Originally started on my Youtube channel as a “crafted gear only” stream series, this challenge has expanded and evolves over the time I have been playing it on a personal character while I haven’t been able to stream as much.
Since it is no longer just a “crafted gear only” challenge and now includes things like relics, extreme and savage trial and raid gear, and other things that involve a bit of grinding but aren’t 100% crafted gear only I wanted to make a page that has a list of things I am allowing and not allowing as I play through the game and decide these restrictions for anyone who wants to try playing the challenge, also so I don’t have to remember them for the stream series later.
Disclaimer: This challenge involves A LOT of crafting and grinding, including for some very expensive and rare materials that the bulk of the community doesn’t even bother selling at times because they are not used by 99% of players anymore. I enjoy this type of gameplay, not everyone will, feel free to tweaks the restrictions in your own runs of this challenge.
Exceptions & Clarifications
- If you are doing raids with a static please do not be that person and just use the best gear you have available to you for that kind of group content, however put it away on a retainer or something as soon as you are back to normal gameplay.
- Restrictions do not apply to glamour plates, unless you personally want them to. This is because glamour is a cosmetic feature only and does not affect gameplay in any way so I’ll leave it up to personal choice if you want to restrict glamour plates or not, I personally will not.
- Non-gear items like ventures, crystals, mounts, aetheryte tickets, collectables, and consumables are allowed to be used regardless of their source if you want.
- Non-gear items are allowed to be bought from vendors, this is because it is literally impossible to complete the game without crafting components from the Grand Company vendors, Rowena’s vendors, and other similar vendors.
- Achievement rewards are allowed to be used. This is because of the amount of work and effort that has to be put into getting them balances out how strong some of them are.
- Dark Knight, Astrologian, and Machinist starter weapons (level 30 quest rewards) are allowed. This is because there are no other weapons available for these jobs at level 30 and it would be impossible to play these jobs. The armour however is not allowed and must be discarded.
- The Ehcatl Wristgloves are allowed to be used for the beast tribe quests they are required to be worn for.
Restricted Gear & Rules
- Story Skips – This should be for fairly obvious reasons but under no circumstances are the story and job skip items from the store allowed to be used.
- Quest Rewards – These are not allowed to be used for gameplay. You can however sell them, desynth them, or use them for glamour plates.
- Vendor Gear – Buying gear, especially combat gear, is not allowed. This includes but is not limited to Gil Vendors, Beast Tribe Vendors, from your Grand Company, any vendor related to Rowena, and the PvP Vendors.
- Poetics Gear – This gear specifically kind of defeats the whole point of the challenge, as you can just get to the end of an expansion’s base content, then buy max item level gear.
- Dungeon, Trial, & Raid Drops – These are not allowed other then for turning in for seals or leveling desynth because of how easy it is to get, there would be no challenge if you could just queue up with other players and run a dungeon a few times to get a full set of higher level gear with minimal effort.
- Expansion Job Cosmetic Weapons – Jobs from the expansions must not use weapons lower then the earliest normal crafted weapon. This is to stop unlocking 60+ jobs in Heavensward and just buying the Thorodan weapon materials off the market board. For Dancer and Gunbreaker the earliest expansion they can be played is Stormblood. For Sage and Reaper the earliest expansion they can be played is Shadowbringers.
- The Market Board – Using the market board is allowed, however to prevent this from being overpowered and abused it also has the limitation of being limited to the current or previous expansions. This is to stop exploits such as crafting the next expansion’s normal recipe gear sets to bypass crafting the current expansion’s required master recipe gear sets.
- Extreme & Savage Content – While extreme and savage content drops are being allowed the content MUST be completed with a full party, synced. There is no point to this challenge if you just have someone who is level 90 unsync the content and clear it for you in twenty seconds. Add in a minimum item level restriction if you want, I leave that up to you.
- Unrestricting Content – Unrestricting content is only allowed, even if it is level synced, if the requirements to enter the content are already fulfilled. This setting and other people to fill a party are not a work around to the required item levels to complete the game’s content.
That is all for now, please be aware that this page will be update over time as I play though the challenge. Rules and restrictions my be added or amended as I play through the game.