Apex Legends season 16 patch notes: All changes so far

Apex Legends is bringing the Revelry in season 16, with a season all about celebrating how far the game has come since the very beginning. And instead of releasing a new legend this season, the Respawn team is devoting the season to overhauling the game’s current cast of characters and positioning Apex well for the future.

With so much to see, do, and party through, there’s a lot to look forward to next season.

While the full patch notes haven’t been released yet, there’s already plenty of information out there and available on the plentiful changes coming to the game. Read on to get acquainted with the new and improved Apex.

Early Apex Legends Revelry patch notes: All legend and game

Legend changes

Bloodhound

• Passive: Tracker
  • White Ravens: Ethereal White Ravens now occasionally spawn near Bloodhound when no enemies are around. Upon interaction or scanning, they fly towards the nearest enemy player
  • The White Raven leaves a trail for Bloodhound to follow and shares direction with their team on the map
  • Using a White Raven will recover 25 percent of Bloodhound’s Tactical and Ultimate charge. Scanning a White Raven fully refunds Tactical charge
• Tactical: Eye of the Allfather
  • Reduced full body scan time from three to one second
• Ultimate: Beast of the Hunt
  • No longer reduces cooldown for Eye of the Allfather scans
  • Now spawns one White Raven, which flies to the nearest enemy location. Killing an enemy while Beast of the Hunt is active spawns another raven.

Horizon

• Tactical: Gravity Lift
  • Nerf to weapon accuracy when using Horizon’s Gravity Lift
  • Gravity Lift speed buffed

Lifeline

• Passive: Combat Revive
  • Movement penalty when reviving reduced
• Ultimate: Care Package
  • Now descends faster, from 14 seconds to eight seconds

Mirage

• Passive: Now you see me…
  • Mirage and his ally now remain cloaked after a revive for three seconds
  • Weapons remain stowed while cloaked
  • Drawing your weapon ends the cloaking effect early
• Mirage Clones:
  • Bamboozles are now only triggered by bullet fire and melee
  • Bamboozled enemies now receive notification on their screen
  • Bamboozle icon marker now tracks Bamboozled player’s movement 
  • Bamboozle icon marker duration increased from 2.5 to 3.5 seconds  

Pathfinder

• Passive: Insider Knowledge
  • Scanning Survey Beacons no longer gives Pathfinder a cooldown
  • Pathfinder’s passive benefits (Ultimate charge and 10-second Ultimate cooldown reduction) are now gained by revealing Care Packages with the Skirmisher ability 
• Ultimate: Zipline Gun
  • Max range increased by roughly 60 percent.
  • Max speed increased by 66 percent. 
  • Acceleration and exit speed adjustments.
  • Targeting improvements, including updated visual and audio cues.
  • Can no longer place the end station on OOB zones. 

Seer

• Passive: Heartbeat Sensor
  • Respawn made audio from Seer’s passive more audible to enemy players
  • Activation is now delayed to match raise animation of weapon or unarmed
  • Lock-on indication will now only show on heartbeat cadence of target
• Tactical: Focus of Attention
  • No longer shows full body scan on scanned targets
• Ultimate: Exhibit
  • No longer reveals on initiation
  • Duration reduced from 30 seconds to 25
  • Cooldown increased from 120 seconds to 180s

Wraith

• Ultimate: Dimensional Rift
  • Max portal distance doubled (from roughly 76 meters to 152 meters)
  • Portal Duration reduced from 60 seconds to 45 seconds
  • Wraith now increases speed over time when creating longer portals

Legend classes

All legends are now separated into new legend classes with different perks for each class.

Related: All new class perks in Apex Legends

Assault (Ash, Fuse, Mad Maggie, Bangalore, Revenant)

• Can open red loot bins that contain secret compartments holding weapon attachments and hop-ups that are Rare or higher
• Will produce a weapon if no one on their team currently has a weapon
• Can store extra ammunition per stack in their inventory

Skirmisher (Wraith, Mirage, Octane, Horizon, Valkyrie, Pathfinder)

• Can see the highest-tier item in a care package from a distance and as it’s descending
• Can ping that item for teammates to see

Recon (Bloodhound, Seer, Vantage, Crypto)

• Can use modified survey beacons to see the positions of all enemies on the map for 30 seconds
• Enemies within a certain range are alerted to use of the beacon

Controller (Caustic, Wattson, Rampart, Catalyst)

• Can use ring consoles to find the location of the next ring

Support (Lifeline, Loba, Newcastle, Gibraltar)

• Can open secret compartment in blue loot bins for extra healing items
• Can craft teammate banners at Replicators, even if their banner has timed out

Weapon changes

New weapon: Nemesis AR

• Energy weapon
• Shoots in four-round bursts
• Reportedly, these bursts work automatically, and players don’t need to repeatedly tap their fire button like the Hemlok or Prowler
• Base damage: 17 to body, 27 to head
• Charge-up passive: The more you shoot the Nemesis, the shorter the time between bursts gets

R-301

• Base damaged nerfed from 14 to 13 to the body

R-99

• Increased damage from 11 to 12

CAR

• Reduced base ammo capacity to 19 from 20

Hemlock Burst AR (Care Package)

• Damage increased to 23 (was 20)
• Headshot Multiplier increased to 1.8 (was 1.75)
• Improved recoil
• Integrated Boosted Loader Hop-Up
• Boosted Loader: Faster reloads at low ammo that overload the magazine with 9 extra rounds

EVA-8

• Increased projectile size at close range

Peacekeeper

• Added Tactical Stocks attachment to improve reload speed and handling
• Increased close-range projectile size

Mastiff

• Spread pattern adjusted to be tighter
• Added Tactical Stocks attachment to improve reload speed and handling
• Increased close-range projectile size

Rampage LMG (Floor)

• Reverted to non-Care Package version
  • Damage reduced to 26 (from 28 in Care Package)
  • No longer auto-energizes when picking up
• Energy decays slower when not firing

Shotguns

• Gold shotgun bolt: New attachment automatically reloads shotguns when player slides, regardless of what weapon they currently have out

Assault Rifles

• Significantly reduced hipfire accuracy

Hop Up changes

The Hammerpoint Rounds hop up returns to ground loot as a Gold rarity item. It can once again be attached to the P2020 and the Mozambique for increased damage to flesh.

Game mode changes

Arenas and ranked Arenas are being sunset, and will no longer be available to play in Apex after season 15 ends. In its place, Team Death Match will enter Apex for the first three weeks of season 16. The six-vs-six mode uses several old Arenas maps, and allows players to choose loadouts and respawn after deaths similar to Control. Teams race to 30 total kills to win a round. First team to win two rounds wins the Team Death Match.

Related: Is Team Deathmatch permanent in Apex Legends?

After the first three weeks of the season are over, Team Death Match will go into a new, permanent playlist called Mixtape. Mixtape will rotate Team Death Match with Control and Gun Run, giving all three fan-favorite LTMs a more consistent home in Apex.

Map changes

In addition to some extra decorations that you’ll see on maps during the game’s anniversary season, the Mirage Voyage makes a return to all three maps in the season 16 rotation: World’s Edge, Storm Point, and Broken Moon.

Reportedly, the newly-named Mirage A Trois will appear in its traditional spot on World’s Edge, as well as in The Divide on Broken Moon. It is unknown exactly where it will appear on Storm Point.

Ranked changes

Instead of playing a full ranked split on one map, ranked will feature a rotation of maps. Broken Moon, Storm Point, and World’s Edge will all appear in ranked, with each map remaining for 24 hours before the next map takes its place.

New player experience

Players new to Apex will have to play orientation matches after completing the game’s tutorial. These matches will feature a couple of other beginner squads, as well as a host of AI bots that will comprise most of the lobby. Doing well in these orientation matches guarantees that players can more quickly graduate to full lobbies, but just completing a certain amount of games will also do the trick.

UI updates

Season 16 will introduce a new character select screen that reflects the shift into new legend classes and their importance in Apex.