Patron of the site David Haig (@DavidHaig1) had an interesting request, something of a challenge: a glamour that had a total item level no larger than 100, which got me to look at lower level gear in a new light. If you’d like to make requests of your own, you can support Fashion Ninjutsu on Patreon.

I’m on record (at least on Twitter, and probably somewhere here on Fashion Ninjutsu) as disliking the fact that each of FFXIV‘s new jobs have started at levels higher than 1, skipping the “low level” period. There are a lot of reasons for that on which I won’t go into great detail, but one of them is that it means that over time, lower level gear becomes largely forgotten when it comes to glamour in favor of more ornate and impressive higher level pieces. That’s naturally going to happen, but there’s part of me that personally misses the experience both of wearing lower level gear and of glamouring with hard item level restrictions (yes, I know, I’m really weird).

Outside of a few glamours I put together while leveling Lynahra, it’s been a long time since I’ve considered anything lower than level 50 for a glamour that wasn’t something specifically designed for glamour (like the many level 1 items meant for nothing else), and I miss the sort of “design constraints” that being low level creates when it comes to glamours. But this month, with David’s request in mind, I had to think outside of my usual boxes and look at lower level gear again. When he first sent over his idea, I thought I’d end up using pieces (probably the body, at least) from the Infantry set that comes from Brayflox’s Longstop—the set’s an old favorite of mine, but I’ve never actually had any lasting glamours using it. But then I realized that I didn’t have the Infantry set anymore: I apparently discarded all of the pieces in my pre-Stormblood inventory purge, leaving me with the choice between farming the Longstop or looking for something new.

Glamour Components: (Required Level: DoW 50)
Weapon: Maple Longbow
Head: Gryphonskin Eyepatch (Ochu Green)
Body: Explorer’s Tunic
Hands: Fingerless Boarskin Gloves (Loam Brown)
Legs: Gryphonskin Pantalettes (Hunter Green)
Feet: Expeditioner’s Thighboots

Since it was the simpler of the two options, I decided to at least check over the Market Board before sinking time into farming Brayflox, and as luck would have it, I saved myself a ton of time. The Explorer’s Tunic jumped out at me almost immediately as something to play with, and I snap bought one to get started. I’ve always liked the piece, as the green on it makes it stand out in ways other tunics with the same model don’t, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to put it to use. With the item level stipulation in mind, I made a mental note that the tunic had an item level of 52 and started looking for other things to use with it.

I knew gloves were going to be the most important choice here, and since I only had 48 item levels remaining, I decided that I should do those first, to make sure I had the most available options. It’s a good thing I did, too, because the only pair of gloves I could find that I liked, the Fingerless Boarskin Gloves (at item level 35), ate up just about all of my remaining item level. While there are plenty of gloves that use their model, they’re the only ones that seemed to blend in well with the leather on the Tunic both in the type of leather and in color. That didn’t leave me with much to work with in other slots, which meant I was going to have to stick with level 1 glamour items for the rest.

The Expeditioner’s Thighboots probably need no introduction at this point, serving as a staple for any sort of glamour in need of brown thighboots since their introduction in the early days of Heavensward. I did elect for the Gryphonskin Pantalettes over the Expeditioner’s ones, though, since the leather straps seemed to make things too busy around the thigh area given the overall length of the Explorer’s Tunic. To finish off the look, I brought back an old favorite in the Gryponskin Eyepatch, which dyes perfectly to complement the green and white on the tunic. With the included bow (just because I had to have something equipped), the combined item level of the look comes out to 98—just under the limit of 100.

In a first for the site, despite the bow, I’ve categorized this one as a Disciple of War glamour (and indeed I debated taking the pictures on both Ninja and Dragoon), since all of the actual clothing and armor can be equipped by over half of FFXIV‘s “Battlecraft” classes. Glamours of this sort are probably going to be pretty rare, of course, since (much to my chagrin) the developers largely abandoned Disciple of War and Disciple of Magic as gear categories from 3.0 onward. Personally, I would have loved an alternate world where gear outside of expansion level caps still used these categories, as it would both expand glamour options for everyone and also free up at least some time for the art team to work on more unique models since we’d end up with the need for fewer overall items for leveling. But that’s not the world we have, now, is it?

But that’s a topic for, perhaps, another post, I suppose!