Though I couldn’t tell you why, I’ve always loved tonfa as a weapon for martial artists in games (with a particular favorite tonfa user being Talim from Soul Calibur), so I was quite stoked to pick up Monk’s new relic tonfa for Shadowbringers. Though I didn’t get them straight away (Dark Knight and Ninja naturally had to come first), there’s no way I’d have gotten any others before them even if I almost never play Monk after the updates to Ninja earlier this expansion. Likewise, I focused on glamours for the other two first, but I’d been pondering ideas for Samsara since nearly day one of Patch 5.25.

All that pondering didn’t much pay off, though. As with the previous two weapons, I struggled when it came to new glamour ideas. While Samsara’s three main colors of black, gold, and red would normally be right up my alley, their overall style and character proved vexing when placed in the context of all the glamours available to Monk. Many of the black and red options I’d used in the past for Monk have included silver, rather than gold, and I found gold in general to be surprisingly rare in terms of accents in the Striking library. For a time I put Samsara aside, thinking perhaps I could work out a relic glamour for another job instead (picking up the Dancer weapon, which has also proved difficult to work with).

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Glamour Components (Requirements: MNK 80, Female)
Weapon: Samsara
Head: Reading Glasses (Ul Brown)
Body: Augmented Shire Pankratiast’s Jacket (Dalamud Red)
Hands: Anemos Pacifist’s Armguards (Dalamud Red)
Legs: Skallic Bottoms of Striking (Jet Black)
Feet: Scion Healer’s Highboots

Normally, of course, I focus on body armor as the centerpiece for my glamours, since that’s the piece of gear that normally is most prominently on display. But I found my inspiration in an unexpected place this time—the piece that finally clicked alongside Samsara for me turned out to be the Artifact gloves from Stormblood, which have the black and gold I needed with a dyeable segment that looked perfect in Dalamud Red. Gloves weren’t enough to solve the glamour issue by themselves, though—I still had to find some sort of body gear to go with them.

The best answer I could find turned out to be the Pankratiast’s Jacket. The Pacifist’s Gloves have a similar shape to the Pankratiast’s Gloves but aren’t quite so plain, and the jacket and gloves together line up pretty well in terms of colors once the Dalamud Red is in the mix. I don’t think the jacket’s really the best possible fit here, but it was the only thing I could personally find that really lined up in the right way. The one thought I have at the moment that might prove better is the dyeable Edenchoir Gambison of Striking—something quite out of my reach as a non-raider (at least until we’re level 90 or beyond next expansion).

Of course, with Shire gear in the mix along with a focus on red, turning down an opportunity to bring back Y’shtola’s boots would have been criminal (I did consider the Sky Pirate’s Boots of Striking even so, though). The only other choice I had to make involved another Stormblood-era update to a much older glamour, bringing in the Skallic Bottoms over the Makai Quartertights I once used for a similar look back at the end of Heavensward. Overall, though, that does leave the look feeling a little dated, and I’m going to be keeping my eyes (and mind) open to other possibilities moving forward (if only the pink on the Neo-Ishgardian Top of Striking dyed…)