BioWare is ready to push out another big (by the looks of it) update to their brand new looter shooter game Anthem. The so-called “loot update” will include a much needed inscription pools re-balancing as well as some of the usual bug fixes. It is expected to be live some time on February 28th or March 1st.
UPDATE 2 (Evening of Feb 28)BioWare released the Loot Update with one difference compared to the originally announced patch notes – the common and uncommon items still drop at level 30. The devs met some challenge stopping this from happening, as they planned, so this was left to be introduced in a future update.
Here are the new patch notes for February 28th:
- The tethering timer for missions has been increased. Players should now have more time to catch up to their Squad before seeing a countdown timer.
- The Swarm Tyrant encounter in the Tyrant Mine Stronghold can no longer be reset by the entire Squad exiting to the main menu and rejoining the session in progress.
- Players are no longer able to reopen chests that had already been looted in Strongholds.
In addition to the above updates we have deployed the following hot fixes:
- Items will no longer have inscriptions on them that are not appropriate for that specific item. NOTE: This only applies to items obtained after the patch. Items obtained prior to the patch will still have the same inscriptions they had before.
- Masterwork crafting costs have been reduced from 25 -> 15 Masterwork Embers. The amount of plants, metal and parts required for crafting a Masterwork item have also been reduced.
Source ► ea.com
UPDATE 1 (morning of Feb 28)
BioWare announced that a small hotfix patch is being applied today before the Loot Update, which is still on track for later today or tomorrow. Here are the patch notes:
-
The tethering timer for missions has been increased. Players should now have more time to catch up to their Squad before seeing a countdown timer.
-
The Swarm Tyrant encounter in the Tyrant Mine Stronghold can no longer be reset by the entire Squad exiting to the main menu and rejoining the session in progress.
-
Players are no longer able to reopen chests that have already been looted in Strongholds.
Source ► reddit
Original story follows…
BioWare proves once again they are busy doing their best to fix the many issues Anthem has. One of the most glaring problems are the high-end weapons and gear. Namely the inscriptions these items receive.
Let’s take a Masterwork (or Legendary) weapons as an example. These have four inscriptions slots: Major Primary, Major Secondary, Minor Primary and Minor Secondary. Before the “Loot Update” each weapon used to draw its inscriptions from the “weapons pool”. This meant that the four slots could be filled with any random inscription perk from the global pool. Naturally, this resulted in a lot of RNG and frustration from us, the players.
Farming a Grandmaster Stronghold for an hour to get a completely useless Masterwork item or one you already have, but with even worse inscriptions, felt uninspiring to continue the grind.
To fix BioWare introduces specific sub-pools for all types of weapons:
- Primary Inscriptions provide damage or survivability boosts.
- Secondary Inscriptions provide utility bonuses or item-related ones. They can also be specific to the item they belong to or the whole suit (the gear icon or the human figure icon)
The Inscriptions will always be tailored to the item they belong to. As in you will always receive inscriptions that benefit the specific item. For a Shotgun you will get bonuses that are tailored to the Shotgun type of weapon.
Below I present you the full unedited text posted on reddit late last night by Anthem lead producer Ben Irving. As soon as these turn into official patch notes, you will see them placed here on top of the reddit quotation or in a separate news post.
First off, thank you for all the feedback around loot drops, this is what we have heard:
Many inscriptions are not useful to the item they are attached to
Due to this, players need to get many masterworks of the same item to find a “good one”
Players want the frequency of masterwork drops to increase to help with the above OR…
They want us to change how masterwork inscriptions work so that they are more “useful”
There is more feedback, the above is a summary.
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
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)
