Apex Legends Full Patch Notes Season 20 Breakout
Apex Legends Season 20 Breakout Patch Notes Shield Upgrade, Legend Upgrades, Crafting Changes
- In Season 20, Legends will not get to pick from two upgrade perks during a battle-royale match when they level up their shield to blue and purple.
- Evo Armor has been reworked in Season 20 of Apex Legends and can be leveled up with combat and non-combat actions.
- Apex Legends Crafting Replicators have been overhauled and can only be used one time each.
Apex Legends Season 20: Breakout, is almost here, and with it the biggest changes to how Legends play in the game's five-year history. While there is no new Legend, map, or weapons being added in Season 20, there are major overhauls and reworks to core systems of the Apex Legends experience that will change how the game is played. In the patch notes for Apex Legends, the major overhauls include a complete rework of how Evo Shields functions, a brand-new Legend Upgrade System that will make every match unique, and a simplified rework of how players interact with Crafting Replicators.
For the full breakdown of everything new in Apex Legends Season 20: Breakout, check below for the full patch notes. Apex Legends Season 20: Breakout launches on February 13th.
Mad Maggie adds some heat to her ultimate ability, Wrecking Ball, in Apex Legends Season 20: Breakout using Legend Upgrades.
Apex Legends Season 20: Breakout Patch Notes
The three biggest changes coming to Apex Legends in Season 20 Breakout are the new Legend Upgrade System, the Evo Armor rework, and the Crafting Replicator overhaul. Players should also expect buffs and nerfs for both Legends and guns, but those will be fully released closer to patch day on February 13th.
Legend Upgrade System
The developers at Respawn said this Legend Upgrade System is easily the biggest change to happen to the game and the way it is played since Apex Legends launched five years ago. All 25 Legends have been given four unique perks, with some agnostic perks across all Legends, that they can unlock during a game of duos, trios, or ranked. In total, over 100 different perks will be added to the game with the Legend Upgrade System.
That’s right, this Legend Upgrade System is now a core part of the Apex Legends battle-royale experience starting in Season 20 Breakout.
So how exactly does the Legend Upgrade System work? Whenever a player upgrades their Evo Shield to blue and purple, they will receive a prompt at the top of their screen and be allowed to choose from one of two upgrades. These upgrades can be specific to the Legend and revolve around their tactical ability, their ultimate ability, or other mechanics such as gunplay.
Here are a few examples that were shown off in the trailers for Season 20 Breakout.
- Gibraltar’s Baby Bubble gives him a smaller tactical but lowers its cooldown.
- Gibraltar’s Big Ups revives squad mates with an additional 40 hit points healed.
- Killer Handling auto reloads shotguns when a player gets a knock.
- Mad Maggie had an upgrade that makes her Wrecking Ball rain fire down in a V pattern on its second bounce.
- Octane was able to drop two jump pads in quick succession.
- Last Stand gives Lifeline a self-revive.
- Allied Support makes Lifeline's next ultimate ability a neutral supply drop.
Gibraltar chooses between Big Ups or Killer Handling when his Evo Shield hits Lvl 2 in Apex Legends Season 20.
Legend Game Designer John Larson explained exactly how players can expect these Legend upgrades to affect the status quo in Apex Legends, “Core abilities will stay the same, but over the course of the match you will be given the opportunity to augment your legend. Some upgrades improve the specialization of a Legend,” referring to Gibraltars tactical ability. “And other upgrades might add something new altogether,” referring to the Killer Handling and Big Ups perks.
“Ultimately, the goal of the upgrade system is to allow players to go deeper with legend mastery and flexibility. To create a more intimate and dynamic gameplay experience over the course of each match,” Larson added.
Check back for more information on the Legend Upgrade System after the launch of Apex Legends Season 20 Breakout. You can find more details in our article on the Legend Upgrade System.
Two big changes in Season 20 of Apex Legends are the Legend Upgrade System and Legend Armor changes.
Evo Armor Changes Season 20
The evolution of shields in Apex Legends has come a long way since its launch five years ago. In Season 6 Evo Armor was added to the game that let players upgrade their shields by dealing damage. In Apex Legends Season 20 Breakout, Evo Armor is getting another massive overhaul.
How do the new Evo Shields work in Apex Legends Season 20? Armor will no longer be a part of the ground loot table in Apex Legends. Players will have their own Evo shield that they will need to upgrade through the match. But, now Evo Armor can be upgraded in more ways than just doing damage to other players.
Players will still upgrade their Evo Shields by taking fights and dealing damage to enemy teams. Evo Shields are now tracked in EVO Points and not just damage, so players can also level up their Evo Armor by doing things that pertain to their role such as Control Legends using Ring Beacons, or Support Legends opening up support bins.
How to gain personal EVO Points
- Dealing Damage,
- Getting Knocks or Assists.
- Knocks against Legends of a higher level net a bonus.
- Performing Finishers.
- Eco Caches from Care Packages and Vaults.
Here are some ways to gain Team EVO Points
- Wiping a Squad.
- Reviving downed Squad Mates.
- Respawning Squad Mates.
- Class Interactions (Survey Beacons, Support Bins, etc.)
- World Interactions (Wildlife, Trials, etc.)
- EVO Harvesters
There will also be Evo Harvesters scattered around the map and in some cases, players can find Evo caches in things such as care packages.
The Evo Cache will be a highly sought-after item to help players in Apex Legends upgrade their Evo Armor.
The other major change that comes along with the Evo Armor changes is that they are no longer a lootable object. This has major repercussions for armor swapping in the middle of combat. Instead of being able to pull out the shield of a boxed enemy, players will now find shield cores in death boxes.
Here are all the ways that players can upgrade their Evo Armor in Apex Legends Season 20: dealing damage to enemies, performing actions specific to your Legend role, and obtaining Evo harvesters or caches.
Shield cores will restore the corresponding shield amount from the defeated player's armor to yours, with higher-level Evo Armors providing a temporary over-shield, that once depleted cannot be regained. Here are a few examples of how it works.
- If a player has an empty blue Evo shield and loots a white shield core, it will put two charges back into their blue armor.
- If a player has a purple shield and it has only one charge and they pick up a red shield core, it will fill their purple armor up and give them one temporary charge.
Evo Shields are tied directly to the new Legend Upgrade System. When your Evo Armor levels up to blue and purple, you will get to choose from the new Legend Upgrade perks. There is no extra reward for hitting red shields.
Shield Cores can now be looted from enemy boxes to refill Legend Evo Armor.
Apex Legends Ranked Changes
The changes for the ranked system, matchmaking, and scoring will all be changing in Apex Legends Season 20 Breakout. The developers are retiring the Ladder Points (LP) and returning to Ranked Points (RP). Players frustrated with the recent changes these past few seasons will be happy to know that a lot of things are being rolled back.
The developers want the ranked experience to be more rewarding for players in terms of kills, their skill, and their placement. Eliminations will now be worth more RP the higher you place in a match.
The Challenger Bonus will earn players a 50% bonus on an elimination of a higher-ranked player when you’ve personally contributed. This bonus is unaffected by the elimination soft cap of 6 kills.
There will also be a new bonus for maintaining a top 5 placement streak in your matches. The Top 5 Streak Bonus will earn you +10 RP at 2 consecutive Top 5's, +20 RP at 3, and up to +40 Bonus RP at 5 or more.
The scoring sheet at the end of the match will give a breakdown of where player RP comes from and how they scored, giving the most detailed look yet at how final RP is calculated.
The new matchmaking system in Season 20 of Apex Legends is abandoning hidden MMR. In Season 20 Ranked Matches will be determined based entirely on Ranked Points, so the more you play the more it will reflect your skill. At the start of Season 20, everyone will be reset to 1 RP, so the beginning of the season will be very chaotic with everyone at the bottom, but the highly skilled players will rise through the ranks quickly.
Entry Costs are once again going to be based on your rank with costs increasing as you move up in the ranks. The entry costs start at 20 RP in Silver 4. Provisional Matches and Promotional Trials are both being removed in Season 20. The new ranked mode will also return to doing two splits during the season with player rank resetting by 6 divisions.
Crating Replicator Changes
The crafting replicators are being streamlined in Apex Legends Season 20 and will be more focused on giving support and healing to squads.
Crafting Materials are being removed from the game entirely and all weapons and attachments are being removed from the replicator. Players will only be able to craft healing items such as Medkits and Batteries, as well as Ammo and Squad Respawn Banners.
While none of these have a crafting cost and the crafting process will be nearly instant, players will only be able to use each crafting replicator one time. So they will need to choose very carefully about what they need from it. The developers said they want Crafting Replicators to be a reliable source of consumables for players.
The replicators' crafting menu has been heavily pruned down in Season 20.
Limited-Time Mode and Mixtape
The developers teased that Season 20 of Apex Legends would bring new game modes and limited-time modes to both the battle royale and Mixtape. They named two of these but only went into depth about one. The two new game modes are the Straight Shot LTM and a Deathmatch-style mode called Lockdown.
The Straight Shot limited-time mode is focused on getting players into the action as quickly as possible. It has half the usual lobby size with only 30 players and uses a truncated size of the map. Instead of players dropping in from the drop-ship every team will spawn directly into a POI with another team.
There will be no attachments on the ground loot and all weapons will come fully kitted in varying rarity from white to gold. The goal of Straight Shot is to simplify the looting process so that players who want to get into the action can do so as quickly as possible.
Players will also be able to queue into the next match directly from the spectating screen and won’t need to waste time returning to the lobby menu.
Mixtape will also be getting a brand-new map designed specifically for Gun Run, Control, and Team Deathmatch. It’s called Thunderdome and is inspired by the original Thunderdome POI in the old King’s Canyon map.
The new Mixtape exclusive map, Thunderdome, will be used for Deathmatch, Control, and Gunrun.
5 Year Anniversary
Season 20 of Apex Legends coincides with the fifth anniversary of the battle royale and Respawn is celebrating by showering players with free rewards throughout the season. Fans of Apex Legends can look forward to the chance to unlock 6 Legends, new banner frames, free skins and gifts, a Legendary Wraith skin, and the first free, reactive weapon skin based on one of the most popular ones, the Flatline Heatsink.
Season 20 of Apex Legends brings all new free rewards to players.
Throughout Season 20 players will be able to play Seer, Fuse, Rampart, Mad Maggie, Loba, and Valkyrie without unlocking them. If they complete a set of challenges for each Legend, they will permanently unlock them on their account. This will also unlock the Legendary Wraith skin.
Players who get the Breakout Battle Pass to Level 60 will unlock additional featured banner frames, including a Legendary banner frame for Wraith to match her new skin.
Apex fans can also send free gifts to their friends corresponding to each of the free-use Legends this season. If they send all six, they'll unlock a Legendary sticker and rare tracker set featuring the new Wraith Legendary skin.
If players complete all three of these challenges, this will also unlock the Reactive Flatline recolor of the Heatsink. This is only the second time a reactive recolor has been available in the game and the first time Apex was charging $170 for it. The fan backlash prompted Respawn to admit they would never do that again, and now it seems, players will get one for free! Much better Respawn.
Performance Mode
Console players on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X, have a new option in the Video Settings menu. Players with 120Hz displays have a new “Performance” mode option available. This option targets 120 FPS performance with content optimizations and reductions to visual quality.
According to the patch notes, "To achieve 120 FPS, current-gen consoles now run on a new multithreaded rendering system, built on top of the Rendering Hardware Interface (RHI). Previously, even with GPU optimizations, the Apex rendering engine has been bottlenecked by single-threaded rendering code, which could not scale to the capabilities of modern hardware. This new system allows us to fully utilize the GPU and forms the foundation for future improvements to the rendering engine."
Map Changes
With crafting materials being removed from the game, major changes are happening with Rampart's Bid Maude on World's Edge.
All weapons in Big Maude are now free, but takes some time to vendor to the players. Loba can still steal a second weapon, but all other Legends are limited to only a single one. There is also a larger variety of weapons to choose from, though they will no longer be gold in rarity.
The ranked map rotation for this season is World's Edge, Olympus, and Storm Point.
Map Updates
- The Apex Games Museum on World’s Edge has an all-new exhibit that honors the history of the Outlands and the origin of the Games. Filled with interactive kiosks, artwork, and red carpet flair, the museum has many interesting tidbits of information, community artwork, and even some easter eggs.
- Special celebration dressing in the form of flags, banners, and even the return of our larger-than-life Legend balloons can be found on every map. This year features an all-new cast designed with the Breakout aesthetic in mind.
- Tridents, jump balloons, gravity cannons, loot bins, and more have a fresh look to complement the theme of the season.
Weapon Changes
Care Package Weapon Rotation
- EVA-8 Enters the Care Package.
- Prowler returns to the floor.
Gold Weapon Rotation
- R-301, RE-45, Mastiff, Devotion, 30-30
30-30 Repeater
- Base damage reduced to 39 (was 42).
- Ammo capacity
- Base capacity unchanged (6).
- White Magazine reduced to 7 (was 8).
- Blue Magazine reduced to 8 (was 10).
- Purple & Gold Magazine reduced to 10 (was 12).
- Skullpiercer headshot multiplier reduced to 2.0 (was 2.1).
- Dual Loader removed as an integrated Hop-Up, now only loads 1 shell per reload.
- Marksman Stock reload speed bonus normalized to match other sniper weapons.
- Reloading 3 shells in a row now increases reload speed by 20% for the remainder of the reload.
EVA-8 [Care Package]
- Damage reduced to 6 (was 7).
- The fire rate increased to 3 (was 2.4).
- Recoil is reduced to better match the much faster fire rate.
- Hammer Points: 20% damage increase against flesh (+1 damage).
- Gold Shotgun Bolt: shells reloaded on slide increased to 2 (was 1).
- Note: this change only affects the Care Package EVA-8.
Hemlock
- Damage reduced to 20 (was 21).
- Hipfire spread increased.
- The spread delay increased to 0.28 (was 0.21).
L-Star
- Can no longer equip Barrel Attachments.
Prowler [Floor]
- Reverted to non-Care Package version.
- Damage decreased to 15 (was 16).
- Select Fire Hop-Up removed.
- Burst delay increased to 0.28 (was 0.24).
- Spread delay increased to 0.28 (was 0.15).
R-99
- ADS vertical and horizontal recoil increased.
R-301
- Hipfire spread reduced.
SMG Ballistics
- Projectile gravity increased across all SMGs.
- Projectile launch speed reduced across most SMGs (Prowler unchanged).
1x Digital Threat
- Can no longer be equipped for SMGs.
- Spawn rates were reduced by 20%.
Laser Sights
- Spread multipliers reduced.
- White Laser Sight adjusted to x0.9 (was x0.8).
- Blue Laser Sight adjusted to x0.8 (was x0.6).
- Purple Laser Sight adjusted to x0.7 (was x0.4).
Legend Changes
Heavy-Rig Legends (Gibraltar, Caustic, Pathfinder, Newcastle, Revenant).
- Now use medium-rig first-person movement animations.
- Actual game speeds have not changed, these Legends will feel less sluggish when running.
Support Legends
- Extended Supply Bin contents have been improved (see below).
Ballistic
- Sling: Sling Weapons now have all White attachments while equipped.
- Tempest: effect radius for ally range has been increased to 90m (was 13m).
Bloodhound
- Tracker: Raven scan’s Ult Charge is now gated behind the Hunting Ravens upgrade.
Catalyst
- Dark Veil:
- lifetime decreased to 15s (was 25s).
- length decreased to 40m (was 55m).
Conduit
- Radiant Flash
- Cooldown increased to 26s (was 21s).
- Temporary Shield generation rate decreased to 15HP/s (was 20HP/s).
- Temporary Shield generation time increased to 9s (was 8s).
- Energy Barricade
- Mine duration reduced to 45s (was 60s).
- Mine HP reduced to 200HP (was 250HP).
- The distance at which mines are removed when deployed too close to one another has been increased by ~100%.
Crypto
- Surveillance Drone
- Speed of drone recall has been increased slightly.
- Transitions going in and out of drone are now faster.
Horizon
- Gravity Lift: cooldown increased to 25s (was 20s).
Lifeline
- In modes with Upgrade Cores enabled, Lifeline's Care Package now has a 50/50 chance to drop an extra piece of smart equipment (vs. large consumable) instead of an Armor.
Mad Maggie
- Wrecking Ball
- Will no longer be destroyed on first enemy hit.
- Instead, the Wrecking Ball will trigger an explosion and then keep going, allowing for a second explosion to trigger later.
- The same player cannot be hit again by the ball for 2s after first impact.
- Players can only be affected by the shellshock and knockback effects once.
- Will now bounce through devices it hits and destroys.
- Will no longer be destroyed on first enemy hit.
Octane
- Jump Pad: audio falloff of double-jump has been adjusted to be slightly less audible from long distances.
Pathfinder
- Insider Knowledge
- Scanning Care Packages now awards 50% Ult Charge (was 100%) and 15s Ult Cooldown (was 10s).
- This also applies to Ring Console or Survey Beacon scans.
World Systems
Extended Supply Bins
- Extended Supply Bins now give Smart Gear.
- Players can find gear upgrades for Knockdown Shields, Helmets, and Backpacks on the hidden shelf.
- Small chance of granting purple gear if a player on the squad has white gear or none at all.
- Small chance of granting gold gear if the entire squad has purple gear.
- More reliably gives Heat Shields & MRBs when needed.
- Increased likelihood of getting Med Kit over Syringes.
Ring Exploit Prevention
- Players spending too much time outside the Ring will be warned and then eliminated.
