This is an optical hat:
It's nothing terribly special, save for it having some legendary accuracy and evasion stats, being a major pain in the butt to get both time and gil-wise to get. It also has some legendary fug, but more about that later.
It is also, as far as I can see, one piece of gear where at least one, if not more, people will get screwed out of theirs. I've heard horror stories, alliances wiping, or breaking, or even once a person who had hit hat lotted on by someone else. Call it Hakutaku's Law.
See, that's the bastard up in the top right. And in the foreground, the front line of fighters seeking his hats. And in behind the camera, the various black mages, white mages, and red mages to keep the fighters up and the eye-blob stunned. Oh, and more fighters. And a Paladin, who begged us to make him part of our alliance.
So, overall about eighteen or twenty people, of all races and nationalities, about eleven of them who have a cluster to bring forth the giant optical monster of doom, some of whom have been waiting two or more hours to just get the party started, and a Saturday night. We went not by /random, but by the order in which we joined the alliance. I was fifth. Cieria was sixth. I got mine. She didn't. See, someone always gets screwed.
Time invested:
2 hours getting the party together.
30 minutes getting everyone to camp.
30 minutes per O-hat run, between downing the multi-eyeballed one, killing his slightly-less-well-endowed eyeballed minions, and getting all the people herded together. And doom toads.
So, if I was fifth, I spent about five hours total getting that hat.
All and all, the runs ran smoothly. Only the tanks, and the black mage Solare died in battle, and another Dragoon died popping her Hakutaku. Stun went down on Firaga III, no time else. The tanks face backwards, and the melee hit Hakutaku from behind. We settled into a routine, and by the time I popped Hakutaku, no one died, the only one without a death.
Then people broke away. The tanks disbanded. The white mages had to go. My support did as well. Someone always gets screwed. Not to mention, Rancor Den smells horrible between the unbathed tonberries, the rotting toadies, and the formaldehyde. I bet it even got to the humes!
Oh, that's not my Hakutaku up there. The pictures of mine ended up looking like a failed alchemy experiment. So I borrowed someone else's.
Now, on to the first confession:
While I wish more people could have gotten their hats because I think everyone has a horror story, some part of me was glad that the party disbanded right after I got mine. Gah!
Let it be a lesson--Join the alliance early, and ask that the order be based on who joins, or join the alliance late and ask that things be done through /random, and hope that your 999 rolling ability prevails.
Second:
I don't think the optical hat is that ugly. Yes, it looks like a hat for a mourning clown. Yes, it looks like a low level mage hat, but it has one thing going for it:
The benign Mithra smile now looks like a sneaky-inscrutible-menacing Mithra smile.
See? Bastard Mithra.
