Questions about Glamours, dungeons/trials, newbie stuff

[Ivven]

Hi all--tried ARR back and launch and it didn't click, but came back and now I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I feel lost though even at level 50 and still have some questions:

1) Can someone explain the difference between casting a glamour on a piece of armor and a glamour plate? Also, I assume if I put things in my glamour dresser, that's like storage for cool armor that I may not necessarily wear as gear again but want to keep for looks?

2) I'm old and my reflexes are shot. I'm making effort to learn my class (SMN, which is about my speed these days easy rotation)and I watch quick dungeon guides before I run anything new--but I guess I still have dungeon-PTSD after years of "that other game" where people tended to get -very very- angry if you messed up even a small amount. I'll probably never do hardcore endgame (don't have time for it anymore), so will "adequate but not great" be OK for MSQ grouping? Like, knowing the basic mechanics of a dungeon and knowing my basic rotation?

3) Is there a best gathering or crafting (or whatever) method for making gil? I'm sure this gets asked a ton and I know bots are a thing in this game as well. I don't need to be mega-wealthy, but enough to maybe buy some nice glamour pieces or an apartment eventually--enough for fun stuff or crafting if I want.

Thanks in advance

[Jeeqbit]

1) Can someone explain the difference between casting a glamour on a piece of armor and a glamour plate? Also, I assume if I put things in my glamour dresser, that's like storage for cool armor that I may not necessarily wear as gear again but want to keep for looks?

Casting glamour onto a piece of gear consumes a glamour prism. It's a one-time thing and if you upgrade your gear, you need to cast the glamour onto it all over again.

A glamour plate is something you create in your Glamour Dresser. You create an entire outfit (head, body, hands, legs, feet) and everything else. You can then attach that glamour plate to a gearset. If you don't know what a gearset is, when you have unlocked multiple classes, you can switch between the gearsets to automatically equip the gear for that class, such as switching from a set of healer gear to a set of tank gear. Attaching a glamour plate to this means it will automatically glamour all the gear when you switch to it, so even if you update the gear that is part of the gearset, it will automatically get glamoured again. This only happens in certain city areas though.

2) I'm old and my reflexes are shot. I'm making effort to learn my class (SMN, which is about my speed these days easy rotation)and I watch quick dungeon guides before I run anything new--but I guess I still have dungeon-PTSD after years of "that other game" where people tended to get -very very- angry if you messed up even a small amount. I'll probably never do hardcore endgame (don't have time for it anymore), so will "adequate but not great" be OK for MSQ grouping? Like, knowing the basic mechanics of a dungeon and knowing my basic rotation?

This will be fine. There is almost always a first-timer in an average dungeon run. People are used to someone messing up and getting all the mechanics wrong. Dungeons are designed to be so easy that a single "good" player can "carry" the other 3 who mess everything up and players are used to doing this. It's so normal that they won't think anything of your mistakes.

[Ivven]

Awesome, that clarifies the glamour bit a lot!
And also de-stresses me a bit about the MSQ dungeons. I don't do big F-ups or anything, but I know I'm definitely not as quick as I was 20 years ago when it comes to nailing rotations at 100 keystrokes a minute, either.

[Iscah]

1) Can someone explain the difference between casting a glamour on a piece of armor and a glamour plate? Also, I assume if I put things in my glamour dresser, that's like storage for cool armor that I may not necessarily wear as gear again but want to keep for looks?

There's no difference in the outcome of casting a glamour via plate or prism. It just affects the method.

Prisms are the original way of applying glamours. You can do it anywhere in the game world but you need to have the glamour item in your inventory.

Plates are more efficient because you only need to spend one prism to put the item into the dresser, then you can apply it as many times as you like, and once you have a full appearance set up on a plate it is much quicker to apply to multiple pieces of gear at once. The downside of plates is that you can only use them in large cities or similar "no enemies" zones.

You can also cast glamours directly from the glamour dresser if you're at the inn.

Whichever way you do it, the gear that has the glamour applied to it will permanently take on the appearance of the glamour, until you dispel it or apply another glamour over it.

(Though if you wear the gear with a class that cannot equip the glamoured piece – say, if you glamoured an all-DoM gear piece with your SCH job gear and then equipped it as SMN – then the gear will appear in its original form and not as the glamour.)

I find plates much easier. A few more steps needed to set them up, but once done, they save a lot of time. Much better for keeping jewellery glamoured/hidden as well – it always seemed a bit small to bother spending a prism on hiding rings and bracelets every time, but when you can just have your preferred ones on the plate, there's no extra time spent on them.

---

The dresser is indeed storage for things you want to keep for glamour, and also necessary as the first step to putting an item on a glamour plate. When you're editing plates, you can choose items from the dresser or the armoire, if you have any pieces in there.

Note that once you've placed an item on a plate it becomes disconnected from the one in the base dresser, and dyeing one does not affect the other. So if you use an expensive dye on an item, do it on the base version and not the plate, then re-add the dyed version to the plate.

Once an item is on a plate, you can also remove the original from the dresser, which is useful if you want to use a piece for its appearance but you also want to keep using it for the moment.

[Ivven]

Thank you--that's very helpful information I missed somehow during the glamor tutorial in regard to the glamour dresser--makes a lot more sense to have plates and a permanent storage vs carrying in inventory all th etime.

[RiversideGuy]

2) I'm old and my reflexes are shot.

Welcome to the club! I have an additional albatross, since some very serious medical issues a while back, anxiety can bring about some smallish hand tremors... finding the button to hit in dialogs takes me longer than pretty much everyone else. In most dungeons, I am looking at the loot to decide what to roll on and the group is already at the next boss. Fortunately I am in a great FC and they keep me in the best crafted gear for the one combat class I play, plus the 3 gathering jobs and a couple of crafters so I have no need for random loot drops. PLUS I have used the trust system to do dungeons (think that starts in ShB) for the MSQ.

I find telling everyone I am brand new to any trial or dungeon very helpful, at least they don't rag on me. Best advice is find a good FC... the final trial of EW was scaring the shizz out of me, so 5-6 FC mates kinda helped me through it. Another activity I couldn't do without them is running old Extreme Trails for the special mounts (unsynced), or running treasure maps... they will cut me some slack for taking a few runs to get acclimated...

Biggest problem with the glamor plates is too few slots (15). Biggest help is applying a plate does not cost any Glamor Prisms (I buy these with grand company seals). I just figured out that I CAN glam an individual piece directly from the Glamor Dresser to an equipped piece of gear. Generally gathering & crafting gear are the same for each job in that category, BUT you can have a specific plate applied (like where it is BTN or MIN) just by changing jobs. The one weakness is you have to do the changing in a major city (or at one's FC house).