The Antiquated Pacifist’s Vest proved to have a lot of longevity for Alahra, allowing my last Monk glamour to survive for the full month leading up to Eureka’s launch. I knew the ultimate goal was to create a version of the look in white once I had the dyeable version, much as it is with anything else, but I saw no reason to fiddle with the look between getting Monk to 70 and the release of Patch 4.25. From the moment I saw how the Anemos Pacifist’s Vest dyed with Pure White, I started mentally mapping out Alahra’s next Monk glamour. Most of the pieces could probably stay the same, I thought, and all I needed was to finish the Eureka grind to get the dyeable Sudarshana Chakras Anemos to replace my Antiquated ones.

All through the process, I marveled at how well the Vest dyed. As I’ve talked about before with respect to Pure White in particular, the grey secondary shade that comes with it is regularly a thorn in my side. With the Pacifist’s Vest, though, FFXIV‘s art team had set up the color channels in a way that really preserved the character of the item while minimizing the impact of the grey, and I couldn’t  have been happier. I played around with some different accessories along the way to pair with the Vest, but I never posted a finished glamour because I was waiting for that capstone moment when I could dye the Chakras to match the Vest, since they were such a crucial part of my love for the non-dyeable version of the glamour.

On all of the Pacifist’s pieces (outside of a small, barely visible ribbon on the Pacifist’s Gaskins), a number of really important things happen with dyes: the chosen color replaces the reddish pink, the appropriate secondary color maps to the coeurl-print, and most of the black sticks around (with some of the black fur taking on the chosen dye color).

The level of consistency across the pieces is really high, and it means that, by and large, the Anemos Pacifist’s gear works in basically any color you could want. That was great news for me, as it seemed to all but guarantee that the glamour I was aiming for was bound to work. I had to go on instinct, of course: because there’s no way to see preview the Anemos weapons by speaking to Gerolt inside Eureka (and I never ran into anyone who had the Chakras before I finished mine), I was never able to test things out prior to completing the grind.

Naturally, I was absolutely crushed when I learned, after getting my hard-earned weapon, that the Chakras don’t follow the same color channel pattern as the rest of the Pacifist’s gear. For reasons unknown to me, the dyes map to completely different channels on the Chakras, which really kills the consistency we find on all of the other pieces. For the Chakras, the reddish color stays around instead of being replaced by the chosen color, with the black (which otherwise was permanent on the rest of the set) being replaced instead. The coeurl-print is also stable, rather than taking on the dye’s secondary color, which ends up being really jarring, since that section of the Chakras is often near waist-level, where the coeurl-print on the Pacifist’s Vest sits.

With the Chakras being one of the small number of Monk weapons that override the appearance of the glove slot (even with weapon display toggled off), this has left me with a bit of a conundrum. I can either glamour over my hard-earned weapon (which I really hate to do), or I can accept a lack of color cohesion in the look (which I also hate to do). In terms of overall style, the Chakras are a much better fit for the Pacifist’s Vest than the Pacifist’s Armguards are (to my eyes, any way), which makes glamouring over the weapon even less palatable. As of writing, I’m perplexed enough that I can’t even play Monk, since no matter how I go about things, the glamour I dreamed of can’t come together.

Much like the Iga Ningi, I have a feeling the Anemos Pacifist’s Vest is going to plague me all throughout Stormblood now, as it looks incredible in Alahra’s perfect color, but doesn’t work well alongside other things that I need it to. In this case, at least, I do have the hope of the next stage Eureka weapon not overriding the glove slot the way the Chakras do. But for the time being, I’m going to have to accept a level of imperfection that I’m not happy about. I’ll be looking for a solid pair of gloves and hope to have the glamour completed soon, but I have to admit, I’m not happy about the way this turned out!