Anthem's best weapons: Masterworks and Legendary guns
In a world filled with magical flying robot suits, the trusty automatic rifle can seem a little pedestrian.
How does Anthem get around this? By giving its best weapons radical paint jobs, names like semi-professional wrestler, and alluring rarity levels like Legendary and Masterworks. Here are a few of Anthem’s best weapons so far, as well as how to unlock Legendary and Masterwork guns.
There are some weapons that can't be used by certain Javelins. The Ranger, Interceptor and Storm can use every type of basic weapon, but only the mighty Colossus is beefy enough to use the heaviest weapons like a grenade launcher and autocannon.
To balance this, the Colossus can’t fit its giant sausage fingers through the trigger guard of Pistols and SMGs, so they can only be used by the lighter classes.
Anthem Masterworks and Legendaries
As you might’ve guessed, Masterworks and Legendaries are the most exclusive and rare loot in Anthem and are dished out as rewards for completing end-game and high difficulty events and missions.
These two tiers of guns aren’t just stronger than lower rarity guns; they also have powerful passive perks that elevate them above the competition. This can be things like having increased damage while hovering, or refreshing your shields faster while it’s equipped.
We’ve seen Masterworks rarity items drop while playing on hard, but Grandmaster is what you really need to be playing on to get best loot flowing.
You can obtain rare loot from a variety of activities - pretty much everything in Anthem gives you loot - including Strongholds, World Events, Main Missions, and even the chests that you find around the world in Freeplay.
How to farm Masterworks and Legendary Weapons in Anthem
Anthem’s endgame mainly consists of running the same three Strongholds and picking up Legendary Contracts. The best way to get these activities to drop Masterwork, and Legendary gear is to play them on higher difficulties, more specifically: the Grandmaster variants.
Legendary Contracts are challenging and lengthy missions that you can get from each Faction. There are three factions in Anthem, namely the Freelancers, Sentinels and Arcanists. Throughout the story and in Freeplay, you’ll complete challenges that will increase your influence with each Faction.
Once you’ve reached Level 30, completed each Faction quest and completed the main story, you’ll unlock the Legendary Contracts. Whilst Masterwork items aren’t guaranteed, completing a Legendary Contract is where you’re most likely to earn some.
More contracts will become available soon, as detailed by the Anthem 90-day roadmap.
The drop rate of chests in Freeplay has been significantly nerfed, as players discovered that simply going into Freeplay and setting the difficulty to Grandmaster automatically improves all the loot in world chests. In other words, you have a chance of getting the rarest gear, usually reserved for endgame activities, just from chests that spawn in the open world.
BioWare has already tackled it in a server-side change. Anthem community manager Jesse Anderson confirmed on Twitter that world chests that aren’t rewarded for taking part in world events now have a much-reduced chance of dropping the rarest items.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t still ways to cheese quality drops though. For instance, one farming method players have discovered is to deliberately fail partway through the mission “Convergence” during Anthem’s main story.
At the end of the mission, there are three Ash Titans - the first two of which have a large chance of dropping good loot. You can let the third one kill you to reset the encounter and repeat.
The below YouTube video from WillisGaming runs through the method:
Anthem best weapons - Masterworks and Legendaries
There are both Masterwork and Legendary versions of the same weapons, with the Legendary versions having stronger stat values and a higher ceiling on their affixes.
This means that your ultimate goal in Anthem is to get the best Legendary version of your favourite gun as possible.
- Divine Vengeance - Upgraded Warden Assault Rifle - Every third weak point hit causes large fire explosions
Divine Vengeance might not look like much, but it's arguably one of the most powerful weapons in Anthem.
Its intrinsic perk means that every third hit on an enemies weak spot causes a massive fiery explosion that does incredible damage. It's very effective against Scar hordes and larger enemies, especially Scar Hunters. It makes playing on Grandmaster level much easier and you won't need to spend an entire magazine clip on one enemy.
It pairs well with the Avenging Herald, so I'd definitely recommend taking both out once they drop.
- Fist of Stral - Upgraded Cloudburst - Striker’s Fury: Successive hits on enemies increases damage
First up is a bit of a beast of an autocannon, the Fist of Stral. This upgraded Cloudburst spits out a ton of RPM, which combined with its perk of increasing damage on successive hits, makes it a menace against big boss monsters that you’re not likely to miss.
- Ralner’s Blaze - Upgraded Hammerhead - Ignites the target on a small hit streak
Who doesn’t like setting baddies on fire? And when it’s a passive perk of a strong, versatile, and dependable assault rifle, there’s nothing to lose.
- Avenging Herald - Upgraded Blastback - Raptor’s Deadeye: Hovering increases weapon damage
What a nutty perk that is! The best bit of Anthem is zooming about like Iron Man, and you’re telling me there’s a gun that does a ridiculous amount more damage while hovering in the air? If you can lay your hands on it, this is one of the best weapons in Anthem to pick up.
- Artinia’s Gambit - Upgraded Relentless - Detonates a combo explosion in immediate area on reload
What’s the worst thing about LMGs? The slow reload time which lets baddies zerg you to death while you’re messing about for what feels like years. Artinia’s Gambit goes some way to reconciling that weakness by blowing up everyone that’s rushing to beat you up when your gun’s empty, while still having all of the benefits and DPS potential of a regular LMG.
- Rolling Carnage - Upgraded Vengeance - Scout’s Advantage: Dashing increases weapon damage for a set time
You want to be up-close-and-personal with a shotty, and the Rolling Carnage rewards you for doing just that. Dash in, blow your target away, get out of there - rinse and repeat.
- Light of the Legion - Upgraded Scout - Emptying mag recharges your shield
If you’re an Origin Premier Access member, then you already have access to this powerful legendary - which we have a separate page showing you how to claim - but it’s powerful defensive perk can’t be overlooked.
For more on Anthem, check out our full review, as well as our guide to the best Javelin for you!