Season 5 of Apex Legends is right around the corner, and Respawn Entertainment has a full list of patch notes for us to check out. Aside from the new character Loba Andrade, we have some exciting changes coming to the map, along with some new Season Quests, buffs, tweaks, and changes. Here’s a look at the Apex Legends Season 5 Fortune’s Favor changes.
Apex Legends Season 5 Fortune’s Favor Changes
First, we got a look at the new Apex Legends Loba Abilities, which we took an in-depth look at in another post.
King’s Canyon Map Update
Skulltown and Thunderdome have fallen, and a new point of interest named Salvage has been added to the Broken Coast. Wetlands is replaced by excavation of the Capacitor, which now includes an underground pathway to Singh Labs.
Netings Grounds continues to regrow into the Reclaimed Forest, featuring new Singh Labs exterior and a small camp outside The Cage. King’s Canyon will be the only map available for two week post season launch. Players have time to explore all the new changes during this time. After two weeks, map rotation begins and World’s Edge S4 will be added into the mix.
Charge Towers
A new device called Charge Towers have been added to Apex Legends. You can activate them for a full Ultimate charge for any Legend standing on the platform.
Seaosn Quest: Broken Quest
Apex Legends’ first Quest, a season-long search for nine pieces of a relix. Your first daily Treasure Pack can be found in any competitive match to start you on your hunt. Weekly drops of new Story, Gameplay, and Rewards will come along the way.
Season Tab
A new season tab contains all seasonal content in one place. Explore the Battle Pass, Quests, and Challenges in here, along with future events.
Now it’s a party! Your favorite trickster has learned a few new tricks to bamboozle his enemies in this new rework for Season 5.
Battle Pass Season 5
Fight your way through the Season 5 Battle Pass with daily and weekly challenges that reward 100 exclusive items. Rewards include Legendary skins, gun charms, skydive emotes, Apex Packs, XP Boosts, load screens, and much more.
Ranked Series 4 and Reconnect
A new season means a new Ranked Series. This season will be the same format as most, but a brand new feature allowing players to reconnect has been implemented.
Legend Update: Mirage
- Tactical: Psyche Out
- Pressing the character utility action button allows Mirage to gain control of his decoy.
- When controlling the decoy, it will mimic Mirage’s every move.
- Decoys now last for 60 seconds.
- Releasing another decoy will remove the previous decoy.
- Ultimate: Life of the Party
- Mirage deploys a team of decoys that mimic his every move (think “Emergency Dance Party” from DUMMIEs Big Day).
- Cooldown 60 seconds.
- Passive: Now You See Me
- In addition to cloaking when downed, Mirage also cloaks while using a respawn beacon and reviving a teammate (the teammate is also cloaked).
- Mirage’s “You got Bamboozled” line will now trigger when you bamboozle an enemy, instead of when you release a decoy.
Bloodhound
- Tactical: Eye of the Allfather
- Increased Sonar Detection from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
- Decreased Cooldown from 35 seconds to 25 seconds.
Crypto
- Tactical: Drone
- Crypto can now ping banners, while in drone, to warn teammates of nearby squads.
Lifeline
- Increased Lifeline bin ratio to 20%
- Removed Knockdown Shields from Secret Compartment loot pool
Caustic
Designer note: this is something that is a bit of an experiment. We will be keeping an eye out to make sure this change doesn’t cause any degenerate player behavior.
- Friendly gas no longer slows teammates.
- Caustic traps are no longer triggered from the other side of a door.
Octane
Designer note: This is a first step in pushing more team utility for Octane. We have more updates planned but they didn’t make the cutoff for this patch.
- Launch Pad cooldown is reduced from 90 seconds to now 60 seconds.
Gibraltar
Designer note: Internal data shows that Gibraltar’s performance in individual fights is in a good place, but we want to bring down his power a bit in team fights.
- Reduced Dome Shield duration from 18s to 12s.
Pathfinder
Designer note: Given the power of quick repositioning in Apex, being able to use Pathfinder’s Grappling Hook multiple times in a fight is both too powerful and muddies combat legibility.
- The cooldown for Grappling Hook has been increased from 15 seconds to 35 seconds.
WEAPON AND LOOT UPDATES
Season 5 is the first season Apex doesn’t get a new weapon. We stepped back and asked ourselves, does Apex need a new weapon every season? If we continue to add new weapons, the weapon pool will become saturated.
We believe there is a “right” amount of weapons in the loot pool, and we think we are currently in that sweet spot. Vaulting weapons is not an option (because players have purchased skins), so we are forced to be more creative.
We have some ideas on how to address it, but we need some time to test them and make sure they are healthy for Apex. We also want to make sure that weapons we add have real value to the gameplay.
We have some fun stuff in the works. Our weapons team is hard at work. In the meantime, we hope the changes listed below can get you excited to learn and master the Season 5 weapon meta.
Season 5 Fully-kitted Gold Weapons
- Longbow DMR
- Hemlok
- Spitfire
- EVA-8
- RE-45
Mastiff
- The Mastiff is being rotated out of the care package to a regular weapon with its power reduced accordingly.
- Reduced damage per pellet from 18 to 13.
- Reduced headshot multiplier from 2.0 to 1.25.
- Increased blast pattern distances for the outer pairs of pellets.
- Increased blast pattern scale ADS multiplier from 0.5 to 0.55.
- Reduced fire rate from 1.3 to 1.0.
- Reduced projectile size to be more in line with other regular shotguns.
- Increased shell count from 4 to 6.
- Increased projectile speed to standard shotgun speed.
Peacekeeper
- Peacekeeper is being rotated out of a regular weapon and into the care package weapon with its power being increased accordingly.
- Tightened pellet spread pattern.
- Reduced rechamber time from 1.2 to 0.9.
- Reduced reload times from 2.65 to 2.45 base and 3.6 to 3.35 empty.
- Increased projectile size to improve consistency at close range.
Alternator
- Increased Mag size from 16 to 19. Level 1 Extended mag is now 22, Level 2 is now 25, and Level 3 is now 27.
RE-45
- Increased damage from 11 to 12.
- Reduced reload time from 1.74 to 1.5 base and 2.12 to 1.95 empty
Havoc
- Vertical recoil increased.
- Horizontal recoil slightly increased.
- Recoil on the first 2 shots increased.
Longbow DMR
- Headshot scale reduced from 2.15 to 2.1.
Wingman
- Headshot scale reduced from 2.1 to 2.0.
Hop Ups
- Adding Skullpiercer Hopup for DMR and Wingman.DMR w/ Skullpiercer – Headshot scale 2.1 -> 2.5Wingman w/ Skullpiercer – Headshot scale 2.0 -> 2.25
- Vaulted Anvil Receiver.
Gold Armor
- Added Perk: Shield Cells & Syringes give double the amount per use.
- Removed Perk: Removed 50% heal speed.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed various conditions causing prediction errors.
- Fixed looting in pillboxes being difficult around weapons.
- Fixed aiming speed during zooming lerp to be consistent with hipfire and ADS speed.
- Fixed disabling Melee Target Compensation.
- Fixed Legend banners having a black box when having AA disabled.
- Fixed a condition where the third character model would be missing on screens with three Legend banners.
- Fixed sometimes erroneously pinging enemies while skydiving or in the plane.
- Fixed exploitable spots against Prowlers in Bloodhound Trial.
- Fixed Prowlers not attacking Gibraltar’s Dome Shield.
- Fixed deathboxes sometimes not moving on the train.
- Fixed subtitles in Russian showing up as English in the Bloodhound Trial area.
- Fixed Havoc VFX while on the train.
- Fixed depth of field when selecting charms in the loadout menu.
- Fixed lighting on Legends sometimes being dark throughout the menus.
- Fixed tooltips not appearing correctly when highlighting items in the menus.
- Fixed the Charge Rifle beam shooting from the scope while using the Hard coded skin.
- Fixed melee not doing any damage when interrupting the Sentinel charge animation.
- Fixed Wingman having higher than normal hipfire accuracy while crouched.
- Fixed Golden Barrel attachment having more muzzle flash than intended.
- Stability fixes to reduce crashing and script errors.
- Crypto’s EMP now affects D.U.M.M.I.E. in the Firing Range.
- Fixed Revenant’s Death Totem being visible through smoke or gas.
- Fixed a few Pathfinder banner poses that caused corrupted art.
- Adjusted Octane’s Jump pad to make it harder to fall through cracks when deploying.
- Fixed Caustic’s Ultimate not deploying when thrown under small surfaces.
- Fixed Bangalore’s smoke canisters getting stuck under the Train.
QOL
- We’ve overhauled the Deathbox UI to compartmentalize loot better so you can find what you need faster.
- Crypto can now ping banners while in drone to warn teammates of nearby squads.
- Added voice over for pinging enemies who are reviving.
- Favorite option now available for Weapon Skins.
- Observer Highlights for Tournament Matches.
- Removed location based Weekly Challenges. These caused players to have mixed motivations from their squadmates, and didn’t work well with map rotation.
- Optimized CPU usage.
- Improved texture streaming quality on GPUs reporting less memory than advertised.
- We’re excited to announce that at the start of Season 5 we will be adding Apex servers to the Middle East as we look to further support our fans in the region.
Read the official patch notes from EA here.
