Apex Legends’ Fight Night event is live

Apex Legends is kicking off 2021 with a bang. The Fight Night Collection Event is now live, bringing a new game type, changing the landscape of Olympus with Pathfinder’s Town Takeover, and adding a slew of exclusive cosmetics—including Gibraltar’s heirloom set.

The patch didn’t usher in the infamous Caustic buff but instead adjusted the Hemlok and Mastiff, two particularly troublesome weapons in season seven, as well as Horizon and Rampart.

Related: Here are Apex Legends’ Fight Night patch notes

Here’s what’s new in Apex’s latest event.

Airdrop Escalation game type

The Fight Night event didn’t bring a new limited-time mode. Instead, it changed the game completely. The Airdrop Escalation is a “takeover” of the casual playlist, which means that fans won’t be able to jump into the normal “Play Apex” game mode for the duration of the event.

Airdrop Escalation spawns four supply drops when leaving the Jumpship and even more of them as the match progresses. Each drop contains fully-kitted weapons of increasingly higher tiers, including crate weapons and red armor starting in round four. Players who don’t land on the supply drops, however, can also grab regular weapons from the floor loot pool.

Pathfinder Town Takeover

It’s time to get in the ring—literally. Fight Night added a Pathfinder-themed boxing ring near Docks and Power Grid. Players who want to fistfight their way to victory will find it to be a prime location.

Entering the ring will disable weapons and abilities. The only way to defeat opponents is with a good old-fashioned fistfight. The ring has some loot balls (like the ones in the Cargo Bots on World’s Edge) that contain rare loot—if you can make it out, of course.

Other players won’t be able to snipe fighters from afar. The ring is impervious to outside interference. “No outside projectiles, grenades, or abilities can penetrate the ring’s force field,” according to Respawn.

Like most other Town Takeovers, the boxing ring should continue to be a part of the Olympian landscape for the foreseeable future.

Fight Night collection and Gibraltar Heirloom

It wouldn’t be a collection event without new cosmetics—and Fight Night is no exception. The latest patch brought a new collection of 24 limited-time items and players who buy all of them will get a special reward: Gibraltar’s heirloom.

The heirloom is Gibraltar’s battle club—or Patu, as he calls it—and first made an appearance during the season seven quest, Family Portrait. The item was a gift from his ex-boyfriend Nik, with whom he reunited during the events of the quest.

The battle club is a bonus reward for players who buy all of the collection items, but it will move to the Heirloom Shop after the event ends. It can be acquired with the elusive Heirloom Shards, the rarest currency in the game.

Balancing updates

In addition to all of the new elements in the patch, Respawn has made a series of balancing adjustments to a few legends and weapons. Fight Night backtracked on a controversial buff to Caustic but buffed Rampart and nerfed Horizon.

The Gravitational Manipulator received a nerf to her tactical: the effective cooldown between uses of her ability increased to 21 seconds (from 16). Rampart also got some extra firepower. The cooldown on her Amped Cover has dropped to 20 seconds (from 30), which could improve her efficiency.

Fight Night nerfed two weapons, too: the Hemlok and the Mastiff. The burst-fire AR saw a flat reduction in damage (20, down from 22) and the Mastiff gained increased spread on its third and fourth pellets. These changes should make them less oppressive and, in the case of the Mastiff, decrease its usable range.