Update 1.1.0 for Anthem is now live. The update adds new content and some quality-of-life improvements to the game.
First up, there's a new Stronghold in town. The Sunken Cell sees players exploring a hostile underwater environment to battle the Dominion. In order to access The Sunken Cell, you'll need to have completed all of Anthem's critical path quests. As with other Strongholds in the game, The Sunken Cell is a dungeon for four players which adds new encounters and new loot to the game. You can access it immediately once you've patched Anthem. For more info on The Sunken Cell, check out BioWare's Sunken Cell-focused Twitch stream.
In addition to the new Stronghold, BioWare has added a couple of oft-requested features to Anthem. Players can now access the Forge from anywhere in the world, including during Missions and Strongholds, meaning that you can change your gear without going to Fort Tarsis. You can now also select contracts from the start of expedition screen and launch new missions from the end of expedition screen. New Universal Masterwork Components have been added, as well as new cortex entries to explain combo, detonator, and primer abilities. There are also a bunch of bugfixes and balance changes in Update 1.1.0. For more information, check out the full patch notes.
Unfortunately, there's also some bad news for Anthem fans. BioWare says there are "more things to fix and improve than [they] planned for", so some Act 1 Calendar features will need to be delayed. Here's the full list of stuff that won't be coming as soon as we thought:
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Mastery System
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Guilds
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Legendary Missions – Phase II
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Weekly Stronghold Challenge
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Leaderboards
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Some Freeplay Events
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Cataclysm
The Cataclysm is an important priority for BioWare. The developer says it's a "big focus" for the team. More news on the Cataclysm is coming in May. BioWare also says it's heard fans' concerns around end-game loot and is working to improve Anthem's loot and progression systems. Also planned for the future is a Player Feedback Environment (PFE) which will allow players to provide feedback before new features are added to Anthem. For now, this feature will be restricted to PC. We don't know when any of the delayed features will actually be introduced to the game.
BioWare closes its statement on Reddit by reaffirming its belief in Anthem and expressing hopes that players will accompany them as they make changes to the game. Whether or not this will happen remains to be seen. Anthem didn't exactly do amazingly well on release, with reviews proving extremely mixed. We liked it perhaps more than some, but there was definitely room for improvement. This delay isn't likely to go down well considering the game's mixed reception.
Are you looking forward to the new Anthem Stronghold? How do you feel about these delays? Let us know in the comments below!
