Way back when the developers first announced that they would be revamping the Main Scenario of A Realm Reborn and New Game Plus, I decided that I wanted to revisit the story once it was possible to do so. While I have leveled a second character through A Realm Reborn up to Heavensward, I did so in a rush, skipping a large number of cutscenes in the process (I was trying to unlock Dark Knight at the time). So, it’s been around 7 years since I first experienced the initial story in any real capacity, which means my memory’s foggy on a lot of details in the post-Shadowbringers landscape, when it feels like years-old events of the Scenario are relevant in completely new ways.

For fun, I also decided that I’d be going through the story on the “canon” Warrior of Light jobs, starting out initially as Archer, moving into Warrior at some point during A Realm Reborn, then Dragoon for Heavensward, Monk (in Ala Mhigo) and Samurai (in Dhoma) for Stormblood, and of course, Dark Knight for Shadowbringers. Naturally, I’m going to want tailor-made glamours for the experience—lots of cutscenes is going to mean a need to keep up appearances! We’re now past the point when Patch 5.3 would have likely been released without delays, but I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll see the patch sometime next month, and so it felt like a great time to get started preparing glamours for my MSQ run.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Glamour Components (Required Level: Disciple of War 49)
Weapon: Vintage Bow
Head: Goatskin Eyepatch (Rust Red)
Body: Doctore’s Harness
Hands: Foestriker’s Mitts
Legs: Foestriker’s Skirt
Feet: Raptorskin Boots

Naturally, I decided to start with Archer, since that was the Warrior of Light’s poster job for the original FFXIV (which shows up at the beginning of the Shadowbringers trailer). I had three main goals in mind: stick with pieces below level 30 where I could (since my current plan for the run is to switch to Warrior at 30 when jobs would otherwise unlock); use some sort of harness if possible (since that’s what the poster WoL, Meteor, wore as an archer); and for the final result to have a bit of a Keeper of the Moon/Coeurlclaw vibe, since my personal WoL has origins as a hunter.

Obviously, revisiting the early stages of the game is also going to involve a lot of nostalgia for me. At launch, A Realm Reborn didn’t have the glamour system that has become so central to FFXIV today, and that meant you were at the mercy of the art designers for the gear in your level range. A few early pieces from that era stood out to me back then, though, and I wore them as long as I felt reasonable: the Foestriker’s Mitts and Skirt (the Tabard too, though I didn’t use that here), and the Doctore’s Harness. The pieces worked really well together back then—and looking cool was important even if I hadn’t started focusing on in-game fashion so much just yet.

Back then, I hadn’t really started using eyeglasses yet, since glamour wasn’t a thing. Instead, I usually wore an eyepatch for some reason, so I decided to bring back one of the low level ones for this glamour, giving it the Rust Red treatment to blend in with the Doctore’s Harness, much as I did so long ago. I still needed to figure out a pair of boots, though—in the time before glamour, we really didn’t have many solid options for thighboots (which is actually strange to me in retrospect, because they were all over lower level gear in FFXI, from which leveling gear in FFXIV takes a number of cues). As far as period-appropriate gear goes, I remember wearing the Goatskin Leg Guards, but those are far too bulky for my tastes these days. The rather basic Expeditioner’s Thighboots didn’t dye in a way that fit, though, so I decided to go beyond level 30 for the sake of glamour and use the Raptorskin Boots added in Shadowbringers.

All that was left after that was to decide on a starting bow. Since I was already using one piece higher than 30, I settled on the Vintage Bow—its colors line up really well with the reds and browns of the glamour itself, and the white plumes work alongside Alahra’s white hair and the white of the Foestriker’s Skirt to bring the whole look together. The Vintage Bow is also a shortbow, which is normally far more appropriate for the hunting I imagine that Alahra grew up with. While I hadn’t intended to actually use this glamour until whenever I started A Realm Reborn in 5.3, I’m actually enamored enough with it that I might continue to use it while I pick at Bard to get it to level 80.