Improvements to Anthem Loot Incoming

Ben Irving has now detailed what the loot improvements coming today or tomorrow are. They’re a really positive start that should make getting a Masterwork or Legendary more rewarding, if not necessarily more frequent.

Loot Change Highlights

• Greens and Whites have been removed from the level 30 loot pool. It’s unclear however whether or not that shifts the probabilities of the higher rarities up, resulting in a higher chance to obtain MW or Legendary. It is entirely possible that the roll chances have remained the same, just with any loot that comes up as Green or White no longer actually dropping now.
• Inscriptions to better fit their items. Some inscriptions have literally no way to use them. Two main versions of this issue at the moment:
  1. Item Specific (Cog Icon) inscriptions that cannot benefit the item it’s on. e.g., Cog Icon buff to Grenade Launcher damage on an Assault Rifle.
  2. Suit Wide (Javelin Icon) but on an item specific to a Javelin who cannot benefit from it. e.g., Ice Damage increase on a Ranger specific component. The Frost Grenade does no damage. Ice Effect is useful, but Ice Damage is not. Note: The Javelin-wide but still not useful issue is not specifically addressed in Ben’s Post. We will have to see if this is fixed with this patch or not.
• Reduction in number of Masterwork Embers required to craft. You need 25 Masterwork Embers to craft a Masterwork gear piece at the moment, this is dropping to 15. Craft 40% more MW’s than you could before! … A bit painful after having crafted a bunch recently. But great going forward! ;)

Inscription Change Details

The changes detailed here are what give me some hope that despite the Javelin-wide but still not useful issue not being addressed, it may actually still be resolved.

Currently the inscription pools are extremely broad and generic. The example Ben gives is ‘Weapons’ as a single pool of possible Inscriptions.

When this patch hits, later today or tomorrow, every slot and type will have its own pool of inscriptions to draw upon when being generated. Further, each potential slot for an inscription on a piece of gear will have its own pool to draw upon.

Worth noting too, despite there being no indication of this in the current Anthem UI, there is a concept of Major and Minor stat-types already. Major inscriptions as you might expect focus on increasing either your damage or your survivability. Minor are more utilitarian or quality of life in nature.

I do query then some of the Major stat choices, for example, on the following item which one is meant to be Major?

What Will These Changes Mean?

Anyone coming to the loot-grind phase of the game now are definitely in for a better time of things. The confusion that items with dead-inscriptions has created for people has been fairly immense, leading people to believe they were missing or just not understanding something.

If you’ve already been on the loot-train like me, it’s going to depend on how far along and how lucky you got! These changes are a great start toward making loot drops more exciting though, with far less likelihood of something disappointing coming your way.

I have some fairly strong items (e.g., I’m not sure I’ll ever get to replace my legendary Pulse Blast at the current item level cap), but plenty of others that are just filling in space.

If you’ve lucked out on God Roll items for most of your gear already, it doesn’t help at all with the variety of items on offer unfortunately or in increasing build options. But at least the Roadmap shows that new items are coming with a fairly regular cadence, starting March.

These changes also mean my interest has been refreshed. I’ll jump back in more after it lands to check-out the changes first hand and see if I can get my Ranger into a state that GM2 feels good to play.