Apex Legends – 11 More Tips and Tricks to Keep in Mind While Playing

Apex Legends might be the new kid on the block in the battle royale scene, but it seems it’s already taken the industry by storm- millions are already playing it, and its userbase is only continuing to grow. While the fact that it’s free-to-play has helped with that, something else that has attracted a lot of people is that it puts several unique and interesting spins on the battle royale genre. In this feature, we’ll be taking a look at eleven basic tips and tricks you should keep in mind that will surely help you out as you play Apex Legends, especially in your first few hours.

DON’T IGNORE PINGING

Doubling down on the game’s focus on squad-based play is the pinging system, which is a simple yet genius way of communicating almost everything of importance to your teammates. Don’t ignore the pinging system- especially if you don’t use voice chat. From guns to shields to enemies to specific loot, everything you ping automatically gets marked on your squadmates’ screens, while your character also verbally describes the thing they have pinged. It’s incredibly effective.

ABILITIES HAVE LOW COOLDOWNS

Apex Legends also has hero shooter elements thrown in, with each of the eight legends (of which two need to be unlocked) having their own unique abilities. When it comes to making use of these abilities, don’t worry about saving them up- they all have very low cooldown timers, and can come in incredibly handy in several situations, from Bloodhound searching the area for hostiles, to Bangalore’s smoke launcher, to Lifeline’s health drone, and others.

PASSIVE ABILITIES

Every character also has a passive ability that the game doesn’t explicitly talk about- keep these in mind, always, and choose the character you want to play as in your next match based on which passive ability might suit you best. For example, Bloodhound can see tracks left behind by enemies, Gibraltar automatically deploys a shield against incoming enemy fire while aiming down sights, while Pathfinder can scan a survey beacon to reveal the next circle’s location well ahead of time.

SLIDING

Though wall-running and the Titans themselves haven’t made the jump from Titanfall to Apex Legends, the beloved sliding mechanic has done so. It feels as good as ever, but most importantly, it gives you a great momentum boost. It’s a great way to move around and get from place to place quickly, and if you’re ever being shot at, sliding around can make you a tricky target to nail. You can also slide down hills indefinitely, while slide-jumping is also a neat trick both for traversal and in combat- basically, slide whenever you can.

HOLSTER WEAPONS WHILE SPRINTING

In the spirit of keeping up the pace of movement and always be moving, which seems to be the point of Apex Legends for the most part, you’ll be doing a lot of running around from place to place. If you holster your weapon (hold Y or triangle on Xbox or PS4 respectively, 3 on PC), your character can actually run faster. If you run faster, you can also obviously jump higher, and slide farther.

WALL JUMPING

Sure, the incredible wall-running from Titanfall isn’t in Apex Legends, but you can still jump up high walls, even those that you might think you can’t scale. Just run at high walls, and hold the jump button as you hit them, and your character will climb over most of them. Of course, not every single wall is scaleable, but many of them are, and jumping over them can be very useful as you’re getting around the map.

THE GAME TELLS YOU WHEN YOU’RE NEAR HIGH-TIER LOOT

Loot is, of course, paramount in any battle royale title, and that is the case in Apex Legends as well. Rather than running around all over the place and trying to manually find the good stuff, though, in Apex Legends, when you enter any area of the map, you get a prompt on the top left of your screen that tells you what kind of loot can be found in the area. If at the beginning of a game, the game tells you that there’s high-tier loot around, find it as quickly as possible. Later on in the game, if the game tells you the same thing, there’s a chance that a player with high-tier loot on them might be in the area, so keep an eye out.

DON’T QUIT IMMEDIATELY AFTER DYING

Unlike most other battle royale, if you in Apex Legends, that’s not necessarily game over for you. You also drop your banner with your death box, and your squadmates can pick up this banner and take it to a Respawn Beacon, to get you to, well, respawn, and redeployed. You come back into the battle with no weapons and loot, sure, but hey- at least you’re not dead. So don’t quit as soon as you’re dead. Wait for your squadmates to get you respawned. While you’re dead, you can also simply press X (A on Xbox One) to mark the nearest Beacon for your squadmates.

SURVIVING LONGER GRANTS MORE EXP THAN DEALING DAMAGE

Battle royale games aren’t about getting the most kills- they’re about getting the last kill. And Apex Legends plays on that in an interesting way. The experience you get at the end of every match rewards you points for various actions, but interestingly enough, you get more points for surviving longer than you do for dealing damage or getting kills. Yet another way the game encourages you to play together as a squad and help each other to get to the end rather than trying to get the most kills. You even get a 5% bonus if your survive longer while playing with a friend.

EXECUTIONS

You can unlock so flashy, slick looking finishing moves – or executions – in Apex Legends that you can use to finish off downed enemies, but while these are fun to use, you should be careful about where and when to use them. While you’re in the middle of an execution, you can still be shot, downed, and killed by enemies around you, so if you do want to do an execution, make sure you’re in the clear and there aren’t any enemies in the vicinity who can harm you.

SELF-REVIVING

While you’re running around the map looking for loot, keep an eye out for legendary Knockdown Shields. While Knockdown Shields of the non-legendary variety can help reduce the damage you take while you’ve been downed, the legendary kind can be used to revive yourself with no help required from a squadmate. Obviously, that can come in very useful.