Apex Legends now has space dragons! Plus, new hero leaks!

Season 1 of Apex Legends concluded last night. The second season of the breakout battle royale game is only set to kick off on 2 July though, and it appears that developer Respawn Entertainment is using the next few weeks to make some big changes to the location of their game. Changes like space dragons!

As teased at E3, last night players began encountering Flyers, the massive flying reptile analogues from the Titanfall universe, showing up in-game. These Flyers are a little different to the ones we encountered in the Titanfall games though. For one, they’re far more squishy as players can shoot them out of the sky relatively easily. And shooting them is not just some way to satisfy a sick trophy hunter fetish, but actually has a practical application as the Flyers appear to be scavengers flying around with players’ death boxes clutched in their claws. Shoot them down and the loot is yours, as you can see in the videos below featuring a number streamers who encountered the beasties last night.

You will notice in the videos above that when players looted the death boxes, it showed the names of other players confirming early reports that the Flyers were actually plucking them up from the ground. Respawn and publisher EA Games are yet to make any official statement regarding the flyers though, but there may be a very good in-game reason for their appearance now.

While we know that the next legend released in season 2 will be Wattson, this week data-miners uncovered some new info buried in the game’s files alluding to another legend named Crypto. Seemingly a hacker of Korean descent (there a number of references to his laptop, along with some coordinates), Crypto has seemingly… done something in the vicinity of the Repulsor portion of the game’s map. According to the in-game lore, the Repulsor tower was built by Wattson and her father to keep Flyers and Leviathans and other animals out of King’s Canyon where the Apex Legends tournaments take place. Could Crypto possibly sabotaging the Repulsor be the reason why Wattson – an engineer who literally grew up in the game but never took part before – would enter the mix now? It certainly makes sense.

As for the flyers, right now they’re not doing anything except being mobile loot box drops, but further data-mining has revealed code to show they have two states: cautious and angry. For the moment, the flyers are firmly in the former state of mind, but a new event titled “Beast Hunter” – which was uncovered by data-miners – may see that change. Along with the flyers though, it’s also been noticed that the Leviathans – the towering beasts lumbering off the coast of King’s Canyon – are actually getting closer as they circle around the island.

Along with last night’s reveal of the flyers, Respawn has released a blog post detailing some major weapons balance changes coming to Apex Legends in season 2. Besides for more info on the new L-Star LMG weapon (which sounds insanely powerful), we also learn that lower-tier weapons are getting some unique buffs. The RE-45 and Alternator now get a “Disruptor Rounds” hop-up that will boost their damage against shields, while the P2020 and Mozambique get a “Hammerpoint Rounds” hop up that increases their damage against unshielded opponents. This makes for some interesting gameplay dynamics as something like a Mozambique – which became a meme due to how useless it was – could potentially still be viable in the later phases of the game now. Break an opponent’s shield with a different weapon, then quickly swap to the Mozambique to finish them off quicker than normal.

Besides for the lower-tier weapon hop-ups, energy weapons (Havoc, Devotion, Triple Take) will now get extended magazine mods and your max ammo capacity per inventory slot has been increased from 60 to 80, allowing you to carry more. On the flip side of this though, shotgun max ammo capacity per slot has been dropped massively from 64 to 16. Eish. You’re going to have to be a lot more conservative with that Peacekeeper now. Respawn will also be making balance changes to the Arc Star grenade, changing the loot drop tables for gold weapon drops (expect more Krabers in early/mid-game drops, with more Mastiffs in late-game) while teasing new gold weapons that will be dropping in season 2 as well as overall buffs for several weapons.

Last Updated: June 19, 2019