UPDATE late-2023ish: Been a while! Saw a couple people left nice comments about this thread on my wall thank you! :) Thought I'd come back and clean this up a bit. I've also noticed most if not all the questions asked are answered somewhere in the post, but it ended up being so damn long no one can be bothered. Changed formatting a bit to test a new system: rambling/lesser info will be in italics, important stuff will be of course bolded, there'll also be a lot of neutral text which is unchanged. I'm hoping a new reader could either ignore italics for the main info or skimp through mostly text around bolded stuff for a very quick summary.
Added 2 TLDRs for the fastest newbie start possible, should be ok to read those and go play you'll pick things up as you go.
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Flash is gone and many players will be forced to switch or quit. I imagine apparel will be confusing to newcomers and some aspects of it are kinda obscure. I think with some community effort we can create a main thread with good info for everyone. I'll keep editing this if people chime in and hopefully we can create the apparel thread™.
General intro: Apparel items are stat-enhancing clothes that work in coin games, club clashes & showdowns. As time goes on wgt is bound to add tournaments or other formats with apparel on, but for classic tournaments/ready-gos etc apparel is not active, no matter what the number on screen says (sometimes club distance is bugged). You can also create multiplayer games like stroke play or alternate shot with them on. To obtain/level them up you need to randomly drop them from apparel packs, and the main way to get apparel packs is to have a sponsorship active in coin games.
Sponsors: There's 5 brands of apparel = 5 sponsor choices. You get 30m sponsor time every 6h for free, so if you use it when available you'll put the sponsorship on a 5h30m cooldown by the time you're done with your games (this cooldown can be paid for with credits, up to a max of 75cr for the full 5h30m). During sponsor time loses give a bronze pack and wins give a silver<gold<platinum pack.
Sponsor status is checked around the start of the game itself, so if you manage to find (matchmaking can take a while) and start a game even with like 10s left on your sponsor it'll be a full sponsored game.
Apparel packs' item amounts: For any given pack grade (bronze/silver/gold/plat) there appears to be an item amount range that is potentially split in bundles of different items. Let's say our packs drop around 10-12. Assuming an average 11 item pack we may get 11 of 1 item or 6+5 for 2 different item bundles or 3+4+4 for 3...etc Whatever it is, you're guaranteed 1 bundle of your chosen sponsor at least. Gold packs appear to be ~3x better than silver and platinums ~3x better than gold quantity-wise. Also the pack tier (more on this later) really matters, if you're legend+ playing in Paris (Amateur pack cap) you are wasting your sponsor time.
Gold/Plat apparel pack rates: based on what I've observed chances of getting gold/plat packs do increase in higher tier coin rooms. Don't have enough data on this but fwiw fmags suggested in some post that for Tour Champ rooms wins the chance of a gold drop is 1:4 and chance of plat is 1:20.
*The amount of items in every pack is also related to the pack tier which depends on the room's pack cap and is also limited by your actual tier.
Pack Caps: You can check a room's pack cap by clicking the circled ">" arrow in the top right of a coin room button. You can only get a "tier" of pack (stated on top of the pack before tapping open) as high as your tier but it's also limited by the pack cap of the room. It encourages higher tier players to play on the higher bet rooms. These pack tiers influence the amount and quality of the drops. For reference these are the room caps:
⇀Amateur: Paris(3-hole)
⇀Pro: Chelsea(1)
⇀Tour Pro: Beverly Hills(9)
⇀Master: Casablanca(3)
⇀Tour Master: Rio(1),Shanghai(9)
⇀Tour Champ: Monaco(9),Tokyo(1),Montréal/Betmgm(3),Manhattan(3),Bellagio(3)
➣E.g: I'm in legend tier and although I'm usually forced to play Rio due to queue times my room would be Tokyo (caps at Tour Champ) which means I'm getting legend silver packs with around 11 items iirc, when I drop to Rio (caps at Tour Master) I'm getting tour master silver packs with maybe 9-10 items? Difference is more noticeable with larger tier jumps. Generally speaking "smurfing" in lower tier rooms is a bad idea and should be avoided unless you can't compete/risk running out of coins in the higher one. Or you're forced to because you can't find a game in a room despite the game saying there's 200 online :(
Farming efficiency: Within the 30 minutes you should be able to complete around 6-8 games for 1-holes, 3-4 for 3-holes and 1-2 for 9-holes so: Chelsea [Pro and under] / Rio [Tour Master and under] / Tokyo [Legend+] are the best way to farm apparel packs during sponsor time. Of course you can still go for Tokyo as a hack and you'll get the coins, but not better packs and the progression I listed is what'd make sense for most players, skills-wise too as higher coin rooms are more competitive.
⏩TLDR Jumpstart-Farming Apparel: green button bottom of coin room screen set sponsor you want (just start Swing Edge) and for next 30 minutes fit in as many games of Chelsea[Hack+], Rio[TourPro+] or Tokyo[Legend+] as you can. Try to win for better boxes, don't go coin-broke. Oh and equip common swing edge items (click profile pic>edit apparel) for all 5 clothing slots when you get them, I'll see you in the 2nd TLDR.
Common vs Rare vs Epic Stats: For any given stat a common would closely match a rare 1 lvl under and an epic 2 lvls. So a maxed out lv10 common would be similar to its respective lv9 rare or lv8 epic. Most stats max at +100, where for level 10 common would be around 80, rare around 90 and epic would reach the actual 100. But rares/epics sometimes carry an additional attribute not present in the normal item, more on this later.
Upgrading: The amount of any given item and the coins needed to upgrade scale pretty hard, coin values are also 1.5x for rare and 3x for epic:
•Lvx→Lvx+1: repeats/units of item + silver coins for common/rare/epic
-Lv1→Lv2: 2xitem + 50/75/100 silver coins
-Lv2→Lv3: 5x + 200/300/600
-Lv3→Lv4: 10x + 800/1200/2400
-Lv4→Lv5: 20x + 3200/4800/9600
-Lv5→Lv6: 50x + 10k/15k/30k
-Lv6→Lv7: 100x + 30k/45k/90k
-Lv7→Lv8: 200x + 50k/75k/150k
-Lv8→Lv9: 500x + 70k/105k/210k
-Lv9→Lv10(max): 1000x + 100k/150k/300k
¤TOTAL Lv1 to Lv10(max): 1887x item + 264,250/396,375/792,700 silver coins.
If my math is correct, which let's be honest it probably isn't, this means in order to upgrade a full inventory Lv1 to 10: 36,333,125 silver coins are needed.
Set Bonuses: Obtained by equipping 5 items of the same brand and rarity with breakpoints at levels 4/6/9. It rounds down so for instance: if you have items of levels 10+8+5+7+9 you'd be getting the level 4 bonus.
- C&M: chance of +15% to apparel stats for 1hr on win. Works like the xp drinks, you get a little C&M icon with the time left instead.
▸10/20/30% chance (lvls 4/6/9)
- FW: chance to save lost ball. If I remember correctly ball gets respawned right after losing it and keeps the stroke count, you keep playing like nothing happened..well except for the stroke penalty for hitting the ball off the course like a hack.
▸15/30/60% chance
- M: chance of 1hr 20%Xp boost on win. Really good, nice simple and efficient if you need xp to level up. Same as the blue drink you can buy. When I used this a long time ago it stacked as well iirc, so you could be perma-boosted if you won often enough.
▸20/30/45% chance
- SE: chance of extra pack on win. Really good, the one most of us use I assume. Nice to grind some apparel, % is low but meh. Can confirm gold packs can drop from this, I don't see any reason why platinums wouldn't. Also keep in mind swing edge is the best apparel in most slots stats-wise.
▸8/11/15% chance
- TG: chance of 50% entry coin refund on loss. Game ends and you get half the coins from entry back, simple.
▸5/10/15% chance
Wildcard items ❋: Game states you can fill up to 4 slots with wildcard items (which are mostly aesthetic items, like the jester hat) for the purposes of getting this^ bonus, but it doesn't seem to be working correctly lowering your x/5 bonus as if you had a different brand/nothing equipped. We don't know if they plan on fixing this, ignore it for now.
Hidden/Rare-Epic stats: some items get an extra stat when they go from common to rare/epic and if you're getting started and have little apparel you won't know this. If there's extra attributes not initially present, they're in [ ]:
--------[Hats]---------
All➠ Putt. Prec. + Hyb. Spin
All➠ Hyb. Dist. + Hyb. Spin
All➠ %Xp + Rough PWR
Common➠ Driver Dist.
Rare/Epic➠ Driver Dist. [+ Rough PWR]
All➠ %Coin + Putt. Forgiv.
-----------[Gloves]------------
Common➠ Hyb. Meter + Iron Spot
Rare/Epic➠ Hyb. Meter + Iron Spot [+ Hyb. Spot]
All➠ Wedge Meter + Hyb. Spot
Common➠ Iron Meter + 3w spot
Rare/Epic➠ Iron Meter + 3w spot [+ %Xp]
Common/Rare➠ Driver Meter + Driver Spot
Epic➠ Driver Meter + Driver Spot [+ Iron Spot]
Common➠ Driver Meter + Iron Spot
Rare/Epic➠ Driver Meter + Iron Spot [+ %Coin]
-----------[Shoes]-----------
All➠ Putt. Forgiv. + Sand PWR
All➠ Sand PWR + Iron Spin
All➠ %Coin + Putt. Forgiv.
All➠ Brush PWR + 3w spin
All➠ %Xp + Dirt PWR
-----------[Tops]------------
All➠ Iron Dist. + 3w Spin
Common/Rare➠ Iron Dist.
Epic➠ Iron Dist. [+ Hyb. Spin]
Common/Rare➠ %Xp + 3w Dist.
Epic➠ %Xp + 3w Dist.[+ Iron Spin]
All➠ 3w Dist. + Iron Spin
Common/Rare➠ %Coin + Iron Dist.
Epic➠ %Coin + Iron Dist. [+ 3w Spin]
----------[Pants]----------
Common/Rare➠ Putt. Prec. + Putt. Spot
Epic➠ Putt. Prec. + Putt. Spot [+ Sand PWR]
Common➠ Wedge Dist.
Rare/Epic➠ Wedge Dist. [+ Sand PWR]
All➠ %Xp + Sand PWR
All➠ Rough PWR + 3w Spot
All➠ %Coin + Brush PWR
BiS apparel build: knowing the stats we can theorize a best-in-slot endgame gigachad ultimate apparel configuration to grind towards, which would be levels 10 of:
Hat: Epic SE
Glove: Epic Max
Shoes: Epic SE//C&M≈Max//FW
Top: Epic Max≈SE
Pants: Epic SE//C&M
⚠︎ In my opinion there's no reason to ever deviate from these main 10 depending on preference, I've already included quite a few generally sub-par niche ones. You're very unlikely to see any serious upgraded players running anything different, but feel free to experiment.
Main 5 look quite boring but it is what it is. Very similar to a straight up swing edge set which is what you'll see most players run I guess. Reasoning: Set bonus has been ignored. Driver/3w distance are non-negotiable. Any hybrid attributes have been ignored. Distance in irons/wedges preferred untouched. Slower meter is next desired attribute over sweet spot as irons>3w/wedges>driver. Any spin on 3w>irons appreciated next. Abnormally high priority given to putting (C&M pants, C&M/ /Max shoes) only applies to 100% ding-putting players, otherwise will lead to inconsistencies. There's also some bizarre cases like the Max top being basically the Swing Edge top with "%xp" added to it. Anyway that combination above is what came out.
⏩TLDR2 Upgrades-Sets-Rarity: Get common Swing Edge (all 5 clothes) as high as you can, upgrades (flashing blue buttons) cost item units + silver coins. Set bonus at lvls 4/6/9 is increasing %chance to get extra box on win. Replace with rares when they all reach lvl9, replace rares with epics when they all reach lvl9. Max glove/top better but only replace when ready to drop swing edge set bonus, boxes on win adds up. Seriously consider full Max set if under account lvl 102 for extra XP. Not-so-seriously consider full Topgolf set for extra coins.
Appearance tab: A one-time 500cr expense. It unlocks an appearance tab where you can put whatever you want the visuals of, the items placed in there have no effect in terms of stat bonuses ⇎ the abilities tab with the items giving you the bonuses remains unchanged and the items placed in there have no effect on the look of your character. They are completely separate, one determines the appearance vs the other determines the bonuses. Hopefully this clears things up, I see lots of questions on this and confusion in general.
Time to max: You should expect to have your rares/epics at level 5/6 by the time you reach 10 with their respective common. Therefore the average player will sit on their common item sets for a veeery long time.
💰Money/Credits for Apparel: You can find scammy apparel packs and single 1 units with a 100 count (24h refresh) for sale in the shop, the price for the 1 unit listings also increases as the supply gets bought but no one ever does; needless to say you should ignore these, it would cost thousands upon thousands USD to upgrade stuff this way. If you wanna use credits to get better apparel your only reasonable option is paying for the cooldown and playing more sponsored games.
Now there's also "exclusive" showdown offers for real money that contain bundles of a random apparel item and balls/coins/credits priced in the 30-50$ range with a higher arbitrarily-chosen crossed out price, because it's a exclusive offer! Seriously though, I don't spend here but these don't seem to be horrible value, if you want to use real money to advance this is the way to do it.. just wait for that epic SE hat or whatever to pop in here, you can check during a showdown clicking on the offers tab.
Repeats: You get 200 coins per repeat unit, so if I have my common Swing Edge cap at lvl 10 and I drop 11 units in a pack I'm getting 2200 coins instead, which is better than nothing I guess.
⛳Congrats you made it through the main post! You're an apparel expert now
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This next section is filled with subjective opinions, untested hypotheses and stuff I keep editing trying to provide some info on a very obscure system that wgt hasn't really explained:
Item stats' effect, subjective usefulness and what the numbers actually mean: some of these stat bonuses are straight forward but others are ambiguous to say the least and they use these +100 scales and stuff instead of clear flat numbers.
-%Xp/%Coin: I think both of these are pretty good and efficient. If you're grinding xp these small percentages and the max set bonus really start adding up. And stacking the coin percentages maybe even with the topgolf loss mitigation set bonus skyrockets your coin gains allowing you to be in credit even with a negative win % where usually you'd need a 55.5%+ winrate (due to wgt's "cut" in coin rooms). What doesn't make any sense is why the shoes are swapped.. generally Max is the xp apparel with xp set bonus, TopGolf is the coin apparel with coin set bonus but for some reason they either messed up with the shoes or swapped the stats on purpose which makes keeping the set bonus just awkward.
BUT as good as they are, for a lot of players including myself these hold absolutely no value, like actually meaningless... if you're lvl102+ you probably don't care about xp farming and unless you're getting started with building up your coins you don't need any multipliers because they're a resource with no value. As I said a 56% winrate is already enough to keep you in the green, and I don't wanna hoard even more coins.
-Distance: In terms of usefulness this one is pretty clear but these 100 scales are a bit weird.. Would be nice if 100=10% but it seems to be a bit less. In the case of my driver every point right now represents 0.089% so extrapolating: .089/100 * 291 = ~.26yd per point * 100 points= 26 , 26+291=317yd. This was recently confirmed the 291 titleist does indeed read 317 with a lvl10 epic SE hat, so this type of rudimentary math works for figuring out the distance gains at different caps. For this driver we have max distances of 312 (common), 314 (rare), 317(epic). Compounded with premium balls we're easily looking at 340-350yd drives which is quite absurd and I love it.
You could reach an almost +9% distance at +100 (epic lvl10) and if we go by the rule of thumb for pro shop balls' distance rating of 1 dot = ~1%.. you're looking at only 5-6% distance for some of the premium balls. Which means this apparel is pretty damn good in terms of the stat's "credit value". Obviously it only works on specific game modes, but still.
Personally I think both driver and 3 wood distance are best in slot for hats and tops respectively. Forgiveness, meter speed etc.. can improve your game sure, but these are literally strokes gained from the back tees. Keep in mind the SE hat gains Rough PWR in the rare tier and the 3w distance top (M/SE) has Iron Spin built in, both of those can mess with your game.. especially if you have your stuff neatly mapped and whatnot, I play yolo style so I don't mind too much.
Irons and wedges' distance are a different story, big scoring clubs don't wanna mess with that. Never tested iron distance since it's in the top section so it's competing with 3w distance. Wedge distance can be grabbed through the foxwind pants not sacrificing much and breaking a potential set bonus but I find it awkward and unnecessary.
Not gonna mention hybrids in any section, obsolete club.
-Spin: I have no idea how to measure the degree of effect on this, not like the "dot system" in the pro shop is any better.. it could very well be the same percentage as in the distance scale. I wanted to get some shot shape data but the top tracer in the new version just refuses to cooperate with me so I'm gonna go off of feel and maybe we get some other opinions.
I play with the rock and I think this is helping, one thing's for sure I'm carrying 2-3yds less on fbs so that has to mean I have a higher apex and the ball does seem to stop better.. that's for the irons, the 3w haven't noticed much of anything tbh but I guess it's helping to a similar degree, when I have to hit an approach with that club I just close my eyes and pray so haven't been paying much attention.
Would've been nice to get something with wedge spin just for some fbs fun, see how hard you could zip some premium balls considering the free ball on 12+ greens is already ridiculous.. but oh well
-Meter Speed: Pretty straight forward, I like it on approach clubs because of the rock ball meter.. but depending on your ball I can imagine slowing that further could be counterproductive even. Sometimes faster and consistent is just better than having different slow meters that you keep tinkering with.
Notice that this is a glove stat so you're pretty much choosing between Driver (TG/SE), Hybrid (C&M), Irons (M) or Wedge (FW) with irons probably being the best one.
-Sweet Spot: Ugh this one... What does that even mean? I can think of at least 3 things:
a) Dings go superstraight instead of straight
b) Ding line is effectively thicker so if you hit a hair early or late it snaps to a ding
c) Pseudoforgiveness so when you hit close to the ding it behaves closer to a ding?
At this point I'm just assuming it's c, maybe it helps worse clubs more but I honestly don't even notice this. At least it shouldn't hurt or throw you off coming from an apparel-less round, no harm it's just there.
-Putter Precision: Sounds good doesn't it? I can't imagine this having any value. The putts you wanna make are closer to 15 footers than 100, and from those distances I'm quite sure the starter club and the billion dollar golden putter are virtually equal in terms of dispersion.
-Putter Forgiveness: Probably one of the more interesting stats actually considering the rest, it's hard to say how much of an effect it has. Personally I putt with different degrees of offding very often, this is the last thing I'd wanna change and just anything about the putt in general.
But there has to be pure ding putters out there that don't ever change their mind on strike or choose an offding line.. players who just set their line and go for a ding every single time, in that case this stat has to be nice surely. I assume it'd only be noticeable with longer putts.
Of course if the inflated stats of the golden putter are anything to go by this won't revolutionize your game, but that's because the important consistency putts are not 100ft away from the hole, I still think it's an interesting stat tho.
-Surface Power: And we arrive to what I think is the most confusing stat, I really want to find out exactly how this works but I don't even know how to start. Different surfaces affect a shot in many more ways than "it goes shorter", they also affect different clubs and even club-ball combos differently, hence why people map this stuff for the highest level of play instead of deriving rules of thumb.. Way too many factors, "power" doesn't describe anything, also I assume this would force some remapping for players who rely on that, depending on the magnitude of the effect.
-Does it simply make the shot go further with other parameters staying the same?
-Does it affect your apex less with longer clubs?
-Does it let you keep spin from some of these surfaces if you upgrade it enough?
-Does it allow playing clubs/shots that'd otherwise be scuffed from thicker roughs etc?
-Does it simply turn the lie into "more similar to fairway" affecting all mentioned factors to a degree?
What I can say for sure is it messes you up, I play by feel but for the most part you start kind of getting little routines for these lies.. I'm in some nasty stuff: just go to punch, go 1/2 clubs up should be decent, that sort of thing.. But now everything's off, this is doing something for sure.
It doesn't help that you can get this thing stacked up, e.g. both SE rare/epic hat and SE pants give this. This is all subjective recalling but I'm pretty sure I've ripped some ridiculous wedges from like 40-50% rough while having this stat. Usually for a wedge and somewhat thick rough I'd expect less carry and perhaps some release if I'm choking down but I've carried balls 5+ yds over a flag with a wedge from roughs and it has to be this cursed stat doing that.
Heck there's even a wording problem here.. does rough include deep rough? Is fescue included in brush? I assume sand includes all bunkers and hard sand? How about dirt, is it really only dirt or also that mulch thing maybe?
The WGT community may never know. These lies are so rare to begin with there's no incentive to even figure this out. If anyone has any insight this could be updated, but considering this is mostly a fairway-green kinda game this will probably remain a mystery. Just remember the rough power thing will f you up, care with wedges/short irons from the rough ball flies a mile.
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These are all the things that I could come up with right now but I'm sure I missed some stuff.. Anyway thanks for checking the post and a special thanks if there's anyone out there willing to contribute some stuff.
🎄Happy Holidays!🎄