Castrum Lacus Litore declining participation

[Puremallace]

Just add Castrum to the Duty Finder queue and slap some Tombs of Revelations on there in the Alliance Queue. It is already an instanced thing but forming groups takes forever and groups fall apart quickly.

Add a little indicator that says "Castrum is available" or just have it auto queue just like you do Praetorium 24 hours a day.

[Ftail]

Meddle loss in Castrum is the weakest excuse people ever give. Even those who are afraid to do the content.

Why? Say you die 2x in your first ever run at level 10. You know you are going to do more Skirmishes and CEs later anyway to do another run of Castrum, and that takes at-least 60 minutes to spawn another one. In that time you'll make up the loss in 1 CE, and probably be at level 11 by the next queue.

Even at level 15, all it takes is 1 CE to get back to the cap. Which doesn't matter, you're always 15 no matter what happens currently.

I remember rezzing my friend over a dozen times on his first run. Even at level 15 people don’t want to lose mettle because eventually they will add more content to bozja meaning more levels. It’ll be a total pain to get to level 16 in the future if we lose too much mettle now.

[Shinklet]

I've been in there my fair share of attempts. Not once have I ever seen it done with less than 25. Any less than that simply aren't capable of killing the first boss(es), let along what comes next. This has been my experience.

I've seen it done with 10, *not completely premade* they used a discord server and did have voice comms.

As I said content like this just requires a shred of co-ordination from the people involved

[Fawkes]

I've seen it done with 10, *not completely premade* they used a discord server and did have voice comms.

As I said content like this just requires a shred of co-ordination from the people involved

Discord premade with voice chat is like... maximum coordination.

A shred of coordination would be shouting what job you are when you ask for an invite.

[Tlamila]

There's just no reason to do Castrum past completion.
What most people go to Castrum now it's either clusters farms or xp, Castrum gives neither.
I personally hate Bozja in general, but I would have liked to get at least to rank 15. Castrum gives no mettle, it even makes you lose a lot of it. And tbh Bozja in general is so empty right now that even doing CE you lose more mettle than you gain, as with such small groups (max people I've seen in a CE last time I went to Bozja was what, 10 maybe?) you're bound to die more. Honestly, they could at least make it like Eureka, that you only lose xp if not ressed, but this way it's easier to lose mettle than to gain it tbh.
My friend used to do Castrum for coins, but stopped when they added them to the rest, since right now Castrum is just an unrewarding waste of time and mettle that often ends in failure anyway.

And honestly I hope they won't require rank 15 for the next part, as it's required for relic progress.

Hopefully they'll make Castrum more rewarding so that people have less of a hard time completing it once to move with story, such new content already dead is sad, especially when it's needed to unlock more. For now I think PF and discord are the best bets.

[SturmChurro]

What time are you people even doing Castrum for your datacenter? I'm on primal, and with the exception of like now 4-7 AM EST weekdays, the instances I get later are usually full, or fairly filled. Many of the times I've ran cluster farm groups, people have to keep trying to get into the instance before I can invite/re-invite them. I was just killing time leveling my MNK in there with FATE farm. Did a CE with like 16 people, half of them dead, completed it fine. Certain CE's can be difficult, but they can still be completed if people know what they are doing. Mettle means nothing, I respawned 3 times because I didn't feel like waiting for a revive from the party I was in, and I could just get my gold for my previous contribution and move on to another FATE. I just left Borzja with my mettle capped at level 15. Mettle loss is meaningless.

You definitely shouldn't be going into Castrum and coming out with a net loss of mettle, but losing it is overall not a big deal at all. The big deal is that time investment vs. reward. Always a waste of time in there when yeah, you can just earn more outside of the instance for the same time investment.

[Tlamila]

What time are you people even doing Castrum for your datacenter?

I don't know about the other DCs, but on Chaos Bozja died pretty quickly. I remember the first week there were maybe 2-3 instances full and Gangos also crowded, but already after a few weeks Gangos was empty and Bozja generally only having one instance.
It might be a matter of EU dcs being smaller, idk. I haven't been there in maybe a month or more now, but I think right now it's not really more crowded than Eureka is?
At the time you described not even roulettes pop on chaos mostly, so there's that.

[Derio]

The coin drops from it are far too low. You would be better off doing skirmishes and CE than doing castrum for coins. They would need to triple or quadruple the drop rate in castrum to make it worth while.

[Vahlnir]

The coin drops from it are far too low. You would be better off doing skirmishes and CE than doing castrum for coins. They would need to triple or quadruple the drop rate in castrum to make it worth while.

I feel that the coin drops are fine. The instance just needs something...more. And those gear augments with a laughable drop rate aren't the answer. Exp and relic item drops would be a good start. I also view mettle loss as a non issue, but throwing some mettle gains in there as well wouldn't hurt I guess.

[Sacred-Oblivion]

I’m lvl 80 and rank 15 and would do bozja a lot more if people did Castrum. Grinding fates & CEs gets boring quickly, and so it’s nice to have a fun raid in the mix. But since bozja is too monotonous with castrum dead, I can’t bother with it until patch 5.45. I was hoping I wouldnt have to wait that long for them to fix castrum but it is what it is.