Apex Legends season 3 patch: Full notes and updates

Season three of Apex Legends is underway and Respawn introduced a myriad of changes to shake up the battle royale’s meta today, including a new map, legend, and weapon.

Season three, Meltdown, looks to reinvigorate the battle royale in its junior year, promising a thrilling and exciting experience. World’s Edge will be the only playable map at launch following the removal of Kings Canyon. It features terrain that varies from ice and snow to molten lava. Crypto, the Charge Rifle, and new hop-ups will also make their debut along with weapon and item tweaks.

Here are the full patch notes for season three, Meltdown.

World’s Edge

The new map incorporates terrifying ice spikes, molten lava, geysers, and even a moving train to create a truly unique experience.

“After multiple suspicious setbacks during the reconstruction of Kings Canyon, the Syndicate has decided to move the Games to the cliffside mining city known as World’s Edge on nearby Talo,” Respawn said.

Crypto

• The hacker makes his Apex debut, showcasing surveillance abilities that will likely cause a dramatic shift in the meta.
• Passive: Neurolink
  • Crypto and his teammates see what his Surveillance Drone detects up to a 30 meter 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.

Charge Rifle

• The new gun is a sniper rifle that uses energy ammunition. Players can equip Extended Energy Magazines to it, as well as all scopes and sniper stocks.
• The rifle deals minor damage initially before “delivering a mighty blow.”
• Players can find the Charge Rifle all over the map as it’s a part of the standard loot pool.

Legend meta

All legends will now have the “Executioner Perk,” which gives a full shield recharge after successfully completing a finisher on an enemy. Although the perk was previously on the Gold Body Shield, it’s now available to all legends no matter what armor they have equipped.

Gibraltar

• Dome Shield
  • Players in the Dome Shield use healing items 25 percent faster.
  • Increased the throw distance by 60 percent.
  • Increased cooldown.
    • 20 seconds to 30 seconds.
• Defensive Bombardment
  • Decreased cooldown.
    • 4.5 minutes to three minutes.
  • Decreased duration.
    • Eight seconds to six seconds.
  • Increased throw distance by 36 percent.

Bloodhound

• Eye of the Allfather
  • Reduced the animation time to activate by 33 percent.
  • 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 percent.
  • Increased movement speed bonus
    • 25 percent to 30 percent

Bangalore

• Rolling Thunder
  • Increased damage
    • 20 to 40.

Octane

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

Wraith

• Dimensional Rift
  • No longer deploys if you’re downed before placing it.

Pathfinder

• Grapple
  • Reduced the grapple projectile velocity by 33 percent, meaning it takes a fraction of a second longer to connect the grapple to the wall. The behavior once you’re connected remains the same.
• Zipline
  • Increased cooldown.
    • 90 seconds to 120 seconds.

Weapon and loot meta

Hop-ups

“We think the number of hop-up types in the game is about as high as we want to go right now when we consider loot dilution and the likelihood of finding a desired hop-up,” Respawn said “Going forward, we intend to rotate hop-ups each season—some may be removed from the loot pool to make room for new or returning ones.”

• 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 four (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 three (purple).
  • This hop-up makes each trigger pull fire a quick two round burst.

Consumables

• Ultimate Accelerants
  • Ultimate charge restored increased.
    • 20 percent to 35 percent
  • Reduced the amount in the world by around 40 percent.

Gold Gear changes

• Gold Backpack
  • The gold backpack has a new perk, “Guardian Angel.” With Guardian Angel, you’ll 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’ll be able to tell when an opponent has the ability to heal faster by seeing the gold armor damage numbers.

Weapons

“For season three weapon changes, our goals were to encourage and improve longer range gunfights and reduce power on some of the weapons that have been dominating lately,” Respawn said.

• 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 to 1.3
  • Reduced leg damage multiplier.
    • 0.9 to 0.8
• G7 Scout
  • Increased base damage.
    • 30 to 34
• Hemlok
  • Increased base damage.
    • 18 to 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 to 19

New Gold Weapons

“We’ve swapped out the previous set of Gold Weapons with some fresh new ones for season three,” Respawn said.

• 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.
• 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) 
• Daily challenges should only give you, at most, one challenge for a Legend you don’t own.
• No dupe character daily challenges (e.g. you should never get two 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.

Bug fixes

• Octane – fixed a bug where sometimes mantling while using a tactical stopped players from being able to perform any other actions until the tactical is finished.
• Wattson – fixed bug where sometimes the visual FX from her fences would not show up after being deployed.
• Pathfinder – Fixed a bug with Insider Knowledge passive where Survey Beacon locations would disappear from the full map after activating them.
• Fixed bug where players could sometimes receive additional Battle Pass rewards by leveling up two games in a row.
• Fixed an exploit that allowed players to spam fire with the Peacekeeper.
• Fixed bug where looting Lifeline’s Care Packages would not count towards the “Loot X amount of Care Packages” in the Battle Pass challenges.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes the smoke visual FX from Gibraltar, Bangalore, and Caustic Ultimates would show up on scopes when swapping weapons rapidly.
• PC – Fixed bug where model settings would be forced to “high” regardless of what setting was selected.
• Fixed a bug where players could sometimes skip the landing animation after a long fall.
• Fixed bug where sometimes map fog visual FX would disappear while looting a deathbox.
• Rebalanced audio to address issues with footsteps, ziplines, and jump jets.