Anthem loot drops are getting a rework

Anthem players, the days of pulling low-rarity items from Level 30 farming runs are over!

According to BioWare lead producer Ben Irving’s Reddit post, the removal of common (green) and uncommon (white) items from the Level 30 drop pools are among an extensive list of changes which should roll out sometime today or tomorrow. Have a look!

Main Changes

• Inscriptions are now better for the items they are on
  • This applies to new items earned in Anthem (not existing ones in your Vault)
  • If an inscription applies only to the item it is on (gear icon), it will be useful to that item. Otherwise the inscription will provide a Javelin wide benefit
  • For example, an Assault Rifle will not have an item specific +pistol damage inscription. It may have a +electric damage suit wide inscription (cool for a lightning build)
  • Some more information below
• Removed uncommon (white) and common (green) items from level 30 drop tables
  • This was a highly requested change and we agree, so that’s that.
• We have reduced the crafting materials needed to craft a masterwork from 25 masterwork embers to 15 masterwork embers
  • As you salvage or harvest, you should be able to craft more masterwork items to get the inscriptions you are looking for
  • Now that inscriptions are more relevant to their item, this should yield better results for players

In his post, Irving also details further technical changes to inscriptions and how they work, which should be good news for both casual and hardcore Anthem fans. In a nutshell, each item will now have it’s own pool of inscription effects, as compared to all items sharing a generic roster. These should make inscriptions in Anthem more relevant for their respective items.

Inscription Changes

• Current: There are a large pool of inscription options available to roll on items, the inscription pools are generic (e.g. Weapons)
  • Every masterwork item has 4 inscriptions – Major Primary, Minor Primary, Major Secondary, Minor Secondary
• Change: Each item type now has a specific set of inscription options for each of their inscription pools. The pools are smaller and are targeted to the specific item type
  •  E.g. there used to be a Weapon pool, now there is an Assault Rifle pool and the assault rifle pool has 4 pools for each of the inscription types listed above
  • Primary inscriptions are focused on damage or survivability
  • Any item specific inscriptions (gear icon) will always benefit the item they are on
  • Javelin wide inscriptions (suit icon) will benefit damage or survivability across the whole Javelin
  • Secondary inscriptions focus on utility and can be targeted to the item (gear icon) or the entire javelin (suit icon)

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Good play, BioWare

All in all, I’m just happy that the devs are really listening to the community. As of now, Anthem feels really grindy where farming is concerned, and irrelevant inscription effects aren’t helping one bit. After a somewhat rocky release, it would appear things are finally starting to look up for BioWare’s gorgeous open-world shooter and we really hope it stays that way.