A Modest Proposal - Castrating Castrum

[Alente]

For those of you who decided to make Darklight a goal you'll no doubt find yourselves farming either Castrum Meridianum or Amdapor Keep for Tomes of Philosophy. If, like me, you've ended up legging FFXIV without a guild so far then chances are it'll be Castrum since you can survive that without too many disasters in a PUG unlike AK speed runs.

How many you ask? Well with a full Darklight set raking up to 5,010 tomes you'll either be doing 51 Castrums or 63 AKs. A Castrum run taking 40-60~ minutes (depending on the quality of your team) quickly takes that up to 34-51+ hours of your life farming the same instance over and over. Now picture every run trying to compensate and carry for people who are there for the first time thanks to story progression and, by no fault of their own, have no idea what's going on. There's got to be a better way!

I finished my set today (yay!) and one thing you discover early on is while there's definitely some players out there who... aren't really equipped to handle this sort of content most people having trouble are simply new. The campaign has, for better or worse, thrown them into a raid environment and they are discovering as they go. Explaining mechanics makes things go a lot smoother but it also takes a lot of time, I was blessed to have two friends (SMN/PLD) running with me most of the time but that still left five slots to deal with.

So what to do? Well automate of course - I wrote macros explaining the basic mechanics of the instance and if anyone in the party was new ran them throughout. That shaved off about 20 minutes on most runs and hours of stress out of my days.

You're more than welcome to make any alterations/omissions - there are certainly slightly more efficient ways to clear the dungeon but I personally didn't find them worthwhile risking with PUG groups.

~Entry Macro~
/party
Howdy all, welcome to another exciting trip of Castrum =p
Once you two tanks have settled whose main/offtanking grab the first pull - after they're dead we can disable the alarms to despawn the rest.

~First Boss Macro~
/party
Easy first boss, just turn him around and tank/spank. Kill adds as they appear, stay away from the doorways where they spawn. Try to keep adds off Healers if you can OT <3

~Second Boss Macro~
/party
Second boss yay! Main tank to turn the boss around as per usual (pull him to the left door), adds spawn from doors so avoid standing there squishies
Healers should try to avoid heals when adds spawn (aggro, in all fights bar the final) A large Reaper will spawn - offtank keep aggro on that but do not kill it, waste of time.

~Trash+Colossus after killing mobs Cid reveals~
/party
Pull these mobs (and the next two pulls) to the Alarm Siren Post infront of the cannons, we can pretty much instakill all this trash with cannons. Boom?
Be sure to disable the Siren before the Colossus pull to cannons, most of the trash will despawn.
The mobs above can be dragged further back into a second set of cannons (mobs there too) - no one except the tank heal/do anything until you get to the second cannons.

~Large Colossus Boss Macro~
/party
Ranged players can head into the corner (on the ramp) where the boss will spawn after trash. MT - tank him at the lightpost at the bottom of the ramp facing away.
Adds will spawn and funnel towards us so OT can help with those. A large Vanguard will appear - offtank keep agro on that but do not kill it, waste of time.
SMN/BLM can LB the second wave - after the third adds will stop spawning so you can move around freely without much trouble.

~Courtyard Area (behind keycard door) Macro~
/party
Hug left in this area - do not disable the search lights until everything is dead around them. Skip the cutscenes please as we will still be in combat.
(Spoiler Alert!: An airship spawns/explodes - that's actually happening ingame right now and oh god there's fire everywhere!)
Main tank head to the left door and grab the mob that's about to spawn, OT grab the one on the right. Try keep them away from eachother since double cleave hurts (owwie!)

~Livia Phase One Macro~
/party
This fight is easy, just load the cannons and shoot them at her. Everyone who doesn't have aggro focus on killing adds/ firing cannons - if you have agro just stand in the center
The boss does no real damage. If adds are dragged into the center cannons can oneshot them when you shoot the boss.

~Livia Phase Two Macro~
/party
Real fight! Turn her around and tank her by the back door, when adds spawn they will focus on one target (you'll get an angry icon over your character if it's you), nuke em down.
If they're on you stand still near the DPS and trust your Healers!
These mobs cannot be taunted unless the initial target dies (bad juju). A large Colossus will spawn - offtank keep aggro on that but do not kill it, waste of time.

One thing I'd like to mention though is the is the controversy going around lately over people demanding cutscenes be skipped in this dungeon. Frankly, as someone whose run it over 50 times now, I can understand why farmers want people to just hurry up and watch it later in their inn rooms but really it's just not the same as experiencing the story as you're playing it for the first time. The only boss where someone watching a cutscene is going to risk them being locked out is the first (oh noes) so it's really not a big deal to be missing people for a trash pull.

The only exception to that is the Courtyard (cannons, two colossus) where cutscenes trigger in combat. Those cutscenes have nothing of value and risk a party wipe if a tank/healer is watching them - skip the darn things! The design intent seems to be for people to tank/dodge the airship attacks until the Colossus mobs are dead but frankly that never happens, seen it once in all my runs, and SE needs to address that in a future patch at some point.

EDIT: If someone in your party seems to agro Livia the second Phase Two of her fight starts don't give them grief. There's a bug, a rare one but still, where people will spawn next to her after phase one instead of where the party is. It's not their fault so deal with it =)

TL;DR Boo farming instances, yay macros, cake.

Feedback/questions are more than welcome =)

See y'all in-game,
Sparkle Sunshine - Leviathan.