What does Anthem offer in the endgame and what content could follow after the release? We summarize what is known so far.
What is the endgame about? In the endgame of Anthem, the main goal is to find better equipment for the four Javelin suits. Therefore, it mainly revolves around replaying missions on higher difficulties and continuously gathering better gear.
With the Strongholds and the Contracts, Anthem offers two main activities for this at launch. Additionally, at a certain level, three more difficulty levels are unlocked, very much in the style of the torment ranks from Diablo 3.
The Strongholds – Like Small Raids
How the Strongholds work: Strongholds are special missions that send you into a larger dungeon. In this dungeon, specific tasks and some tough enemies await you.
So far, one Stronghold is known where you fight the Swarm Tyrant at the end. However, before facing the boss, you have to complete some tasks. In the first section, you must collect echoes and bring them to a certain point. In the second phase, it’s about relics that can open the door to the final section: the boss fight.
This fight is quite intense. The Swarm Tyrant is a gigantic, insect-like beast that constantly spawns smaller versions of its kind. However, its weak spots on the back are very easy to hit.
What rewards are available: After each section, a loot box appears. In the demo version of Anthem, the contents of these boxes were quite generous. That could change significantly in the full version.
If you defeat the boss, there’s an additional loot bonus and a large amount of experience points. The loot can basically be anything – from weapons to skill mods. The higher the difficulty, the rarer the reward can be.
Strongholds are expected to be the best way to find rare loot at launch. However, there are also the Contracts, the other part of the well-known endgame.
Contracts provide constant mission supply
How the Contracts work: Contracts are contracts that send you on missions. The legendary variant of these Contracts will be one of your main activities in the endgame of Anthem.
Contracts consist of repeatable missions whose details are generated anew each time. Ultimately, they are randomly generated missions. They can vary in location, objective, enemies, and mission type. This is meant to keep the Contracts diverse.
What rewards are available: The loot and rewards adjust to the difficulty level of the Contracts. Legendary Contracts therefore yield very high-quality equipment.
Grandmaster Difficulty for better loot
How difficulty levels work in Anthem: There are six difficulty levels, of which only three are available at the start of the game:
- Easy
- Normal
- Hard
Additionally, there are the Grandmaster levels 1 to 3, which are part of the endgame. Initially, you cannot select them. To unlock them, you need to reach level 30. After that, you can choose freely among them.
What rewards are available: The higher the difficulty, the better the chances for rare loot. However, the enemies are also significantly stronger. Ultimately, one of the goals of Anthem will be to master all Grandmaster ranks to get the best loot.
And what does the future hold?
This is what BioWare says: In an interview with Gamespot the lead producer of Anthem, Ben Irving, discussed possible content that could be released after launch.
Raids are part of the plans; Irving refers to them as “aspirational content”. This refers to content from games whose progression is designed to master these special experiences: “We believe in “aspirational content”, I think in other games they can call it raids. We have plans for “aspirational content” and live service.”
In addition to raids, they are also looking for other ways to connect players to the world of Anthem. This includes opportunities to compete “friendly” within the community.
The game world can be constantly changed
This could become important in the future: Anthem was designed so that the creators can constantly make changes to the world. This is even tied to the story of the game and is supposed to happen through special events aimed at preventing content drought.
According to Irving, the “Anthem of Creation” is constantly creating things and could therefore cause chaos in the world. He envisions the effect like this:
You might just log in, go out into free play, and something is different. And sometimes it’s just something mysterious, and you have to figure out what happened.
Thus, BioWare can easily launch new events that even have a visible impact on the open world. How this will look in practice will be revealed after the launch on February 22.
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Our author Robert was able to play already: Here’s how difficult he found the Anthem demo.
