FromSoftware’s magnum opus, Elden Ring, has been lauded for its punishing boss fights, sprawling open world, and impossibly deep lore. Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team created a landscape where every crumbling ruin whispers a story, and finding the perfect weapon or spell can feel like unearthing a relic. Yet as players continue to roam the Lands Between four years after launch, a quiet frustration has grown into a persistent murmur: for a game that lets you sculpt your face down to the size of your character’s chin cleft, the actual armour customization remains bafflingly, almost comically shallow.

The system that shipped with the base game in 2022 remains largely untouched even after the massive Shadow of the Erdtree expansion in 2024. What do players get? The ability to remove a cape. That’s it—snip off a cape, lose a few points of defense and weight, and watch the item description change to reflect your tailoring. You can march up to Boc the Seamster, hand over a golden needle, and he’ll joyfully declare your boss armour cape-free. It’s a neat little trick. But here’s the thing: you’re telling me I can become Elden Lord while cosplaying as a pot-headed jar warrior, but I can’t even tint my gauntlets to match my greaves? Come on. Somewhere in the Lands Between, Miquella’s needle just trembled with sheer disappointment.

The lack of meaningful gear alteration has been a sticking point since launch. Countless threads on community forums begged for armour dyeing—a feature that would let Tarnished fashionistas finally coordinate their Radahn lion-print cape with their Tree Sentinel boots. The imagination exploded: golden Godrick sets, obsidian Night’s Cavalry wraps, even ridiculous neon-green bull-goat pranks. But FromSoftware stayed silent. Even after the DLC introduced a dizzying array of new armour sets—each with lovingly penned lore snippets—the only tailoring available remained that trusty old cape toggle. It’s like having a wardrobe stuffed full of hand-embroidered royal garments, but the only modification you’re allowed is unbuttoning the collar.

A related headache is stat allocation. In many modern RPGs, you can wear whatever makes you look glorious while keeping the numbers from your hard-earned loot. Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition let players layer appearances over functional gear without sacrificing a single stat point. Elden Ring, by contrast, forces a painful choice: do you want to look like the next Elden Lord, or do you want to survive a single hit from Malenia? Yes, you can technically beat the game in nothing but a loincloth, but that’s a self-imposed challenge, not a design invitation. The Fashion Souls community has long dreamed of a system where the armour you find unlocks a cosmetic slot independent of defense values. Imagine equipping a 50-pound Bull-Goat chest piece for the poise, then making it look like that elegant Blue Silver Mail set you adore. Right now, that’s pure fantasy—unless you’re on PC and willing to dabble in mods, which risk bans and disconnect you from the multiplayer soul of the game.

The situation creates a bizarre tension inside every player’s head. You spend hours perfecting a character’s facial structure, hair colour, and even those tiny eye bags—only to then wrap that meticulously crafted face in a clashing mishmash of gear because the stats demand it. PvP arenas are filled with terrifying patchwork nightmares: Raging Wolf helm, Lionel’s Armour, Fire Prelate Greaves. The community has even coined the term “Spaghetti Souls” for the grotesque outfits forced by min-maxing. And you know what the worst part is? All those stunning armour descriptions—the melancholy tale of Lusat’s stone-crusted rags, the haunting madness of the Traveller’s Set—become practically pointless if your build crumples like a soggy tissue the moment you dare to actually wear them.

Boc’s little questline remains a bittersweet reminder of what could have been. That golden needle is a genuine gesture of love from the developers, a small nod to the desire for alteration. But players were not asking for a tailor who can only hem a cloak. We were asking for a dye workshop, a glamour system, maybe even the ability to move minor armour parts around. In 2026, with no further expansions on the horizon from FromSoftware, the official avenue looks closed. The community has taken matters into its own hands, with PC mods like “Fashion Police” or “Transmog System” offering the freedom that the Lands Between sorely lacks. Yet console Tarnished remain stuck with the cape removal, rolling their eyes every time they pass the seamster.

The legacy of Elden Ring remains untouchable in so many ways—its art direction, world-building, and sense of discovery are peerless. But as fashion-forward games like Fashion Dreamer or even updates to Monster Hunter show how deeply players connect with visual identity, the gap in armour customization feels less like a charming quirk and more like a missed opportunity. Creating hundreds of unique armour pieces only to let players toggle one single detail? That’s like painting a masterpiece and then hanging it in a closet. Here’s hoping that whatever successor Miyazaki crafts next—Elden Ring 2, a new Dark Souls, or something entirely unexpected—will finally give the Fashion Souls community the tools it deserves. Until then, we’ll keep begging for a dye pot, or at least a second needle. Please. My Tarnished really needs her gloves to match her boots.