Aurora recolor guide

Many Classic World cash items are dyeable. In game, the Mystery Palette recolors a dyeable item with a random result. Henesys Store’s Aurora editor lets you explore color directions on reference artwork before you spend anything. This guide explains what each control does, how the preview calculates colors, and what it cannot tell you.

What the preview is — and is not

The editor applies a color transform to the item’s sprite. It is based on the prism color math in the open-source WzComparerR2 tool, which works on hue, saturation, and lightness and snaps results to a stepped palette like the game’s artwork. It is an illustration. It does not reproduce a specific Mystery Palette roll, guarantee that a color is possible in game, or tell you the odds of any result.

Tone

Tone rotates every color in the item around the color wheel by the chosen number of degrees. At about +120 a red becomes green; at about +240 it becomes blue. Because the whole item rotates together, the relationship between its colors is preserved: a two-tone item stays two-tone. After the rotation, each color channel snaps to one of sixteen palette steps, so small tone changes can jump between neighbouring shades rather than moving smoothly.

Chroma

Chroma raises or lowers saturation. Positive values make colors more vivid; negative values move them toward grey. Pure greys have no saturation to change, so chroma leaves grey, black, and white areas alone — which is why a mostly grey item barely responds to chroma.

Brightness

Positive brightness lifts colors toward white. Negative brightness darkens colored areas. Pure black outlines and pure white highlights never change, which keeps the sprite’s outline readable at any setting.

A practical workflow

1. Equip the whole outfit first, then select the piece you want to recolor.
2. Find the color family with Tone, then adjust Chroma and Brightness. Large brightness changes can flatten shading.
3. Use the original comparison to make sure you still like the result next to the unedited sprite.
4. Try a preset — Rose, Lilac, Sky, Mint, Golden, or Midnight — as a quick starting point, then fine-tune.
5. Recolor one or two pieces and keep the rest close to their originals. One accent color on a quieter outfit usually reads better than every piece at full chroma.

Why the same settings look different on different items

The transform starts from each item’s own colors. A tone of +180 turns a red item cyan but turns a blue item orange. Items with lots of grey respond mainly to brightness. Items previewed with older GMS v83 art can have fewer shading steps than v255 or native Classic World art, so they may look flatter after a large change. Each item page lists which artwork its preview uses.

See it in practice

The outfit ideas guide includes a dark “fallen angel” variant of the Founder’s angel set that uses the Midnight preset on two pieces. Open it, then move the sliders to see how each control changes the result.