How to use your makeover scroll

I have not seen any guides for using makeover scrolls, so this thread is for collecting tips and suggestions about how to use them. Note that some of these game specific details can and probably will change when they issue new patched versions of the game. Of course, if people post general tips (for example on choosing colors or other artistic suggestions), they should stay valid (or invalid, depending .

You can get a makeover scroll from a quest or from the perfect world Boutique.

When you use your makeover scroll, you can use the character customization controls to change your character's appearance. You currently have only one chance here. You can cancel out and keep using your character's current appearance, but once you have changed your character would need to use another makeover scroll if you wanted to make further changes. This means you need to be careful. I will try to warn you of some mistakes you can make that you will probably want to avoid.

Furthermore, the camera positioning controls are rather limited during this process. For example, your avatar photo (that you see on the upper left hand corner of your screen, and which other people see when they have you selected) has a top-down perspective that you can not simulate when customizing your character's face. Also, your avatar picture only shows your head and hair. This can emphasize your character's chin. Finding a balance between a good looking avatar picture and a good looking character can require some care, depending on your overall facial structure and features.

Some options have "unrealistic effects" that can easily be taken too far. Other sliders almost demand extreme settings. Problems include inhuman shapes and cracks appearing in your character's skin (for example, in certain mouth positions). But unrealistic features can look nice on some characters, so these controls can be worth experimenting with.

To help deal with this kind of flexibility, you can save a snapshot of your character's current potential appearance and then restore that saved setting later. Personally, I went through something like a hundred snapshots when I was designing my character's face. And, after some initial attempts, I started naming them z01, z02, z03, ... (So that they would stay in the same order when I quit and restarted that they were in when I made them. Also, because short names were easier to type.) But I was designing my face from scratch and trying push the limits of their customization controls. If you upload a snapshot to match against you will probably find this easier than I did.

Some options may not seem to offer enough flexibility, but sometimes you can change the rest of your face to obtain the proportions you were looking for.

I sometimes like making a few different saved snapshots and then quickly flipping between them to help me decide which I liked best.

You can also create a new character and and go in game with the appearance you have been working on, to get some ideas of how your new appearance would look, from different angles and maybe even in different lighting conditions.

Currently, when you restore a snapshot, your character's sliders do not move. This can be used to good effect, if you want to copy some group of features from one saved face to another, but usually I found this frustrating. Fortunately, you can revert any unwanted changes using those saved snapshots. But if you want to edit some part of a saved version of your character's face, I think you need to first load that version on a potential new character, then quit entirely, and then start back up. Then all your controls will be set up right for you.

Sometimes you can also use "reset" to restore where those sliders get positioned but this can make your lips turn white if you were working on your mouth.

Unfortunately, some problems can not be eliminated or eliminating them would be overly restrictive. Certain otherwise beautiful hair styles will leave your hair hanging inside your character's body. And there's that cut where your throat joins your head. Also, the mechanism they have implemented, to give our characters' skins texture and depth, works best with lighter colored skin. If you make a dark character, your character's appearance will be somewhat "cartoonish" because of the lack of contrast in skin tones. I wish I had some good ideas for making really good looking dark skin, but I do not.

Anyways, eventually you run out of ways of improving your character. Personally, I prefer saving my work and waiting for a few days to see if I come up with any better improvements. But I am extremely cautious and if you are happy with your face maybe you should be enjoying your new look.

If anyone else has any good suggestions, I would love to hear them!