Brad Bradley, SWG Tailor

Hello, I'm Brad Bradley, and I'm a Master Tailor from the planet Rori in the Naboo system (Kettemoor server). Please feel free to visit my expanded, newly restocked shop in the city of Sirtet, at /waypoint -1315 4019!

I've prepared this web page to help you and your tailor (whether it's me or not) have a more productive and more enjoyable time picking out clothes for your character in Star Wars: Galaxies.

Table of Contents: Introduction. Catalog: pants & skirts, shirts, jackets & vests, all-in-one, lingerie, accessories, jewelry, & wookiee wear.

A Note about Colors

Standard Colors:
 Accessory Colors:
 Leather Colors:
 Metal Colors:
 Subtle Colors:

When you're looking at these images to pick a color, don't memorize the row and column, because the layout changes from item to item. The ideal way to describe them would be something like, "color number 105 counting the first one as 0" or failing that as "the second to last set of blues, 3rd one from the left."

Standard: This is the color palette that mostly affects cloth. The most important thing to remember is that this color palette varies entirely by level. Novice Artisans start out with only the first 20 colors. They gain 20 colors per level, more or less, through Domestic I to IV, then Novice Tailor, then Tailoring I to IV. The last 55 colors are only available to Master Tailors.

Accessory: This is the color palette that mostly affects plastic parts and some heavier-than-usual fabric parts. It is also called the "limited" color palette. Notice that there are some huge gaps in this - for example, there is no red darker than a medium pink, nor any blue darker than a pale medium blue. The entire palette is available to Artisans from the start.

Leather: This is the color palette that mostly affects leather-look parts of clothing. This includes most shoes, some outerwear, and most importantly, nearly all Wookiee clothing. No, there is no red, blue, or purple. What you get is yellow, tan, brown, white, gray, black, pink, and green. That's all. The entire palette is available to Artisans from the start.

Metal: This is the color palette that is intended to represent metal, but seems to also apply to some fabric bits that are intended to be metalic in color. The entire palette is available to Artisans from the start.

Subtle: This is a very weird color palette in that it only applies to one item, the Dress Robe. I ran through the levels of Tailoring pretty fast, but it does appear to come in stages from Tailoring 1 through Master Tailor.

Prices

There is no more sensitive subject in the Tailor community than pricing. Pricing has generated more arguments between tailors, and between tailors and their customers, and between tailors and their suppliers, than any other subject.

If you want to get a feel for pricing in general, go visit Zachary's Tailor Item Price Calculator. It lets tailors put in their pricing assumptions - how much per unit of resource, how much for each factory-made component, what multiplier for rare skill requirements, and so on. It then generates a price list for all Tailor items. If you run that calculator with the default numbers, which are very common numbers, you'll see prices that range from 160 credits for a Utility Belt up through around 10,000 credits for some of the Master Tailor robes. Most items average out to around 1000 credits per item, or around 5000 credits for a complete ordinary outfit. If you don't have that much to spend, don't bother a Master Tailor.

I'm sure those prices seem high to you. And some of them do seem high even to me. But between the color issues and a certain amount of snobbery, players just absolutely swarm Master Tailors. Virtually every Master Tailor in the game is turning away business, even at those prices, because there aren't enough hours in the day. Lower ranking tailors, on the other hand, are desperate for work. They need the money to buy more resources for grinding. They need the usage XP (as little as there is) in order to level up. You will always, always, always get better prices from a lower level tailor than you will from a Master Tailor.

Socketed Clothing

Clothing items can take clothes powerups, items that look like a roll of tape. (This is also the same icon that is used for the Trim clothing component.) These are called Skill-Enhancing Items, and when they're listed on the Bazaar they're listed under Misc.

These items are not craftable. They are very, very rare loot from higher-level human NPCs, usually inside Locked Containers (or so I'm told).

You install them by dragging them onto the clothes item. This can be done at any time, and (unlike BE-modded clothing, see below) it is usually done after the item is finished. No special skill is required to install clothing powerups. Once a clothing powerup has been installed, it can not be removed. Finally, due to a user-interface problem, no matter how many sockets a backpack has, you can't add powerups to it.

Tailors can not absolutely predict how many sockets a clothing item will have. That being said, any Novice Tailor can reasonably predict that most clothes from the Domestic Arts catalog will have at least 1 socket, and perhaps as many as 4. To get sockets on Tailor items requires the Tailoring skill at level 2 or above; at Master Tailor most Tailor items will have slots. Even at the Master Tailor level, perhaps 1 item in 5 will have no slots at all.

Some people will tell you not to use these items, because they're bugged. They are out of date, the 08Oct03 patch fixed those issues.

There are two remaining issues that you might think are bugs, but they're not. Important Note: These issues apply to BE-modded clothing as well. First of all, if you don't have a skill at all, bonuses to that skill don't work at all. For example, if you wear a shirt that has a bonus to the number of creatures you can tame, and you're not a creature handler, you won't get the bonus. Secondly, if you wear a lot of these, you may not get the full benefit, as there is a cap of +25 in bonuses allowed to any given skill.

Bio-Engineering Enhanced Clothing

Bio-Engineers who have the Tissue skills can make components that give bonuses to specific skills. Unlike clothing powerups, above, these have to be used by the tailor during item creation. Basically, the Tailor buys the tissues from a Bio Engineer, uses them (either manually or with a factory) to make customized clothing components, which can then be substituted for regular components in making certain clothing. In game terms, these use either cloned nerve tissue to enhance your perceptions, or they use cloned scent glands to affect other people (and creatures).

Note that as of 13Nov03, the rules for these have changed. These are the new rules:

Here are the Synthetic Cloth enhancements that are available. Note that I have not included ones that require milk as it is not available in sufficient quantity to make bioengineered tissues. These can be used in roughly half of the shirts, pants, vests, jackets, and headwear that a tailor can make.

P.S. I list Enhanced Myoflex as theoretically available, but each panel uses 20 units of identical Eggs, or 520 of them for a crate. For one person gathering eggs, that's probably five or six hours' work, on a good day. Consequently, Enhanced Myoflex is very, very hard to get ahold of, especially in factory crates.

Here are the Reinforced Fiber Panel enhancements that are available. These, I'm afraid, can only be used in a few items - to be precise, 3 shirts, 6 types of pants, 3 jackets (all at double cost), a half-dozen bodysuits (but only at ridiculous cost), and most bandoliers (which conflict with backpacks). Note that I have not included tissues that require milk as it is not available in sufficient quantity to make bioengineered tissues.

I have a source I could ask for Constrictor Cloth, Confidence Cloth, and Visual Camouflage, and I could probably provide them for the same 1000 credit per panel price that I charge for all level II and below tissues, although it might be two weeks or more before I got them. If you think that there's any demand for very low level bleed defense, melee offense, and sniper skill tissues, email me ("Brad") in game.

And yes, I do buy BE tissues by the crate. I'm offering a flat 500 credits per tissue for novice, level 1, and level 2 tissues, minimum bonus +3. For level 3 and up tissues, I'm offering 100 credits per +1 to the highest stat.

Your Friend, the Tailor

In general, you will pay much higher prices for a Master Tailor's time than you will for a Novice Tailor's time ... unless they like you. If you care a lot about your character's clothes in this game, it is worth your time to cultivate a relationship with one or more tailors, just as you already are with medics, creature handlers, and weaponsmiths. If the tailor likes you, you'll pay prices around half to two-thirds off, and probably get some items thrown at you for free.

Here are the things that will really, really endear you to a tailor.

  1. Start Early in their Career. There are some very useful and attractive items that can be bought from a Novice Tailor. You probably want many of those items in colors that even a Novice Tailor can make, like gray and black. Can't deal with the Novice Tailor choices? Consider that most of the clothes that most people want can be made, with slots, with a very good range of colors, by someone with Field Wear IV and Tailoring II. That's over half the tailors in the game. There is no good reason not to take your orders for those items to one of those tailors. And if you do, you will be rewarded for your patronage later, really.

  2. Sell to Them, at Reasonable Prices. Tailors desperately need Scouts, including Rangers. Tailoring goes through hides by the thousands. This is especially true for tailors who make the same mistake I did of starting with Casual Wear, and who therefore have to use Cloaks for their grinding. All of the rest of the resources that a tailor needs, they can get on their own for just as cheap as you can. But if you can offer them stacks of hide, especially Bristley Hide and Wooly Hide, in even multiples of 100 hides, for prices of 2 to 4 credits per hide, you will earn their undying loyalty.

    Tailors also need Architects. Every Tailor is sooner or later going to need at least one house, a personal crafting station, stacks of harvesters, a solar or fusion power plant, and at least one Wearables Factory. If you don't gouge them on buildings, they won't gouge you on clothes.

    Tailors also need Droid Engineers. People are always asking for clothes that require a crafting station, and asking them to be custom-made on the spot. Every tailor needs a droid with a Clothes and Armor crafting station. It can be as simple as an MSE droid, and it'll make them happy. Happy tailors are repeat customers, and people who give away free clothing.

    Finally, tailors need models. Dancers and Musicians who support Tailors during their early days get cheap clothing. Dancers and Musicans who model those clothes, either giving free publicity during concerts or posing for web catalogs, get free clothes.

  3. Befriend Them. Virtually every Tailor is a "Tailor Slash." You know, Tailor/Marksman, Tailor/Scout, Tailor/Entertainer, or Tailor/Medic. When they're out looking for a group because they're taking a break from grinding and selling, they tend to remember the people they befriend along the way. Failing that, even if you're just a friendly person who always says "Hi" and "How are you" and "What's new" when you see them at the Bank or Bazaar, that gets remembered, too. And if you've got a house in the neighborhood, be a neighbor - stop in to the shop some times, once in a rare while, just to say, "Hi."

  4. Be a Better Customer. Tailors have long, long lists of pet peeves about their customers. You can find threads about bad customer experiences (not giving names, just venting) on the Tailor message board. You might recognize yourself in it. That being said, if you buy something from a Tailor and (a) you understand our limitations (most of which were mentioned above), and (b) can actually describe what you want, preferably even giving actual item names, and (c) you don't try to screw us down on prices, and (d) you don't insult us (you laugh? it happens all the time), and finally, (e) you want something other than pants, shirt, boots, gloves, and a duster in all black, then your tailor will be so happy with you that they may shower free clothing on you for the rest of your natural life.

If you don't do any of those things, don't be surprised if you pay full price - if you can get anyone to sell clothes to you at all. If you're a bad enough customer, and rude enough, you might not be able to find clothes at all except for occasional lucky buys on the Bazaar.

Continue on to your choice of: pants & skirts, shirts, jackets & vests, lingerie, all-in-one, accessories, jewelry, & wookiee wear.