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, 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.
- 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.
- If an item is available from a vendor for both a rare, crafted, or extreme trial currency item and is NOT bought with poetics then it is okay to get it by other means. Example: Buying the non-crafted Artisan’s set from your grand company instead of from Mor Dohna for crafted items.
- 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 skipping straight to item level 115 Heavensward gear while still completing A Realm Reborn.
- 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.
- Extreme and Savage 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.
- 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.
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.
- Augmented Poetics Gear – This type of 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 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.
- Vendor Gear – Buying gear, especially combat gear, is not allowed. This includes from Gil Vendors, Beast Tribe Vendors, from your Grand Company, and the PVP Vendors. You can buy and use these for glamour plates though.
- Quest Rewards – These are not allowed to be used for gameplay. You can sell them, desynth them, or use them for glamour plates. Non-gear quest rewards like ventures, crystals, mounts, aetheryte tickets, and consumables are allowed to be used if you want.
- 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.
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.