Elden Ring introduced a new Alter Garments feature that players are quickly discovering serves very little purpose. That said there is a bit of work to do if you want access to this arguably useless feature.
If you want the ability to alter your garments you will need to traverse through the Coastal Cave and face the Demi-Human Chief bosses. Once you fell this boss you will gain the Tailoring Tools and Sewing Needle. After you gain these items the Alter Garments feature will appear at all Sites of Grace.
From here you can go over the different appearances and edits you can make to the armor. For example, Prophets can remove the wheel around their neck. While a small Rune cost is associated with Armor Alterations, it is cheap enough to essentially use the tailoring tools whenever you want.
When players found out that they would have the ability to alter their armor and make it unique there was tons of excitement. Everyone figured that this was going to provide a great way to make your character as unique as possible and allow for an even more immersive gaming experience. How wrong we were though…
It did not take long for players to realize that there were little to no alterations available. While the Prophet’s alteration of removing the neck wheel was fairly significant, most are simply removing the best parts of your outfit. This mainly consists of removing the hoods and capes from outfits. No color changes and no additions are included, simply taking away the stylish aspects of your armor and making them bland.
For example, as a Confessor, you can only remove the outer hood and cloak that is attached to your armor. This makes you look pretty lame and this is the only option for this outfit. Almost all other outfits follow the same trend of taking away the cool parts of all your armor for no benefit whatsoever.
When you alter armor it does not affect your stats. While it is a good thing that making your armor less cool does not make your stats better, it is incredibly obnoxious that not more attention was placed on garment alterations. Because of the fact that it only changes appearances many players feel as though more armor changes should have been available to implement. This feels especially true since the feature is unlocked by a boss fight.
Color changes, adding more flair/attachments, and maybe even design/style changes should have been part of Altering Garments. While it is not totally impossible that we could see this feature expanded upon in future updates, no news on this has been mentioned at all. It appears that for now, Elden Ring players are stuck with this bland feature.
Elden Ring is currently available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
