Apex Legends Season 9 patch notes: Update time, buffs & nerfs, Arenas mode

Apex Legends Legacy update drops on May 4, along with the new Legend Valkyrie, the new 3v3 Arenas mode, and so much more. Check out the full patch notes for Season 9 below.

Outside of the main attractions of Arenas and Valkyrie, there are also map changes to Olympus, the new bow weapon, and new hop-ups with it too.

And of course, there are lots of balancing changes to various Legends, and the existing weapon pool.

What time is Apex Legends Season 9 update?

The Apex Legends Legacy update will go live on Tuesday, May 4, at 10AM PT / 1PM ET / 6PM BST.

PlayStation players can already pre-load the update on your console to be ready for Season 9, but other platforms (PC, Xbox, and Switch) will need to wait until update time to start the download.

On PlayStation 4, the Season 9 update was around 30GB.

Respawn Entertainment

Valkyrie is the new legend arriving with the new Season.

The patch notes for Season 9 include a bunch of changes to Legends, including big buffs to Loba and Fuse, while Lifeline and Horizon get some big nerfs.

There are also a lot of changes to the weapon meta, with the Peacekeeper returning to floor loot, and the Triple Take replacing it in care packages. With the addition of the Bow, there’s a new ‘Marksman Weapon’ category too.

• Read More: What’s in the Apex Legends Season 9 Battle Pass?

Check out the full patch notes from Respawn below.

Apex Legends Legacy update patch notes

ARENAS

The Games are going underground with the introduction of a new permanent mode: Arenas. Fully reassembled and unimpressed with the glitz and glamor of the Apex Games, former Apex Predator Ash is taking the competition back to its roots. A purer form of combat.

The rules are simple: 3-versus-3. Eliminate your enemies to win the round. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. You win, or you die.

Arenas features a new set of custom maps, tailor-made for close-quarters combat (with more to come in the future). Squads start each round in a spawn room, where they can get weapons, gear, and abilities, and adjust their loadout as their strategy changes. The first team to win three rounds with at least a two-point lead will be crowned the victor—unless they battle to a four-four tie. Then they’ll have the honor of participating in Ash’s favorite part of the game: Sudden Death.

PARTY CRASHER

Party Crasher is one of two exciting custom arenas where you’ll be able to show off your skills. This arena takes place in a ritzy, downtown plaza where players can choose to engage on the crashed Mirage Voyage, or the opulent two story buildings that make up the downtown. Stay vigilante, as this map hosts a variety of engagement distances—both close quarters and long distance.

PHASE RUNNER

Phase Runner is the second of our custom arenas, and our largest. You’ll fight in a hidden, experimental zone at the peak of a mountain where a prototype phase runner lays for use. This map gives you a lot of space to maneuver, so be sure to be on the lookout for those who prefer to be patient and take you out from afar. Sound tactics and clear communication are what you’ll need to come out on top as you fight through the construction site or near the phase runner exit.

In addition to the two new maps, other areas from our three BR maps will be thrown into a bi-weekly rotation, giving you five maps total for Arenas. At the start you’ll get Artillery from Kings Canyon, Thermal Station from World’s Edge, and Golden Gardens from Olympus.

VALKYRIE

Kairi Imahara, the daughter of Apex Predator Viper, salvaged the remains of her father’s Northstar Titan years after his death. With Rampart’s help, she fashioned it into a sleek new jetpack that honors her family’s legacy. Now, she’s entered the Games under the name VALKYRIE.

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 which 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.

Class: Recon

Scanning Survey Beacons reveals the next circle’s location.

BOCEK

The new Bocek (pronounced ) compound bow is a precision marksman weapon that rewards a skilled and confident hand. Holding down fire will draw the bow over a short time, increasing the power of the shot, with maximum power giving optimal damage and projectile speed. Repeatedly firing the Bocek right as it reaches max power provides the best sustained damage.

The Bocek uses a new ammo type, Arrows, which are unique to this weapon. Arrows are more rare on the battlefield, but fired arrows will stick into surfaces and remain in the world for players to pick back up and reuse. The 1x hcog classic, 1x holosight, 2x hcog, 1x-2x variable, and 3x hcog optics can all be equipped. The Bocek can also be further modified with the two new hop-ups entering the game, Shatter Caps and Deadeye’s Tempo; it can even equip both hop-ups simultaneously!

OLYMPUS – THE LOST FLEET UPDATE

A fleet of mysterious ships have made their way to Olympus and brought with them an otherworldly, parasitic plant that has begun to take root along the surface. The lead ship, The Icarus, has docked with the city and changed the landscape for good. Fight through the claustrophobic halls of the ghost ship, search corpses for a mysterious key card, and walk away as the last squad standing.

To allow everyone to see the latest map update, Olympus will be the only map in rotation for the first week of the new season.

STARTER KIT AND LOOT CHANGES

• Players will now start a match with a “Starter Kit” consisting of a Level 1 EVO Shield, Helmet, and Knockdown Shield, plus two Shield Cells and Syringes each.
• We’ve removed Level 1 Helmets and Knockdown Shields from the loot pool.
• Spawn chances for Level 1 EVO Shields in the loot pool have been significantly reduced.
• Along with the lowered or removed spawn chances for these items, we’ve rebalanced the loot pool such that higher-level versions of these items will appear nearly the same as they do now, but other item types will appear more often (weapons, ordinance, health, ammo, etc.)

EMOTES

Introducing Emotes! Every Legend will have one emote unlocked at launch and additional emotes can be obtained through Apex packs or by crafting them. Equip your emotes to the emote wheel and flex away! It’s great fun to show off to your squadmates in the starting room of Arenas, and of course you have to use them on the Winner’s podium.

Now, since emotes kick your camera back to a third-person view, we know some folks are already thinking about corner peeking. Competitive integrity is still paramount, so enemies that your character couldn’t see in first-person view will not be shown while you are in third person.

This video shows the “Anti-Peek” feature working on the purple Dummie behind the rock. Without it, Pathfinder would be able to use the 3rd person camera to gain knowledge that he shouldn’t have. All emotes have Anti-Peek enabled and there is no way to disable it.

BATTLE PASS

Unlock the premium Legacy Battle Pass and level it up to unlock new skins like Rampart’s Crafty Kitsune at Premium Level 25 and Wraith’s Demon’s Whisper at Premium Level 50.

LEGEND UPDATES

LOW PROFILE CHARACTERS

• Low profile no longer exists! This trait has been removed from Wraith, Lifeline, and Wattson.

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.
• Horizon’s abilities will now get zapped by Wattson pylons.

FUSE

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

BANGALORE

• Smoke Launcher: Thickened Bangalore’s smoke.

BLOODHOUND

• No longer receives assists from Eye of the Allfather.

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 UPDATES

MARKSMAN WEAPON CATEGORY

The G7 Scout and the 30-30 are currently in the Assault Rifle weapons category, but they are a bit strange in that category due to their firing style and some of their handling values. Similarly, the Triple Take felt a little out of place in the Sniper category.

With the introduction of the Bocek bow, we felt it was a good time to introduce a new weapons category, Marksman Weapons, which will include the G7, 30-30, Triple Take, and Bocek. Weapons in this category are precision weapons that are most effective up to medium-long range, and are the sort of in-betweens of Assault Rifles and Snipers. This allows us to begin moving the settings of these weapons towards more consistent value for the class, and make the settings of ARs and Snipers more consistent with less outliers.

For starters, we are increasing the movement speed while aiming down sights for marksman weapons; They were at sniper speeds, and will now be between sniper and AR speeds. Additionally, we have done some targeted normalization of hipfire spread amounts.

SUPPLY DROP ROTATION

This season, we’re taking the Peacekeeper out of the supply drop and putting the Triple Take in its place. Of course, with any supply drop change, these weapons will have their stats updated. See how each weapon changes down below.

Crate Weapon Drop Rates: Since we are exchanging a shotgun with a marksman weapon, now was a good time to rebalance the drop rates of crate weapons. The Kraber will spawn less often in the early game and more often in the mid game to better accommodate its power. The Triple Take will be the most common early game crate weapon, with the Prowler being the most prominent late game crate weapon.

FULLY KITTED ROTATION

• Added: Wingman, Bocek, R99, Hemlock, and Sentinel
• Removed: R301, 30-30 Repeater, Mozambique, Longbow DMR, and Spitfire

HOP UPS

• Shatter Caps – Fire select to toggle between standard mode and shatter mode. In shatter mode, rounds split into a blast pattern on firing. This hop up will be equipable to the 30-30 Repeater and the Bocek.
• Deadeye’s Tempo – Firing at the perfect moment increases fire rate. This can currently be attached to the Sentinel and the Bocek.
• To make room, the Hammerpoint and Skullpiercer hop ups are being vaulted for now, and won’t be available.

ASSAULT RIFLES

• Reducing the headshot multiplier for all assault rifles from 2.0 to 1.75

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

WINGMAN

• Increased headshot multiplier from 2.0 to 2.15

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.

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Badges are now sorted by categories and can be filtered by “all” or “unlocked only”. This suggestion came directly from players. Thank you! It’s so much better!

• When looting death boxes, players can now see health bars for everyone on the team.

• Challenges can now be “favorited” by going into the challenges menu and right clicking a challenge. That Challenge will then be added to a new favorites tab that will appear in the lobby and in the match’s map screen.

• Pressing and Holding F2 while in-game will bring up the ability description page for your character. This is only available on PC.
• Players can now request better equipment by going into their inventory and pinging a piece of equipment.
• Your first Challenge Reroll of the day is now free.
• Rerolling your challenges will allow you to choose from either BR-focused challenges or Arenas-focused ones.
• Holo Sprays, Quips, and Emotes, can be favorited. These will be used whenever the player is prompted to do a random emote.
• Club Invites v2: You can now include what you want to play when you send your clubmates a party invite via the Club tab. Select as many club mates as you want to send the invite to at once via the member list.
• Ranked: Fixed edge cases where an abandon penalty would be incorrectly applied due to server errors.
• Flight path adjustments: Removing edge dropship flight paths to prevent matches where large portions of the map receive little to no traffic. These screenshots show a before/after comparison of possible flight paths on Kings Canyon.

RING UPDATE

We’re continuing work from the Fight Night update to improve match pacing towards the end of the game. We’re slowing down the closing speed of the late game Rings to allow you more time to fight and maneuver your way into the Ring. We’re also reducing the “waiting” time before Rings 4 and 6 start to close.

• Ring 4 pre-shrink time reduced from 2:00 to 1:45
• Ring 4 shrink speed reduced from 33 second close time to 40 seconds
• Ring 5 shrink speed reduced from 20 second close time to 40 seconds
• Ring 6 pre-shrink time reduced from 1:30 to 1:00
• Ring 6 shrink speed reduced from 1:40 close time to 2:00

BUG FIXES

Bloodhound

• Fixed an issue with the Tactical UI not showing while in Bloodhound’s Ultimate.

Pathfinder

• Gas Traps and Jump Pads will no longer float into the sky when placed next to a zipline.

Wraith

• Slight wall bumps no longer inadvertently cancel Wraith’s tactical.

Mirage

• Decoys no longer die after a tick of thermite damage.

Octane

• Ordinances will no longer get stuck and disappear when being bounced off of Jump Pads.
• Death Totems will no longer bounce when a Jump Pad is placed under it.
• Players will no longer have weapons drawn if they are knocked as they enter the Fight Night ring via a Jump Pad.
• Updated Octane’s Helicopter emote to correctly remove his leg for which he is using it to do said helicoptering.

Wattson

• Fixed the “Extend” prompt for Watson’s fences not appearing in certain situations.
• Haute Drop skin will no longer block view when reloading the Sentinel.

Loba

• Fixed more areas where Loba’s Bracelet fails.
• Red Handed skin on consoles will now properly animate.

Rampart

• Mobile Respawn Beacon now has proper collision with Amped Cover.
• Jumping on and off a damaged Shiela will no longer transfer the flame effect to your weapon.

Horizon

• Players will no longer have weapons drawn if they are knocked as they enter the fight night ring via a Gravity Lift.
• 1x holo sight will no longer block view when using certain skins.
• Fixed an issue with NEWT not getting refunded if it immediately dies due to a bad spot.

Fuse

• 1x holo sight will no longer block view when using certain skins.

Flatline

• Part of the iron sight was being displayed over the whole weapon.

Prowler

• Supply Drop Prowler can now toggle fire modes.

Sentinel

• Moved tool tips to not overlap hop up icons.
• Fixed a graphical issue when swapping to Sentinel.

Misc.

• Fixed a menu issue with the advanced look options being hidden.
• Survey beacons will now appear on the map when teammates are respawned.