Apex Legends has officially launched season 1, The Wild Frontier, and with it comes Octane, a brand new legend, and an array of balance changes, bug fixes and quality of life adjustments.
Here’s everything you need to know about patch and what it means for your favorite legend.
Season 1 Changes
The Lobby now boasts a battle pass tab. This will allow you to purchase the season 1 battle pass for 950 Apex Coins. A Battle Pass Bundle is also available for 2,800 Apex coins which unlocks the next 25 levels of Season 1 instantly.
Players will also be able to earn 1 Wild Frontier Legend Skin, 5 Apex Packs, and 18 Wild Frontier themed Stat Trackers just by playing during the new season.
There are also some cosmetic changes to the lobby, main menu and dashboard to reflect the start of the season.
New Legend
The biggest change is the addition of new legend, Octane. He is an unlockable character, available for 12,000 Legend Tokens or 750 Apex Coins.
Related: Apex Legends: A Beginner's Guide To Octane
Legend Balance Changes
The new patch also brings with it some balance changes for several Legends.
The biggest positive balance change is the hitbox size reduction, which is being implemented in response to players complaints about the huge variations between legends.
Caustic, Pathfinder and Gibraltar will all see optimizations and reductions in their hitbox sizes, making them more closely match a tighter silhouette.
The other current changes to Legends are as follows:
Caustic - Buffed
Caustic is on the receiving end of a number of buffs. Not only is his hit box being reduced in size, but his traps are also getting a huge boost.
Caustic’s tactical ability, Nox Gas Trap, will see a reduced cooldown, from 30 to 25 seconds; while his ultimate ability, Nox Gas Grenade, is down from a 2 minutes 30 cooldown, to just 2 minutes.
Caustic also receives a boost to his traps radius and proximity radius, which are being increased by approximately 10%; as well as the removal of a 1 second delay on the smoke dealing damage to players.
These changes add up to a big buff for the unlockable legend.
Pathfinder - Buffed
Pathfinder is also benefiting from a reduced hitbox, which you can see in action in this video posted on Reddit.
Alongside this, Pathfinder’s Insider Knowledge ability will also receive a boost in the form of 2 additional beacons being added to the world, bringing the total to 12. His grapple is also benefiting from the changes, with its distance being increased from 850 to 900. Pathfinder can also now grapple ziplines, increasing his maneuverability even more.
The hitbox change is the biggest to affect Pathfinder, but the other changes will also be noticeable; especially when combined with the fix for his zipline not deploying when jumping.
Gibraltar - Buffed And Nerfed
Gibraltar is also benefiting from the hitbox buffs, with his vast hitbox being reduced, albeit likely not as drastically as the others. He will also benefit from a bug fix which “Patched up the hole we found in Gibraltar’s shield.”
It’s not all good news for Gibraltar players however as he also faces a nerf in the form of his ultimate ability, Defensive Bombardment, which will now correctly apply the Shell Shock debuff to allies in its range. This means it now functions in a similar way to Bangalore's ultimate ability.
Quality of Life Changes
There are also a number of quality of life changes being deployed in this patch. These include extra menu settings, allowing you to fine tune some aspects of the game. The menus themselves now also have added D-pad support.
In terms of accessibility there are improvements to the color blind support features and a new option has to been added to allow players to modify the subtitle size.
A number of bug fixes and other changes which address stability and performance issues on both PC and console have also been deployed.
Something many players have been asking for is a report function, which has been added with this patch.
PC gamers can now report cheaters from spectate view after dying, or when looking at their team’s Banner Cards in the Squad tab. These reports will be sent directly to Easy Anti-Cheat. Both PC and Console players can also report abuse using the same method.
You can find more details on all these changes and more in the patch notes, which are posted over on Reddit.