Anthem is one of the most broken games that I’ve seen in recent years. All these crashes, connection errors, broken animations, missing missions, issues with audio, it’s terrible. But when it works, Anthem can be a pretty cool game. Also, it can be a little bit confusing sometimes. Especially when it comes to your gear stats aka gear inscriptions because the game fails to tell you what any of them actually do.

Inscriptions appear at the bottom of weapons and gear and they give you different bonuses. Many of my friends have repeatedly asked what these things actually do, so here’s Anthem Inscriptions Guide.

First, there are two icons – Gear and Javelin. The Gear icon means that this bonus applies to that particular item only. The Javelin icon means that this bonus applies to your Javelin.

Base bonuses

• Impact: damages a single enemy or target.
• Blast: Area of Effect damage or explosive damage that affects multiple enemies or targets.
• Melee: boosts your Melee Skills and attack damage.
• Guns: Improves either Impact damage or Blast Damage if a Grenade or Rocket Launcher.

Class specific

• Storm Combo: increases the number of Combo chains by two.
• Interceptor Aura effect: increases the damage that Interceptor Aura pulses for.

Skill

• Skill damage: Skill damage increase for chosen skill.
• Gear damage: overall Skill damage increased.
• Skill Speed: chosen Skill cooldown reduced.
• Gear Speed: overall Skill cooldown reduced.

Elemental

• Fire: fire damage over time, doing +25% damage against armour and -25% against shields.
• Ice: freezes enemies, with +25% damage against shields and -25% against armour.
• Thunder: charges before spreading damage to nearby enemies, with +50% damage against shields and -50% against armour.
• Acid: reduces resistance, with +50% damage against armour, and-50% against shields.

Weapon

• Weapon damage: increases weapon damage.
• Weapon mag size: increases magazine size.
• Weapon ammo: bigger ammo reserves.
• Weapon fire rate: increased rate of fire.
• Weapon reload time: increases reload speed.
• Weapon Blast damage: more explosive damage caused.
• Weapon type damage: increased damaged for a specific weapon.

Javelin bonuses

• Ultimate damage: Ultimate Skill damage increased.
• Ultimate cooldown speed: Ultimate Skill cooldown reduced.
• Melee damage: melee and Skills damage increased.
• Combo damage: Combo damage increased.
• Combo targets: Detonating Primed enemies chains to additional enemies.
• Critical damage: Critical Hit damage increased.
• Support speed: Support Skill cooldown reduced.
• Elemental damage: Elemental Skills and item damage increased.
• Damage: damage increased across the board.
• Force: reduces damage required to cause a Stagger Effect.
• Effect: increase all status effects applied to enemies/ can Prime enemies quicker.
• Element Effect: increase all status effects applied to enemies from the chosen elemental effect.
• Pickup Radius: bigger pickup area for dropped items.
• Thruster Life: can fly for longer before overheating.
• Thruster Speed: jet cooldown time increased.
• Overheat Delay: reduces the time it takes to recover from overheating.
• Element Resist: reduces damage taken from attacks of named element.
• Armour Damage Resist: increased resistance to damage.
• Armour Max: increases your green Armour bar.
• Shield Max: increase your blue shield bar.
• Shield Delay: reduces the time it takes to recover your shield.
• Shield Refresh: how quickly your shield recharges once it starts recovering.

Drop Rate

Drop rate inscription increases the rate at which you’ll find ammo, Health and Items.

• Ammo Drop Rate: more ammo.
• Repair Drop Rate: more Health.
• Supply Drop Rate: more Items.

Drop Quality

This Inscription increases the quality of dropped items or can give a Harvest bonus when collecting crafting materials.

• Ammo Pickup Amount: more ammo per drop.
• Repair Amount: more Health per drop.
• Support Luck: a chance for better Items per drop.
• Harvest Bonus: can be earned by collecting crafting materials.