FFXIV Castrum Meridianum Dungeon: How To Safely Complete This Dungeon With Three Bosses? - Full Guide
Posted: Jan 23, 2025
Posted: Jan 23, 2025
Source: IGGMAs you progress through your character level in Final Fantasy 14, you’ll encounter a special dungeon at level 50 called Castrum Meridianum, which is also the penultimate dungeon to explore in Patch 2.0’s A Realm Reborn MSQ. Only by completing this dungeon can you advance to the final dungeon run.
While the quest to explore this dungeon isn’t too difficult, you may need some combat strategies to help you complete this Castrum Meridianum dungeon run more quickly, because it contains three boss encounters. Plus, this dungeon has long cutscenes before each encounter, so if you’re limited on time, having the strategies for unlocking and defeating the bosses covered in this guide may allow you to complete all the quests without rushing.
Unlock Castrum Meridianum
As mentioned above, you can unlock this dungeon by completing the penultimate Rock the Castrum main quest in A Realm Reborn MSQ. After you complete the quest, you can enter it using Duty Finder. Alternatively, you can move to the entrance of Northern Thanalan, which also leads to Castrum Meridianum dungeon you need to explore next.
Once inside, you can complete the exploration of this huge dungeon one by one, according to the quest log on the screen. You will encounter three bosses in turn: Black Eft, Magitek Vanguard F-1, and Livia Sas Junius. The other little monsters are pretty simple, and as long as your item level is high enough, you can rely on them in this dungeon to farm FFXIV Gil as well as other loot that can be used to enhance your build.
Three Bosses
Of course, before challenging these three bosses, you need to first understand their attack moves and mechanisms so that you can effectively deal with and avoid them. Next, we will introduce the specific information of these three bosses one by one. Please prepare your powerful characters and start fighting!
Black Eft
The first boss you need to fight is Black Eft, and some 8th Cohort soldiers. They mainly use auto attacks to cause small amounts of damage to you or cast continuous fire damage on you. You only need to improve your own defense ability, and Black Eft has the following attack moves that you need to pay attention to.
- High-powered Magitek Ray: The boss will cause untelegraphed area damage to the front of itself. During this skill, you will see that it is gathering power in the cannon in front of it. This is a sign. You need to move to its sides or back to avoid this attack.
- Incendiary Support: This skill will cause four unavoidable damage to your entire team, so during this period, the healer in the team needs to exert force to restore the health of all players quickly.
- Request Assistance: Like many bosses, Black Eft will also spawn more enemies during the battle to help it cause more damage to you, including more 8th Cohort soldiers and Magitek Colossi. At this time, any skills that can cause group damage come in handy, and you can gather them together to knock them all down.
- Magitek Cannon: The boss will deal damage in a circular area around random players, just avoid it.
It is important to note that Black Eft will repeat these attacks. So be careful at all times to avoid taking a lot of damage. After you defeat Black Eft, you can go to east through Disposal Chute and continue your exploration.
Magitek Vanguard F-1
The second boss to appear in Castrum Meridianum dungeon is Magitek Vanguard F-1. It has no other helpers, so you only need to focus on the following attacks it uses.
- Thermobaric Strike: The boss will first mark a corner of the arena with an AOE. The closer you are to the mark, the more damage you will take. So before it shoots the mark, try to predict the general direction and leap to the other end.
- Hypercharge: It will create a circular and ring-shaped area of damage to itself. You will see a small ring of safety between the two areas, so you need to keep moving to avoid those areas of damage.
- Cermet Drill: The boss will deal high damage to Tanks in the group. Even if the tank has strong health, try to reduce the cooldown of defensive skills to reduce the damage caused by this move.
- Overcharge: It will damage a wide cone in front of itself, and will cause Paralysis to you if you are in it, and can periodically disable you. You can only move out of the damage range to avoid further damage.
- Targeted Support: You will see a circular damage range running towards you, so you only need to move out of the telegraph to avoid damage.
You will see that Magitek Vanguard F-1 here deals mostly area damage, so please spend some FFXIV Gil before challenging it to make your build more flexible so that you can quickly avoid most damage.
Livia Sas Junius
The final boss you’ll face in Castrum Meridianum is Livia Sas Junius, and it has more attacks than the first two, so be prepared. Here are all the attacks it can throw at you.
- Artificial Plasma: First, it will deal unavoidable damage to all members of your party. Healers should use area heals to recover quickly.
- Roundhouse: Livia will deal damage to a large area around her, and Discharge will work in tandem.
- Discharge: Multiple circular areas of damage will appear around the arena. So when these attacks are in effect, you need to move quickly to a safe area to avoid all the damage areas.
- Aglaea Climb: Livia will also deal high damage to the tanks in your team with this move. The tank’s own defensive skill cooldown reduction may not be very effective at this time, so healers may need to help.
- Infinite Reach: The boss will dash through the center of the arena several times in a row, damaging your party in a straight line. At the same time, there will be a continuous barrage of Discharge AOEs. You may need to watch the order in which they appear to avoid them.
- Angry Salamander: After the last move, Livia will stand in the center of the arena and shoot several straight lines outward to deal area damage. You can only continue to move to a safe area to avoid the damage.
- Thermobaric Strike: Livia will create two Proximity AOEs on opposite sides of the arena. Again, the closer you are to them, the more damage you will take. You also need to pay attention to the appearance of Stunning Sweep at this time.
- Stunning Sweep: The boss will cause damage to the surrounding area, and you will also suffer Paralysis effect if you are in this area. At the same time, several Discharge AOEs will explode. To avoid all three attacks, you first need to stand near one of the two Proximity AOEs until Stunning Sweep and Discharge stop. Then quickly move to the other two unmarked corners.
Note that when Livia uses Thermobaric Strike for the second time, you will also see that this will be combined with Angry Salamander and create four Discharge AOEs. You may need to move to the center of the arena quickly and strengthen your defenses so that you can withstand the damage caused by Thermobaric Strike. After you defeat it, you can enter the final The Ultimate Weapon quest.
These are the three bosses you will encounter when exploring Castrum Meridianum in FFXIV, as well as their attack moves and countermeasures. I hope this guide can make your exploration of this dungeon smoother and easier, and get more high-value loot from it to face the final challenge. I wish you a happy game!
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