We all know by now what a fate BioWare's ambitious, yet broken, game Anthem had to endure upon launch. Recently, the game also completed its first anniversary, but did not celebrate it, except mentioning the milestone within the game.
A few weeks ago, we learned that BioWare is not ready to give up on Anthem and the developer is looking at completely overhauling things from the ground up. The developer seems to be setting the foundation for the ambitious overhaul with the recent 1.7.0 update patch. The latest update makes some minor refreshes to the game and fixes some bugs, but the main objective behind this patch is much bigger than just some quality of life changes.
In the patch notes, BioWare states, "With Patch 1.7.0, we are kicking off our recurring schedule. The primary focus of this schedule is to deliver a regular rotation of challenges, store offerings, content and game modes, coin and currency awards, gameplay inversions, and mini-holiday seasons throughout the year."
When talking about the gameplay overhaul, BioWare mentioned that once the development team is focused on bringing overhaul changes to the game, the arrival of new content will slow down. The recent update focuses on cycling events and store items while making use of past seasonal and Cataclysm content.
Anthem 1.7.0 Patch Notes
Check out the full patch notes for Anthem below:
Challenges:
- Six concurrent, active Daily Challenges that rotate regularly through these categories:
- Contracts / Legendary Contracts
- World Events
- Time Trials
- Strongholds
- Creature Kills
- Gameplay Style
- Rotating Weekly Meta Challenges:
- Factions
- Contracts / Legendary Contracts
- Stronghold
Rotating Monthly Meta Challenges:
- Bronze
- Silver
- Gold
- Festive challenges while mini-holidays are active.
Store Offerings:
- A regular rotation of armor sets, wraps, graphics, decals, and materials previously available in the Featured Store.
Content & Game Modes:
Seasonal gameplay modes and features have been included in the normal event rotations:
- Cataclysm Conjunctions
- Cataclysm Nexus
- Season of Skulls Conjunctions
- Season of Skulls Nexus
- Icetide Time Trials
- Icetide Weekly Strongholds
- Legendary Crafting
Rotating weekly gameplay modes:
- Sunken Cell Weekly Stronghold
- Heart of Rage Weekly Stronghold
- Tyrant Mine Weekly Stronghold
- Temple of Scar Weekly Stronghold
- Nexus
Gameplay Inversions
- We’ve created a rotating Gameplay Inversion schedule to coincide with the weekly rotating game modes. Inversions and gameplay modes are scheduled separately to create more combinations and support diversity in week-to-week content throughout the year.
Coin & Currency awards
- Coin and Crystals will be awarded for Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Challenges.
- Crystals can be earned and spent at any time.
Holidays:
- Holidays are small events based on the yearly calendar that are primarily driven by unique challenges. These challenges will run for one to four weeks, depending on the holiday. Some of the larger holidays will include changes to the weekly gameplay mode or decorations in Fort Tarsis and the world.
- When can you expect to see these events in the game?
- We will be sharing details on these holiday events as they arrive throughout the year!
Bug Fixes & Improvements
- Fixed various crashes to improve stabilization.
- Fixed various texture, audio, user interface, and environment issues.
- Fixed an issue where the Badge of Devastation Ranger Component had an inconsistent icon.
- Fixed an issue that prevented adjusting the wrist colour on the Frost Tusk Armor.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented players from changing their difficulty level after leaving a squad.
- Fixed an issue that caused the names of the Iron Serpent and Iron Valley regions to sometimes appear reversed.
- Fixed an issue where dying while carrying three echoes would sometimes respawn only two echoes.
- Players should no longer be teleported back into the arena if they respawn while the Titan fight is still active.
- Fixed an issue that prevented the Quickplay Stronghold option from unlocking after completing a weekly stronghold.
- Fixed an issue that caused blue lights to appear around the Golden Grabbit when it’s defeated.
- Description for Synchronized Frame now properly indicates that damage must be done with an Ordnance Launcher to trigger.
- “Hitting an enemy with an ordnance launcher increases Heavy Launcher damage by 60% for 10 seconds.”
- Javelin Madness should now correctly track and advance progress.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused players to be stuck during the “Freelancer Down” mission.
- Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the first player that reached the third step in Tyrant Mine to be teleported back to the party if they weren’t in the room yet.
- When players force respawn, they should now correctly drop all carried mission objects.
- Tip of the Spear should now correctly only heal players.
- Using your support gear while it is on cooldown should not longer interrupt your other gear.
