Respawn Entertainment launched Season 9 for Apex Legends, and the name of the season is Legacy. They were announcing the new features that will come with the new season. This time, they came up with patch notes that will affect the game’s meta.
Apex Legends Season 9 Patch Notes
- Arena War Mode
- New Legend: Valkyrie
- New Weapon: Bocek
- Olympus Update
- Starting Items and Loot Changes
- Emotes
- Legend Updates
- Weapon Updates
- Quality of Life
- Bug Fixes
Arena War Mode
We have prepared a detailed article about Arena War mode for you. But let’s summarize the mode a little.
Apex Legends, known as a battle royale game, will become a different game with Season 9. This game mode, called Arena War, will feature 3v3 battles. It will be like the tactical FPS genre and will proceed with the round system. There will be the same weapons, abilities, and characters, although there will be some differences. There will also be a buying phase before each round. Players will be able to purchase the weapons and abilities they will use here.
The Arena War mode will feature five maps, three of which are from the game. The other two maps were created by developers for this mode. Of course, they are located in locations suitable for the maps of the game.
New Legend: Valkyrie
You may have actually heard the name Valk many times. Previously, data miners shared the character’s name as Valk. That’s why a lot of information about her came with that name. But now we see that the character’s real name is Valkyrie. But I’m sure a lot of the players will call her Valk.
Before we talk about the character’s abilities, let’s talk about her name. You can see the name Valkyrie in many different ways: Walkyrie, Valkyrja, etc. In Norse mythology, Valkyries are known as Odin’s distinguished, young, beautiful virgin warriors. In Norse mythology, the Valkyries descend from the sky to the battlefield with their wings, just like our Valkyrie.
Valkyrie’s real name is Kairi Imahara. She’s the daughter of one of our enemies in Titanfall 2, Viper. Years later, Valkyrie, who saved her father’s titan, Northstar, will participate in the Apex Games with Rampart’s help.
Valkyrie is in the Recon class, just like Bloodhound, Pathfinder, and Crypto. So she can use the Survey Beacons to locate the next ring.
Passive Ability: VTOL Jets
Valkyrie easily climbs to the top platforms, thanks to the jetpack she carries. Of course, it’s not like the one in GTA San Andreas, because her jetpack has a fuel system. Besides that, you can’t use a gun when you fly.
Tactical Ability: Missile Swarm
Valkyrie launches a series of mini-rockets at her enemies with her tactical ability. Of course, this ability won’t do much damage.
Ultimate Ability: Skyward Dive
Ultimate ability will be one of the things that make Valkyrie different. As soon as she uses the ability, she’ll slowly rise and quickly jump to distant areas of the map. And her teammates will be with her during this flight if they want to.
New Weapon: Bocek
Before we tell you about the gun, let’s give some information about the name Bocek. Respawn is a company that gives the names of its employees to the things about the game. The best example of this is Erik Kraber, the senior audio director of the game. Kraber, as you know, is a powerful sniper found in both Titanfall and Apex Legends. Just like Kraber, Bocek is an employee’s name. David Bocek is perhaps one of the successful developers who made Apex Legends the number one battle royale game.
Bocek is a bow and will use arrows as bullets. That means Apex Legends will add a new type of ammo to the game with Season 9. If you press the trigger button briefly while using the weapon, you will strike quickly but weakly. Although it may take some time to fully pull the arrow, the damage and speed of the arrow will increase significantly.
The arrows, as we mentioned, will now be on the maps. But we won’t find as many as the other munitions. Of course, developers have also found a way to make up for it. They will bring a system that we often see in medieval RPG games. The arrow we shot will remain stuck in the target. Thanks to that, we can get that arrow back and use it.
The sights you can use are close-mid range sights in general. You will also be able to use two new hop-ups. Shatter Caps is turning the bow into some kind of shotgun. Like Mozambique, it shoots more arrows at the target. Deadeye’s Tempo significantly increases your targeting time.
Olympus Update
With the Season 9 update, Apex Legends players will see a few changes on Olympus, the game’s latest map. We explained the details of these changes in this article. But let’s also summarize it here.
In general, parasitic plants will cover the map. We can see the roots of plants in many places, even use them in battles. There’s also a new spacecraft, Icarus, southeast of the Solar Array. There is also a unique section that opens with a keycard in this area, which has plenty of loot. You can also find these keycards in various places on the map.
Only this map will be active in the first week of Season 9, so players can get used to the map.
Starting Items and Loot Changes
With Season 8, the developers celebrated the completion of the game’s second year with a special event. In this event, called Anniversary, we played in a fun game mode. Locked and Loaded mode generally improved the quality of items in the game. Of course, many of us loved this feature. Developers have also indicated that they are working on how to add this feature to the regular game. They added this feature to the game with Season 9, though not exactly like Locked and Loaded.
Dev’s Note
We’ve wanted to take a crack at improving the loot game for a while, with our design goals being to make picking up loot feel more impactful to the game, and to thin out our loot a bit in general, since we’re always adding new items to the pool. The recent Locked & Loaded takeover mode helped us field-test some of the changes we’re looking to make moving forward: certain pieces of loot, and low-tier loot types specifically, are being put on notice.
We’re removing Level 1 Helmets and Knockdown Shields from the ground loot because these seemed like the least exciting, least meaningful equipment pickups we had. Their power is practically invisible, so they don’t really feel like a character improvement in the way that things like, say, a Backpack feels (getting those extra slots feels SO chunky!).
We’re keeping Level 1 EVO Shields in the loot pool (albeit at a lower spawn chance) in addition to adding them to your starter kit because having them sprinkled around is still important for “shield-swapping” shenanigans.
Finally, granting these pieces of gear from the start of the game is also intended to improve the “hot drop” situation: having more health, some headshot damage reduction, and a little knockdown protection can help give players some more time to react to a chaotic hot drop than before.
Respawn Entertainment
Emotes
Apex Legends players will start using animations that express their feelings during games with the Season 9 update! We’ve seen them in a lot of games before, and let’s be honest, Fortnite is really good at it. Now we’ll see these animations in Apex Legends.
Of course, there will be different animations for each character. You can get them from the Apex Packs you open, or you can craft them by spending Crafting Metal. It will be pretty enjoyable to use them to show off in the match. You will also be able to use them on the champion screen when you finish the match with a win.
When using these animations, we will watch ourselves from a third-person perspective. Of course, in a game that is a first-person shooter game, such a situation can provide an advantage. For example, we can see the back of the corner using these animations. But Respawn, of course, has come up with a solution. We can look in any direction we want when using the animation. However, as long as the animation is active, our ability to see visible enemies is disabled.
Competitive integrity is still paramount, so enemies that your character couldn’t see in the first-person view will not be shown while you are in the third-person.
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Battle Pass
Of course, a new season means a new Battle Pass. Battle Pass, which will also be completed in 110 levels, will give you a variety of gifts even if you don’t get the premium. The most notable ones are Crafty Kitsune Rampart and Demon’s Whisper Wraith skins. Rampart’s skin unlocks at level 25, and Wraith’s skin unlocks at level 50.
Legend Updates
The new season will bring the new Battle Pass, but it also brings significant updates. Apex Legends players will see changes in many characters at the beginning and middle of each season.
Low Profile Perk
- Low Profile is a perk that the legends with smaller hitboxes have. Because of this perk, they are taking more damage. With Season 9, this feature will be completely removed. So Wraith, Lifeline, and Wattson will no longer be Low Profile characters.
After our successful experiment with Wraith’s hitboxes, we are now confident that we can solve balance issues between smaller and larger Legends through changes to their kits and hitboxes. It is finally time for Low Profile to go the way of the dodo. (Sorry dodos.)
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Lifeline
- Combat Revive (Passive Ability): During combat, the characters revive their fallen friends themselves. But Lifeline, thanks to its passive ability, is leaving that job to her drone, D.O.C. The drone also offers a shield during the reviving process. With this season, there will be no more shields. But she can revive two friends at the same time. In addition, she can cancel the revive at any time to protect her knocked friends.
- D.O.C. Drone (Tactical Ability): The drone’s healing effect increased from 5 HP per second to 8 HP. The time to deploy the drone became about 33% faster.
- Care Package (Ultimate Ability): Cooldown decreased from 6 minutes to 5 minutes. It will offer upgrades in three different categories: Body Shield, Helmet, Backpack, Knockdown Shield, and weapon equipment. These upgrades will be adjusted according to the team’s current situation.
Lifeline’s kit was not in a particularly healthy place. The Passive shield was extremely strong to the point of frustration, while her Tactical and Ultimate seemed like they were becoming more and more obsolete. These changes are aimed to redistribute this big power differential between all of her abilities, making D.O.C. and Care Package more powerful and effective, while tamping down on the highly binary and situational Combat Revive.
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Octane
- Stim (Tactical Ability): The time between the two Stims decreased from 4 seconds to 1 second. The cost of using the ability increased from 12 HP to 20 HP.
- Increased bullet spread while in the air and shooting from the low Launch Pad trajectory
Octane continues to perform really well after the latest changes. Too well? We still love the frequency of the Jump Pad, but we’d like to make using Stim something Octane thinks about doing at the right time, instead of always slamming it by default.
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Loba
- Burglar’s Best Friend (Tactical Ability): Loba can run and slide at normal speed when she threw the bracelet. After translocation, she will not be affected by the effect of slowing down.
- Fixed bugs that cause bracelet tosses to fail.
- Black Market Boutique (Ultimate Ability): Cooldown increased from 90 seconds to 120 seconds.
Horizon
- Gravity Lift (Ultimate Ability): Lift speed reduced by 30%. Side-to-side acceleration reduced. The time you can sit at the top of Gravity Lift is limited to 2 seconds. Cooldown increased from 15 seconds to 20 seconds.
- Wattson pylons can zap Horizon’s abilities.
Horizon is powerful and popular, but that’s not why we’re making these changes. We believe that mistakes in Apex Legends should be punishable, and when Horizon could just get herself out of bad positioning while popping a whole battery, this just wasn’t true. These changes have two goals: 1) make it much more possible for enemies to shoot Horizon as she sits in her gravity lift and 2) make gravity lift less of an impromptu sniper tower.
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Fuse
- Knuckle Cluster (Tactical Ability): Fuse now has two stacks of Knuckle Cluster. Cooldown reduced from 25 seconds to 20 seconds.
More help is coming, but we want to be very careful how we buff him so that he doesn’t just become the Legend that kills you with his abilities.
Respawn Entertainment
Bangalore
- Smoke Launcher (Tactical Ability): Bangalore’s smoke is now thicker.
Last patch we optimized Bangalore’s smoke particles and inadvertently thinned them out. This aims to get her back to the original visuals while keeping the optimizations.
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Bloodhound
- No longer receives assists from Eye of the Allfather.
Bloodhound’s scan is strong, but the goal of this change in particular is to reconsider assists and their implications for Ranked Points. There’s enough intrinsic value in sonar scans, and it’s a slippery slope to consider crediting assists for other non-damaging abilities. Crypto will remain an exception. The active nature of Crypto’s drone scan is notably different from the passive option with Bloodhound. This should encourage Bloodhound players to act on the information they get from the scan, to eliminate instances where they might try to snag a quick assist without committing to a fight in the same way Crypto has to.
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Crypto
- Crypto’s drone can now scan and open care packages.
- Can no longer use his drone to “hijack” a respawn beacon that’s already in use.
Weapon Updates
Like Legends, weapons will change with the new season.
Marksman Category
In addition to sniper weapons, the game also has marksman weapons. We all know these weapons, G7 Scout and 30-30 Repeater. Both weapons have been under the Assault Rifle category. However, with this new season, Marksman will be added as a new category.
The G7 Scout and 30-30 Repeater will now be in this category. In addition, the game’s newest weapon, the Bocek, will also be a Marksman weapon. Respawn also decided to add Triple Take, which we know as a sniper, into this category. So from now on, we’re not going to be able to implement sniper equipment to Triple Take.
Supply Drop Weapons
With Season 9, Peacekeeper, Apex Legends players’ favorite weapon from day one, is finally no longer a supply drop weapon! But acting like a shotgun at close range and a sniper at long range, Triple Take is the new weapon of supply drops.
Since we are exchanging a shotgun with a marksman weapon, now was a good time to rebalance the drop rates of crate weapons. The Kraber will spawn less often in the early game and more often in the mid game to better accommodate its power. The Triple Take will be the most common early game crate weapon, with the Prowler being the most prominent late game crate weapon.
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Fully Kited Weapons
With the new season, fully equipped weapons, which we know as gold weapons, are also changing.
- Added: Wingman, Bocek, R99, Hemlock, and Sentinel
- Removed: R301, 30-30 Repeater, Mozambique, Longbow DMR, and Spitfire
Hop-Ups
- Shatter Caps: Once you have this, you can change the way your weapon fires normally or in shatter mode. In this mode, your bullets will split into pieces. The weapons you can use this hop-up will be 30-30 Repeater and Bocek.
- Deadeye’s Tempo: Firing at the perfect moment increases the fire rate. This can currently be attached to the Sentinel and the Bocek.
- Hammerpoint and Skullpiercer are removed from the loot pool.
Assault Rifles
- The headshot multiplier for all assault rifles reduced from 2.0 to 1.75
This was already the case for the Hemlok, so the affected guns are the R301, Flatline, and Havoc.
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Peacekeeper
- Precision Choke will be default and can be toggled off.
- Pellet damage reduced from 10 to 9
- Rechamber time increased from 0.9 seconds to 1.1 seconds
- Reload times increased (regular from 2.45 to 2.5, empty from 3.35 to 3.5)
- Pellet spread increased in general and spread when charged increased for all charge levels (from 0.65/0.45/0.2 to 0.85/0.65/0.35)
- Quickly loses charge after leaving ADS
Since the Peacekeeper is coming out of the crate, we are bringing many of the stats back in line with their previous values. We are also reducing its damage potential and bringing in the effective range a bit since the Precision Choke is always available now.
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Triple Take
- As a crate weapon, it will come with a 9 ammo clip and 63 reserve ammo
- Fire rate increased from 1.2 to 1.3
- Time to full charge reduced from 1.1 seconds to 1 second
- Retains charge briefly after leaving ADS
- Move-speed while aiming down sights has been increased to match other marksman weapons — faster than snipers, slower than ARs
- Increased spread while airborne and aiming down sights
Havoc
- Increased recoil controllability early in the pattern
Spitfire
- Reduced recoil controllability early in the pattern
The Spitfire is too strong at the moment, boasting good damage output with low recoil. Making it a bit harder to control early in the pattern should give more time for opponents to fight against it. That said, we’re prepared to make more changes to the Spitfire if it remains too powerful.
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30-30 Repeater
- Increased leg damage multiplier from 0.75 to 0.85
- Move-speed while aiming down sights has been increased to match other marksman weapons — faster than snipers, slower than ARs
The 30-30 could use some love, so we’re bringing up the amount of leg damage it does. This should make it a bit more consistent without raising its high “best case” damage potential.
Respawn Entertainment
G7 Scout
- Move-speed while aiming down sights has been increased to match other marksman weapons — faster than snipers, slower than ARs
- Increased hipfire spread size (reduced accuracy) to be more in line with other marksman weapons
The 30-30 Repeater and the Bocek Compound Bow have more accurate hipfire than the baseline marksman weapon values, so the G7 Scout will be less accurate in hipfire than these other weapons.
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Longbow
- Increased headshot multiplier from 2.0 to 2.15
Wingman
- Increased headshot multiplier from 2.0 to 2.15
As we’ve done before when the Skullpiercer is out of the loot pool, we’re giving the Longbow and Wingman a compensatory buff.
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Mozambique
- Increased magazine capacity from 4 to 6
- Moved the lower 2 pellets inward in the blast pattern
This brings up the baseline power level so “only” finding a Mozambique early in the match gives you more of a fighting chance, and makes up for the removal of Hammerpoints.
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P2020
- Increased bullet damage from 15 to 18
- Lowered fire rate from 8.5 to 6.25
Similar to the Mozambique, we want to bring up the P2020’s baseline power level a bit. Most players couldn’t take advantage of the fast fire rate, so bringing that down while increasing the damage should help players win more early fights with the P2020.
Respawn Entertainment
Arc Star
- Aim and movement slow removed from the initial stick.
Sticking someone should feel rewarding, considering it’s a rare occurrence that’s difficult to pull off. While an argument can be made that getting stuck should be a personal death sentence, the inability to at least relocate and spare teammates from the follow-up explosion makes it hard to counter against a coordinated team. This change should help mitigate that without stripping away the satisfaction of hitting a nice stick.
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Quality of Life
- Badges are now sorted by categories and can be filtered by “all” or “unlocked only”.
- When looting death boxes, players can now see health bars for everyone on the team.
- Challenges can now be “favorited” by going into the challenges menu and right clicking a challenge. That Challenge will then be added to a new favorites tab that will appear in the lobby and in the match’s map screen.
- Pressing and Holding F2 while in-game will bring up the ability description page for your character. This is only available on PC.
- Players can now request better equipment by going into their inventory and pinging a piece of equipment.
- Your first Challenge Reroll of the day is now free.
- Rerolling your challenges will allow you to choose from either BR-focused challenges or Arenas-focused ones.
- Holo Sprays, Quips, and Emotes, can be favorited. These will be used whenever the player is prompted to do a random emote.
- Club Invites v2: You can now include what you want to play when you send your clubmates a party invite via the Club tab. Select as many club mates as you want to send the invite to at once via the member list.
- Ranked: Fixed edge cases where an abandon penalty would be incorrectly applied due to server errors.
- Flight path adjustments: Removing edge dropship flight paths to prevent matches where large portions of the map receive little to no traffic.
Ring Updates
- Fourth Ring pre-shrink time reduced from 2:00 to 1:45, and shrink speed reduced from 33 second close time to 40 seconds.
- Fifth Ring shrink speed reduced from 20 second close time to 40 seconds.
- Sixth Ring pre-shrink time reduced from 1:30 to 1:00, and shrink speed reduced from 1:40 close time to 2:00.
Bug Fixes
Bloodhound
- Fixed an issue with the Tactical UI not showing while in Bloodhound’s Ultimate.
Pathfinder
- Gas Traps and Jump Pads will no longer float into the sky when placed next to a zipline.
Wraith
- Slight wall bumps no longer inadvertently cancel Wraith’s tactical.
Mirage
- Decoys no longer die after a tick of thermite damage.
Octane
- Ordinances will no longer get stuck and disappear when being bounced off of Jump Pads.
- Death Totems will no longer bounce when a Jump Pad is placed under it.
- Players will no longer have weapons drawn if they are knocked as they enter the Fight Night ring via a Jump Pad.
- Updated Octane’s Helicopter emote to correctly remove his leg for which he is using it to do said helicoptering.
Wattson
- Fixed the “Extend” prompt for Watson’s fences not appearing in certain situations.
- Haute Drop skin will no longer block view when reloading the Sentinel.
Loba
- Fixed more areas where Loba’s Bracelet fails.
- Red Handed skin on consoles will now properly animate.
Rampart
- Mobile Respawn Beacon now has proper collision with Amped Cover.
- Jumping on and off a damaged Shiela will no longer transfer the flame effect to your weapon.
Horizon
- Players will no longer have weapons drawn if they are knocked as they enter the fight night ring via a Gravity Lift.
- 1x holo sight will no longer block view when using certain skins.
- Fixed an issue with NEWT not getting refunded if it immediately dies due to a bad spot.
Fuse
- 1x holo sight will no longer block view when using certain skins.
Flatline
- Part of the iron sight was being displayed over the whole weapon.
Prowler
- Supply Drop Prowler can now toggle fire modes.
Sentinel
- Moved tool tips to not overlap hop up icons.
- Fixed a graphical issue when swapping to Sentinel.
Misc.
- Fixed a menu issue with the advanced look options being hidden.
- Survey beacons will now appear on the map when teammates are respawned.
Apex Legends players were waiting for the Season 9 updates because devs told players that Titanfall 2 content is coming to the game. However, with the launch of Season 9, players rushed into the game, and servers of Apex Legends couldn’t handle it. But devs fixed the problem, and many players are happy about the content. We hope that Apex Legends will release good seasons, just like Season 9.
