Guild Wars 2

Sorry i’m a little new to this. I am a returning player from had playing till about level 20 at launch. When I returned the week after purchasing the expansion. I found a bunch of cool goodies on my 4 year old character. One of them being able to choose a backpack.

I was just a regular human on my old character but since its been a awhile I decided to start new and chose a Nord engineer. Anyways because of that I chose the backpack that would fit the Nord when it asked. It would not let me equip it or add to my wardrobe on the original character so I put it in the bank and tried with the fresh Nord character.. Same.. issue. Not sure what to do…

Also I had a hat I think it was just a hat the game showed you how to use the black market with… When I returned it said something about talking to a Black market trader to convert it? I did so and asked him to switch every thing but I dont have a hat still… Little confused.

Sorry if its something simple like me not being high enough level or something… It didn’t really say anything like that.

The backpack is a skin, not an item, you need to already have a back item equipped to use the skin.

Your hat should have been added to your wardrobe collection, in your Hero panels wardrobe tab, you have to click on one of your equipped items, to be able to view all possible skins you can use for that item. So if you click on your Head slot, you should see your cap in the list on the left. This description is clearly shown in your screenshot too. (you must already have items equipped to use the skins, aswell as have transmutation charges)

Okay haha im a little confused. So is it a one time use thing?

I also just purchased cosmetic items thinking they would just kind add to my wardrobe and I would be apple to turn them on or off appearance wise… But they wont add to my wardrobe and are asking me to use a one time appearance change… Did I just pay for something that can only be used once… Or only once for free then I have to use in game currency to change back to that appearance… This is a horrible system if so… I feel like a just threw money in the trash as a low level. Sorry again this is all new. Seems kind of off are combining cosmetics with armor. Ruins the fun of buying things.

Skins like that back pack and Gemstore Armour purchases are free to apply on the first use only. After that you need the Transmutation charges to be able to change any skin over, with a few exceptions (Achievement point reward skins, HoM skins) we’ve always needed to use trasmutation to change skins, Anet changed the old stones (which destroyed one part of 2 items and combined the stats of the remaining one with the look of the other) to an account wide number with an accountwide wardrobe which stores skins you have earned to be used again though.
Outfits which are bought can be used whenever, these will be in your outfit tab and requires nothing except owning them to use them.

You can earn transmutation charges ingame in PvP/WvW tracks, map completion and PvP League play.

Thank you so much for your help. kitten should have got a outfit lol. Thank you tho very helpful! Sorry I was so dense haha.