Apex Legends has launched its Season 2 update, bringing with it a new character, a totally revamped Battle Pass, Ranked Leagues, and tons of other changes. All the big-ticket updates launching with Season 2 came alongside a number of smaller tweaks to factors like weapon balance, and Respawn has outlined all those in the patch notes. Read on for the full list and a look at some of the stand-out additions and changes.

　　Posted on the Apex Legends subreddit, the patch notes are extensive. It outlines a few of the major changes--namely, significant adjustments to the map and the addition of a new playable Legend named Wattson--but then goes into the nitty-gritty detail. There are several balance adjustments to Legends and weapons, some quality-of-life changes, and bug fixes. New hop-ups are also available, including disruptor rounds that deal additional damage to shielded targets, hammerpoint rounds for unshielded targets, and a change to the skullpiercer.

　　You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.

　　Click To Unmute

　　Thompson: The Pop Culture Icon’s Strange Legacy - Loadout

　　Firearms Expert’s FAVORITE Weapons Of 2023State Of Gaming Handhelds In 2023How Lies of P Cracked the Souls GenreLike a Dragon: Infinite Wealth - Official Ichiban Kasuga Character Spotlight TrailerLike a Dragon: Infinite Wealth - Official Chitose Fujinomiya Character Spotlight TrailerResident Evil 4 Adds Mercenaries and Microtransactions | GameSpot NewsFallout: New Vegas 2 Rumors Explained | GameSpotApril Xbox Game Pass Games Revealed | GameSpot NewsOver 15 Free Games To Claim In April | GameSpot NewsNew Witcher Game Plans Have Changed | GameSpot NewsElden Ring Death Count Revealed | GameSpot News

　　Share

　　LinkEmbed

　　Size:640 × 360480 × 270

　　Start at: End at: Autoplay Loop

　　Want us to remember this setting for all your devices?

　　Sign up or Sign in now!

　　Please use a html5 video capable browser to watch videos.

　　This video has an invalid file format.

　　00:00:00

　　HTML5

　　Auto HD High Low

　　Report a problem

　　Sorry, but you can't access this content!

Please enter your date of birth to view this video

　　By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's

　　Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

　　enter

　　Now Playing: Apex Legends Season 2 Patch Notes Include Free Apex Packs And More - GS News Update

　　The patch notes also detail some free rewards you can get simply by playing Season 2--no need to purchase the Battle Pass. Those include a Hot Rod skin for Wattson, five Apex packs, and stat trackers for each Legend.

　　You can read the full patch notes below, or check out our wrap-up of all the big changes in Season 2. Also be sure to keep up with how King's Canyon has changed and the revised challenge system, which ties into the new Battle Pass that's available for purchase this season. Aside from the new Legend Wattson, we've seen hints of a second new Legend coming to the game this season as well.

Apex Legends Season 2 Patch Notes

　　To get the Battle Pass, jump into Apex Legends and head to the Battle Pass tab in the store. Grab the Battle Pass for 950 Apex Coins or the Battle Pass Bundle for 2,800 Apex Coins (containing 4,700 Apex Coins’ worth of content!), and you’re all set.

　　CHALLENGES

　　Take on Daily and Weekly Challenges to score bonus Battle Pass XP and level up even faster. Read more here.

　　NEW CONTENT TYPES

　　Skydive emotes, music packs, and unique loading screens are now part of the rewards track.

　　MORE LEGENDARIES AND CRAFTING MATERIALS

　　Grab even more Legendary skins from the reward track and earn enough Crafting Materials to create a Legendary item of your choice.

　　FREE REWARDS

　　Everyone who plays Apex Legends Season 2 can earn:

　　Season 2 stat trackers for each Legend.

　　Five Apex Packs.

　　The Wattson Hot Rod skin.

　　Many new things to discover on Kings Canyon!

　　KINGS CANYON CHANGES

　　The Leviathans have breached Kings Canyon and it’ll never be the same! Many areas have been affected by our new guests. Enjoy exploring the new changes!

　　NEW LEGEND: WATTSON

　　Wattson has entered the arena and is available for 750 Apex Coins or 12,000 Legend Tokens.

　　PASSIVE: Spark of Genius

　　Ultimate Accelerants fully charge Wattson’s ultimate. Standing near the Interception Pylon boosts Wattson’s tactical recharge rate.

　　TACTICAL: Perimeter Security

　　Create electrified fences by connecting nodes. Fences damage and slow enemies.

　　ULTIMATE: Interception Pylon

　　Place an electrified pylon that destroys incoming ordnance and repairs damaged shields [can place up to 3 Pylons at one time].

　　RANKED LEAGUES

　　One thing we forgot to mention in the blog post: Players abandoning in Ranked will be penalized both with a matchmaking penalty, as well as have any potential RP gains zeroed out. On top of that, they will pay an additional penalty RP cost equal to their match entry cost. For example: if a Gold player gets 4 kills and would have finished top 5 but abandons his or her match on purpose, that player will get 0 RP for kills and placement, pay the 2 RP entry cost, and on top of that pay another 2 RP abandon penalty cost.

　　WEAPONS

　　New Airdrop Weapon: L-STAR EMG

　　Fires large high-damage plasma projectiles

　　Will overheat if player fires for too long

　　Comes with its own limited ammo supply

　　Only available in Airdrops

　　New Hop-Up: Disruptor Rounds

　　Increased damage to shielded targets.

　　Compatibility: Alternator / RE-45

　　New Hop-Up: Hammerpoint Rounds

　　Increased damage to unshielded targets.

　　Compatibility: P2020, Mozambique.

　　New Attachments: Energy Mags

　　Increases magazine capacity.

　　Increases reload speed at rare and above.

　　Compatibility: Havoc, Triple Take, Devotion.

　　Reduced default mag sizes on compatible weapons.

　　Skullpiercer Hop-Up: Upgraded to gold tier & increased rarity.

　　Flatline:

　　damage 16 -> 19

　　P2020:

　　damage 12 -> 13

　　Triple Take x Precision Choke:

　　choke time 1.5 -> 1.1

　　Alternator:

　　damage 13 -> 15

　　recoil mitigation increased for all barrel attachments.

　　Kraber:

　　damage 125 -> 145

　　headshot scale 2.0 -> 2.05

　　leg damage scale 0.76 -> 0.8

　　slightly increased rarity

　　Arc Star Tweaks

　　Increased ignition delay from 2.5 to 2.8 seconds.

　　Sticking a full health player with no armor will now down them.

　　Players at the edge of the explosion no longer get their shields completely shredded.

　　Ammo Stack Sizes

　　Shotgun max stack reduced from 64 to 16. Players now need multiple stacks of ammo to run a shotty.

　　Energy max stack increased from 60 to 80; now matches Light/ Heavy ammo.

　　Rotated Gold Weapons

　　Flatline

　　Alternator

　　RE45

　　Mozambique

　　P2020

　　Airdrop Weapon Spawn Rates

　　L-STAR added to airdrop weapon loot tables.

　　Airdrop weapon spawn rates now change based on early/ mid/ late game. For example, early game will spawn more Krabers, end game will spawn more Mastiffs.

　　Performance Optimizations

　　Improved performance when firing weapons, especially for multi-projectile weapons like shotguns and Triple Take.

　　In our testing this has contributed to delivering a smoother overall experience on both server and client, particularly during early game combat situations.

　　Bug fixes

　　Fixed exploit where players could use weapon inspect to cancel out other weapon behaviors.

　　EVA-8: ADS recoil now resettles back to starting point instead of a randomized offset of the starting point.

　　Thermite Grenades: fixed an issue where players downed with thermite could be invincible to thermite after being revived.

　　General

　　Fortified [ Gibraltar, Caustic ]

　　Damage reduction increased: 10% -> 15%

　　Fortified Legends are now immune to slow effects from weapon fire.

　　Low Profile [ Wraith, Lifeline, Pathfinder ]

　　Low Profile increases incoming damage by 5%.

　　Bloodhound

　　Eye of the Allfather

　　Enemies scanned now are tracked in real time instead of leaving a ghost image behind. The tracking lasts for 1.5 seconds.

　　Increased the angle of the scan to 110 from 90.

　　Tracker

　　Increased clue duration to 90 seconds from 60 seconds.

　　Fixed a bug where energy weapons wouldn’t leave behind weapon fired clues.

　　Fixed a bug where movement clues would sometimes not be generated.

　　Mirage

　　Vanishing Act

　　Mirage can now cancel out of his ultimate cloak early.

　　Mirage now has a small delay when disabling cloak.

　　Caustic

　　Nox Gas

　　The magnitude of the slow is reduced by 50% when effecting teammates.

　　Gibraltar

　　Dome of Protection

　　Increased the duration by 3 seconds.

　　Pathfinder

　　Updated the hit box to better conform with the base model.

　　We are also planning to make adjustments so his hitbox better reflects Legendary Skins as well for cases where it’s not matching up.

　　Lifeline

　　D.O.C. heal drone now gets destroyed after 2 damage ticks by the circle.

　　STATS PAGE

　　Added a stats page. You can access it by hovering over your name while in the Lobby and clicking it to inspect. The page will show you your overall account stats as well as access to your stats for each season and Ranked Series.

　　We're sure you all will have feedback on other stats you'd like to see here. What we're shipping with Season 2 is just the start and we're planning to build on it. We won't promise anything but definitely let us know what other stats you want shown after you've played around with it.

　　KNOWN ISSUES: There will be some stats [like assists for example] that will start counting for Season 2 but won’t account for progress before that. This is because until we added the feature, this stuff wasn’t being counted. We’re looking at future improvements to retroactively update these areas that we hope to address down the road.

　　THE RING

　　With Season 2, we’ll trying out new circle closing speed, size, and damage that now applies to both Ranked Leagues and the normal Apex Queue.

　　Ring Damage is now the following:

　　Round 1: 2% damage taken per tick.

　　Round 2: 5% damage taken per tick.

　　Round 3: 10% damage taken per tick.

　　Round 4: 20% damage taken per tick.

　　Round 5: 20% damage taken per tick.

　　Round 6 and beyond: 25% damage taken per tick.

　　Ring start and closing speed is now the following:

　　First Circle

　　Starts closing after: 3 minutes.

　　Time to close: 2 minutes.

　　Second Circle

　　Starts closing after: 2 minutes 30 seconds.

　　Time to close: 2 minutes.

　　Third Circle

　　Starts closing after: 2 minutes 15 seconds.

　　Time to close: 2 minutes.

　　Fourth Circle

　　Starts closing after: 2 minutes.

　　Time to close: 2 minutes.

　　Fifth Circle

　　Starts closing after: 1 minute 30 seconds.

　　Time to close: 1 minutes 40 seconds.

　　Sixth Circle

　　Starts closing after: 1 minute 30 seconds.

　　Time to close: 1 minutes 40 seconds.

　　Seventh Circle

　　Starts closing after: 2 minutes.

　　Time to close: 1 minute 20 seconds.

　　Eighth Circle

　　Starts closing after: 20 seconds.

　　Time to close: 1 minute 20 seconds.

　　Ring radius for the first circle has been slightly reduced [it’s about 9% smaller than it was before].

　　QUALITY OF LIFE

　　Pings

　　When pinging a closed door, the player will now say “closed door here”.

　　When pinging an open door, the player will now say “someone’s been here”.

　　When a player requests a hop up, if the gun only accepts one kind of hop up, the player will callout that specific hop up they are looking for. If the gun accepts multiple hop ups, the player won’t vocalize it but all possible hop ups requested will show up in the obit feed.

　　Arc stars that are stuck to players should no longer fail to do damage when the part of the player it is stuck to is intersecting another object.

　　Made visual improvements to the Legends while in the Lobby and character select.

　　Added improvements and polish to the Legend’s animations while skydiving.

　　Improved melee hit detection on the hover tank while it’s moving.

　　Server optimizations.

　　Improved server and client performance when firing weapons, especially for multi-projectile weapons like shotguns and TripleTake.

　　Large doors and Supply Bins can now be used while viewing them from more extreme angles.

　　Slow Effects will now slow players equally regardless of their controller settings.

　　Wraith’s Heirloom will now more reliably show its lightning visualFX.

　　Heal items will now more reliably show the correct model when switching between different types.

　　General optimizations to improve framerate.

　　Fixed issue with geometry sometimes flickering when viewed from a long distance.

　　Death Box rarity colors are now more visible from a distance.

　　“Send Friend Request” tool-tip now shows up when hovering over teammates Banners while viewing the “Squad Eliminated” screen and “Squads” tab during a match.

　　Made it so that your weapon won’t play its priming animation when you pull it out after skydiving.

　　Fixed issue with skydive continuing to loop falling soundFX after landing.

　　Apex will no longer swap from full screen to windowed mode automatically if you shift to focus on other applications while Apex is booting up.

　　Fixed issue with players seeing their Origin friends listed as offline when they aren’t.

　　Made improvements to voice chat for PC.

　　Fixed issue where you could lose your Steam friends list after restarting Apex on PC.

　　Fixed issue where sometimes players would get a black screen during character select.

　　Added “Flash Hider” description to the Gold Barrel Stabilizer attachment. It always did this but the information wasn’t provided well so we added it to the description when inspecting the attachment.

　　BUG FIXES

　　Fixed a hit registration bug that could occur if you fired your weapon while being damaged by an enemy shotgun.

　　Fixed a bug where sometimes load screens would not appear properly and players would temporarily see the training map before loading into a match.

　　Fixed issue with players not always hearing selected quip dialogue when performing a finisher or being executed.

　　Fixed issue with Apex not working correctly when SLI or Crossfire is enabled.

　　Fixed bug with the consumables wheel sometimes appearing blank.

　　Fixed bug where players would sometimes get stuck on the Battle Pass Level screen.

　　Fixed bug where The Unlock button would be greyed out when it shouldn’t be when trying to view rewards.

　　Fixed bug where players would sometimes be unable to exit the Battle Pass tab after selecting it from the Lobby.

　　Fixed an exploit where players could jump while downed.

　　Fixed issue where sometimes the client would crash to the Dashboard when entering character select on Xbox One.

　　Fixed a bug where pinging a sniper stock in your inventory would show up as “looking for Grip”

　　Fixed a bug that caused players and loot to begin sliding permanently or launching inconsistently onto Supply Ship surfaces after doing melee attacks against the Supply Ship walls.

　　Fixed bug that could cause players to shift to a location under the map when switching between players while spectating.

　　Fixed bug for cases where performing a melee attack while inspecting an item would cause the attack to slow down and not deal damage.

　　[X1 only] Fixed bug where players were not being rewarded “The Player” achievement after hitting level 50. If you have reached level 50 and not received it in the past it should now be awarded retroactively.

　　Fixed the bug that sometimes caused Apex to crash when plugging a PS4 controller into your PC while the game is active.

　　Fixed bug that caused an “Out of Bounds” warning and timer while riding the Supply Ship over certain areas of Kings Canyon.

　　General improvements to game stability related to various script errors.

　　LEGENDS

　　Bloodhound

　　Fixed bug where players wouldn’t create movement evidence markers unless they were sprinting.

　　Fixed bug where sometimes energy weapons wouldn’t create ‘weapon fired’ evidence markers.

　　Wraith

　　Fixed bug where Wraith’s jetpack boosters could still be seen while phasing.

　　Fixed issue where in some rare cases, performing a Finisher while down player is entering a Wraith Portal.

　　Fixed an exploit that allowed players to place extra Dimensional Portals.

　　Octane

　　Fixed a bug that caused throwable items to bounce off a jump pad without actually touching it.