Featuring a new area, loot, gameplay mechanics and more.
Though The Cataclysm event for Anthem has been delayed, we now know some more concrete details about this upcoming content.
Revealed in a livestream on Twitch hosted by BioWare’s Ben Irving and Jesse Anderson, The Cataclysm will be an eight week event. The first two weeks constitute pre-events where players can earn vanity items, and the core of the experience will occur over the following six weeks. It will consist of three new missions, a new area called The Cataclysm, new systems, rewards and more.
Unfortunately, The Cataclysm doesn’t have a set release date just yet.
Following the events of the main game’s critical path, Dominion forces are in disarray and are starting to feel desperate – a faction emerges with a new leader called Vara and they trigger a Cataclysm. It’s up to the freelancer to learn how this happened, and how to silence it.
The developers showed off some brief gameplay from The Cataclysm during the livestream. After leaving a safe bubble, the player enters a massive storm complete with crashing waves and blowing trees. The top of the screen shows a resistance bar that slowly drains as players are exposed to The Cataclysm, and if they don’t get to safe zones quickly, they’ll suffer damage.
There are arenas within safe zones that have different criteria for completing them. Some arenas will be locked at first, but will become available as The Cataclysm progresses. Players start The Cataclysm with a timer they can extend by completing objectives, while the primary objective is to defeat Vara – players can fly straight to her and try to win, but they may not have enough time to defeat her without racking up extra time.
The new scoring system adds a competitive element to the event. BioWare says The Cataclysm can be beaten relatively easily, but players can net better scores and multipliers by using tricks and finding special routes throughout the new content – defeating Vara doubles the player’s score. Ultimately, scores will be logged via online leaderboards.
A new feature called inversions will be added, which essentially act as gameplay modifiers, and they change every week. Examples of inversions included players earning their ultimate 400% faster, shotguns can net players double points, etc. This will be used to keep gameplay variety up throughout The Cataclysm, which is intended for four players, and is being designed to be accessible for all levels.
New weapon types will be added, but won’t be available at the start of The Cataclysm. Stronger Masterwork and Legendary support gear and melee variant slots will be added, and players earn currency by participating in the event, which can then be spent on war chests in Fort Tarsis that rotate throughout The Cataclysm. The Luck stat will be removed from the game, and much more loot will drop for everybody as if they had full Luck – those who have Luck builds will have that stat replaced with extra Armor. All new items will have a higher power level – specifically, Masterwork and Legendary items will be five item levels higher.
A public test server for Cataclysm will open next week for PC only and will likely last two to three weeks. Anyone who has Anthem on PC or has a subscription to EA Origin Premiere will have access to the public test server, which will be its own separate client to download. The finished Cataclysm event will launch when BioWare has determined it’s ready.
Earlier this week, BioWare released a big update for Anthem which included a lot of “under the hood” content for The Cataclysm. BioWare revealed in April that it was delaying The Cataclysm in order to prioritize things like bug fixes and stabilization.
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Colin Stevens is a news writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.
