What are Glamour Prisms for?
Perhaps you’ve heard people talk about how glamour is the ‘true endgame’ of FFXIV. There are so many cool looking outfits you can make that some players really do spend a lot of time and gil creating the perfect look. Of course, to do so, you’re going to need Glamour Prisms.
If you haven’t gotten started with glamour yet, check out this post for the basics on How to Glamour.
Essentially, you’ll need a Glamour Prism to make one piece of equipment look like another (and hopefully nicer-looking) piece of equipment. You also need one to place a piece of equipment in your Glamour Dresser, which is the recommended method because it uses fewer Glamour Prisms in the long run.
How to Obtain Glamour Prisms
There are lots of ways to get your hands on these Glamour Prisms. Some are more sensible than others, so let’s compare the methods in terms of efficiency and accessibility.
Marketboard (~Gil)
Prices will vary from server to server, but since gil is so easy to get, you should always be able to grab some Glamour Prisms through the marketboard. It’s a popular item for people to sell, typically as a way of converting their Grand Company Seals into gil.
Anyone with marketboard access can do this, so as long as you’re not on the free trial, you can buy Prisms for gil. If you buy them in bulk, consider checking out other servers on your data centre using the World Visit system to see if you can get them cheaper.
Grand Company (200 Seals)
First off, because there are so many menu sections here: Glamour Prisms are listed under the Materiel tab, in the Middle Tier section. You must have reached the final rank of the second tier (i.e. Chief Storm Sergeant, Chief Serpent Sergeant, or Chief Flame Sergeant).
If you’re a new player on your first run through the MSQ, you’ll probably have to level up your rank before you have access to Glamour Prisms here, but it’s definitely worth it (for other reasons as well).
This is a really easy way to keep your supply up if you do high level content, since you can turn in dungeon loot for Company Seals. To put it in perspective, the loot from the level 80 dungeons give over 1600 seals, which is enough for eight Glamour Prisms.
Think about how often you run the expert dungeon roulette, and how often you consume Glamour Prisms. This is most likely your most efficient option. Even loot from levelling dungeons and alliance raids is worth a few of these things, so if you remember to roll Greed your supply should stay healthy as long as you do these activities semi-regularly.
Crafting
A long time ago you needed specific Glamour Prisms to glamour different types of equipment, depending on which crafter makes that piece. This isn’t the case anymore, but the recipes remain in your crafting log, so you can make yourself some Glamour Prisms if you have some of these low level materials around.
The crafters use different intermediate materials from their own recipe lists, usually in the level 25-30 range. These include:
Walnut Lumber
Steel Ingots
Steel Rivets
Silver Ingots
Toad Leather
Undyed Velveteen, and
Growth Formula Gamma.
Keep in mind that Culinarians cannot make Glamour Prisms, because there were never any equipment pieces made by them.
All the recipes use a single clear prism, which you can buy from lots of NPCs for 200 gil, including in the starting cities, Revenant’s Toll, Idyllshire, Kugane, Rhalgr’s Reach, and from Apartment Merchants.
To be honest, this is not a good way to get your Glamour Prisms. Even if you buy all your materials from NPCs (which you can do for some recipes using Beast Tribe vendors), I think it would be just be cheaper and faster to buy the finished Glamour Prisms from the marketboard.
Maybe if your server’s economy is really messed up, or if you have a huge supply of those low level materials leftover for some reason, then this can be a use for your extras.
PvP (100 Wolf Marks)
Definitely don’t do PvP just to get Glamour Prisms, as it’s not an efficient use of time. However, if you’re doing lots of PvP and have run out of things you’re interested in buying, this may be worth looking at to dump your Wolf Marks if you’re nearing the 20,000 cap.
Shadowbringers FATEs (6 Bicolor Gemstones)
The Shadowbringers FATEs drop their own currency, called Bicolor Gemstones. Earning the highest contribution rank when completing one of these FATEs gives you 12, so as long as you’re actively involved in them, each one is worth two Glamour Prisms.
Obviously this is only accessible to players who have entered Shadowbringers content, so new or lower level players will have to look elsewhere.
Considering these only take a few minutes solo, even faster when with others, this could be a quick way to both level your jobs and stock up on Prisms. I sometimes do FATEs while waiting for a duty queue to pop. Just remember to check out any cosmetics you’re still saving up for with this currency, as they’re more expensive items.
If you’re not interested in the cosmetics, or if you’re about to hit the cap of 1000, Glamour Prisms are always a safe buy.
Culinarian Desynthesis (Queensgown – Il Mheg Spearfishing)
It’s rare, but you can get Glamour Prisms when desynthesizing the Queensgown fish. You’ll need to unlock Desynthesis of course, but you don’t need to have a high level Culinarian.
This is obviously not a reliable way of getting them consistently, but if you’re trying to powerlevel your Culinarian Desynthesis, note that this is a level 409 fish so you can use it for nearly the whole levelling process while simultaneously stocking up on Glamour Prisms.
Summary
For the average player there are two efficient ways of getting Glamour Prisms. The first is buying them off the Marketboard for gil, which the game throws at you for doing nearly every little activity. The second is buying them from your Grand Company for Company Seals, which are easily amassed by looting dungeons and raids, especially high level ones like those in the Expert Roulette.
Low level players may be limited to using the Marketboard until they can rank up with their Grand Company, while high level players have a couple of extra sources depending on their in-game activities.
Note that Wolf Marks and Bicolor Gemstones can be converted easily for Glamour Prisms to avoid overcapping, but they are usually best saved for the more expensive cosmetic offerings at their respective vendors.
I hope this cleared up any questions about where you should look for Glamour Prisms, and lets you keep a healthy supply so you can glamour to your heart’s content.
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