BioWare is hard at work on Anthem’s revamp and redesign at the moment. While we wait the studio decided that the game will continue to run with its current content. The Winter Season has just ended and a new patch was released today. Update 1.7.0 announces the return of (almost) every event and challenge that was available in the game during its first year!
Yesterday BioWare came up with a brief message announcing several hours long maintenance for today, 25th of February. A little surprising (to me, at least) a new patch came out today.
Game Update 1.7.0 actually re-introduces all of the major events and features that Anthem had released in its first year of existence since its launch last February.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. I am not sure why I didn’t expect that to happen. They actually did announce that all of the Cataclysm events, challenges and store items will make a return while we wait for Anthem 2.0 or as I prefer to call it now “Anthem Redesigned”.
“With Patch 1.7.0, we are kicking off our recurring schedule. The primary focus of this schedule is to deliver a regular rotation of challenges, store offerings, content and game modes, coin and currency awards, gameplay inversions, and mini-holiday seasons throughout the year.” – the opening paragraph of the patch notes says.
The next months will obviously not be very content-full for Anthem. BioWare would likely double and triple down on the redesign of the game because they cannot afford a second bad launch.
To call Anthem’s February 2019 launch “bad” is such an understatement. In fact Ruby (the author of several Anthem guides here on VULKK.com has a special post coming up reviewing Anthem’s first year with all of its ups and downs.
So, what else do we get from today’s patch after the ~3.4 GB download that you have to go through. By the way, this is for the PC Patch, I currently have no info on the consoles download patch sizes.
- Challenges
- Six concurrent, active Daily Challenges that rotate regularly through these categories:
- Contracts / Legendary Contracts
- World Events
- Time Trials
- Strongholds
- Creature Kills
- Gameplay Style
- Rotating Weekly Meta Challenges:
- Factions
- Contracts / Legendary Contracts
- Stronghold
- Rotating Monthly Meta Challenges:
- Bronze
- Silver
- Gold
- Festive challenges while mini-holidays are active.
- Six concurrent, active Daily Challenges that rotate regularly through these categories:
- Store Offerings:
- A regular rotation of armor sets, wraps, graphics, decals, and materials previously available in the Featured Store.
- Content & Game Modes:
- Seasonal gameplay modes and features have been included in the normal event rotations:
- Rotating weekly gameplay modes:
- Gameplay Inversions
- We’ve created a rotating Gameplay Inversion schedule to coincide with the weekly rotating game modes. Inversions and gameplay modes are scheduled separately to create more combinations and support diversity in week-to-week content throughout the year.
- Coin & Currency awards
- Coin and Crystals will be awarded for Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Challenges.
- Crystals can be earned and spent at any time.
- Holidays:
- Holidays are small events based on the yearly calendar that are primarily driven by unique challenges. These challenges will run for one to four weeks, depending on the holiday. Some of the larger holidays will include changes to the weekly gameplay mode or decorations in Fort Tarsis and the world.
- When can you expect to see these events in the game?
- We will be sharing details on these holiday events as they arrive throughout the year!
- Bug Fixes & Improvements
- Fixed various crashes to improve stabilization.
- Fixed various texture, audio, user interface, and environment issues.
- Fixed an issue where the Badge of Devastation Ranger Component had an inconsistent icon.
- Fixed an issue that prevented adjusting the wrist colour on the Frost Tusk Armor.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented players from changing their difficulty level after leaving a squad.
- Fixed an issue that caused the names of the Iron Serpent and Iron Valley regions to sometimes appear reversed.
- Fixed an issue where dying while carrying three echoes would sometimes respawn only two echoes.
- Players should no longer be teleported back into the arena if they respawn while the Titan fight is still active.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the Quickplay Stronghold option from unlocking after completing a weekly stronghold.
- Fixed an issue that caused blue lights to appear around the Golden Grabbit when it’s defeated.
- Description for Synchronized Frame now properly indicates that damage must be done with an Ordnance Launcher to trigger.
- “Hitting an enemy with an ordnance launcher increases Heavy Launcher damage by 60% for 10 seconds.”
- Javelin Madness should now correctly track and advance progress.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused players to be stuck during the “Freelancer Down” mission.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the first player that reached the third step in Tyrant Mine to be teleported back to the party if they weren’t in the room yet.
- When players force respawn, they should now correctly drop all carried mission objects.
- Tip of the Spear should now correctly only heal players.
- Using your support gear while it is on cooldown should not longer interrupt your other gear.
To celebrate the first anniversary of the game, BioWare gives away four unique javelin wraps – one for each type of exosuit. These Empowered wraps reference the original colors and style of the javelins when they first appeared and were marketed when the studio started promoting the game. You can, of course, see them in full detail in my review article.
