Good Morning Friends! This morning I decided to make good on an idea that has been kicking around in my head. Mixtape Mondays have given me an anchor to the week, a focal point to sort of plan the entire week around. I had this idea of a second fixed point, but I am not entirely certain it will be as regular as the Monday offering has become. Favorite Fridays is a time for me to break out something that I love in a game, pop culture, or pretty much anything else I am passionate about and do a deep dive on it. It might be a favorite weapon or a location in a game that I absolutely cherish or maybe even a specific section of quest dialog that I greatly enjoy. Whatever the case it is time for me to explore that item in depth in post form.
Usagi Kabuto
There is one item in Final Fantasy XIV that has become more synonymous with my brand than pretty much anything else. It is a cosmetic hat known as the Usagi Kabuto, or “Bunny Hat” as I tend to refer to it. This single item has spent more time on my head in glamour form than pretty much any other item in the game. The truth is I largely stumbled upon it when I was first exploring the options of what I could use for glamour purposes. There isn’t anything special about it as items go, it is a Kabuto or a type of helmet often worn by Japanese warriors… most specifically associated with Samurai. That is the first thing in its favor because I have always had an attraction to that classic Samurai appearance.
The item first made its appearance as part of the Heavensturn event in 2011 and then was reprised briefly in 2014 as well… aka the first Heavensturn event for A Realm Reborn. Heavensturn for those unfamiliar is the in-game holiday in Final Fantasy XIV associated with the Lunar New Year and as a result, has a heavy association with whatever animal of the Chinese Zodiac represents a given year. For example, we are currently in the “Year of the Ox” and as a result, the Kabutos associated with that event featured an Oxhead. 2011 was the “Year of the Rabbit” which I believe would have been the very first Heavensturn in the original version of Final Fantasy XIV. When the event first game to A Realm Reborn Rabbit, Dragon and Sheep were all available for purchase.
I cannot say for certain what it is about the appearance that really drew me to it. It was however a happy coincidence that pretty much all of the Warrior-specific sets happened to be black and red, which meant the specific version of the Usagi Kabuto that I liked the most matched them perfectly. Over the years I have been a Bunny Warrior, a Bunny Bard, a Bunny Samurai, and most recently a Bunny Paladin. I even have the Gold Saucer-themed bunny ears so that I can craft “Bunny” outfits for things where this helm doesn’t exactly match. I realize that Zepla’s whole thing is calling her community “Buns” but I have been a Bunny Warrior since those early days of A Realm Reborn when we were first exploring this game.
There is just something about being a Lalafell and having a hyper-serious expression most of the time… and wearing a giant bunny hat that makes me happy. So many of my memories of this game… involved a cut scene where I was wearing this exact helmet. I used it so often that prior to the existence of glamour plates I carried around a stack of crystals and the hat on my person at all times so I could glamour over any other appearances.
In fact, I believe that it was “Bunny Bel” that was my very first commission that I had my good friend Ammo work on. It has pretty much graced the masthead of this website since the day it was created. If I was going to single out any specific version of Belghas to represent me as a whole… it would probably be that version. It is the incarnation of me that brings me the most joy, and now that I have come back to Final Fantasy XIV and embraced the bunny once again… my happiness quotient has increased significantly. So when I was trying to think about the single item that I wanted to kick this series off with, it was quickly evident what it had to be.
The only negative of the Usagi Kabuto is that since it has been largely inaccessible in the game since 2014 for some seven years there is now a pretty hefty price tag associated with it. In theory, if the pattern holds, it should make a reappearance during the Heavensturn event for 2023. I am not sure when they started this, but after a certain point, anything that was seasonal was no longer able to be listed on the Market board. It means those first few holiday events have items that fetch a hefty premium. I know both Thalen and Tamrielo made their in-game fortunes by selling housing items that were obtained from those first few events.
Square Enix now uses expired seasonal content as a way of propping up their cash shop, which honestly I feel is fair given that they churn out brand new seasonal events every single year with zero repeats that I am aware of. If you absolutely must follow in my footsteps and join the order of the bunny warrior, you can drop $3 to get your very own bind-on character version of the helmet. It features a slightly different item name, which I assume is to differentiate between the store-bought and market purchasable versions. If I ever got serious about playing on another server I would probably pick one of these up on the market so that I could still be the Bunny Warrior of Light there as well.
