The ninth season of Apex Legends, simply titled "Legacy," is less than a week away now. Developer Respawn Entertainment has been slowly doling out information on what’s coming in the new season for a few weeks now, and just released the official update notes.
Apex Legends' Legacy update will release on Tuesday, May 4, bringing with it a slew of new content and changes to the game. In fact, this may be the most substantial update to Apex Legends yet. Here is everything you need to know about what is coming in May.
New Legend, Valkyrie
As is tradition, a new legend will be joining the fray. Kairi Imahara, AKA Valkyrie, is a legend capable of flight thanks to the suit she scrapped together from her father’s Northstar titan. Valkyrie’s Passive abilities allow her to hover in the air, mark on-screen enemies while dropping, and scan Survey Beacons like other Recon legends. Her Tactical is a barrage of missiles that cover a wide area but serve mostly to stun and deal a small amount of damage. Lastly, her Ultimate allows her and her teammates to launch back into the sky and skydive down again, just like a Jump Tower.
Arenas
By far and away the biggest thing coming in the Legacy update for Apex Legends is the all-new permanent Arenas mode. Arenas is a multi-round 3v3 deathmatch where players must purchase all of their weapons and gear with crafting tokens at the beginning of each round. Players get more crafting tokens from getting kills or finding them in the arena.
Players have a set number of Tactical and Ultimate “charges” they can use per round instead of a recharge timer, and more charges can be purchased between rounds. Maps for Arenas are much smaller and the selection will be comprised of single POIs from Apex Legends’ battle royale maps, like Thermal Station from World’s Edge, and new maps, like a downtown plaza where Mirage crashed his Mirage Voyage ship. The new mode will be hosted by Ash, a simulacrum and pilot from Titanfall 2, who was the subject of a big in-game teaser where players had to decrypt a passcode to earn a meeting with her.
The Bocek Bow and Other Weapon Changes
The Legacy update for Apex Legends will also introduce the new Bocek compound bow. The Bocek bow will bring arrows as a new ammo type, as well as two new Hop-Ups: Shatter Caps and Deadeye’s Tempo, which splinters arrows into a shotgun pattern and can increase rate of fire, respectively. The arrows will stick into the environment and enemies and can be picked back up when walking over them or looting deathboxes.
There is more going on in the weapons department than just the Bocek Bow though. The Mozambique will be getting an increase in magazine capacity from four to six, making up for the removal of the Hammerpoint Hop-Up. The P2020 will be getting a damage buff, but at the cost of fire rate. The Peacekeeper shotgun will be returning to ground loot, trading places with the Triple Take, the later of which will lose its ability to use sniper optics. Additionally, the aforementioned Shatter Caps Hop-Up will be usable with the 30-30 Repeater, and the Deadeye’s Tempo will work with the Sentinel.
Legend Changes Galore
A lot of the legends will be receiving some pretty significant changes with this update, most notably Lifeline, who will be losing her revive shield completely. To make up for that nerf, her drone will now be able to revive both teammates at once. Her Tactical will receive both healing speed and cooldown buffs, and her Ultimate will be buffed to dole out loot that is guaranteed to be an upgrade for her and her teammates.
Meanwhile Loba’s Tactical will be receiving some much-needed bug fixes, and she will now have full movement speed after using it, but her Ultimate will take a little longer to recharge. Fuse’s Tactical will now have two charges and will recharge faster, though Respawn did confirm in its Dev Stream for Legacy that he will receive more changes in the future. The Low Profile perk is being removed from the game too, meaning legends like Lifeline, Wattson, and Wraith will no longer take extra damage for their smaller stature.
Changes to the Battle Royale
Following the success of the Locked and Loaded LTM, all players will drop with a level 1 Helmet, Body Shield, and Knockdown Shield, as well as two Syringes and Shield Cells, from Season 9 onwards. This will also be the starting loot for Arenas and Ranked modes. Accordingly, Respawn is removing level 1 Helmets and Knockdown Shields from the loot pool and reducing the spawn rates of Level 1 Body Shields. This will free up space for other better loot in the battle royale modes.
Olympus will be getting an additional POI that is a large ship infested with alien vines. The ship will have a loot vault, similar to the ones on World’s Edge, but the keycard will have to be picked up off of a dead scientist on the ship. So that players have time to get used to the Olympus changes, World's Edge will be returning as the map for the first half of the Ranked split.
Sadly, this means that Kings Canyon will be going away this season. Respawn has yet to have all three of Apex Legends' maps in rotation at once, and it looks like that will continue. That’s a shame given how fresh the updated Kings Canyon still feels, but it will be back someday. And some chunks of Kings Canyon will be turned into maps for the new Arenas mode, like Artillery, so it won’t be completely gone.
Ground Emotes and More
Fans have been asking for ground emotes for some time, and Respawn is finally delivering. Each legend will come with one free emote with more available to unlock. The detailed animations are viewable in third-person, though Respawn has implemented a technical trick that will keep player’s from being able to see enemies they otherwise shouldn’t be able to called Anti-Peek.
Other additions for the season will include a new Battle Pass full of cosmetics to unlock and another weekly comic story. Respawn has revealed that the comic will show the legends dealing with the infestation on Olympus as they try to figure out what happened and stop the infestation from spreading. In-game, legends will also have new voice lines relating to what happened in the Pathfinder’s Quest book that was released during Season 8, so fans that have yet to read that should catch up now. There will also be a physical comic mini-series called Overtime that assumedly takes place during Season 9.
Apex Legends is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.