Since last week, players who have reached the end game in Anthem have been noticing some poor design choices with relation to drops, stats, and inscriptions. Bioware has thankfully been quick to respond, and will be making some meaningful updates starting today or tomorrow. Here are the details:
This is our plan for changes to go live on February 28th or March 1st (central US time)
Inscriptions are now better for the items they are on
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- This applies to new items earned in Anthem (not existing ones in your Vault)
- If an inscription applies only to the item it is on (gear icon), it will be useful to that item. Otherwise the inscription will provide a Javelin wide benefit
- For example, an Assault Rifle will not have an item specific +pistol damage inscription. It may have a +electric damage suit wide inscription (cool for a lightning build)
- Some more information below
- Removed uncommon (white) and common (green) items from level 30 drop tables
- This was a highly requested change and we agree, so that’s that.
- We have reduced the crafting materials needed to craft a masterwork from 25 masterwork embers to 15 masterwork embers
- As you salvage or harvest, you should be able to craft more masterwork items to get the inscriptions you are looking for
- Now that inscriptions are more relevant to their item, this should yield better results for players
Additional inscription change details
Its hard to write a short version of this, but I’m going to try. If we need to add more information later we can do that…
- Current: There are a large pool of inscription options available to roll on items, the inscription pools are generic (e.g. Weapons)
- Every masterwork item has 4 inscriptions – Major Primary, Minor Primary, Major Secondary, Minor Secondary
- Change: Each item type now has a specific set of inscription options for each of their inscription pools. The pools are smaller and are targeted to the specific item type
- E.g. there used to be a Weapon pool, now there is an Assault Rifle pool and the assault rifle pool has 4 pools for each of the inscription types listed above
- Primary inscriptions are focused on damage or survivability
- Any item specific inscriptions (gear icon) will always benefit the item they are on
- Javelin wide inscriptions (suit icon) will benefit damage or survivability across the whole Javelin
- Secondary inscriptions focus on utility and can be targeted to the item (gear icon) or the entire javelin (suit icon)
You can follow the full thread with Bioware on Reddit here : Anthem Loot Update
Our Take
We’ve discussed Anthem extensively and expressed our concerns. Despite them, we’re still really enjoying our time with it as the gameplay and Javelin designs are excellent. We’re also pleased that Bioware is very active among the community and recognizing and responding to issues in quick order. With time, Anthem could become something quite special.