Anthem is overhauling the grind for finding the perfect masterwork weapon

If there’s one area where Anthem drops the ball, like some sort of mechanised clown that decides to quit mid-juggle because of an epiphany about children being bastards and that he should live his life to the full, it’s the endgame pursuit for some of the best weapons to be found in the land of Bastion.

Much like Destiny’s fabled Exotics, Anthem has a rarity class all of its own: Masterwork weapons. Unlike Destiny however, Masterwork weapons have barely any personality beyond their more inflated damage-dealing numbers, don’t feel worth the effort to obtain and are oftentimes badly designed collections of fancy effects. So they’re kind of a reflection of Anthem in its current state.

Bioware wants to change all that with an upcoming fix, that’ll make the pursuit of Masterwork weapons a little bit easier and actually useful when combined with certain Javelin loadouts, resulting in said weapons having far better perks or “inscriptions” as they’re known as within the game. “First off, thank you for all the feedback around loot drops, this is what we have heard,” Anthem lead producer Ben Irving wrote on reddit:

• Many inscriptions are not useful to the item they are attached to
• Due to this, players need to get many masterworks of the same item to find a “good one”
• Players want the frequency of masterwork drops to increase to help with the above OR…
• They want us to change how masterwork inscriptions work so that they are more “useful”

So what’s the plan? Better inscriptions for Masterworks, reduced crafting requirements and an overhaul of how these weapons will function as loadout-specific badasses:

• 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

Additional inscription change details

• 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)

Anthem still has potential to shine, but right now, the game is going to need a lot of work if it wants to even survive against Ubisoft’s upcoming return to the US in the form of The Division 2. I may not have been enamoured with Anthem, but if Bioware can produce a miracle and take the foundation that it has released and build a better game on top of that? I’ll happily step back into my Colossus Javelin, Stompy McStomperton Esq.

Last Updated: February 28, 2019