Remember when I first discovered the boot mismatch for orange armormech recipes (heavy armor, republic)?  I didn’t have all the recipes at the time and hypothesized that some boots got “swapped” and went with the wrong sets.

So now that I have all the boots, all the gloves, and most of the belts, I can say with certainty:

• In a given set, the boots, gloves, and belt will match each other.
• There are situations where there is NO match.  Not mixed up, just none exists.
• I’m ignoring bracers, because they are pretty much under gloves, and I don’t have enough of them to figure out what matches what.

Here, let me show you the sets, you’ll see.  Keep in mind that I don’t have all the belts so if the belt doesn’t match, it’s probably the wrong one.  But hey, we’re focused on boots and gloves, right?

As you can see, you will be relying pretty heavily on “match to chest” for many of these sets.  For some, you can mix and match between the sets to get the coordinated look that was obviously intended.  For other sets, there just do not exist matching boots and gloves.

I’ve noticed some mismatches in synthweaving gear (heavy, medium, and light) and in the medium armormech stuff, but most of the time it’s not as totally obvious as with the trooper stuff.  I don’t have enough experience sith-side to say what is going on with their versions of the gear.

To be blunt, this pisses me off.  A lot.  I’ve busted my ass to get all the recipes only to discover that we’re going to have to rely on “match to chest” anyway – so I probably could have been a slacker on collecting those.  There are some subtle differences in models, but not THAT much variety.

When you are putting together your gear set, it’s not only OK to mix and match, it’s damn well necessary.  My technique so far is to find chest and pants that are the same set (or look good together), and then find a set of boots and gloves that match each OTHER but aren’t necessarily part of the same set as the chest/pants.  You don’t really see bracers, and belts will depend on your personal style of “belt doodads” or lack thereof.  Hats are also largely a matter of personal taste, if you even show them at all, and often will go just fine with another set.