BioWare’s beleaguered Anthem is getting its fourth major update as soon as next week and it comes with a ton of great improvements and fixes. BioWare are working incredibly hard to make changes, fixes and improvements at impressive speed.
In the most recent Developer Livestream hosted by Community manager Jesse Anderson and Systems Designer Chris Schmidt had a ton of really, really nice updates coming as soon as next week.
You can watch the video for yourself below but I’ve pulled out the ones that really got me excited.
Forge faster, anywhere
The Forge can now be accessed without a loading screen which is AWESOME. But that’s not all, you can now jump into the Forge from anywhere in Fort Tarsis. No more walking to dais to push the button. Oh thank the makers! Gear load outs in the Forge now show which components you have equipped beneath your weapons and gear. So no more having to hover over the component icon to see what you’re packing.
Elysium Caches
One thing Anthem does really well is the Javelin customization and the New Elysium Caches which drop vanity items and embers will only make it better. They can be found at the end of Stronghold bosses and guarantee no duplicates ever which makes them a great new thing to chase.
These chests will require a key to open and which you can earn every day by doing a select challenge. Each player in a party will get a share of the loot that drops. So you can earn a ton of cosmetics by continuously running Strongholds with different friends with keys.
Legendary Missions
This was mentioned a few weeks ago by Producer Ben Irving and it’s finally coming in 1.0.4 update. These are critical story missions that you can replay on a daily basis. They have much harder versions of the enemies and an Apex level creature like an Ursix, Fury or Titan at the end. Of course this means a chance for some Legendary drops.
What’s more is that you won’t need to talk to NPC’s to start these missions as they will always exist on your map. There will be 6 to start and they will rotate daily but you can play each one as many times as you like. This is a welcome new way to farm loot because, well, Strongholds are pretty boring after 100 runs.
Stronghold Loot and fixes
Some more improvements to the drop rates of loot in Strongholds will guarantee more Masterwork/Legendary drops. Nothing said about the bosses dropping Legendaries but one can hope. As it stands, it’s really not that fun to run Strongholds because you are only guaranteed a Masterwork from the boss and not much else.
Also a big fix is that you will no longer be spawned direct into a Stronghold boss. New timers have been set so that if a Stronghold has progressed by 2 min, you will no longer be match-made into it. Few things annoy as much as spawning right into the Monitor fight when you really wanted to do some farming.
More flying
Oh God yes. One of the more questionable choices in Anthem is limiting our flight time with overheating. Iron-Man don’t overheat, why should we? Anyway, while you still won’t be able to fly indefinitely, BioWare have increased all Javelin flight time by a reasonable 20%.
Furthermore, thruster over heating duration has been reduced by 20% so you can get back into the air quicker. And the devs mentioned in passing that there is a new Universal Masterwork component that gives a 50% flight buff. How cool is that?
More Universal Masterwork components
A slew of new Masterwork components are coming in addition to that Flight buff one. The Devs say they are mostly weapon focused components with an example of a new Shotgun component — Acid Slugs. This buffs Shotgun damage and has the perk of applying acid to targets upon seven pellet hits.
I feel like Anthem focuses more on ability play over gunplay so it’s nice to see more components that buff weapon use.
Plenty of QoL improvements
The developers said the patch notes are 13 pages long so there’s a ton of stuff that couldn’t be talked about. A lot of those are Quality of Life improvements that add up to a greater experience. Things like the Interceptor can now melee continually by a holding the melee button so no more blisters from button mashing.
Some others include:
- the ability to organise your consumables by name and rarity
- UI speed improvements
- faster salvaging of items
- Field of View sliders for PC players
- World Event waypoints on the map
- Nvidia DLSS support
These are some great improvements and fixes which can give players more confidence in BioWare’s commitment to Anthem. As I said in my review, it’s only a matter or time and Anthem will become an great game with all the continuous improvements.
Check out the video below.
