Clothes, washing and scent

The outfit you picked in the creator is the only one you choose like that. From then on, every piece of clothing is an item: you find it, make it or trade for it, and you change clothes by wearing it.

Changing clothes

• Open your inventory (F2). The Clothing section under Loadout shows what you wear, slot by slot, and how dirty, wet and worn each piece is.
• To put something on, right-click it in your pockets and pick Wear (or double-click it). What you had on in that place comes off into your pockets.
• To take something off, right-click it in the Clothing section and pick Take off.
• Body armor goes in the Armor slot, the last one in the Clothing section, and plates go into the vest there. See Body armor and plates.
• Changing takes time: a couple of seconds for a hat, several for a jacket, longer for pants and boots. You can't do it in a fight, in the water or on the ground.

Where clothes come from

• Clothing racks and shops, suitcases, wardrobes and dressers, houses, storage boxes and lockers. Military crates hold military kit; police lockers tactical kit.
• The dead and old camps: their clothes are torn, filthy and often bloody. Wash them before you wear them.
• Make them: a tarp poncho, foot wraps from rags, a face covering, a patched jacket, knitted hats and scarves by hand; tops, shirts, pants and shoes at a tailor's bench, with a quality.
• Haven's quartermaster sells second-hand clothes and soap flakes.
• A ghillie suit is only ever made, never found or sold, and you can't pick one in the creator: tie canvas, paracord, cloth and fresh brush together at a workbench, or sew one at a tailor's bench (both need a tier 4 bench). Worn as your top, it covers you head to foot, over whatever pants you have on, and makes you hard to see and harder to smell.

Dirt, blood and wear

Clothes get dirty from wearing them, and faster when you sweat, run, fight, crawl, walk through mud in the rain or wade. Blood gets into them when you bleed, get bitten or butcher an animal. Each piece goes Fresh, Worn, Dirty, Filthy and finally Spoiled (sour with sweat and filth, or soaked in blood). Clothes also wear out, and teeth, blows and bullets tear them: mend what you're wearing with a sewing kit and thread.

The infected track you by smell. Dirty or bloody clothes and an unwashed body carry your scent much further: when you get "Your clothes reek", change into something clean or wash. A washed body in clean clothes is a little harder to smell than bare skin.

Thick clothes turn teeth: a leather jacket, heavy coats, mail gauntlets and good boots stop some bites outright, fewer once they're torn.

Washing clothes

• Take the piece off first. Then, at any water you could wash yourself in, use the third eye and pick Wash clothes. At your base, a basin, bath or shower works too (a bottle of any water for every two garments).
• Soap in your pockets gets out far more dirt, and all the blood. Laundry soap flakes wash about twelve garments; a bar of soap three.
• Washed clothes come out wet. Wet clothes steal your body heat, faster in wind: dry them before you wear them.

Drying

• Folded in your pockets they dry slowly. Carried near a lit camp fire they dry fast.
• A Laundry Rack at your base (build it at a workbench) holds six garments and dries them several times faster, fastest in sun and wind. Out in the rain it gets them wetter, so put it under a roof.
• Clothes left wet and folded for long start to sour.

See also Dirty water, hygiene and sickness (washing yourself) and Weather (cold and wet).