BioWare Addresses Anthem Loot Fan Concerns With Update

By Colin Stevens

Update: BioWare has confirmed the hotfix for Anthem loot has been pushed live.

While it has not yet implemented the issue to prevent uncommon and common drops at level 30 — which is intended to come later, the hotfix does address the following issues, per this Reddit post:

• 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 hotfix 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.

Original story follows:

BioWare is making various fan-requested changes to the loot systems in Anthem, and has detailed much of what will be tweaked.

Revealed through an official Reddit post, BioWare lead producer Ben Irvo described changes that are coming to inscriptions, level 30 drop tables and masterwork crafting material requirements. These changes are planned to go live on February 28 or March 1.

Inscriptions are modifiers on items that can grant various improvements while out on expeditions, but not all listed inscriptions are useful. Bonuses can impact health, damage, armor and more, but when an inscription that boosts physical damage is applied to a fully elemental weapon, it’s effectively useless. These ineffective inscriptions are officially going away, allowing for generally better and more effective loot to be acquired.

These changes will only apply to newly acquired items, and not to items which already exist in your Vault. If an inscription applies only to the item it’s on, meaning it shows a gear icon, it will be useful specifically to that item. Otherwise, the inscription will be beneficial to the Javelin as a whole. For more nitty-gritty details on inscription and inscription pool changes, check out the full post.

On top of the inscription changes, uncommon (white) and common (green) items will be removed from level 30 drop tables, meaning higher-level players won’t be quite as swamped with weak loot – it’s unclear if these will be replaced by higher-rated loot, or simply won’t appear at all.

Additionally, BioWare has reduced the crafting materials required to create a masterwork from 25 masterwork embers to 15, allowing players to craft more masterwork items with inscriptions they may be looking for.

Aside from these changes, which will go live in the next day or so, BioWare dropped a new patch this morning alongside a brief set of patch notes. The patch increases the tethering timer for missions, the Swarm Tyrant encounter in the Tyrant Mine Stronghold can no longer be reset by the squad exiting and rejoining the session in progress, and players can no longer open chests in Strongholds that have already been looted.

For more on Anthem, check out our review of the game, which we called “Okay” saying “Anthem has energetic combat but it saves too much of what precious little content it has for the endgame, making playing through its mismatched story a tediously repetitive grind.”

Anthem’s 90-day post launch plans have been revealed, so players can see the short-term roadmap for the game. If you’re already playing Anthem, check out our wiki for treasure chest locations.

Colin Stevens is a news writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.