Castrum is dead. Please do something, Squenix

[MsMisato]

This is not Square Enix's fault. It's because players are too scared of entering an instance that requires the tiniest of coordination and thinking and so they don't even try. Blame lower player skill.

But it is indeed SE fault on this part. BAd enough its on a 1 hour timer but the reward is not worth the effort even for 26 coins. I mean why would I chance a death in Castrum to loose mettle and walk out with absolutely no mettle or xp gain to offest the loss whatsoever for the time involved in running it. Sure there is the low low rng chance of getting a piece of equipment drop or even the note for the collection but lets be honest the castrum run was not thought out at all for the long term. And know you can get a coin for each critical engagement, its simply less risk doing that with better reward opportunities such as cluster's, memory, and mettle and xp gain. SE needs to make adjustment to castrum.


As for the OP, I would look into the Bozja Discord and see if its possible to get a party together to tackle Castrum.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Most people don't do Castrum because there's so little reason to do it. Even adding guaranteed drops for the relic quest items wouldn't help much because they're guaranteed to drop already from much easier content.

Maybe they could, I dunno, guarantee a piece of job-appropriate unaugmented gear once per week? At least then Tuesday would have some activity before people got their drops and stopped bothering.

[Packetdancer]

Castrum is already the best coin income assuming it's up.
You aren't going to earn 25ish coins in skirmishes and CEs in the time it takes to do castrum.
It's also the only way to get certain fragments

I actually enjoy Castrum mechanically just as a duty on its own; yes, I grant I may be weird. However:

1. You may not earn 25-ish coins in skirmishes and CEs in the time it takes to do Castrum, but unless you really need/want the augmented Bozjan gear, you don't need that many coins either.
2. If you grind for coins outside Bozja, the coin gain might be slightly slower but you can also be accumulating Memories for a relic, Bozjan clusters, lockboxes, and mettle. The ability to get all those other things simultaneously may outweigh the slight loss of speed in farming coins for folks.
3. You don't really need the fragments exclusive to Castrum, either. They're nice, but not necessary for any content.

So there's not a burning need for most people to do Castrum for rewards. And since you get no mettle from it but can lose a fair amount, there's that actual disincentive to run it.

Even good players can screw up; no one has perfect runs 100% of the time. And every screw-up in Castrum will cost them. Maybe not rank, no, but even rank 15 folks could lose mettle and have to build it back up in advance of whatever comes next. Add to that the fact that not doing Castrum currently rewards you by meaning you spend that time farming 3 other things (relic items, clusters, and lockboxes) Castrum will not, plus mettle for those not capped...

A lot of players in this game want to focus on "efficiency"; that's a valid way to play, but right now those players are going to avoid Castrum because while you might get coins at a slightly higher rate, you're doing so at increased risk of net mettle loss, and by sacrificing the ability to grind/farm three other things simultaneously. Moreover, for folks wanting to do the 1v1's, going into Castrum means losing a chance at a duel if the eligible CEs pop while you're in, so there's an additional opportunity cost there which may not be outweighed by coins.

So for a lot of people I know, they decide Castrum is an efficiency loss overall; other than the fragments, there's nothing you can get in Castrum you can't get outside it, and quite a few things you can get outside it that you can't get if you do run it.

[Raltar]

I do Castrum at least once a day and we always have 30+ people. Maybe you are just doing it at the wrong times.

[Raikai]

This is not Square Enix's fault. It's because players are too scared of entering an instance that requires the tiniest of coordination and thinking and so they don't even try. Blame lower player skill.

Not really! It required coordination, yes, but people were willing to try and put the effort. A couple of weeks in, already had more people experienced with Castrum and more successful runs.

The only thing Castrum needed reward wise was a huge chunk of job experience. I have no interest in the augmented pieces, and I don't really need coins anymore for the 2 jobs I main... But I would surely run Castrum with my sub-80 jobs if it had a worthy amount of experience.

[Deceptus]

Castrum upon successful completionn of the duty the following should happen. Perhaps this is too much but I suspect there would be no problem getting people to run the duty.

1. Mettle reward
2, Experience reward for those leveling jobs
3. 26 Coins is probably fine if other incentives are added
4. Memory rewards at least one of each yellow, blue, red and green
5. Clusters perhaps 10
6. Increased drop rate for upgrades
7. Maintain the same drops rate for music scrolls and other current rewards.

idling in zone right now in the EU waiting to see if I can get a Castrum clear for one of my alts given it's the weekend and perhaps there will be better participation. I'd like to get it done now as opposed to waiting for the developers to get around to a hotfix. Castrum pop is about 10 minutes away. Yesterday the duty couldn't muster more that 12 on two attempts.

Edit: Gil could also be an incentive for completion like with many duties we run outside of Borzan.

Bonus coins / mettle for first time participants.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

No one runs it anymore. Making fates give coins was a HUGE mistake. It has rendered Castrum incredibly useless to the point that no one queues for it anymore. Why did you do this? Did you not foresee this happening? New players now can’t complete the story and people who enjoy Castrum or want to finish the achievement for 50 runs are SOL. You should not have to join a discord group in order to complete story content in this game. I don’t know what the solution would be, either drastically upping the drop rate of boxes, making it give exp, or just plain making it doable with less than 10 players...just please...DO SOMETHING

PLEASE DO SOMETHING

This happened with the big instanced battle in Eureka. It required such coordination that only large raid groups could reasonably be expected to complete it successfully and said groups would discourage free roaming players from entering it, even just to try it out (to be fair, execution was very tetchy in there, or so I hear, much like the main Emergency in Diadem. I can only assume it takes very little to wipe it).

The problem is, co-op is vastly different overseas, as some posters from EU and JP have explained. This kind of content never really goes very well here, as we've see in Diadem, Eureka and now Bozja. Thus the reason the currency is available outside of this instance. Only the most determined will go for it but for those who miss out, they can still get what they need.

You can try for a Party Finder, or try to find enough people in Bozja itself if you want the story completion. Good luck in any case, but NA execution of this kind of group content has been terribad for ages. At least you can still get the main payout without doing the Castrum at all. A small consolation but I feel like that's their answer.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Shinryu was still never nerfed, he's just been outgeared.

[RyuDragnier]

Shinryu was still never nerfed, he's just been outgeared.

Which I'm still thankful for. The calls for him and Nidhogg to be nerfed were absurd, they were always going to be outgeared at some point, and neither fight was that difficult.

[HyperiusUltima]

I've been staying away from Bozja for a while because of the issues it has right now. The fact they threw in Coins into the Overworld is not a bad idea, but eventually you're gonna HAVE to go into Castrum for some reason for another.

Want to do 1v1s? Go into Castrum.
Want to complete story? Go into Castrum.
Need more coins? Go into Castrum.

A lot of people exacerbate the rate of losing Mettle in Castrum like it's going to literally make you lose 100,000 Mettle just for a goof. You can gain TONS of Mettle just by doing stuff outside of Castrum - Bozja's rates for gaining Mettle are a higher net gain than what you can lose in there over a whole hour if you're constantly running FATEs. If you're not R15, then sure; but it shouldn't stop you from trying to get there. People always want the easy way out no matter what, and don't want to work for anything. 1v1s are where that was, but the gate of RNG and 20/1 people qualifying is literally too horrible right now to even try. SE has too much they need to fix in Bozjan Southern Front that I hope they can fix after 5.4 or on 5.4's patch.