After the last couple months, which had me run through the entirety of the Kingdom Hearts series leading up to the release of Kingdom Hearts III, diving into Dragon Age: Inquisition for two 100-hour playthroughs, and then (naturally) playing through Kingdom Hearts III, I’m finally at a point where I’m getting back into FFXIV in a more direct way. I’ve started getting weekly Tomestones again (though I’m not going out of my way to cap), running the Return to Ivalice raids, and looking ahead to the release of Shadowbringers. I’ve got a few things on my pre-expansion bucket list, including gearing up Monk, finishing my Ninja Eureka weapon, and getting my last few jobs (Dragoon, Machinist, and Warrior) to level 70.
My partner took an interest in Warrior last week, getting hers up to 60 while I was playing Kingdom Hearts III, and over the weekend, she asked to do some dungeons to get past the level 60 roadblock into actual Stormblood dungeons. At the time, I’d given no thought to which of my three remaining jobs I was going to tackle first, so I chose Dragoon on a whim so as not to keep her waiting. My glamour was a mess, though: a hastily cobbled together “copy” of the Nezha Lady’s glamour I wore on Monk and Ninja for much of last year. It really didn’t look right for Dragoon, and I needed something new. Since I was trying to be quick, though, I went back to a very old Dragoon glamour for a few runs.
Glamour Components (Required Level: DRG 50)
Weapon: (Augmented) Ironworks Magitek Spear
Head: Elegant Rimless Glasses (Storm Blue)
Body: Wyrm's Mail
Hands: Wolfram Gauntlets (Dark Blue)
Legs: Valentione Skirt (Void Blue)
Feet: Augmented Ironworks Sollerets of Maiming (Jet Black)
By the end of our leveling session, I had the direction I wanted for the glamour. Dragoon is one of those Final Fantasy jobs that I can’t really envision well in anything but legacy armor, and the whole time we were playing I felt like I wasn’t actually playing Dragoon because of that. I’ve always been partial to the original Artifact set for the job, so it was an easy decision to update another of my old looks for the class.
I had a little work, to do, though, since there were a few pieces from that original look that had to go. I burned out on the Light Steel Subligar quite some time ago, I’ve never cared much for the Wyrm’s Gauntlets (only defaulting to them because I had no idea what else to use), and the Allagan mask was out mainly due to it being a little too ridiculous. That last one was easy to resolve: Alahra needed her glasses, even if they are also a little on the ridiculous side.
Figuring out the other two pieces proved more difficult, though. The ornate nature of the Wyrm Mail doesn’t go with much in the way of my normal preference for Alahra’s legwear, but since I was still committed to the Ironworks Sollerets, I needed to find something in that vein anyway. I tried every dyeable skirt I could think of (since I wanted something a larger than the tiny Light Steel Subligar), but most of them stood out too much to work. The Valentione Skirt proved to “blend” better than the rest, so I went with that (though it’s honestly a little too flimsy for what I want). The Guardian Corps Skirt gets an honorable mention here, though. If the actual skirt were dyeable I probably would have gone with that, but I couldn’t handle the color clash in this case.
But gauntlets proved to be the real snag. I tend to avoid overly-ornate pieces in my glamours, so with the Wyrm’s Mail as the centerpiece, I wanted to scale back the more stylized aspects of the look. The Wyrm’s Gauntlets never really look right for Alahra, anyway, but finding a different pair that works was a real struggle. The Wyrm’s Mail really demands sleek accompaniment, and most gauntlets Dragoons have are heavier, patterned after tank armor that they normally share models with. On top of that, every pair dyes a little differently, which makes finding the right shade of blue to match the Wyrm’s Mail a challenge, too. After an hour or so of trying every pair I could find, I had all but given up. I only found a solution because we decided to do one more dungeon run, and I had to have something, settling on the Wolfram Gauntlets as a temporary measure. By the end of that run, I was actually happy with them, and so they stuck.
As is often the case, I’m not actually sure how rapidly I’ll be leveling Dragoon at this point. With Patch 4.55 announced for next week, I’ll probably be focused on Pyros this week (I still need to get a good set of stats on my knives for Ninja) and Hydatos once that’s here. But I have a feeling this look could last me all the way to 70 if I want it to, since Stormblood‘s added so few things that I like to play with along the way.
Fashion Ninjutsu 