Castle Thorn and the Mystery of the Disappearing Circle

greytday137 · March 2023

My dungeon group has experienced consistent issues with two players not being able to see the circle move in Castle Thorn hard mode. It seems to consistently happen to a couple of players, and it is making it virtually impossible to prog the Trifecta in there. The issues seems to occur during the circle's path when it is moving forward. The brief moments in the corners where the circle backtracks make it become visible again.

We are on PS5s, and the workarounds we have tried include:
- turning off ability bar timers (this did nothing)
- having our healer swap their role to tank (this made it possible for the healer to see the circle but then the tank could not)
- having everyone in there set their role to tank (same issue as above)
- Changing to different toons (this made it visible to some that had lost it, but then invisible to others)

Can the team please look into and address this issue? Its beyond frustrating with an already frustrating dungeon.

fizl101 · March 2023

This was me yesterday (on ps5). I put a bright icon on someone to help follow them. For me it seemed to happen when the not imp add spawned, then would reappear for a bit, then disappear again

Soarora · March 2023

This problem happens on PC as well. Never had it personally but played with people who have.

Dragonredux · March 2023

Can confirm, still happens even on PC.

Recent run with guildmates, only the Healer could see the circle properly. The rest could only see the circle staying then updating every so often like it's lagging behind. Virtually impossible to try to HM it with most of the team broken.

greytday137 · March 2023

Any update on this? @ZOS_Kevin

The icon thing is not an effective work around because it depends on a person staying dead center in the circle. If the icon is on a DD, that person will have to leave the circle to go chuck the ball thing after the imp dies. If the icon is on the tank, the tank is busy with the Guardian add and may need to leave dead center to get a bash or something. This has been a problem for almost year, so a fix is necessary.

greytday137 · March 2023

Really enjoy seeing all of the updates on bug fixes for other things. Does anyone know if Castle Thorn has been fixed or if a fix is in the works? @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin

ZOS_Kevin · March 2023

Hi all, thanks for bringing this up. We passed this to our team and they had some follow up questions to help them pinpoint the issue.

Which Phase did they see the circle disappear? She does her safety circle aoe twice during Hard Mode, then towards the last part of her health, she comes down and fights you while you're in the safety circle. So knowing when the circle is disappearing will be helpful.
How long were you running the dungeon?
Any other info is much appreciated.

greytday137 · March 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all, thanks for bringing this up. We passed this to our team and they had some follow up questions to help them pinpoint the issue.
Which Phase did they see the circle disappear? She does her safety circle aoe twice during Hard Mode, then towards the last part of her health, she comes down and fights you while you're in the safety circle. So knowing when the circle is disappearing will be helpful.

How long were you running the dungeon?

Any other info is much appreciated.

Regarding the Phase, it happens whenever the circle is moving. During hardmode, the safety circle appears 4 times. Twice before 60% it appears and is stationary. This safety circle appears consistently for all members of our group. Then, at 60% we have the first instance of the mobile safety circle. It is the safety circles that appear at 60% and then 20% that are mobile that are not consistently showing up for 2 people in our group.

Each time we have encountered this issue, we were on track for a Bane of Thorns run, so had been in the dungeon about 20 minutes, maybe a bit less.

For some additional information, the circle follows a consistent pattern, where it moves forward, back tracks a little bit roughly in the corners, and then moves forward again. When it back tracks, it can occasionally become visible to the group members who could not see the circle. Then, when it progresses forward, it becomes invisible again.

This was not an issue previously. I think it started around U35? I will try to get a video of the issue later this week or next weekend.

Thank you for the response! It is always appreciated to know that our issues are being acknowledged!

saschmi3 · March 2023

Little more on this (I'm one of the people in Greyt's group that always has the circle disappear).

It is always during any phase in which the circle is supposed to move, on both hardmode and non-hardmode. I can't recall if it happens on normal too.

The moving safety circle appears, but will visually stop it's movement and remain at the spot it stopped for an indefinite amount of time. When exactly the movement first stops is inconsistent for me; sometimes it will move at the start of the phase (giving me a faint glimmer of hope) and then stop a little later. Sometimes it won't move from the start of the phase.

As others mentioned, sometimes the circle will visually start moving again and visually teleport to where it actually is, usually related to when it briefly changes direction from what we can tell. But those moments do not last for very long, and it will visually freeze in a new location.

From our testing it does seem to be somehow linked to toon or role, but we haven't found a clear pattern. In our usual group, Greyt (the tank) and one of our dps can always see the circle move; the other dps and I as the healer can never see it move. I have been on dps toons and seen the movement fine. We always have at least one person in group that can see the movement, but the number of people who can't varies. It's a strange one.

I will get a video on the healer that always experiences it and then try to find a toon where I do not have the problem, so you have both instances from the same account. I will also check on a different healer.

Thank you @ZOS_Kevin for responding to this post. It's been a super frustrating problem for a long time and I'm glad it's being acknowledged.

(Edited typos)

ZOS_Kevin · March 2023

No worries. Thanks for tagging me and bringing it up.

@greytday137 Whenever you get the video up, please tag me or DM. It would be very helpful to our team during their investigation.

AmishDefector · April 2023

Hey @ZOS_Kevin
its me one of the other people in this group. We were able to get the circle to show up for everyone. I think if you dont throw a scythe at any point in the dungeon the circle shows up. We also travelled to castle thorn rather than using dungeon finder.
I have 2 videos uploaded one where it breaks and one where it works. I can confirm i threw a scythe on the one where it broke and did not on the one where it worked perfectly. Could be coincidence but seems to be repeatable.

Hope that helps! @ZOS_Kevin

Broken circle

https://youtu.be/ygQmHIq0NN8

Working as intended circle

https://youtu.be/qoCG4PtrwE8

Darrell9090 · April 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

No worries. Thanks for tagging me and bringing it up.

@greytday137 Whenever you get the video up, please tag me or DM. It would be very helpful to our team during their investigation.

The phase when the entire room turns to blood and the circle moves. As a tank I have never experienced this issue. My theory on this problem is perhaps she is not targeting everyone during this phase like she should be so the circle is not appearing for the healer or dps every time that phase occurs. When I do this dungeon and even hard mode my dps or healers always die due to this bug.

BuffNukem · April 2023

@ZOS_Kevin
This bug has been around for around 2 years. In fact I personally brought this bug to Rich's attention in late 2021 back when he was streaming and he said he was going to have the team look at it. Besides directly informing him and many submitted bug reports on XBox we even brought this to this board back in Jun 2022 here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7633253

We included fairly detailed description of the bug and multiple video clips of the bug happening. The thread got zero response or acknowledgement from ZOS. I appreciate this time around maybe it has caught ZOS's attention, but it shouldn't take 2 years to even acknowledge, let alone fixed, such a huge dungeon breaking bug like this.

Looking forward to this bug maybe finally getting addressed.

athena9205 · April 2023

just did (TRIED) to do vet here and 2 bugs showed up. One as tank the circle 'Appeared' to stay still when the circle was moving. I died ofc. Second a teamate said the circle disapeared after the 3rd scamp and so she went to rez and died in the mechanic. This was near the end of the battle, second moving circle.

athena9205 · April 2023

Hotdog_23 · April 2023

BuffNukem wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin
This bug has been around for around 2 years. In fact I personally brought this bug to Rich's attention in late 2021 back when he was streaming and he said he was going to have the team look at it. Besides directly informing him and many submitted bug reports on XBox we even brought this to this board back in Jun 2022 here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7633253

We included fairly detailed description of the bug and multiple video clips of the bug happening. The thread got zero response or acknowledgement from ZOS. I appreciate this time around maybe it has caught ZOS's attention, but it should take 2 years to even acknowledge, let alone fixed, such a huge dungeon breaking bug like this.

Looking forward to this bug maybe finally getting addressed.

Can confirm it's been happening on PSNA for so long now it just seems like normal behavior. Happens on both normal and vet with no apparent pattern.

Stay safe

jaws343 · April 2023

Darrell9090 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

No worries. Thanks for tagging me and bringing it up.

@greytday137 Whenever you get the video up, please tag me or DM. It would be very helpful to our team during their investigation.

The phase when the entire room turns to blood and the circle moves. As a tank I have never experienced this issue. My theory on this problem is perhaps she is not targeting everyone during this phase like she should be so the circle is not appearing for the healer or dps every time that phase occurs. When I do this dungeon and even hard mode my dps or healers always die due to this bug.

I don't think it is quite this. In my experience, running the dungeon solo, the circle always disappears the moment it starts moving. Making it impossible to finish the dungeon alone. So I don't think it is tied to a tank taking aggro as I would be the only player in the dungeon to target.

And it is only when the circle starts moving. The stationary one is fine. I also know it isn't a solo problem, because I have soloed this before without issue and the circle moved as expected.

greytday137 · April 2023

I did message @ZOS_Kevin with the missing circle video today. Certainly the more examples we can provide the better. For those missing the circle, did you use the scythe earlier in the dungeon to create helper blobs?

jaws343 · April 2023

greytday137 wrote: »

I did message @ZOS_Kevin with the missing circle video today. Certainly the more examples we can provide the better. For those missing the circle, did you use the scythe earlier in the dungeon to create helper blobs?

Yeah, exactly 2 scythes away from getting that achievement actually. No issue seeing those.

ZOS_Kevin · April 2023

Hi All, thanks for the additional info here. We're alerting the team investigating this now just so they have your recent updates.

Adaarye · May 2023

It's still broken ....

Hotdog_23 · June 2023

Still broke

Kiyakotari · June 2023

This bug is of course more of an issue on hardmode, but it can and will show up on veteran non-hardmode and even normal runs, as well. I've seen it many times on normal, where someone was clearly confused and not staying in the circle, only to explain after the fight that it kept disappearing or wasn't moving/was freezing in one spot. I've had the latter happen to myself more than once on normal and veteran.

greenmachine86 · October 2023

Bug still occurring xbox NA

SaintJohnHM · October 2023

We just had this ZOS bug in CT HM run when it was pledge a couple of days ago. It looks like they were talking about fixing it in April, but never did.

We had two players with us who would have probably gotten their first trifecta in there if the bug hadn't ruined it for them.

Billium813 · October 2023

Castle Thorn is sooo buggy. Opening 20+ in-game tickets, over 2 years has done nothing to get it fixed. Even more bugs just keep getting created instead!

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/636945/castle-thorn-is-bugged
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/582556/castle-thorn-achievement-bug
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/617438/castle-thorn-lady-thorn-zero-health-bug
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/608528/castle-thorn-bugs-for-life
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/592298/vcastle-thorn-lady-thorn-mega-bat-swarm-bug-xbox-eu

Daoin · October 2023

think this thing been around way over 2 years now

DUTCH_REAPER · October 2023

This bug is still there! ZOS! Seriously cmon. Two years and this is still going on.

Daoin · October 2023

could people settle for some 'this ones just too hard to fix' admissions ? and let it be

DUTCH_REAPER · October 2023

Either fix the mechanic or remove it.

Billium813 · October 2023

DUTCH_REAPER wrote: »

Either fix the mechanic or remove it.

Unfortunately, they can't really remove the mechanic. The Bat Swarm phase is necessary for the final boss fight and the circle is fundamental to that phase. They could just place 1 large circle in the middle and remove how it moves around... but that still would kind of trivialize the difficulty of the fight, especially on HM.

I think the bigger issue is that ZOS just doesn't seem to know/listen that there are multiple bugs in this dungeon. I'm sure they could fix it if they took the time. They fix bugs in dungeons all the time.