This is a guide aimed at players, who have just hit the level cap and are wondering how to continue their progression with the Anthem EndGame. Whether you roam in Freeplay and complete events, do missions and Contracts or challenge yourself with a Stronghold, your goal is always the same – obtain better gear for your build. Below I will show and tell you what is the practical difference between Grandmaster 1 through 3, which activity rewards you the most XP and where do you have the highest chances to find Masterwork and Legendary items
This is not a Beginners Guide, meaning I would assume you are familiar with some basic mechanics and features. If you are feeling lost or need a reminder, make sure to check first the ANTHEM Guide: Tips for Beginner Players.
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WHAT IS ANTHEM ENDGAME LIKE
Being a looter shooter game Anthem does suffer from the typical for this genre repetitiveness. You will often do the same things over and over again with the single hope for a better item to drop as loot, so you can upgrade your javelin.
As soon as you hit 30, your goal will be to get as many Masterwork and Legendary items for your javelin(s). These are the two highest tiers of gear currently available in Anthem. The higher the rarity of the items, the better their performance and perks are.
Some of the content may already feel repetitive while you are progressing through the levels. At level 30 you will be greeted with more of the same. As I said above, it’s just the nature of these games. BioWare is to blame to a certain extend for not providing enough content, but no matter how much is added, repeating things is the bread and butter of each looter shooter.
Now that this was made clear and is out of the way, let’s focus on the various activities you can do. Things like Contracts and Strongholds are available earlier as well, but they truly start to shine after you get to the Endgame. Legendary and Normal Contracts, Legendary Missions, Freeplay, Strongholds and the Cataclysm Seasonal game mode – these are the things you can do in Anthem. Each activity grants you loot, each item looted brings you closer to the perfect item with “God rolls” on its inscriptions. The thing that stands out the most are the difficulties that become available.
THE GRANDMASTER DIFFICULTIES
As soon as you reach level 30, you will have all of your Consumable slots unlocked and three new difficulty levels available to test your builds with. Grandmaster 1, 2 and 3 each offer progressing scaling of the enemies HP and damage output.
The difficulties don’t offer new content. Instead each piece of content listed below is available in each difficulty. The differences are in how hard it becomes to take down the enemies and how hard they will hit you. There are no new and unique mechanics. There are no additional chests. There is an increased chance for a higher tier loot to drop, though.
GRANDMASTER 1
This is the your warm welcome to the endgame. Gear of power score 500+ is recommended, but not required. However, if you are not in a group with friends, I strongly suggest you get a proper build for your Javelin before you venture in.
GRANDMASTER 2
The middle level of toughness. Good balance between challenge and reward. Gear power score of 650+ is recommended to play in this difficulty.
To be able to efficiently and effectively solo the events and random mobs in Freeplay on GM2, you would need at least 700+ or be very skilled and patient player. The GM2 Strongholds are a considerable step up in challenge compared the the same content on GM1. Approach them carefully with decently built Javelin and/or a team of friends, who know how to play together.
GRANDMASTER 3
This is the true endgame. Highest difficulty currently with highest chance for loot to drop. I recommend you to enter it with a javelin of power score 750+. I would add that with this kind of gear it may be quite hard, slow and boring for you to solo things.
GM3 is designed for team-play. Build coordination and proper communication can make your expeditions here a lot easier and lower the amount of resurrections you and your teammates would have to execute.
DIFFICULTIES DIFFERENCES
The three difficulties are not exactly equal when it comes to what kind of activity you are planing to do. In each one the scale goes in the same order from easiest to hardest:
Freeplay – Normal Contracts – Legendary Contracts – Legendary Missions – Strongholds
Here’s an interesting comparison between the difficulties to give you an even better impression. GM3 Freeplay is somewhat equal to GM2 Stronghold. Also GM1 Stronghold would equal to GM2 Freeplay. To a certain degree, of course.
The rewards are higher. Don’t let random luck fool you. I have seen 3 Legendaries drop from Chests in GM1 Stronghold, while on the next run in Freeplay GM3 I get nothing in one hour of farming.
There is a fine line between effort and chance for a good reward, of course. The higher your gear score, the higher difficulty you should push yourself to. Anthem is a looter shooter, but having fun while farming your loot is also very important. Luckily the gameplay part is extremely well done.
Don’t shoot yourself in the knee farming lower difficulties for hours on end and getting yourself bored one-shooting enemies. I want to underline how important it is to jump into the next difficulty once your current one becomes a walk in the park. If you start one-shotting your opponents, it is time to move up the ladder. Don’t be afraid to switch from GM1 to GM2. First do a bit of Freeplay. Remember, in each difficulty Freeplay is the easiest game mode and will allow you to get used to the new HP and damage of the things you fight.
No matter what you do, it’s important to look cool while doing it! Check out the Complete Anthem Armor Sets Catalog here on VULKK.com and pick the best pack for your javelin’s style!
AVAILABLE ENDGAME ACTIVITIES IN ANTHEM
This segment of the guide will show and tell you what are the various activities you can take part in. Which ones can be done solo, which ones are strictly for a group and which ones you can solo, but should actually play through with a team.
FREEPLAY
Most players seem to have best luck getting their best loot from Freeplay. And what’s even more interesting, the claims are that the loot usually drops from weak and random mobs, not the ones you would expect to drop – Legendary creatures and Event Chests. All of these are, of course, just theories! The official statement from BioWare is that loot has equal chance to drop from pretty much everything. If the enemy is Legendary, it has a higher chance to drop Masterwork and Legendary items.
To start Freeplay, go to the garage or press and hold “R” (on PC) to get to the Game Modes screen (shown above). You have a few available starting points to choose from. They will place you in a different spot of the open world of Anthem – Bastion.
In Freeplay you can roam and discover lore objects, hidden passages and caves, find and open treasure chests and complete events.
To find events in Freeplay, you need to roam around until one spawns near you. Events are not marked on your map until you or someone else nearby discover them.
If you play solo, the events will feature fewer and easier encounters. If you approach them with a group, expect more enemies and generally tougher encounters. If you play solo, you would often see the enemies run away from you after a while, which will conclude the event. When you are a part of a team, enemies are far less likely to run away.
NORMAL AND LEGENDARY CONTRACTS
These are the missions you can pick up from Fort Tarsis. The Normal Contracts are marked with yellow scroll icon, Legendary ones are marked with purple scroll icon. They are usually quick and feature two locations (for Normal) or three locations (for Legendary) you need to visit and take care of.
You can pick up your contracts from each individual NPC. Alternatively, you can go to the Launch Bay and pick all contracts with one click of a button from the board located to the right from you as you spawn in.
Based on who your mission giver is, a different voice will be your guide. Locations and objectives are generated randomly and are completely different each time you do a contract. The contracts have the same names and are marked on the map of Bastion with the same icons and on the same places always. However, they will take you to different locations and offer various randomized encounters each time. Of course, it all boils down to clearing enemies, silencing relics and collecting artifacts.
Contracts are arguably the best and most reliable source for XP to grind through your Weekly Alliance Tiers. Next would be Quickplay. Strongholds provide about half of the XP and can take significantly longer to complete.
All Contracts reset on daily basis at noon GMT. You can, however, keep doing them through Quickplay or joining a friend, who has not done theirs yet. Contracts, like anything else, are best done in a group, but you can set them up in a private instance and enter with as many friends as you wish. Keep in mind that some of the encounters may prove quite difficult and time consuming to solo or under-man.
LEGENDARY MISSIONS
The Legendary Missions first appear with Update 1.0.4. At the time of writing this guide they are not yet released, so the information here is based on what the developers have told us so far.
The Legendary Missions are virtually the same missions that you have done as part of the so-called Crit Path – your main story progression. In the legendary version you will have to complete them once again, but with a few tweaks. Enemies will be a lot tougher and more in numbers. Encounters will be tweaked for EndGame, meaning more variety in types of mobs in each pull. At the end you will get a chest with loot for a reward.
If there is a named special character you fight at the end of the original mission, in the Legendary version you will face an Apex creature – Titan, Luminari, Fury etc. Most likely Legendary one, but that may be based on the difficulty you have selected for the Legendary Mission before you start it.
Some of these missions will feature the original cinematics mid-action. You will have to endure them. The good news is that only a few of the Legendary Missions have mid-action cutscenes.
You can do a Legendary Mission as many times as you wish. Once you are done with your own, you can join and help your friend do theirs. It is best to do them with a group of four players.
STRONGHOLDS
Anthem launched with three Strongholds. A fourth one “The Sunken Cell” is added with the Act I update – the April Content Pach. The Tyrant Mine is the first Stronghold that you get as soon as you hit level 7 (I think it was). It is also the easiest. It serves well to introduce you to many of the core endgame mechanics you will encounter in many placed later on.
If you have done it at lower level, don’t expect it to be the same walk in the park. The first encounter near the first relic will prove that a Stronghold is the most challenging content in the game. A lot tougher than Freeplay and even Legendary Contracts.
As soon as you complete the main storyline of Anthem, the other Strongholds get unlocked. The Temple of Scar will take you deep under the ground chasing Scelos and fighting hordes of Scar in their lairs. The Heart of Rage is nearly identical to the final mission of the Crit Path of the game. Here you will have to face the Monitor as the final boss once again and defeat him for glory and loot.
Anthem’s Update 1.0.4 adds Elysian Caches – Stronghold Vanity Chests that will spawn after you kill the final boss. These chests will require you to have a key to unlock them. To obtain the key, you will have to complete a random daily challenge. The rewards inside are crafting materials, victory poses, emotes and vinyls. No armor sets.
Strongholds cannot be done solo. You can also not opt to enter them in a Private Instance. To start a Stronghold, open the Game Modes screen and select it from the right panel.
From a difficulty stand point, I would place the Strongholds in the following order from easiest to hardest:
Tyrant Mine – Temple of Scar – Heart of Rage
The Bug boss is deadly, but most of its attacks are easily avoidable. Also the fact that Tyrant Mine is accessible from very early levels, means that more players are familiar with it from way before they reach level cap.
From duration point of view I would place the Strongholds in the following order from shortest to longest, provided you skip everything that can be skipped:
Heart of Rage – Temple of Scar – Tyrant Mine
I strongly urge you NOT to skip the trash mobs. Also the Tyrant Mine has a few secret tunnels and extra enemies to kill for an additional chance for loot. If you are chasing a daily challenge and the time is pressing you, then you could rush through them all. A Heart of Rage could be rushed in ten minutes or even less, based on group and gear score.
THE CATCLYSM
In the beginning of August BioWare finally released the new game mode called Cataclysm. This is a separate instance with its own map. The Cataclysm is a seasonal event, offering players both high challenge and a interesting rewards.
To play it, you need to complete the main storyline Incursion. The Cataclysm is available in all difficulties and levels. It is, however, designed and aimed at EndGame players of level 30 and tackling the higher difficulties – GM1 to GM3.
The Cataclysm is a four man group content, but many of the arena challenges, including the final boss, can be completed even solo. Some have a hard-coded requirement demanding at least two people to participate to unlock or complete something.
The Cataclysm offers a large number of challenges, both visible and secret ones. My favorite is the Grabbit ears challenge. Officially called “Or You Die”, this secret challenge awards you four Grabbit Ear helmets – one for each Javelin exosuit. There are many other Decals, Graphics and various animations available from challenges or trade-able at the Seasonal Store in Fort Tarsis.
QUICKPLAY
This is the option you would most likely choose when you are very bored or desperately need a quick run through something for a challenge, perhaps. It offers you a choice between joining a Mission or a Stronghold. It can be any mission and any Stronghold, chosen randomly. A good way to help yourself decide what to do if you are not sure what you want to do.
In Quickplay you cannot queue with a friend and you cannot choose which mission to do. You are placed in the first available squad that the matchmaking system things you are a good fit for. The mission or Stronghold could be just starting or it could already be under way. You also get an extra reward (Feat) for helping other players finish their own expeditions with success.
I hope you have found my Anthem EndGame Guide useful! This one, like most of the guides on VULKK.com will likely get expanded and updated in the future as BioWare tweaks Anthem and adds more content to the game.
ANTHEM Beginners Guides
Are you new to Anthem? Here you will find all the basics to help you get started! This Beginners Guides Collection is always up to date with the latest changes from BioWare!
