Apex Legends Season 9 'Legacy Update' Patch Notes Explained

The first batch of patch notes for Apex Legends Season 9 has dropped—including the anticipated "Legacy Update."

Players can finally experience the long-awaited Legacy Update today, Thursday, April 29. Respawn Entertainment released a long post on the Apex Legends news blog detailing the patch notes and each of the unique features making their way into the game this season.

The notes are a bit lengthy, so let's just hop right in.

Apex Legends Season 9 'Legacy Update' Patch Notes

New Game Mode: Arenas

If you haven't heard: the new game mode, Arenas, will be launching with the Legacy Update. We've gone over this in depth, but, as a refresher: this is a 3v3 multiple-round fight featuring a total of five maps—two brand new, three rotating biweekly—where squads can go head-to-head until a victor is crowned.

New Character: Kairi "Valkyrie" Imahara

The recently revealed legend, Valkyrie, is ready to fly following the update. Also known as Kairi Imahara, she is the daughter of another legend, Viper, and seeks to honor her family's legacy thanks to a bit of tech help from Rampart. Valkyrie is a recon hero, and has the following abilities:

• Passive: VTOL Jets—Use your jetpack to reposition or reach high places. You have limited fuel and cannot use weapons while flying.
• Tactical: Missile Swarm—Fire a swarm of mini-rockets that damage and disorient the enemy.
• Ultimate: Skyward Dive—Take to the skies to reposition a long-distance across the map. Your squadmates can join in.

Legend Buffs and Nerfs

In addition to the removal of Low Profile, the development team has made changes to Lifeline, Octane, Loba, Horizon, Fuse, Bangalore, Bloodhound, and Crypto.

Lifeline

• Combat Revive: No longer deploys a shield. Can now revive two players at the same time. Can now cancel active revives in progress to allow your teammate to defend themselves with their knockdown shield.
  
• D.O.C. Heal Drone: Heal rate increased from 5hp per second to 8hp per second. Deployment time before healing begins reduced by roughly 33%.
  
• Care Package: Cooldown reduced from 6 minutes to 5 minutes. Now guarantees an upgrade (if possible) in three categories: Body Shield, Other Equipment (Helmet, Backpack, and Knockdown Shield), and Weapon Attachment, based on your team’s current gear when the Package arrives.

Octane

• Stim: Reduced cooldown between stims from 4s to 1s. Increased health cost from 12hp to 20hp.
  
• Increased bullet spread while in the air and shooting from the low Launch Pad trajectory.

Loba

• Burglar's Best Friend: Can now run and slide at full speed while aiming the bracelet and while the bracelet is in the air. Loba will no longer be slowed after translocating.
  
• Fixed a lot of bugs that caused bracelet tosses to fail.
  
• Black Market Boutique: Increased cooldown from 90s to 120s.

Horizon

• Gravity Lift: Reduced lift speed by 30%. Reduced side-to-side acceleration. Limited the time you can sit at the top of Gravity Lift to 2 seconds. Increased cooldown from 15s to 20s. According to devs, this is meant to "1) make it much more possible for enemies to shoot Horizon as she sits in her gravity lift and 2) make gravity lift less of an impromptu sniper tower."
  
• Horizon’s abilities will now get zapped by Wattson pylons.

Bangalore

• Knuckle Cluster: Fuse now has two stacks of Knuckle Cluster. Reduced cooldown from 25s to 20s.

Fuse

• Smoke Launcher: Thickened Bangalore’s smoke. Devs note this is a fix for an accidental earlier issue.

Bloodhound

• No longer receives assists from Eye of the Allfather. According to the devs, "There's enough intrinsic value in sonar scans, and it's a slippery slope to consider crediting assists for other non-damaging abilities." Crypto will still enjoy this perk, however, due to the "active nature" of his drone.

Crypto

• Crypto's drone can now scan and open care packages.
  
• Can no longer use his drone to "hijack" a respawn beacon that's already in use.

Weapons Buffs and Nerfs

There are two new hop-ups coming to Apex Legends: Death's Tempo and Shatter Caps. The former offers an increased rate of fire according to a rhythm while the other splits rounds like a shotgun.

Additionally, a new weapon is being added to the game known as the Bocek Bow, which uses a new unique type of ammo: arrows. These are more difficult to find on the map, but stick to surfaces when shot and can be re-looted to fire again.

The following weapons have received changes from the developers:

Assault Rifles (AR)

• Reducing the headshot multiplier for all assault rifles from 2.0 to 1.75. According to the devs, this was already in place for Hemlock, so players should only notice changes with Flatline, R301, and Havoc.

Peacekeeper

• It comes with the Precision Choke by default, which can be toggled off
• Pellet damage reduced from 10 to 9
• Rechamber time increased from 0.9 seconds to 1.1 seconds
• Reload times increased (regular from 2.45 to 2.5, empty from 3.35 to 3.5)
• Pellet spread increased in general, and spread when charged increased for all charge levels (from 0.65/0.45/0.2 to 0.85/0.65/0.35)
• Quickly loses charge after leaving ADS

Triple Take

• As a crate weapon, it will come with a 9 ammo clip and 63 reserve ammo
• Fire rate increased from 1.2 to 1.3
• Time to full charge reduced from 1.1 seconds to 1 second
• Retains charge briefly after leaving ADS
• Move-speed while aiming down sights has been increased to match other marksman weapons—faster than snipers, slower than ARs
• Increased spread while airborne and aiming down sights

Havoc

• Increased recoil controllability early in the pattern

Spitfire

• Reduced recoil controllability early in the pattern

30-30 Repeater

• Increased leg damage multiplier from 0.75 to 0.85
  
• Move-speed while aiming down sights has been increased to match other marksman weapons—faster than snipers, slower than ARs

G7 Scout

• Move-speed while aiming down sights has been increased to match other marksman weapons—faster than snipers, slower than ARs
  
• Increased hipfire spread size (reduced accuracy) to be more in line with other marksman weapons

Longbow

• Increased headshot multiplier from 2.0 to 2.15. This change was made as a compensation for the removal of Skull Piercer.

Wingman

• Increased headshot multiplier from 2.0 to 2.15. This change was made as a compensation for the removal of Skull Piercer.

Mozambique

• Increased magazine capacity from 4 to 6
  
• Moved the lower 2 pellets inward in the blast pattern

P2020

• Increased bullet damage from 15 to 18
  
• Lowered fire rate from 8.5 to 6.25

Arc Stars

• Aim and movement slow removed from the initial stick.

Other Notable Changes

Players should notice a new fleet of "mysterious ships" around Olympus. They've brought a "an otherworldly, parasitic plant" to the map that has already begun to take root on high buildings. The primary ship, "The Icarus," is now accessible via those roots and is open to players.

Emotes are coming to Apex Legends. Each legend has one unique emote once they've been unlocked. Emotes will throw players into third person. However, enemies that were no seen in first person will not be seen when emoting. Additional emotes can be found via Apex packs or crafting.

Players will now be able to re-roll one challenge per day for both general play and Arenas. They can even favorite them to keep track of their progress while playing.

A full list of all the changes can be found on Respawn's Apex Legends website.