It’s easy to replenish your body shield in Apex Legends. There are plenty of recovery items, such as Shield Batteries, Cells, and some Phoenix Kits you can find everywhere. But there’s another complicated yet instant method of fully recovering your shield, and all you need to do is play well.
Apex player Roonerth shared a video of him tricking an opponent to replenish his own shield. He was wearing the Epic variant of the item, which gave him 100 shield points. After being shot in an ambush, his shield went down to zero. He grabbed a common shield with 50 points off the floor, dropped his Epic variant and stood in front of it. When an opponent ran into his old body armor, he shot them down and got the kill. He was looting his opponent and noticed that his purple shield was back to 100 points.
Apex players know this mechanic exists, even if they never paid attention to it. When you eliminate an opponent who has a body shield, you’ve also taken the shield points down to zero. But when you search their death box for items, the body shield is always full. That means whenever you eliminate an opponent, their body shield will instantly replenish itself. That’s why Roonerth’s armor was back to 100 points after he eliminated his opponent.
This effect doesn’t happen when you drop the body shield. That’s why when his opponent switched to the one Roonerth had just dropped, he had no protection and was vulnerable to direct damage to his health.
This is a situational play, though. Roonerth’s opponent wouldn’t have grabbed this body shield if he was also wearing an Epic or Legendary variant. The video shows he was wearing the Rare, blue variant, which he drops after picking up the purple one.
Apex also has plenty of shield recovering items and they’re fast to use. During a fight, it’s safer to hide and use a couple of seconds to pop a Shield Battery or Phoenix Kit instead.
Even so, if you like tricking your opponents, this is a flashy play to pull off and you can get rewarded for it.
