How to customize your characters in Space Marine 2

Customizing your Space Marine 2 characters lets you honor your favourite Chapter, show your skills with fancy gear, and create entirely unique looks, but it’s a complicated process. The Battle Barge’s Armouring Hall is where to go for all your fashion-hammer needs but Space Marine 2 doesn’t make things easy, requiring you to unlock colors, emblems, and individual armor pieces by spending Requisitions or completing challenges. To help you create some outfits befitting of the God-Emperor’s finest, I’ve laid out how Space Marine 2 armor customization works below.

Space Marine 2 armor customization explained

Before you start customizing your armor, make sure you’re in either of the Space Marine 2 multiplayer modes, Operations or Eternal War, and are on the Battle Barge, then head to the Armouring Hall and interact with Galeo, just like you would in the campaign. Here you can scroll between each of the six Space Marine 2 classes and choose the “Edit Armour” option to begin changing the look of their armor.

It’s important to note that Operations and Eternal War have separate Space Marine 2 customization, so, for example, your Tactical Marine’s armor style and Chapter colors in Operations will not transfer to your Eternal War Tactical Marine, so you either have to recreate the outfit or can create something different.

Now that you’re editing your chosen class’s armor, you’ll see two headings at the top that represent the two major stages of customizing your characters in Space Marine 2. Here’s how they work as well as the Heraldry shop where you unlock most cosmetics:

Armour Sets in Space Marine 2

These determine the visual shape and style of your Space Marine’s armor. Most sets consist of individual pieces, and you can unlock an entire set by completing Operations or winning Eternal War matches. Note that some armor sets are entirely fixed and can’t be customized at all, such as Champion skins.

At the bottom, you’ll also find four slots for custom armor sets which let you mix and match all the armor pieces you’ve unlocked to create your own unique looks that you can easily switch between. You can change the follow parts of your Space Marines’ armor:

• Helm
• Pauldrons (left and right)
• Breastplate
• Backpack
• Wargear
• Gauntlets (left and right)
• Greaves (left and right)

Astartes Chapters in Space Marine 2

This is where you pick the color scheme for your Space Marine based on the existing Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, from classic Ultramarines, Dark Angels, and Space Wolves to the more obscure Storm Giants, Minotaurs, and Omega Marines. However, each of these Chapter schemes is made of a Chapter emblem for the left shoulder some other cosmetics, and you must buy each of those via the Heraldry sub-menu before you can equip the entire Chapter scheme. When you do equip the Chapter scheme, it applies all the special heraldry rules for you as well to complete the look.

As with the Armor Sets tab, you’ll find four custom slots under the Astartes Chapters. This is where you can create “rules” for a custom color scheme that you can freely apply to any of your armor sets. You start with a “General Rule” that determines the following:

• Pattern: The style of your Space Marine’s color scheme. It could be one solid color over all the armor two colors split vertically, for example.
• Colour: Primary, secondary, and tertiary slots for all the colors you have unlocked. Primary is the main armor color, secondary applies if you have chosen a special pattern, and tertiary is for trim and special details.
• Emblem: The Chapter icon that goes on your marine’s left pauldron.
• Emblem Colour: Primary, secondary, and tertiary slots to determine the Chapter icon’s colors, though it’s unlikely you’ll ever have to use all three slots.

After this, you can start adding custom rules for specific armor pieces that override the General Rule. Click the “add” button at the bottom, then pick an armor piece that you want to change the appearance of. Now you can choose the pattern and colors that will apply to only this armor piece.

Heraldry in Space Marine 2

This is essentially the paint and decal shop for customizing your Space Marines. Either select a Chapter in the Astartes Chapters screen or press the Heraldry icon to reach this menu. Here you can spend Requisitions on unlocking your chosen Chapter’s emblem, then whatever else that follows, such as color packs, company markings, other emblems, and unique armor pieces. Everything you unlock using Requisitions is available to all six classes and across both Operations and Eternal War, so there’s no need to double dip.

Heraldry is also divided into three sections: “Astartes Heraldry” for all the recognizable Chapters, “Heretic Astartes” for Chaos Space Marine warbands, and “Unknown Foundings” for lesser-known Chapters. Paid cosmetic packs, such as the Ultramarines Cosmetic Pack, unlock additional sections of the Heraldry menu, allowing for even more customization.

Customizing Heretic Astartes in Space Marine 2

When you’re editing your appearance in Eternal War mode, you can toggle between altering the Adeptus Astartes and Heretic Astartes versions of each class. However, you can change only the colors and heraldry for Heretic Astartes characters as they don’t get any Armor Sets, so you can’t customize their armor style.

From the Heraldry menu, you can unlock and equip the warband colors and emblems of six Chaos warbands: Alpha Legion, Black Legion, Iron Warriors, Night Lords, World Eaters, and Death Guard. As with the Adeptus Astartes, you can also create custom color schemes using the slots below, letting you freely change the colors and heraldry using what you’ve unlocked. For example, you could dress your Alpha Legion-armored Sniper in Ultramarine colors and heraldry for the ultimate disguise.

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