Apex Legends Season 12 patch notes: Crypto buff, Caustic nerf, weapon changes, more
Apex Legends Season 12 update will release on February 8, and perhaps the most exciting part for most players is seeing the new season patch notes, expected to make sweeping changes to Legends, weapons, and gameplay. Check out the full patch notes below.
The headline changes this season are of course the newLegend Mad Maggie,map changes to Olympus, and the newControl mode.
There will also be a brand new pass to work through, as well as a fresh Ranked reset. But, beyond all the new content, changes to existing Legends and weapons will often get the most attention.
The full patch notes have now been published by Respawn, and there is a lot to dig into.
Apex Legends Season 12 patch notes
NEW LEGEND
Mad Maggie, cutthroat warlord and the Outlands’ meanest mad-lass, is back and she’s coming into the Apex Games like a wrecking ball with an offensive playstyle. With enhanced shotgun proficiency, the ability to dislodge enemies behind cover, and a crushing Ultimate, aggressive players are going to love playing as Mad Maggie.
Passive: Warlord’s IreTemporarily highlight enemies you’ve damaged. No movement speed penalty when wielding Shotguns.
Tactical: Riot DrillFire a drill that attaches to an obstacle and burns enemies on the other side.
Wrecking BallThrow a ball that releases speed-boosting pads and detonates near enemies.
BRAND NEW LIMITED-TIME MODE: CONTROL
Defiance kicks off with Control, a brand-new limited-time mode that delivers an adrenaline-fueled 9v9 experience where two teams fight to capture and control points on the map. Featuring the largest team sizes in Apex Legends to date, players will pre-select their loadouts, drop in, and for the first time ever have the opportunity to experience the rush of having the same Legends fighting side by side, creating thrilling moments that can only happen in Control. In this mode, death is not the end, as throughout the match players will be able to respawn and carry on the fight until one team earns enough points to be declared the winner. So get ready to experience the spectacle of 9v9 Legend combat when Control kicks off on February 8th.Check out the full blog from Designer Mark Yampolsky here.
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OLYMPUS MAP UPDATE
Someone or something has hacked into Olympus’ Phase Runner, sending the floating city crashing down and creating destabilizations across the city that change the face of the map: perhaps forever. Players will experience a malfunctioning Olympus, with new terrain exposed and more POIs than ever. And that’s not all!
Check out the full blogfrom map designer, Alex Graner that goes into detail about what to expect from the Olympus Map Update.
Players in the regular Play Apex queue will drop exclusively into Olympus for the first week of the season, after which we’ll add Storm Point and Kings Canyon into the rotation.
STORM POINT UPDATES
Wildlife Update
It’s now been a full season since we introduced PvE into Battle Royal and while we were happy with how wildlife launched, we’ve seen that Prowlers were a bit too punishing and not quite rewarding enough. Additionally, we have seen some bad edge cases that create frustration for players that we’re hoping to address this season. We’ll go more in depth on the exact details and our reasoning behind them in another blog, but in short:
Drop Ship Pathing.
While Storm Point has a relatively healthy spread of landing locations, we realized the typical drop ship logic often made the high northeast corner of the map particularly tough to land in. Rotating the distribution and moving the centerpoint slightly northeast should make Highpoint and Lightning Rod more accessible while still allowing players to land in the lower southwest portion if they desire.
Each image below shows 400 drop ship simulations, before and after the change:
Finally, a few miscellaneous changes:
RANKED UPDATE
In Apex Legends the primary goal is to be the last Legend standing, and racking up kills is the vehicle to get you there. Last season, we made changes that opened up flexibility by compensating players with high kill counts that didn’t necessarily place first. We like this flexibility, but after observing the pacing of high-level ranked games, we saw players were focused on seeking out kills a little too much. Players that focus on fighting for higher placements and teamplay should be more faithfully awarded.
Change Summary:
Max Kill KP:175→ 125Placement Points & Per Kill Bonus:
This tuning is more punishing to teams that undervalue placements. We’re bumping up placement points for teams in the top 5; easing back on the ‘Kill KP Cap’ and adjusting ‘Per Kill Bonuses’ to require ~2-3 less Kills to hit the maximum.
Split 1 will be played on Olympus, and we’ll move over to Kings Canyon for Split 2 in April.
COMMUNICATION FILTER
During this season we’ll be releasing a new feature where players will be able to determine which players they want to receive voice and text chat from called Communication Filter. Players can find the feature in the Options Menu under Gameplay and will have 3 options to choose from.
Players can also unmute anyone they choose, friend of friend or a good random squadmate.
PATCH NOTES
LEGENDS BALANCE
Drone View HUD and other Quality of Life updates:
Neurolinkchanges:
Surveillance Dronechanges:
Crypto has been off the grid in terms of pick rate. The goal of these changes was to make his kit more accessible and engaging. With a new deployment option, we lowered drone health to prevent reckless drone deploy. Crypto is still a methodical, calculating legend, and manually piloting Hack should still be the primary way to access macro-level recon. The drone view HUD updates should help here as well. Crypto’s never been weak per se; we’re cognizant of his strengths at high-level play and will be keeping an eye on his usage and performance.
Nox Gas Trapsare now destroyable after detonation
WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT BALANCE
Supply Drop Rotation
The Alternator SMG returns to the ground loot this season and taking its place is the powerful mid-range energy Volt SMG.
Alternator SMG
Kinetic Feeder – Triple Take & Peacekeeper
Sliding with the Triple Take or Peacekeeper significantly speeds up choke time and automatically reloads rounds.
Hammerpoint Rounds – P2020, Mozambique & RE-45
Shatter Caps – 30-30 Repeater & Bocek Bow
Triple Take
VK-47 Flatline
Rampage LMG (Hotfix)
Fully Kitted Rotation
Weapons in Crafting
BUG FIXES AND QUALITY OF LIFE
Fixing some weird rules in how assists and kills are determined and properly rewarded.
