Apex Legends season 3 arrives, adding a new map, legend, and more

Season three of Apex Legends brings with it the biggest content update the game has seen, introducing a new map, a new legend, new weapons, and a whole host of balance changes. There’s more than enough content here to keep current players happy for some time, as well as potentially bringing back old players (like myself).

The most notable addition of this update (other than the start of season 3) is of course the new map, ‘World’s Edge’. The map is bigger than Kings Canyon and contains three separate biomes; there’s an ice area, a fire area, and a lush green area between them, with a moving train (which you can get on) that travels between all three different areas.

There’s some concern about the size of the map, especially in competitive play, as there could be a lot more teams left towards the end of the match which could make things a bit too hectic. That being said, we’re sure that Respawn will keep an eye on this as competitive tournaments start taking place on the new map.

One important thing to note regarding the new map is that you can’t choose which map you want to play. In fact, at the moment it’s not possible to play on the original Kings Canyon map at all, but we imagine there will soon be a map rotation feature.

The new Legend that has been added is called ‘Crypto’, who makes use of a drone and is more of a support class. His abilities include:

• Passive: NEUROLINK Crypto and his teammates see what his Surveillance Drone detects up to a 30m distance.
• Tactical: SURVEILLANCE DRONE Deploy an aerial camera drone. 40 second cooldown if destroyed.
• Ultimate: DRONE EMP Charge up an EMP from your drone. The blast deals 50 shield damage, slows players, and destroys traps.

A new weapon has also been added to the game. The ‘Charge Rifle’ is a new energy weapon that fires a beam at enemies causing a small amount of damage. However, if you continue to fire at the enemy it will explode, dealing high damage.

The full change log along with our comments can be found below:

LEGEND BALANCE CHANGES

All Legends

Executioner Perk: Previously, the Gold Armor perk, “Executioner”, gave a full shield recharge on successful completion of a finisher. In Season 3, all Legends will have this perk, meaning finishers will fully recharge your shields regardless if you have Gold Armor equipped or not. Gold Armor will now have a Guardian Angel perk which is detailed below in the Loot / Meta Changes section.

Gibraltar

Dome Shield

• Players in the Dome Shield use healing items 25% faster.
• Increased the throw distance by 60%.
• Increased cooldown 20 seconds -> 30 seconds.

Defensive Bombardment

• Decreased cooldown 4.5 minutes -> 3 minutes.
• Decreased duration 8 seconds -> 6 seconds.
• Increased throw distance by 36%.

Bloodhound

Eye of the Allfather

• Reduced the animation time to activate by 33%.
• Now immediately tells you how many targets have been pinged.

Beast of the Hunt

• Fixed an issue with FoV scaling messing up ADS aim sensitivity.
• Reduced animation time to activate by 30%.
• Increased movement speed bonus 25% -> 30%

Bangalore

Rolling Thunder

• Increased damage 20 -> 40.

Octane

Adrenaline Junkie

• Fixed an issue with FoV scaling messing up ADS aim sensitivity.

Wraith

Dimensional Rift

• No longer deploys if you are downed before placing it.

Pathfinder

Grapple

• Reduced the grapple projectile velocity by 33%, meaning it takes a fraction of a second longer to connect the grapple to the wall. The behavior once you are connected remains the same

Zipline

• Increased cooldown 90 seconds -> 120 seconds.

WEAPON AND LOOT BALANCE CHANGES

Hop-ups

• REMOVED: Disruptor Rounds
• REMOVED: Skullpiercer Rifling
• The base headshot damage multipliers of the DMR and Wingman have been increased slightly.
• Wingman: Was 2.0 base / 2.25 with Skullpiercer. Is now 2.15 base.
• DMR: Was 2.0 base / 2.5 with Skullpiercer. Is now 2.15 base.

NEW HOP-UP: Anvil Receiver

• Attaches to: Flatline and R-301.
• Rarity: level 4 (gold).
• This hop-up empowers semi-auto mode; it offers highly increased damage, but at the cost of reduced rate of fire and double ammo per shot.

NEW HOP-UP: Double Tap Trigger

• Attaches to: G7 Scout and EVA-8 Auto.
• Rarity: level 3 (purple).
• This hop-up makes each trigger pull fire a quick two round burst.

Consumables

Ultimate Accelerants

• Ultimate charge restored increased 20% -> 35%.
• Reduced the amount in the world by around 40%.

GOLD GEAR CHANGES

Gold Backpack

• The gold backpack has a new perk, “Guardian Angel”. With Guardian Angel, you will revive downed teammates with bonus health and shields (if they have armor).

Gold Armor

• The gold armor will now have “Fast Use” (consumable items take half as long to use), which was previously on the gold backpack. Now, you will be able to tell when an opponent has the ability to heal faster by seeing the gold armor damage numbers.

WEAPONS

R-99

• Base mag size reduction (Before: 18/22/26/30 – After: 18/20/23/27)
• Added some recoil randomness to patterns.

PDW Prowler

• Added some slight recoil randomness while maintaining the same pattern when fired in full-auto mode.

Longbow DMR

• Reduced rate of fire 1.6 -> 1.3
• Reduced leg damage multiplier 0.9 -> 0.8

G7 Scout

• Increased base damage 30 -> 34

Hemlok

• Increased base damage 18 -> 22
• Slight decrease to rate of fire to both fire modes.

Mozambique

• Decreased pattern spread
• Mozambique will now reset from recoil faster, which should make it easier to track targets and see where shots land.

L-STAR

• Substantial reduction to horizontal recoil.
• Now comes equipped with 1x Digital Threat optic.
• Reduced damage 21 -> 19

We’ve swapped out the previous set of Gold Weapons with some fresh new ones for Season 3. Keep an eye out for these fully kitted beasts that all include tier 3 versions of all compatible attachments, hop-up, and the following optics:

Flatline

• Includes 1x-2x optics

EVA-8

• Includes 1x threat scope

TripleTake

• 4x-10x Threat scope

G7 Scout

• 2x-4x optics

Charge Rifle

• 4x-10x threat scope

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Added a “random” option for customizing your unlocked loadscreens.
• Expanded the Ping Wheel so that you can now equip your unlocked Intro and Kill quips.
• Equip up to 8 intro or kill quips in the lobby
• Nearby enemies can hear quips when activated
• Press Y while ping wheel is up to access (controller) or F1 (default keyboard binding — you may need to set this manually as it won’t auto-bind).
• ”Celebrate” quickchat is now the 1st option in the quip wheel (Previously down on dpad).
• New Legend battle chatter – Legends now have voice lines that will call out when your squad is being third-partied. This is triggered if you take damage when recently damaged by another living squad
• You can now equip multiple skydive emotes (if you have multiple available on a character) – Hold A while skydiving to open the menu to select the skydive emote you want to use.
• Daily challenges should only give you, at most, 1 challenge for a Legend you don’t own.
• No dupe character daily challenges (e.g. you should never get 2 Gibraltar dailies in the same day).
• Fixes for slowdown/performance drops at the start of a match.
• Mirage – decoys will now go where directed when deploying them during the drop if Mirage isn’t the Jumpmaster.
• Lifeline – D.O.C. Healing Drone will no longer float away after being deployed on Supply Ships
• Fixed issue where Legends could show up as locked instead of selected when joining a match late.
• Small improvements across UI to make fonts and other elements more readable.
• When swapping weapons with one on the ground, attachments will now attempt to transfer to your stowed weapon in addition to the weapon you are about to pick up.

As well as the changes above there have also been a whole host of bug fixes and some changes to ranked play, including changes to scoring and penalties for leavers. You can read the full change list to ranked play here.