Clothing

*For clothing-like gear you can't remove and that you lose when you die, see Survivor equipment.*

**Clothing** is the primary means of increasing the combat (or related) capability of your character in a reliable way - because weapons expire with use, and clothing does not. There are two forms of this:

1. The effects of a clothing set - obtained when all parts of the set are being worn (this only applies to some of the clothes - those forming sets)
2. The effects of the upgrade kits inserted in all the garments being worn.

Also, clothing, like hair styles or other customizations can be used to define the appearance of your character. There are 4 body areas:

1. the head
2. the torso
3. the loins+legs
4. the feet

Upgrade kits are inserted into particular pieces of clothing they cannot be removed from (only overwritten with other kits), and they work when that piece is being worn for function. Clothing, in turn, can be put on, changed or removed any time the character is in a safe state - at the encampment, lakeview or at (city or portable) bonfire - or an unlit camp (which works even without fire). You don't lose your clothing (nor inserted kits) when you incur a flare death.

To outfit a character, guide them to a safe state and open your profile. Therein, underneath the silhouette of your character (**don't use the nearby pistol icon** or your character will drop its items and lose its survivor gear, unless you have tamed Pouch the dog to guard you) there is a small matrix of 2 rows of 4 body areas. In its **top** row you select the pieces that are to be used for their **function** (=set bonus and kit effects), and that, if not overridden, will also sculpt the appearance your character. In the **bottom** row you can select which items your character will use as the **visual overlay** (overriding the appearance of the corresponding functional piece) but will **not** use the functions of (= set bonuses and kits in the garments in the bottom row don't apply, they're only for appearance). Note that a piece is only available to be used as the visual overlay if it's upgraded to the 5/5 (exceptional quality) level, but if you reach it you will be able to switch between your overlays anywhere (and not only in safe zones).

It follows that a particular body area can only host one item of clothing for its function at a time, and it's best if there's space for a set to be worn. There are no two sets that can be worn simultaneously. 19 sets accept any garment for the feet, and 14 for the head, giving you modularity: the ability to use optional parts with different kits for the same set. Conversely, the same pair of shoes or hat will be able to complement many sets. Note that kits can synergize, while others clash, so learn that and plan your modularity ahead.

Each set has its own covering of the torso, and there are only 2 sets (fast food and RATS fan) accepting any garments for the loins. Therefore it's best not to upgrade non-set shirts and pants for function and not to fill them with kits, and do that to set clothes instead.

As your character gets tired, your shirt/pants will start to look torn up; once you rest your clothing will repair itself. Unupgraded clothing has a ragged appearance as well, but see the paragraph above.

There are around 200 pieces of clothing and 39 clothing sets.

It is possible to try out different styles for your character out-of-game by using unofficial dressing rooms:

* Wiki Dressing room(code on Github)

## Obtaining clothing

You can obtain clothing in the following ways:

* **Sam Bullock's Shop** - You can find Sam (and Johanna) near the campfire in Survivors' camp, where he sells a selection of 8 random clothing (including ones you already own) for  500 or  200/175/150. Bought clothing is in high quality. The clothing cycles every 3 days and the Fraise price is discounted by 20-40%. The clothing he sells is same for everyone. The rarity of clothing have no infulence on what clothing will be randomly chosen to be selled.
He will also sell a Clothing set for  750 or  250 Fraise each piece, without discounts on the Fraises, on a weekly basis. (Resets 18:00 / 6:00 PM UTC)
* **Leveling up** - All tier 1 clothing can be obtained through level up rewards.
* **Research projects** - All tier 1 and tier 2 clothing can be obtained through researching.
* **Loot / Drops (themed)** - Every infected may drop the clothing that it wears. In areas where themed infecteds spawn, the containers are also more likely to contain their clothing.
* **Loot / Drops (non-themed)** - You can find any clothing commonly in secret passages or as drops from bosses and Peruvian infecteds.
* **Loot / Drops (non-themed, extremly rare)** - All clothing can be found in containers or from normal infected drops, albeit incredibly rare. The  Collectioner Strategy can help with this. There are a few cosmopolitan areas (like the soccer pitch of Santa Rosa) that can make rare clothing drop.
* **Events** - Obtained through a Dead Maze event. These clothing items can not be obtained with the above methods.  Pumpkin is currently the only item to fit this category.

All clothing starts off in "poor" condition, except those purchased from shop - you get them at 4/5, which means if buying them for 500, you get all that reputation back in their upgrade level.

## Clothing set

*Main article: Clothing set*Some clothing pieces have prescribed related pieces for other body areas. If those pieces are all worn together, an additional set bonus is applied (once for the entire set, not as many times as there are pieces). How many pieces comprise a set varies from 2 to 4, so certain sets can be worn with optional complements (see the main section). There are no two clothing sets that can be worn simultaneously.

## Rarity

Clothing comes in 4 tiers of rarity that can be reckoned by the color of the name of the clothing item name in your profile / the shop. The rarity (not to be confused with quality= how many times it's been upgraded) goes from common to rare: white, green, blue, purple (listed as 1-4 in the tables below). Effects:

* The rarer clothing is, the less likely it will be dropped by an infected / found in a container (even when fighting a themed infected such as the firefighter).
* When upgraded, the hp each upgrade earns you is calculated based on its rarity.

## Coloring

*Main article: Dye*It is possible to change the color of your clothes by applying  Dye. This customization will remain unless you remove it by applying any water bottle to the clothing. Some clothing can't be dyed, however when you try to dye un-dyeable clothing, it wont use your dye up. Since the effect a dye has on the garment varies from one to another, it's recommended to use the unoffical dressing room to preview the effect before the dye is used in the game. In the dressroom, clicking on clothing items you can see a "color wheel" button on top of screen if it can be dyed (no color wheel if not), and clicking this you can chose the dye color, to chose color of your clothing.

Note: Since Black and Dark Blue Dyes are very rare, you might want to upgrade clothing(to Exceptional Quality) that are already black by default and equip those in the comestic slots. If you accidentally dyed a black clothing, you can remove the dye with any bottle of water.

## Upgrading clothing

When you get clothing it will start off in "poor" 1/5 quality, and to reach the ultimate 5/5 level you will need the sewing workshop, but all the lower levels can be attained simply by opening kit slots in your garments even if you don't have the workshop. Resources and sewing kits are no longer used for the upgrading of clothes - currently the method is by spending  Reputation or  Fraise .

* Increases hp the item gives (higher rarity clothing gives bigger hp boosts at each stage)
* A new slot becomes available (except for when they become exceptional).
* Each clothing item upgraded to max quality increases your max HP by 1 (even when not worn).

In the tables below, the "Upgrade Cost" shows the amount of resources needed to upgrade 1 point towards the next quality level, which with each increasing "recipe level" progressively requiring more currencies:

 Average → Good |  150
 Good → High |  300
 High → Exceptional |  500

## Slots

Each piece of clothing has 3 slots, each of one of 3 types: Battle, Support, and Protection. You can fill them with upgrade kits as long as the kit type matches the slot, but you can't eject kits you've already inserted (you only can overwrite them with other kits)

The number of slots unlocked (from left to right) depends on its current quality:

* 0 slots: Poor
* 1 slot: Average
* 2 slots: Good
* 3 slots: High / Exceptional

## List

The "set" column indicates whether or not it belong to a clothing set. The "dye" column menas, if clothing can be dyed using Dye, this information comes from unoffical dressing room. (Its reccomended to use this tool, to see how would your clothing look dyed, wihnout having to use the dye.)

If you try to drag dye on undyable clothing, dye will be returned to your inventory, the clothing wont be colored.

## Trivia

* During beta before the clothes shop was added, you obtained clothing through level up rewards; you would be given a "crate" option which once selected would open to reveal a random clothing piece you didn't have yet (with higher level clothing being rarer).
* Before V1.14, "poor" quality clothing would show as torn, and had to be upgraded to at least average quality to remove torn effect.
* Before V1.18 upgrades required  sewing kits and varying amounts of fabric, as well as 0-2 resources which depended on the clothing.
* Raven's Shoes was the only rarity 0 (Max Health boosts: 1~0/1/2/3/4) clothing piece. On July 6th, 2018, it was changed to a rarity 4 clothing piece.