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BioWare revealed a lot of details about the upcoming Anthem in-game event, called The Cataclysm. It will be on a separate new map, will feature new systems and rewards with higher power score. Leaderboards and Inversions are among the new mechanics introduced with it as well. The Cataclysm will be developed live with the help from players who participate on a Public Test Server!

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On May 30 BioWare’s Anthem Lead Producer Ben Irving and community manager Jesse Anderson hosted a 30 minutes live stream. During it they previewed the upcoming Cataclysm event and talked about its features.

THE CATACLYSM EVENT

The Cataclysm in general (as an event) will be a eight week aspirational in-game event. It will have its own map – a brand new area. The zone is not too big, but it’s large enough. The design is a bit different than Bastion’s, but not very.

The Cataclysm will have a two weeks of pre-events, followed by six weeks of the actual Cataclysm. In that time there will be three crit path missions that will set up the narrative for the Cataclysm, which is (in short): A new faction emerges from within the Dominion, led by Vara (the Cataclysm’s final boss, more on that later). In an effort of desperation, the Dominion triggers a Cataclysm event. Freelancers will have to learn what happened and find a way to stop it. The three pre-event missions will tell you more about this. The hosts of the live stream made their best not to show and reveal any story spoilers.

The Actual Cataclysm is six-week EndGame group content. It can be played on different difficulties. Rewards and Score points depend on your choice of difficulty.

When you spawn inside the new map, you will find yourself in a safe zone. As soon as you fly outside the spawn-area, the Storm will engulf you and start damaging your Javelin. The new UI element at the top (shrinking bar) signals your resistance lowering. When it’s gone, the Storm will hit you (and down you immediately).

Several points of interest will spawn all over the map (not all will be unlocked at first), showing you the nearby arenas. In these arenas you can complete various objectives to earn Score and attempt to complete the Cataclysm. There are tricks to each zone and objective to complete it quicker and earn more Score points. The objectives are displayed lime a mission in the top right corner of your screen.

If you shoot at the red sparkly thing in the middle of the arenas, you will create a safe area around, but will lose the extra score multiplier applied to you while you fight in the storm. Remember that same storm that damages you constantly.

As soon as you leave the safe zone in the beginning, a timer will appear. On the stream it was a 15 minutes mark. Once it expires, your mission is over and you exit the Cataclysm. The goal for you and your team is to complete as many of the objectives as possible and also defeat the main boss. Completing the objectives in the Arenas, however, will earn you extra time in The Cataclysm.

Ah, the boss! Vara is the leader of the Dominion and is your main and final objective. At the time of the live stream, the boss was not ready yet with some of its abilities and mechanics mission of unfinished, so we didn’t get to see it live. If you manage to defeat the boss, your final Scoring wil double. This gives you an extra incentive to go for the boss if you have little time left.

There will be three new game mechanics introduced for and with the Cataclysm – Inversions, Scoring and Leaderboards.

Inversions will be weekly mini events on their own. During each one you will experience various changes to the gameplay. For example one week your Ultimate may be building much faster than usual, while another week specific types of weapons might perform better than the rest. This has a lot of potential to liven up your gameplay and also provoke you to complete those weapons and abilities challenges you have been putting to the side for some time.

Scoring and Leaderboards are the bread and butter of The Cataclysm. While inside the new map, you will want to complete objectives in the different arenas and earn as many Score points as possible. Killing mobs earns you Score points too. If you choose to fight in the Storm and not kill the red spark object in the middle of the arena, you will earn more Score points, but will suffer from the Storm’s damaging effects. The Leaderboards is where you can compete with the rest of the world based on your Scoring.

The eight weeks of Cataclysm are just the beginning of a much larger event, Jesse explained on Twitter later after the live stream – “it would be pretty strange for it to be around temporarily and just go away completely”, he said.

NEW REWARDS AND LOOT IMPROVEMENTS

While on the topic of The Cataclysm, let’s not forget to mention the new higher Power gear and weapons. For now they are planned to be five levels higher than the currently available Masterwork an Legendary items in the game. So, the new ones will be 66 for MW and 76 for Legendary.

You can get these new items from the Cataclysm. A new vendor will be placed in Fort Tarsis. There you will be able to trade the new currency you will earn from completing the Cataclysm and get War Chests. The contents of these will change several times during the event.

The general improvements to the Loot in Anthem start with the big announcement that Luck is getting removed from the game. In its place, all items that you currently have with that stat, will get + Armor boost.

Because of the Luck’s removal, you will always play with what was previously the maximum or full luck stacked. This will result in higher drop rates and higher tiers of your loot eventually.

A brand new Melee slot is being added to all Javelins. This will not offer different types of melee weapons, but may allow you to choose if you want your Melee to be a Combo primer or a Combo detonator, for example. It will also serve as yet another stats boost.

Last, but not least – Masterwork and Legendary Support gear is coming to the game, finally! It will likely be added with the Cataclysm update.

Ben Irving also mentioned a few not-very-clear things about plans to improve and re-balance Grandmaster 3 difficulty by improving the gameplay experience there and changing the health to damage ratio that annoys many players, who attempt the highest difficulty tier in Anthem. Gunplay and gun-usefulness is also getting a look at for GM3, apparently.

WHEN CAN YOU PLAY THE ANTHEM CATACLYSM

This is where we start talking about PTS – Public Test server! Anthem’s Cataclysm is far form ready for live deployment. The dev team at BioWare decided to open up a Public Test server where all PC players, who own the game or have Origin Access subscription, will be able to participate.

PTS is expected to launch next week (the week of June 3rd). It will be a separate download, so prepare to have Anthem installed twice, literally. It will also get updated/patched frequently. The first build is likely to be the one demonstrated on the live stream on May 30th. At first it will be accessible for a couple of days without breaks. Then the devs will start arranging more limited sessions, where participants will get to play more specific segments and help the team by providing feedback.

The PTS will last for two to three weeks. After that there will be some time for the devs to take on the feedback, decide what to implement it and prepare for the official live launch of this event.

Vara will not be fully completed in this first build. The new Masterwork 66 and Legendary 76 items will also not be added immediately. The first build will focus around gameplay and getting to know the Cataclysm event. There will also be a couple of surveys you can complete to help the studio with a more structured feedback.

Any updates on down time and play sessions as well as changes and PTS patch notes will be posted first on EA’s official forums. Of course, if you don’t or can’t stalk them, you can always find all the important information and latest news here on VULKK.com!

I hope you found this overview useful. These are all of the things the two hosts shared on the dev stream on May 30th. If you have some free time and want to check out the video, I have the archive linked below. Take a look.

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If you had missed it, catch up with Anthem’s latest Update 1.2.0 that was released on May 29, 2019! It added a few cool improvements to Freeplay, some Javelin gear re-balancing and three new Legendary missions.