I appear to have already missed the boat on bozja

[Infindox]

There ARE still people that do Bozja and the Castrum area; the problem is it's a crapshoot as to whether or not you get lucky enough to be in an instance where a premade happens to be into.

I still feel like Bozja is better then what Eureka was (and isn't whatever they tried to do with BA and failed miserablely imo) but they made a mistake in making the coins easier to get outside that instance.

[Jennah]

When 5.45 drops, even if they don't make any changes to how the Front works, there will be more people queuing for Castrum since it's required to continue the relic quest. Hopefully they give more incentives for others to join Castrum, but either way you're going to need to wait until 5.45.

Woah, hold up. They PROMISED we wouldn't have to do Eureka 2: Electric Boogaloo to get our relics. Do you know this for a fact, or are you just assuming?

I guess if it turns out to be true, I'll just make an angry forum post, stick all seventeen i500 relics on a retainer, and pretend there aren't any Shadowbringers relics after all. Just like there weren't any in Stormblood.

[SturmChurro]

I honestly felt like I missed the boat playing it on day 2. I was super excited for this as a way to level up alt jobs, but since I didn't play it immediately and no life it, the ship has sailed.

I have gotten my MNK from 71-80 in a few days, and I'm about to get my BLM to 80 in a couple days. This is WITHOUT the bonus exp Bozjan earrings too. Still very good for leveling, boring as heck though (to me). Especially since lockboxes give literal trash.

I don't think Castrum even gives exp, so another reason why people don't want to do it.

[Iscah]

Woah, hold up. They PROMISED we wouldn't have to do Eureka 2: Electric Boogaloo to get our relics. Do you know this for a fact, or are you just assuming?

I guess if it turns out to be true, I'll just make an angry forum post, stick all seventeen i500 relics on a retainer, and pretend there aren't any Shadowbringers relics after all. Just like there weren't any in Stormblood.

There's definitely a chance that you'll need to clear the story to do the next stage of the relic, but I think it's just speculating at this point.

They could have meant that you wouldn't have to do the bulk of the memory-gathering in Bozja when they said you wouldn't need to do the relic in there.

I levelled to rank 10 to get into Castrum and I ended up with about half the memories needed for one weapon upgrade, so there is definitely a benefit to being able to do the rest outside. Let alone if I was trying to do another sixteen of them.

But of course this is fun and engaging content that you'll want to do for the sake of it, right?

[SturmChurro]

There's definitely a chance that you'll need to clear the story to do the next stage of the relic, but I think it's just speculating at this point.

They could have meant that you wouldn't have to do the bulk of the memory-gathering in Bozja when they said you wouldn't need to do the relic in there.

I levelled to rank 10 to get into Castrum and I ended up with about half the memories needed for one weapon upgrade, so there is definitely a benefit to being able to do the rest outside. Let alone if I was trying to do another sixteen of them.

But of course this is fun and engaging content that you'll want to do for the sake of it, right?

Relic quests have been outside of instance, so far. You never have to step foot in borzja, if you don't want to. If you do borzja it's actually more effective to keep weapon quests active, and passively gain memories. I have hundreds upon hundreds of them (probably near a thousand now - not joking). All types. The hardest part now is actually poetics.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Woah, hold up. They PROMISED we wouldn't have to do Eureka 2: Electric Boogaloo to get our relics. Do you know this for a fact, or are you just assuming?

I guess if it turns out to be true, I'll just make an angry forum post, stick all seventeen i500 relics on a retainer, and pretend there aren't any Shadowbringers relics after all. Just like there weren't any in Stormblood.

"Your resistance weapon can be upgrade in 5.45, but you need to finish the story including Delubrum Reginae normal"
2 upgrade steps and you can customize the substats during the 2nd upgrade" ~ Yoshi-P, From the previous liveletter before 5.4. Delubrum Reginae is the special 24 man coming in 5.45 for Bozja.

The quote he mentioned about not being forced due to do Bozja to upgrade your weapon was taken out of context.

You didn't have to do Bozja to get the items for the current upgrade step, not that you could complete the relic without ever doing the Save the Queen storyline. With how intimately tied these relics are to the Save the Queen story, it was insanely telegraphed from the moment they were first implemented that completion of the Bozja story would be mandatory for them.

So yes, you'll have to pretend there isn't any SHB relics then. Not that Bozja is tedious to do, compared to Eureka (You can hit rank 10 within 3-5 evenings of casual play easily, I've done it on 3 characters now), especially once they fix Castrum.

[SturmChurro]

"Your resistance weapon can be upgrade in 5.45, but you need to finish the story including Delubrum Reginae normal
2 upgrade steps and you can customize the substats during the 2nd upgrade" ~ Yoshi-P, From the previous liveletter before 5.4

The quote he mentioned about not being forced due to do Bozja to upgrade your weapon was taken out of context.

You didn't have to do Bozja to get the items for this upgrade step, not that you could complete the relic without ever doing the Save the Queen storyline. With how intimately tied these relics are to the Save the Queen story, it was insanely telegraphed that completion of the Bozja story would be mandatory for them.

So yes, you'll have to pretend there isn't any SHB relics then. Not that Bozja is infinitely less tedious to do than Eureka was, especially once they fix Castrum.

Bummer for some people then, but actually this might get castrum popping again. Could be smart, for borzja's longevity at least. Too bad for people who don't want to do it outside of borzja then.

[Shougun]

I have gotten my MNK from 71-80 in a few days, and I'm about to get my BLM to 80 in a couple days. This is WITHOUT the bonus exp Bozjan earrings too. Still very good for leveling, boring as heck though (to me). Especially since lockboxes give literal trash.

I don't think Castrum even gives exp, so another reason why people don't want to do it.

An aside, I really wish whoever made the lockbox mechanic condensed and removed a lot of stuff (naturally this may affect drop mechanics / rates). Amount of garbage inventory fill up from any of the lock boxes in this game is just 11/10 lol.

Even if perhaps they made the lock boxes turn into tokens or something. 4 tier tokens, each token can be vendored for immediate average npc sale price gil for that group (as if you had purchased and vendored the items themselves). They can keep the reveal effect, just reveals which tier token you get rather than which specific item. May even have some sort of fail safe mechanic so it's like 99 of X token can be spent to upgrade into 1 of the next tier.

[Gemina]

As much as I defend the devs, even my verbal gymnast attempts can't help them here. They seriously screwed this one up big time, and I have no idea what they were thinking. Perhaps as the next patch approaches there will be more peeps needing to clear Castrum. Even if this is the case, players should not have rely/wait on such instances to line up with their goals.

Just terrible decision making on the part of the dev team.

[Vahlnir]

and I have no idea what they were thinking

This is something I have found myself saying pretty regularly during Shadowbringers, unfortunately. Castrum Lacus Litore is par for the course.