Most of the time, when I get a request from Patrons, I’m asked to put together a new glamour, but returning player and Patron Helena wanted to see a breakdown of how glamour works in the game now. It’s changed a lot since it was first added duringA Realm Reborn,after all, and it can be tricky to find information on the changes and how everything works in tandem now.With that in mind, here’s theFashion Ninjutsuguide to glamour (current as of 5.1).
FFXIV‘s glamour system, which allows the player to have a different item’s appearance display over the appearance of another item, started out fairly complex, with around 40 “catalyst” items, each one tied to a different material type and item level. The action to glamour couldn’t be unlocked until level 50, either, making it more of an “endgame” activity than one that was core to the game. Since the glamour system’s introduction in Patch 2.2, it’s been adjusted to make things much simpler and cement it as one of the game’s core features.
You unlock the ability to glamour your gear by completing the level 15 quest “If I Had A Glamour” from the NPC Swyrgeim (X 12.7, Y 14.3). Swyrgeim has two other important quests as well: “Color Your World” (which will allow you to dye items) and “Absolutely Glamourous” (which will allow level 15+ Disciples of the Hand to create Glamour Prisms), so I’d recommend taking care of all three of them at the same time!
Once you complete “If I Had A Glamour,” you’ll receive the general action Cast Glamour and a handful of Glamour Prisms, which are required to cast glamours on your other items.
If you’re coming back to the game after a long absence, Glamour Prisms are now all-purpose! They work for gear of all levels and item levels, and they no longer need to be matched to the type of gear you’re glamouring! If you have any of the old “specialized” glamour prisms, like a Grade 2 Glamour Prism (Clothcraft), you can exchange them (and any Graded Clear Prisms) with Tataroga in Mor Dhona (X 22.2, Y 6.8) for the newer all-purpose Glamour Prisms and Clear Prisms.
With that out of the way, you’re all set! Applying a glamour is fairly straightforward. You can either use the Cast Glamour action directly (such as by placing it on a hotbar), which will open the Cast Glamour menu, or you can open the subcommand menu on an item and selecting Cast Glamour there, which will do the same. Once you’re in the menu, you can select the base item you want to change on the left, and the item that has the appearance you want on the right. As with many things, you’ll get a confirmation window after that, and once you confirm, the base item will take on the appearance of your selected item (and you’ll expend one Glamour Prism).
There are a few things to keep in mind while you’re glamouring:
- Your base item has to be of equal or higher level than the item whose appearance you want to glamour, meaning that you can’t glamour the appearance of a level 50 piece of gear onto a level 1 piece of gear. Note that this does not apply toitem level, though: you can glamour an item level 350 piece of gear onto an item level 300 piece of gear, since they would both be level 70. That’s generally not going to be important, but it might matter sometimes if you’re glamouring gear to equip on your retainers.
- A glamoured appearance will only display when worn by a class or job that can normally wear the item. You can’t glamour Paladin’s Valor Surcoat to wear while you’re playing Dark Knight—the base item’s appearance will be displayed instead. If you swap to Paladin, the Valor Surcoat’s appearance will display, though. While this used to be a major snag for glamouring job-specific gear while playing multiple jobs of the same role (which often share gear), we have a little more freedom now thanks to the new Glamour Dresser and Glamour Plates, which we’ll get to soon enough.
- If you try to glamour the appearance of an item that is already “holding” a glamour, you’ll get an error message. You’ll have to remove the glamour using a Glamour Dispeller (which you do in the Cast Glamour menu by selecting “Remove” in the right column instead of an item) before you can copy the original item’s appearance over using a Glamour Prism.
- Whenever you cast a glamour, any dye already applied to the item that has the appearance you’re copying is carried over, including expensive dyes like Pure White and Jet Black. You can use this feature to “store” expensive dyes on items you frequently use for glamour without having to spend another dye, which is a major cost-saving measure!
That’s all you need to do to unlock the basics of the glamour system, and you can get by without ever using any of the more advanced options. If you’re looking for more flexibility, though, you’ll want to check out the Glamour Dresser, which doubles as extra glamour storage and a way to save full glamour sets for later.
WhileFFXIVstill doesn’t have a glamour log of some kind (likeWorld of Warcrafthas for transmogrification), it does now have something of a band-aid fix in the form of the new Glamour Dresser. Once you’ve unlocked the ability to cast glamours, all you need to do to use the Glamour Dresser is go to an inn room in one of the major city states or the Grand Company Squadron Barracks, where you’ll find it waiting for you.
The Glamour Dresser serves two main functions, as I mentioned above. Firstly, you can use it to store up to 400 pieces of gear, sorted by their equipment slot. Storing an item in the Glamour Dresser requires expending a single Glamour Prism and preserves dyes (so that you can save those expensive Pure Whites and Jet Blacks!). This “converts” the item into a glamour, which is a holdover from the Dresser’s original implementation where the actual item was permanently lost once stored inside. Happily, you can now add and remove items from the Glamour Dresser as much as you like, provided you’ve got the necessary Glamour Prisms.
But storage isn’t really the main draw of the Glamour Dresser, glamour is! On a basic level, you can use the dropdown menu on any item in your Dresser to apply it to your currently equipped gear in that slot. The real function of the Dresser, though, is the creation of Glamour Plates from the items you’ve stored within. While browsing your Dresser, you can go to Edit Glamour Plates, which will open up a window a bit like the character equipment window, showing all of your gear slots and your character model. By clicking on a slot, you’ll see your Glamour Dresser inventory tab to that equipment type, and from there, you can assign any appropriate item you’ve got in your Glamour Dresser to the Plate. You can also apply items from the Armoire to a Glamour Plate with the Open Armoire button. Once you’ve created a full set, you can Save the Glamour Plate at the bottom of the window.
You can then apply that Glamour Plate directly from the Glamour Dresser, or you can use the Glamour Plates option from your Character menu to do the same (though you can only apply Glamour Plates in residential areas, city-states, and hubs like Idyllshire or Rhalgr’s Reach). Doing so doesnotconsume any Glamour Prisms, since you already spent them when you stored the items in the Glamour Dressers. You can store up to 15 Glamour Plates in this way, allowing you to save staple glamours that you’ll reapply often, saving both time and Prisms. You can edit any Glamour Plates in much the same way as your created them in the first place, allowing you to keep them easily updated as you change your glamours.
That’s not all, though! You can also link Glamour Plates to your gear sets (from the dropdown menus in your list of gear sets), so that they’ll be automatically applied whenever you switch to that set. You can use this to apply different glamours to jobs that are sharing the same gear, like your Paladin and Dark Knight gear sets. This allows you to get around the problem of glamouring job-specific gear onto shared gear, too. Simply set up two plates: one with the job-specific glamour for your Paladin (or whatever job) and one with another glamour for your Dark Knight. Then link those two Plates to the appropriate gear sets, and you’re good to go!
Linking Glamour Plates to your gear sets also makes reapplying them when you get new gear very easy. Once you’ve updated the gear set to include your new gear, if you’ve already linked a Glamour Plate to the set, that Plate will be applied automatically the next time you equip the set. That’s especially handy if you’re leveling a job and want to maintain a look the whole way, since you’ll frequently be updating your gear.
Recent updates also allow you to apply glamours from your Glamour Dresser (and the Armoire) to members of your Grand Company Squadron, too. You can’t currently use Glamour Plates for members of your Squadron, but being able to pull directly from the Dresser is still a nice quality of life addition (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they add the ability to use Plates for them eventually, too).
That should cover everything you need to know! I’ll be trying to keep this guide updated as new changes come in from Patches and hotfixes. In the mean time, if you’ve got any questions (or if I’ve forgotten something!), feel free to drop me a line on Twitter (@alahrav), and I’ll do what I can to help!
This guide was made possible thanks to the support of Fashion Ninjutsu’s patrons over on Patreon, which supports more involved posts like Mog Station Reviews, expansion retrospectives, and this one. If you’re interested, you can offer support of your own here.
