A Weekly timed challenge appeared this week in Anthem. It celebrates the Season of Skulls, which returns again a year after its original and first appearance in 2019. This guide will show you how to complete the required tasks to earn the rewards from the “Festive: Season of Skulls” weekly challenge
Table of contents
What is Festive: Season of Skulls
As usual, without a warning or announcement, BioWare added a weekly challenge this week to Anthem. It’s called “Festive: Season of Skulls”.
The text of the challenge reads:
The Season of Skulls has come once again to Bastion, bringing the darknes sand dangers that lurk therein. Bastion’s people brave the season by facing their fears and remembering those who have fallen.
Participate in this Festive event by completing seasonal events in Freeplay, defeating skorpions and silencing the Cataclysm
This challenge celebrates the Season of Skull event from last year. This time around it appears in a smaller scale and all you have to do to earn the rewards from the challenge is to complete the listed objectives:
- Silence 3x Catacyisms
- Defeat 250 Skorpions
- Defeat the Swarm Tyrant boss once
- Complete 3x Sentinel Bonfire events
- Complete 3x Freelancer Pilgrimage events
- Complete 3x Arcanist Research events
The reward for doing all this in the span of a week consists of:
- 5x Guardian Tokens
- 20 000 Minor Crystals
You can find the Challenge in your Journal, inside the Festive Category.
How to silence the Cataclysm
This week the Seasonal content is the Echoes of Reality. This is the original Cataclysm event that first appeared in Summer of 2019. It features the following Inversions:
To learn the mechanics, tactics and secrets of this event, check out the Cataclysm Complete Guide, written by Ruby and available here on VULKK.com.
The Cataclysm is a complicated event, not new-players friendly at all. I strongly recommend you check out the guide if you want to save yourself a significant amount of time wasted learning what is what.
Thankfully to complete the challenge all you need to do is defeat Vara – the final boss. She is located in the far north of the map. Conviniently, your starting spawn location as you load into the Cataclysm is right next to the boss, so you do not even need to bother clearing the other areas if you only care about the Weekly Challenge.
How and where to find and defeat Skorpions
Skorpions are quite easy to find pretty much anywhere. They spawn often in Freeplay in the northern areas of Bastion and are involved in some Freeplay Events as well.
While doing the Swarm Tyrant and the Freelancer Pilgrimage you will encounter countless numbers of Skorpions. From one Freelancer Pilgrimage alone you could get as many as half of the Skorpions you need to this challenge.
Where to find and defeat Swarm Tyrant
The Swarm Tyrant is a giant skorpion type of a monster. This is the final boss to the Tyrant Mine Stronghold. It is the first Stronghold that becomes available in Anthem and that happens quite early in the game, so I guess you have ran it once or twice at least. You can use the guide linked here to better understand the mechanics and features of this Stronghold.
This is one of the larger Strongholds in terms of time spend to complete it and you have no shortcuts to reach the boss for the challenge. In a speed run it could be completed in about 20ish minutes even in a PUG. With a pro team, if you manage to find one for yourself, time could be even shorter.
Remember, if you only care about the Challenge, you can select a lower difficulty to speed things up. This is valid for all objectives, actually. The rewards from the Chalenge are always the same, no matter on what difficulty you complete the individual objectives.
How to complete Sentinel Bonfire
This is exactly the same event that appears last year. I am copy-pasting the instructions for it from my old guide, to save you some time and clicking to get to it.
In Freeplay, find the marker on the map that bears the name of this event. Once the timer is up and the event is ready to start, the Sentinels around the pyre will give you the honor of lighting it up. Use a cylinder lying nearby to do that. Next you will see a bar at the top right corner and the objective above it reading “Defend Bonfire.
During the whole event you have to try and stay inside the marked area to keep the progress bar from turning red. Defeat any scar that spawn and don’t let them enter the perimeter.
From time to time a special creature (The Scourge Scar, with a mark above its head) will spawn. Defeat it quickly and then pick up the canister that it drops. Bring it to the bonfire to keep it burning.
There is no filling up the bar of the burning bonfire, but this isn’t your goal anyway. All you need to do is make sure you support the fire and don’t let it burn out. The Scourge Scar will spawn in the right time, you just make sure you have the firepower to take it down quick, otherwise you risk letting the fire burn out.
How to complete Freelancer Pilgrimage
Same as the Bonfire one, this is also the same identical event that appeared last year. The text below is from my old guide, but will serve you perfectly well for this challenge. Its entrance is deep under water in the north-eastern corner of the High Road zone.
Once you are inside the Fire Shrine Cave, the fun part begins. You have to pick up a torch and carry it from shrine to shrine.
Shortly after you take it, a green bar will show up in the right top corner of the screen. This shows the “strength” of the fire. To replenish it, run to the next shrine and place the torch for a moment there. Then pick it up again and continue.
There are a lot of crafting materials inside the cave. Spiders will spawn and attack you very often. The person, who carries the torch, cannot run, but can jump and fight. If you run outside the “safe zone” that the torch creates, a new bar will show up at the top middle, showing you how long you have before the darkness starts taking your life (literally).
There are three big shrines you need to find and place the torch on to cleanse them. The cave is dark, but narrow and it’s not hard to find the path. After each big shrine a yellow marker will show you in which direction to take off to reach the next one.
At the third Shrine, you have to defeat a marked creature. Before that you have to find five Shrine Ornaments (located nearby). A green radar at the top middle will help you find them. They are “in the dark”, so don’t stay out for too long or you will die. There are smaller shrines around, which you can use to replenish your red bar.
Once you bring all five Shrine Ornaments, you have to defend the Final Shrine for a bit from Brutes. When Blackblood the Corrupt spawns, defeat it to complete the event.
How to complete Arcanist Research
Once again, the event is identical to the one with the same name from last year. It is also the most complex in terms of player involvement and mechanics of all three Season of Skulls Freeplay events.
This one may spawn in a different location on the map. It is a timed event and starts on its own. You can join in progress to help another Freelancer or wait for its timer to start it yourself.
To start the event, click on the terminal next to the relic to activate it. Now you have to collect four echoes that have spawned around and bring them to the relic.
Next, defend the device from the freshly spawning Elementals.
The next phase tasks you to step on two pressure plates. This mini puzzle is similar to one of the puzzles in the Sunken Cell Stronghold. There are several symbol pedestals around the relic. The two you need to step on to finish the phase are shown on top of the device (image below)
The pedestals with symbols are all around in a circle around the relic. To speed things up, you can just run through them all. Stepping on a wrong one does not reset or break the event. You can run through them all until you step on the two needed for this phase. The image below shows you how the pressure plates with the symbols look like. If you step on it, the symbol disappears.
If you fail to step on the pressure plates before the timer expires, you will fail the event and have to wait a few minutes for it to reset to try it again.
The event includes these same phases repeating one after another several times. Here is what you need to do in short:
- Start the device.
- Stage 1: Collect 4 echoes – defend the device – step on the pressure plates.
- Stage 2: Collect 5 echoes – defend the device – step on the pressure plates.
- Stage 3: Collect 6 echoes – defend the device – step on the pressure plates.
- Stage 4: Defeat the Titan.
After the final phase, a Titan will spawn. Defeat it to complete the event and get your loot chest!
