The latest Apex Legends limited-time event, Grand Soirée Arcade, has already begun. The event will continue until January 28, offering seven different game modes and several unlockable legendary cosmetics. The event launched for Apex Legends along with an accompanying patch, which has implemented some major changes to some Legends, fixed some bugs and also hints at potential content for Season 4.
Now that the patch has been released, Gibraltar and Crypto have been buffed, while Wraith has been nerfed. Gibraltar now has a third passive ability, which lets him revive a squadmate faster when inside his Dome Shield. Crypto's drone has also been buffed from 1 HP to 30 HP, making it harder to destroy. Additionally, the drone's EMP will not slow down squadmates, but still takes shield damage.
Wraith has been nerfed in an interesting manner. Before the nerf, Wraith received a speed boost when activating Into the Void. She was also able to couple that speed with the Dimensional Rift, allowing her to create longer portals. After the nerf, when Wraith combines her Void and Dimensional Rift, she will only be able to move at the combined speed of both her abilities without any extra boost. Additionally, the cooldown for her Into the Void passive has been increased from 25 seconds to 35, making her harder to escaping firefights and zone walls.
As mentioned before, the update patch also fixes a lot of bugs, including a bug that only displayed your skins and not your squadmates' skins on character select screen. Extended energy mags have also been removed. This leaves the Havoc assault rifle with 32 shots and Devotion machine gun with 44 shots, but the Triple-Take sniper rifle's clip size remains unchanged. In the update patch notes, Respawn mentioned: "that the removal of energy mags seems a bit odd, but it will make much more sense with the release of Season 4." Later, the developer said that the change was a mistake and wasn't supposed to happen until the start of Season 4.
The removal of extended energy mags does not confirm that the Volt submachine will be added to the game, but it seems like a possible hint in that direction. However, Volt, as seen in Titanfall 2, is one of the best guns in the game. Extending the gun's magazine size would only make it more overpowered in the hands of fast-moving operators.
Here are the full patch notes for the latest update in Apex Legends:
General Bug Fixes
- Fixes for various script and code errors that were causing crashes.
- Fixed a bug where the out of bounds timer would not display when perching on top of some buildings in Capitol City.
- Fix for cases we saw where players would receive a client error when fighting Wattson.
- Fixed issue with Octane's Laughing Fool skin blocking player vision when using the 1x Holo Sight.
- Fixed issue where players could get into unintentional hiding spots in the Train tunnels and around multiple buildings on the map.
- Fixed bug where the minimap was showing an incorrect view of the landscape east of the Sorting Factory and Capitol City.
- Fixed bug where the trajectory line wouldn’t appear when trying to aim ordnance.
- Fixes for cases where the final circle was ending in a bad location.
- Fixed an issue with the Ghouls and Ghost Peacekeeper skin not displaying the correct animation in-game.
- Fixed the bug where a squadmate selects a character in Legend Select and the Legend is not displaying the skin that is currently equipped by the player.
Legend Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where if anyone picks up gold shields while inside of a Gibraltar dome shield they will receive 63% faster healing when it should stay at 50%
- Fixed a couple of bugs with Bloodhound Passive skill: players could not see timers when looking at enemy tracks [clues] and tracks would expire 30 seconds sooner than expected.
- Fixed bug where Wraith could take damage from Thermite ordnance while using her Tactical or Ultimate abilities.
- Fixed visual bug for when Crypto first drops into game, the Drone UI reports that it is "recharging" (as if it has been destroyed pre-drop), but progress does not complete / progress.
- Fix for Wattson’s Ultimate to prevent being able to deploy an Interceptor Pylon through walls.
Legend Meta
- Gibraltar
- Passive: Gibraltar revives squadmates faster while inside the Dome Shield.
- Wraith
- Removed the bonus move speed Into the Void and Dimensional Rift at the same time. Wraith will now move at their combined movement speed when they are both activated.
- Increased cooldown for Into the Void: 25 seconds -> 35 seconds.
- Crypto
- Drone and EMP improvements.
- Surveillance Drone increased the health 1 -> 30.
- EMP no longer affects friendly traps/deployables.
- EMP no longer slows friendlies.
Change To Energy Mags
- Extended Energy Mags removed
- HAVOC mag size: 32
- Devotion mag size: 44
Designer Notes:
We know that the removal of energy mags seems a bit odd, but it will make much more sense with the release of Season 4! It takes a while to make the bigger changes you see in the new season updates, and we generally make sure to filter out these changes from preceding mid-season updates. This time we made a mistake and shipped a change that wasn’t intended to go live until Season 4.
Tournament Mode
This feature is limited to approved partners and allows them to arrange private player matches, record live footage via game client spectators, and view match results. Our goal here is to provide great tools for tournament organizers for setting up teams and matches at events and a better spectating experience for fans.
