Apex Legends Season 6: Release date, battle pass, crafting, new weapons and more

Apex Legends' Season 6 is right around the corner, promising players exciting changes to the battle royale as competition in the genre continues to grow.

This time around, Respawn has confirmed new features such as crafting, one more character added to the roster, Rampart, fresh weapons, and more.

Let's break it all down.

Apex Legends Season 6 Release Date

Season 6 of Apex Legends is expected to launch on 17th August at 10 pm PT for US players, based on the time difference, the season will begin at 6 am BST in the UK (18th August).

Since Season 5 started on 12th May, expect this next one to last until November, at least.

Apex Legends Season 6 New Character: Rampart

Respawn is set to debut its latest Legend, Rampart, with the beginning of Season 6. The devs describe her as "an expert modder who made her name in underground fight clubs," so be sure to expect some flashy abilities from her. She already sports a Gatling gun in the reveal trailer, that's enough to make us excited.

Apex Legends Rampart Abilities

• Tactical: Amped Cover - Build a crouch-cover wall which deploys full-cover amped wall that blocks incoming shots and Amps outgoing shots
• Passive: Modded Loader - Increased Magazine/Heat capacity and faster reloads/recharge when using LMGs and the Minigun.
• Ultimate: Sheila - Place a mounted machine gun that anyone can use. 150 round capacity, long reload time.

Check out more on her abilities right here.

Apex Legends Season 6 Battle Pass

Apex Legends Battle Passes have always been filled with plenty of cosmetics that entice players into grinding the game for the duration of the season, and while little is known about the contents of the Season 6 Battle Pass, the reveal trailer gave us a glimpse at some of the new skins.

All images courtesy of EA

Bloodhound Skin

Bangalore Skin

Octane skin

Apex Legends Season 6 Battle Pass Cost

With no price change in sight, expect the Season 6 battle pass to cost 950 coins, ($9.99/£7.99).

If you fancy a head start and have the spare cash, players can buy a version of the battle pass that includes the first 25 levels unlocked for 2,800 coins, around $29.98/£23.98.

Apex Legends Season 6 Crafting System

New to Apex Legends for Season 6 will be a crafting system. Respawn has yet to reveal more information regarding this new feature, however, players have pieced together some info after watching the reveal trailer, including a box called the "Replicator" that includes the following crafting options:

• Weapons
• Armour
• Healing items
• Attachments 
• Knockdown Shields 
• Ammo
• Mobile Respawn Beacons

Apex Legends Season 6 New Weapon: Volt Gun

If you're one of the few people, like me, that actually played the heavily underrated Titanfall 2, you'll be pleased to hear the Volt Gun will make its return!

• Read more: Apex Legends may start players with Evo Shields in Season 6

Turned into an SMG that uses energy ammo, the gun will be sure to reign supreme at mid-range combat.

Apex Legends Season 6 Patch Notes

Here are the official Apex Legends patch notes that will go live once Season 6 drops.

Map Update: World’s Edge Update

Hammond Robotics continues to take over World’s Edge. They’re up to… something… nefarious. They have taken steps to “upgrade” World’s Edge with changes to The Dome, Drill site, and other Points of Interests.

Armor Meta

With Season 6, we're introducing some big changes to the way armor works in the game.

First off, all armor in the game is Evo Armor (except the Gold Armor).

When you find a white, blue or purple armor on the ground, it's a pre-leveled Evo Armor. It can be picked up like normal, and continue to be evolved. Red Armor is not in the ground loot and can only be achieved through evolving.

Gold Armor is not part of the Evo Armor track, and is only found in rare locations as usual.

Another interesting change is that players spawn with level 0 Evo Armor. If you get in gun fights right away, and do enough damage, you will automatically level up into a White Armor. And you can continue to take that all the way to Red.

We think this will really help with loot availability in the early game, without requiring players to drop hot when they don't want to.

With all the changes in Season 6, players now have the opportunity to level up their shields through damage, luck in ground loot, or through crafting!

The last big differences is that all Armor is coming down by 25 health. This means, players with Purple and Gold Armor have 175 health, not 200. Red Armor gets you to 200 health, and you can no longer get to 225.

Our goal for this is to bring down the TTK (time to kill) a bit in order to better reward strategic positioning. 

New Damage Requirements:

 Damage to white: 50

 Damage to blue: 125

 Damage to purple: 250

 Damage to red: 500

Recon Class

• All Recon legends (Bloodhound, Crypto, and Pathfinder) can now use Survey Beacons to get the next ring location. Crypto can use his drone to instantly get this information.

Pathfinder:

• Context: Giving all Recon legends access to survey beacons makes Pathfinder less unique, and obviously we don’t love that. For now, we’re giving our friendly robot a small buff to his ultimate cooldown when he uses a survey beacon, but in the future we will take another look at Pathfinder to see what else we could do to make him feel more unique. 
• Passive: Each time Pathfinder scans a survey beacon, the total cooldown of Zipline Gun is reduced.
• Numbers: Zipline Gun cooldown reduced by 10s each time Pathfinder scans a beacon. Up to 6 rings per game means the total cooldown of Zipline Gun can go from 120s to 60s.

Bloodhound:

• Context: Bloodhound fulfills a very clear role in Apex Legends: they’re the information gatherer and tracker, but currently their performance leaves a lot to be desired. In this patch, we wanted to double down on their ultimate being their big moment of becoming a god-like tracker. Bloodhound already gives up some information to the enemy when they scan or use the ultimate (it makes a noticeable sound), so we think there is room for a lot more power during the ultimate.
• Beast of the Hunt: Now gains even more duration when Bloodhound scores a knockdown or kill with the ultimate about to run out.
• Eye of the Allfather: During Beast of the Hunt, Eye of the Allfather now comes out twice as fast and has a much shorter cooldown.
  • Numbers: Beast of the Hunt duration extension 5s → [5s - 15s] based on remaining duration
  • Eye of the Allfather CD during Beast of the Hunt: 25s → 6s
  • Eye of the Allfather total use time during Beast of the Hunt: 1.8s → 0.9s

Crypto:

• Context: Crypto is a particularly interesting recon character: the amount of information he can gather for his team with the drone is very high, but the fact that he has to switch over to his drone leaves him vulnerable and often at a great distance from his team. Because he has no abilities without his drone, we figure there’s room for even more power when he’s in his drone.
• Surveillance drone: 
  • Crypto can now activate respawn and survey beacons from his drone. Doing so is instant instead of requiring a prolonged use. 
  • Made the surveillance drone slightly more consistent to hit but also doubled its hitpoints.
• Drone EMP:
  • EMP will now slow teammates caught in the blast, even if they had no shields. This means that players who have used Revenant’s Death Totem will also be slowed.
  • Numbers:
    • Surveillance Drone 30HP → 60HP
    • Surveillance Drone hitbox size: cube of edge length 16 → cube of edge length 24

Other Legends

Revenant:

• Context: We’re happy to see that dropping the range restriction on Death Totem brought a lot more Revenants into play, but we’ve been watching a particularly frustrating combo play out in professional level play involving a squad of Revenant, Wraith, and Crypto, where using the three ultimates together resulted in two back to back runs at the enemy team that they could do very little about. We’ve attacked part of that in the Crypto EMP change, but here’s the other part aimed at making this play less overwhelming.
• Death Totem:
  • For 2s after being recalled by the Death Totem, players cannot use Wraith’s Dimensional Rift.

Octane:

• Stim: Can now use Stim while healing, but stim will not remove the slow you incur from healing.

Loba:

• Context: While Loba was initially very popular, she’s been struggling to keep up more recently, so we’re tossing her a little buff. If you’re curious why we’ve chosen to buff her ultimate rather than her tactical: we’re seeing that she has decent combat success but that teams with her on them don’t win as much as, say, teams with Lifeline or Wattson. This suggests to us that her out of combat utility (that is to say, how she funnels loot to her team) isn’t doing enough.
• Black Market:
  • Lowered cooldown from 3min to 90s

Gibraltar:

• Defensive Bombardment:
  • Increased cooldown from 3 minutes to 4.5 minutes

Bangalore:

• Rolling Thunder:
  • Decreased cooldown from 4.5 minutes to 3 minutes

Wattson:

• Interception Pylon
  • Trophy system will now shoot down Caustic barrels in flight if they would have landed inside the range of the trophy.

Loot

Added:

• Extended Energy Mags. 
• Turbocharger Hop-up

Updated:

• Precision Choke - Removed Precision Choke from loot pool, but it will now be integrated into the Triple Take and Peacekeeper by default. Fire select toggles on/off the choke

In Supply Drop:

• R99
  • Damage increased from 11 to 12
  • Increased magazine size to 32
  • Ammo Reserve: 160

Out of Supply Drop- Into Ground Loot:

• Devotion 
  • Clip size reduced back to original values (36/40/44/48).

Fully Kitted Weapon Swaps

Removed: 

• DMR
• Hemlok 
• Spitfire 
• EVA-8 
• RE-45

Added: 

• Devotion 
• Mastiff 
• Triple Take
• Flatline 
• Volt

Updated Loot

Sniper ammo

• Increased pick up from 8 to 12
• Increased Stack Size from 16 to 24

Energy Ammo

• Reduce amount picked up from 30 to 20.

Weapon Updates

Hemlok: 

• Reduced vertical recoil in burst mod
• Slightly reducing recoil in pattern on 2nd and 3rd shot so first burst kicks less
• Burst mode time between bursts .32 -> .28

Charge Rifle

• Will now use 2 ammo per shot.
• Increased mag size from 4 to 8

Triple Take Buff: 

• Increase fire rate 1.25 -> 1.4
• Increased Mag size from (5/6/7/8) to (6/7/8/9)
• Built the Choke hop up into the weapon by default. Toggle select-fire to enable/disable the Choke

PK

• Built the Choke hop up into the weapon by default. Toggle select-fire to enable/disable the Choke

Spitfire 

• Improve recoil controllability

Havoc

• Updated Havoc with a new recoil pattern 
•  Designer Note: The Havoc's existing recoil pattern had constant horizontal movement. This means it would either be too difficult to control if there was too much recoil, or far too easy to control if there was too little recoil. Updating to a new pattern which is more consistent in style with existing recoil patterns.

Mozambique

• Increased clip size from 3 to 4.

P2020

• Increased Damage from 13 to 15
• Decreased Hammerpoint damage multiplier from 2.7 to 2.35. This will leave Hammerpoint P2020 damage unchanged in most scenarios..
• Increased mag size from (10/13/15/18) to (12/14/16/18)

Sentinel

• Only requires one shield cell to charge if the player has the gold armor.

Prowler

• Slightly Reduce vertical recoil in burst mode
• Increase horizontal recoil in Auto Mode 

There's plenty more stuff yet to be revealed to spice up the Apex Legends experience, so be sure to check back often as we'll update you on more as soon as it's announced.