This is an in-depth overview of the changes that BioWare has introduced to Anthem with Game Update 1.1.0, also known as the April Update. In addition we have Ben Irving’s open letter to the community and an update to the 90 Days Roadmap.
On April 23 BioWare hosted a developer live stream, which was originally scheduled for a week earlier, but a fiber cable was cut on the day the stream was expected to air, so they postponed it for six days until the day of the patch. Full video archive of the live stream is available at the end of this article.
This article is a mix of two things – detailed overview of the more interesting and important changes that have been implemented, including the new Stronghold, as well as a recap of the live stream with pretty much everything the hosts talked about.
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THE SUNKEN CELL STRONGHOLD
The highlight of this patch is, of course, the new stronghold. It is called The Sunken Cell and takes you to a beautifully designed new instanced area. The starting point is to the far north-east on the map. You can access the stronghold after you have completed your main storyline.
The Stronghold was expected to compensate the lack of Outlaws, but instead this one brings tons and tons of Dominion enemies for you to slain.
It is a masterpiece in terms of level design and in my opinion offers a good amount of mini puzzles and a variety of enemies to slain. The final boss is a mutated Fury, which has a cool mechanic, but is nothing special.
As expected, the difficulty of completing this would be based on which Grandmaster Tier you prefer to run it on and how experienced you and your teammates are. I will very soon have a full guide to help those in need.
The Stronghold is on par with the other three when it comes to timings and longevity. It does offer a lot more vertical approach and will take you to several differently designed and inspiring corridors and rooms. The final boss, as I mentioned, wont break your world with unseen and insane mechanics, but it is a nice epilogue to the stronghold.
In short – to defeat the The Unfathomed, you need to focus your firepower on the weak spots – located on the upper part of the Fury’s long right arm. The boss does perform some of the Fury’s standard attacks that you have seen elsewehere already, but the unique mechanic here is the purple portals. When they appear, they must be destroyed for the Fury to exit its “bubble” phase. Unlike the Fury NPCs from the Heart of Rage or any Freeplay session, here you cannot damage the boss until enough portals are destroyed.
The Stronghold offers three Loot Chests, as do all other Strongholds. At the end, after defeating the Fury boss you also get four Elysian Chests that you can unlock with your special keys.
The featured video at the top of this article shows the final boss fight. It is from the Ranger’s perspective and is a Grandmaster 1 gameplay clip.
THE FORGE AND MISC CHANGES
A great and very frequently requested quality of life change is the ability to jump right into your next mission without having to load in to Fort Tarsis. At the mission end screen you will see a new button, allowing you to jump to the activity selection menu and pick your new expedition.
A great addition to the above mentioned feature is the fact that the Forge is now also accessible from virtually anywhere. You can even stop during gameplay and change your build. If you go to the Forge after your mission is complete, you can change your javelin’s gear loadout and/or appearance, then jump directly into the next adventure for more shiny loot.
Three new Universal Masterwork Components have been added. They boost the gameplay and bonuses for players, who use respectively Sniper Rifles, Machine Pistols and Autocannons, Grenade Launchers and Heavy Pistols.
A number of Masterwork Weapons and javelin specific gear items have been balanced. Pretty much all of them have seen a significant improvement in the bonuses they provide. If you have considered these weapons or gear useless and weak, you might have to reconsider and change your build. Especialy now that you can do that on the move during expeditions.
Adding to the boost explained above, an interesting quality of life update is the fact that your projections will now pass through friendly javelins.
As you know, Combos are a two-part deal. A target must be primed before it is detonated. The person who applied the Prime will now also see the COMBO text on their screen when someone else detonates the target.
If you get defeated during the boss fight in a Stronghold and the boss is downed before you get resurrected, you will automatically respawn and all of the rewards will be yours!
To find out more about the smaller changes coming with the April Update of Anthem, check out the full patch notes. They are available at the link below.
THE LIVE STREAM NOTES
Hosts of the live event were community manager Jesse Anderson, level design lead Ben Scott and associate producer Jen Cheverie. This section of the article is mostly my notes from the event. Some of them overlap with what I wrote above or below this segment, but I felt like it was good to have the same things said from my own perspective as well as the devs’ own eyes and mouths.
Most of the stream consisted of the developers showing off the new stronghold. They revealed a few interesting details about the story behind it.
New Corvus intel has arrived about doctor Harkon. He is the one responsible for the Heart of Rage Cataclysm that took over Freemark. This underwater place has been hidden for a very long time. The Dominion have been running experiments here undisturbed. You are primarily fighting Dominion, but not exclusively. Other types of creatures also plague the different zones – mostly spawned from the Cataclysms that are going on inside.
This facility has been built around a giant Shaper construct. It is a unique feature in this instance that you start at the bottom and work your way up.
The hosts hinted that this Stronghold is an ongoing story. It has connections to the things that have already happened in your main story, but also some relation to events to come.
The live stream lasted for about 35 minutes.
BEN IRVING’S OPEN LETTER AND ROADMAP UPDATE
Ben Irving, lead producer of Anthem, posted a long message on the forums and reddit to talk about upcoming changes to the game, including bugs, loot and roadmap update.
The open letter (as I would call it) starts with a brief intro from Ben about the first 10 weeks of Anthem since its official release:
We have learned a lot since the game went live. We have heard a lot of feedback from all of you, and we have been working diligently to improve as many things as we can in the short term.
We’ve fixed a lot of bugs and made changes which we believe begin to point us in the right direction for the future. That being said, we know there is a long way to go before Anthem becomes the game we all want it to be. So where are we at today…
Later in his letter Ben talks about the delayed features that were expected to be part of the April update. He is quite honest explaining why and how things to delayed:
We have been prioritizing things like bug fixes, stability and game flow over the new features of Act 1. We set aside time for this work, but the reality is there are more things to fix and improve than we planned for. While this is the best thing to do for the game, it means some items from the calendar will be delayed.
The delayed features include the Mastery System, Guilds system, second phase of Legendary Missionis, Leaderboards and the Cataclysm, among other things. This probably means that we may not see the Cataclysm in May, as originally announced in the Roadmap.
The mysterious and still upcoming Cataclysm event is going to be an important addition to the game, as Ben says in the letter. It will bring new challenges and rewards. It will also push the story of Anthem forward. It seems that the Cataclysm is the true story update that was promised with Act I when the Roadmap was released.
The one thing that most of you are probably interested to hear, is Ben’s comment on Loot in the game and how they plan to address it:
We have heard your concerns around end game loot. We agree that our loot and progression systems need to be improved and we are working towards this. When we have more information to share, we will.
Ben considers the practice of talking about things to come too early a mistake that the studio has been making often in the past. Lately the devs and community managers of Anthem have been quite distant and not talking as much to the players via forums and social networks. Perhaps this is Ben’s team’s new approach. In my opinion it is wrong. I don’t mind hearing what is planned, even if some things don’t end up in the game as promised. Any info is better than no info at all.
A lesson we have learned is we have been talking about things too early. There are so many factors that can cause us to pivot on our plans – whether it’s bugs & stability issues, player feedback, or complications with a feature that require us to take more time to deliver it. Our goal is to tell you about new content and features once the work is closer to being done.
In closing Ben assures us, the community, that the studio is well aware how desperately we have been waiting for these updates. “The only thing we can say is this – We Believe in Anthem” – the final words of Ben Irving in his open letter to the community.
You can read the full post here.
THE VANITY STORE UPDATE AND THE WRAP CONTROVERSY
While the focus of today’s Anthem discussions has obviously been the new update 1.1.0, let me remind you that the Anthem Vanity Store also got its regular Tuesday Update.
The new features items feature a new Wrap. The Gold Lancer wrap costs the same price as a javelin Armor. It is available to all javelins and completely fills up the word “skin” in the sense that it is a unique color scheme that covers your javelin in specific places. I have a full overview of the Gold Lancer Wrap available in my Store Update post, published earlier today (April 23).
Why I speak of controversy? BioWare sneaked in a Wrap like this one a few weeks earlier into one of the store’s updates. They received insanely high backlash from the community because of the fact that this is simply a wrap, but it costs the same amount of Coin/Shards as if it was a full armor set.
BioWare pulled the wrap only a couple hours after it was released to the store and replaced it with something else. Today we once again have a Wrap item available and it still costs the same amount.
I personally don’t mind the idea of wraps being sold. The price is too high in my opinion, though.
What do you think? Would you get the Gold Lancer wrap or any other future item from this category and why yes or why not? Is the price a deal breaker for you or do you simply not fancy wraps and prefer armor sets?
That is all I have for you today. In the coming days as we celebrate Easter here in Bulgaria, I will have enough free time to fully explore the new Stronghold and write a detailed guide for you. I hope you have found this article helpful. Leave a comment with your thoughts on the Anthem 1.1.0 update below, let me know how do you like it and why!
