Final Fantasy XIV - Glamour System

I spend way too much time using the vanity system on MMORPGs that have them and I try to avoid the ones that don't. #GamingConfessions
— Mr. Arocena (@MrArocena) January 26, 2015

I tweeted this when I saw the #GamingConfessions hashtag earlier this week and boy is it ever true.

It all started on SWTOR and when I got enough Social points to get the first set of social armour.  I liked the top and since I could swap out the Armour piece, modification piece and enhancement piece I stuck with the same top for most of my leveling experience.

Once I hit end-game I had accumulated a huge number of social points and my social rank was fairly high so I had access to a lot of the social armour sets.  I bought a bunch of them and started mixing and matching to find a look that I liked (thankfully the social armour is cheap).  There were other pieces of customizable armour as well so I spent a great deal of money on the Galactic Market looking for interesting pieces.  This was made even more expensive by the fact that I could customize the appearance of my companions so I had 5 other people to customize.  Took a while and a lot of credits to give my main character and his main companion a look that I liked.

This extended to a lot of other games that have vanity systems like League where I've spent a large amount of money picking up skins that make my character look cool (or skins that are limited edition).  The skins have absolutely no practical purpose but they look cool.

So this brings me to Final Fantasy XIV.  A game with a really robust vanity system known as their Glamour system.  In some ways not as restrictive as SWTOR but in some ways more restrictive.



Restrictive in the sense that your equipment cannot take on the appearance of higher level equipment so I can't make my level 15 lancer look like he has lv50 dragoon armour.  Also your armour is restricted by class so my warrior can't make his helmet look like a chef hat as the chef hat is specific to the culinarian job.  The last restriction is that you must have a class at level 50 to unlock the quest, but once you unlock the system you are free to glamour at any level for your other classes.  Other than that pretty much anything goes and there are a lot of level 1 cosmetic armours available to pick from.

In addition to the glamour system, FF14 has a dye system for colouring your armour.  So you can have any look in a variety of different colours.  There are a few pieces you can't dye though but these tend to be special pieces like the job specific armours you get as part of quests.  Surprisingly you can make these special pieces look like something else and as long as that something else can dyed you can use dyes to colour the new appearance.

With regards to my character's look I kept floundering between a Final Fantasy style outfit (which for females makes them look nice but would not be appropriate for heavy combat which is what a Warrior does)

or a more realistic armoured outfit.  The issue I have the this one is that I can't find a nice pair of boots and pants that look nice and match the armour.

It wasn't until last night when I picked up the Foestriker's Tabard from a low level dungeon roulette that I found the look that I wanted.

Looks good with the boots, actually has armour and still maintains the Final Fantasy flavour for a female hero.  The only unfortunate thing is I can't dye the Tabard but thankfully it matches the trim of the boots well enough (can't dye the boots either as they are special Grand Company boots).

For reference my character's glamour items are

• Head: Silver Spectacles dyed Blood Red
• Body: Foestriker's Tabard
• Hands: Hempen Shortgloves dyed Soot Black
• Legs: Velveteen Bottoms dyed Soot Black
• Feet: Lominsan Officer's Boots
• Weapon: Storm Lieutenant's Labrys

Her actual equipment can be found here.

Now the last thing I want to finish my character's look is Ifrit's Battle Axe.  Looks like I'll be farming Ifrit Hard Mode for a while (4 runs already and nothing yet)