FFXIV: Becoming a Fashion Leader
I don’t know what it is about the Fashion Report mini-game that FFXIV added in Patch 4.2 that taunts me. The MGP you get from earning an 80 or higher is nice, and I like that you can slowly unlock more items in the boutique over time… but honestly, there’s no real pressing need to do well or participate in it.
I mean, you can walk up to Masked Rose in whatever you’re wearing (or not wearing) and just get the 10K MGP participation reward (I had to do this last week… I had no chance in winning). Sure, he chews you out for taking a dump (more or less his words) on his fashion theme of the week, but losers are still winners here.
I have no idea what drove me to push for a full 100% on this week’s Fashion Report… other than I saw that a possibility to achieve it. Only… it would take some work to get some of the things I needed. And when I say some work, I mean several hours of crafting and gathering.
Iron Chef
So Reddit already picked apart the right answers before I even got home from work on Friday. It’s really interesting to see the community jumping into this weekly event with full gusto like it does. The final 100 ultimate outfit was this:
- Main Hand: Chantico Lucis ( raisin brown )
- Head: False Mustache ( charcoal grey )
- Body: Augmented Galleykeep’s (or Gallyemaster’s) Whites ( general-purpose dark brown )
- Hands: Werewolf Arms ( wine red )
- Legs: Survival Halfslops ( raisin brown )
- Feet: Any dyeable ( raisin brown )
- Right Ring: Master Culinarian’s Ring
I saw this, knew I had a level 60 Culinarian, and thought to myself: I can do this! This isn’t so bad this week!
Earning a full 100 points nets you an achievement and a title. I haven’t really been chasing achievements, but now that they’re worth certificates to buy things, I’ve been a lot more aware of them. I really wanted to make the effort to earn this one, just once, just to get it done.
The False Mustache and Werewolf Arms were cosmetics from Christmas and Halloween events I’d participated in past years.
The Survival Halfslops… I didn’t have, and were sold out on the marketboard by the time I got home from work on Friday. However, I bought the three Pellitory – the only ingredient that wasn’t easy to come by – and gathered the rest of the mats myself to craft them.
I didn’t have anywhere near the number of Scrips to mess with the Gallykeep’s Whites. I looked into crafting the Gallymaster’s Whites, but seeing the required materials, decided just to buy it instead. I had enough work ahead of myself (and I made back the money selling housing items this weekend anyhow).
That only left me with two things: Chantico Lucis and Master Culinarian’s Ring. Oh what a quest this turned out to be!
Chantico Lucis
I’m not sure how to explain what this tool is and how to get it. I’d say it’s sorta-sorta the equivalent to a Relic Weapon, but for crafting jobs, back from 2.0. It was pretty challenging to get seeing that it required you to make some high quality items from fairly rare (at the time) materials.
In retrospect, I’m so glad they chose to go the Script route instead now days.
I’d earned the Chantico a long time back. But this needed to be upgraded twice to get the Cantico Lucis. This was my first challenge.
I was surprised to discover that the items I had to craft were still fairly challenging even at level 60 Culinarian. Granted, I wasn’t fully melded with the best tools for the level, but there was some edge-of-the-seat crafting moments during this.
I burned up a lot of my Grand Company seals for the materials, but I bet back when this was end-game content, the mats were a lot harder to come by. In the end, I scored my Lucis without any fails at crafting, and my first challenge was done.
Master Culinarian’s Ring
Earning the Master Culinarian’s Ring was a whole different story. You earn this ring as part of an achievement for crafting 120 individually different recipes as a Culinarian. Yeah, as a level 60 Culinarian, I thought I was pretty close to this, if I’d not earned it.
I was wrong.
The picture above was after I’d put a few hours of crafting on Friday already. I started out at about 62-ish recipes crafted. So I had about 60-ish more to go!
Culinarian is an extremely mat-hungry crafting job. Even some little salad or sandwich can take something like 5-6 different mats to make… not including pre-crafted items which also take more mats.
That’s probably the reason I’d crafted so few individual recipes. This was one of those jobs that sent you to all ends of the earth to gather mats just to make one simple item.
Well… this became my quest for the weekend.
I was able to knock out most of the recipes up to level 15-20 by sitting in the Culinarian guild and using the mats from the supplier there. I also learned there was a guy in the middle of Limsa who sold some of the fish I needed… had no idea.
But once I got into the higher levels, I was on my own. I was thankfully able to organize my gathering list using FFXIV Teamcraft’s tools, and pretty much spent all of Friday night and some time into Saturday running around the world gathering materials that I couldn’t find on the marketboard.
There’s actually a number of 2.0 materials that people don’t gather and sell much anymore. The gathering and organizing really took the most time to do. I was running around with a near maxed out inventory at that point.
But I got it done!
I snagged my ring and went to earn my ultimate reward at the Fashion Report!
This also opened up a new item at the boutique — the Spring Shirt. This is one of a set (people have datamined) of an outfit that can only be earned through the boutique. Here’s what it looks like:
Kinda cute.
And finally… here’s my new title!
I actually almost didn’t wear the title. I mean, I enjoy glamour and making my characters look good in game, but I’m not really a fashion person IRL.
Still, after all the work I put into this title, I decided to embrace it, and use it. At least for now. It really does feel like an accomplishment.
And that’s the story about how I won at the Fashion Report. My first (and probably last) 100. 😉