Cowl (hooded) idea to make them a desired item

[Klive]

The cowl armor take up both head and body slot. As a crafted item, this dramatically reduces its usefulness. Most because crafted items major selling point is materia binds and the cowl takes you lose a valuable head slot for more materia binds. I know to was already discussed having head materia able to bind to cowls, but who would still wear it. Still losing a slot for materia.

So I had an idea to have materia bind to gear what take up more than one slot, only cowl so far, makes the materia bonus a little stronger to compensate the loss of a slot. Not much stronger, like 20% or so stronger. I would like to see cowl have a little more desire on the market.

[Holy_Dragoon]

Cowls by themselves are decent items, but losing materia really hurts their usefulness. Usually the stats don't make up for the losses you take.

[Klive]

Cowls by themselves are decent items, but losing materia really hurts their usefulness. Usually the stats don't make up for the losses you take.

Loss of a materia or more is a big difference. I use to wear the cowl all the time but now the stats are not worth it.

[ninesunz]

Cowls should have higher base stats to compensate head&body ?

[Holy_Dragoon]

They actually do compensate fairly well. As a mage, Woolen Cowl has great stats. It surpasses near all single pieces of gear, but I can only use 1 materia slot. With a Robe + Hat I can have 2.

[DoctorMog]

My thoughts,

-Allow all head and body materia's to be melded to cowls (since they count as both)
-Increase the success rate of materia melding (improving the frequency of cowls being 4 and 5 melded, negating the extra materia available for two separate items)

Alternatively,
-Give cowls the ability to remove its hood and wear it just as a body piece. When the hood is down, the stats are reduced to be equal to just a body item. The hood would give the bonus stats of the hood when "up" (and you would not be able to wear a head item when it is up)

[Zantetsuken]

My thoughts,

Allow all head and body materia's to be melded to cowls (since they count as both)
Increase the success rate of materia melding (improving the frequency of cowls being 4 and 5 melded)

Hmmm.. that would certainly make that 5-meld achievement easier to get...

[DoctorMog]

Hmmm.. that would certainly make that 5-meld achievement easier to get...

I edited my post with one alternative that I thought of, sorry Zan.

[Mychael]

My thoughts,

-Allow all head and body materia's to be melded to cowls (since they count as both)

I apologize for the late reply Eruantien! I was able to get a response from the dev. team about the good points that you brought up.

We first asked the dev. team if they would be able to allow cowls to attach both head and body materia. They let us know that this unfortunately wasn't a possibility with the system.

The question we followed up with was is if they could allow cowls to attach head materia instead of body materia and they said that they are looking into if it would be possible.

As for your last idea, it would work better if the hood was just a separate piece, so we could meld to it as well. That would be weird though, since you could technically put on a hood without the matching body. :/

[Kinseykinz]

As for your last idea, it would work better if the hood was just a separate piece, so we could meld to it as well. That would be weird though, since you could technically put on a hood without the matching body. :/

Lol true... I think some of the NPC Thm's in the THM guild have 'mis-matched' cowl's+headpieces if I remember correctly though...so really, depends on the player choice. I kinda like either the cowl stays as is but allow for certain headwear to be equipped (masks crowns etc) OR make the hood a headpiece and you can buy/meld both.