What are Prestige skins in Apex Legends?

Apex Legends is celebrating its third anniversary for the first three weeks of its new season Defiance. Starting on Tuesday, Feb. 15, this celebration will include a new collection event. This event will bring matching legendary squad skins to Apex alongside a new type of cosmetic: Prestige skins. The first Prestige skin will be for Bloodhound and will serve as the reward for purchasing the collection event’s full catalog, in place of where an Heirloom or Heirloom Shards would traditionally be.

These Prestige skins will feature a unique system of evolution. Additional variants of the base skin, as well as an exclusive finisher, will be available to unlock for free beyond the initial purchase.

When first acquiring a Prestige skin, players will have access to the tier-one variant of it. By completing a series of challenges, they can gain access to tier two and tier three. Once all three tiers of the Prestige skin have been unlocked, players can freely switch between all of its variants depending on the style they want to rock. The challenges to unlock these additional tiers also have no time limit. Once you have purchased a Prestige skin, you can work on those challenges for its other tiers at any time in the future. For the Bloodhound Prestige skin specifically, successfully completing the challenge to unlock tier three will also come with a special finisher called Piercing Plasma.

While Prestige skins for other legends may differ, Respawn Entertainment offered an example of the types of challenges players will be required to undertake to acquire each tier when spotlighting the new Bloodhound Prestige skin. To unlock tier two, players will have to do 30,000 damage with Bloodhound across their matches. To then unlock tier three, an additional 70,000 damage with Bloodhound will be required. It’s no small grind, so players wanting to get the most out of their Prestige skin will be putting in a lot of hours to reach that final tier.

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According to the in-game information window for the Mythics store page (previously named Heirlooms), the Bloodhound Prestige skin and all future Prestige skins will be available to purchase in the Mythics store alongside the Heirlooms for Heirloom Shards. If you want to buy it for a fixed price, you can make use of the offer tied to the collection event, which ends on March 1.