Apex Legends' third season went live last week, freshening up the free-to-play battle royale experience with an entire arsenal's worth of exciting new content and balancing adjustments. There's an inventive new weapon, a brand new Legend, and of course, an all new map. To sum it all up, this is definitely the biggest content update to hit the game so far.
There's most definitely an awful lot to unpack here. And if you're wondering where to start, then as always, we're here to help you out with that. Keep scrolling to join us as we highlight and check out ten of the biggest ways in which season three is changing the game for Apex Legends.
10 New Weapon: Charge Rifle
The Charge Rifle is essentially a new energy-based sniper weapon that packs an incredible amount of punch. It functions a lot like the Havoc with a select-fire modification, in that it needs to "charge up" each shot.
The key difference, however, is that during the "charge-up" period it emits a small laser that rapidly deals small amounts of damage, before dealing a big chunk with the main shot. It's an obvious telegraph, but has huge damage potential. It's excellent for counter-sniping, forcing enemies to either rapidly change positions or suffer crippling damage.
9 Disruptor Rounds & Skullpiercer Hop-Ups Removed
Given the runaway success of the Disruptor Rounds hop-up for the Alternator and RE-45, as well as the classic headshot goodness offered by the Skullpiercer for the Wingman and Longbow, this is sure to be one of season three's less popular changes.
It has to be admitted that the Alternator was just a wee bit overpowered with the Disruptor Rounds attachment, though the removal of the Skullpiercer is a little more difficult to justify. Regardless, for better or worse, these hop-ups seem to be out of rotation for the season.
8 New Hop-Ups: Anvil Receiver & Double Tap Trigger
Of course, when removing the Disruptor Rounds and Skullpiercer hop-ups from play, they had to make sure to give us a couple of new toys to play with. What players get in exchange are the Anvil Receiver for the Flatline and R301, and the Double Tap Trigger for the EVA-8 and G7 Scout.
The Anvil Receiver ups the damage for semi-automatic fire on the R301 and Flatline, giving them more utility as marksman rifles. The Double Tap Trigger, perhaps most interestingly, causes the EVA-8 and Scout to fire two round bursts.
7 Weapon Nerfs & Buffs (At A Glance)
There were an awful lot of small tweaks made to weapon balancing, but here's the quick and dirty on what happened to your favorite guns. The R-99 probably got it worst, with some added randomness to its recoil pattern and a reduction in upgraded magazine size. The Prowler also took a hit, with a slight decrease to accuracy.
The Longbow DMR fires a bit slower and does less damage on leg shots, though the G7 Scout saw a flat increase to damage done. The Hemlok does more damage but fires a bit slower, and the Mozambique was made to be more accurate. The L-Star took a damage nerf, but now has reduced recoil and comes standard with a Digital Threat scope.
6 Big Buffs For Gibraltar
A lot of Legends saw tweaks to their tactical and ultimate abilities, but the man of the hour has to be Gibraltar. The first and biggest change is for his Dome Shield, which now allows allies inside of it to utilize healing items twenty-five percent faster, and can be thrown more than sixty percent further, at the minor expense of charging ten seconds slower.
His Defensive Bombardment ultimate also got some love, with a full minute shaved off of its cooldown time. It also saw two seconds removed from its duration, which can be a bummer, but it can also be thrown more than thirty percent further, giving it a bit more leverage and utility.
5 Gold Armor & Backpack Perks Changed
The Executioner perk that was attached to the golden armor (which restored shields upon successful finishing moves) always felt a little lackluster compared to the rest of the golden items. Now, however, it'll be practically indispensable, as it has the Fast Use perk formerly attached to the backpack, which allows the wearer to use consumables twice as fast.
Most interesting is the brand new perk that has been slotted into the backpack, which causes the wearer to revive downed teammates with more shields and armor. This can make those risky revival situations much more tempting, and is amazing when paired with Lifeline's innate boost to revival speed.
4 Finishing Moves Will Now Always Recover Shields
The "Executioner" perk may have been removed from the golden armor, but it certainly wasn't removed from the game. Instead of it being attached to a piece of gear, players will now recover shields from successful executions as a standard.
This is great because it offers a real incentive to risking a lengthy kill animation for fallen foes outside of bragging rights. You can safely expect to be executed a lot more often and in riskier situations, and should a lot more than tempted to do the same in kind.
3 Ranked League Scoring Got A Little More Complicated
But it's all for the better, honestly. The base cost for entry is higher, but conversely, so is the payout. The biggest takeaway here is the change to how score from kills is calculated, which is drastically improved over the last system.
Instead of being a flat point reward, the points from kills will now benefit from placement "multipliers." For example, placing fifth pays out 30 RP, and has a kill multiplier of 15. This means that getting four kills in that game would've netted 60 points, for a total of 90. It still caps out at five kills, but provides way more incentive to actually get those kills.
2 The New Map: World's Edge
Yes, finally, we're going to address the elephant in the room. Season three takes us away from the familiar locale of King's Canyon and into the new arena of World's Edge, a varied and dynamic landscape with more than a few surprises in store.
Being a bit larger as whole, it packs in sprawling, abandoned cities, frozen, snow-covered locations, and a volcanic region complete with flowing lava. There are no supply ships to fight over, but there is a rad new loot-filled train that loops around the map. It's an absolute blast to explore, and the change of scenery was definitely a long time coming.
1 New Legend: Crypto
If you were worried that Respawn might be running short on inventive ideas for new Legends, then hopefully Crypto will set your mind at ease. To quote Gibraltar from the launch trailer, "Kid's got some moves!"
Hacker savant Crypto is all about surveillance, and his intelligence-gathering abilities give even Bloodhound's a run for their money. He can deploy and control an airborne drone to scout and mark enemies, and his ultimate allows it to produce a powerful EMP blast that stuns enemies, damages shields, and destroys traps over an impressively large radius.