Apex Legends Season 7 Patch Notes: Horizon, Olympus map, Trident Hovercar, Legend Buffs, Weapon Changes, and More

Apex Legends Season 7 kicks off in two days, and it is already shaping up as the game’s biggest season yet. Ahead of Ascension’s November 4 launch at 8 PM PT, Respawn has released the full patch notes for its battle royale’s season seven.

Recently, several content creators in the gaming community got the chance to playtest and record season seven’s new content. However, they were not allowed to share the embargoed footage before November 2. Those restrictions ended today, and many content creators have released their gameplay videos. Check out Acue’s Apex Legends Season 7 gameplay below.

The major changes arriving with the upcoming update include the next legend Horizon, a brand new map called Olympus, and Apex’s first drivable vehicle, the Trident hovercar. Ascension will also mark the game’s debut on Steam, and there’s a new social feature called Clubs.

Furthermore, the developers have given a detailed breakdown of the upcoming balance changes and adjustments for legends, weapons, map rotations, and game meta changes. Read the patch notes for Apex Legends Season 7: Ascension below.

Apex Legends Season 7: New Legend – Horizon

Dr. Mary Somers, also known as Horizon, is the Apex Games’ newest competitor. She is a brilliant scientist who escaped a black hole with her mastery of gravity manipulation.

Horizon’s custom spacesuit allows her to fall from great heights and control her movements in the air. Using her custom technology, she can use gravity lifts to give her team a vertical boost. She can even deploy NEWT (her small robot named after her son, Newton) to drop a micro black hole that pulls opponents into the center for some serious crowd control.

Passive: Spacewalk

Increase air control and reduce fall impacts with Horizon’s custom spacesuit.

Tactical: Gravity Lift

Reverse the flow of gravity, lifting players upward and boosting them outward when they exit.

Ultimate: Black hole

Deploy NEWT to create a micro black hole that sucks in nearby Legends.

New map: Olympus

The Apex Games have found a new arena for the legends to compete in. It is the sky city of Olympus among the clouds, having a lush and futuristic outlook, enriched with greenery and vibrant colors amidst high-rise buildings.

A utopia floating in clouds above Psamathe, Olympus was once a place where the Outlands’ brightest minds could gather and exchange ideas. However, an accident in an experimental research facility led to the creation of the Phase Rift (a massive bubble of Phase energy), and the city was abandoned.

Now players can use Olympus’ luxurious amenities to their advantage. Rotating agricultural towers, beautiful gardens, and classy restaurants serve as new stages for intense skirmishes. New vehicles called Tridents give your squad a way to boost into battle and take your enemies by surprise. The Phase Runner—a tunnel of Phase energy running through the center of Olympus—lets you cross the map in seconds. And the Rift stands tall over everything, mysterious and beckoning.

New Vehicle: The Trident

Exclusive to Olympus, the Trident is a hovercar designed to match the theme of trios.

Cruise the highways to avoid chokepoints or use the boost to soar over jumps. The Trident will speed up those early game rotations. Drive in third person, or ride as a passenger in first person with full shooting capabilities. The Trident is durable, so it will never explode, but damage applied from enemy fire will be dispersed amongst the players in the car. Don’t worry; you can still do full damage to players by hitting them directly. So Respawn expects to see some amazing Kraber shots. Disembark to park it anywhere and use it as makeshift cover in the late game.

Moreover, the Trident can interact with Legend abilities in many different ways, as shown in the gameplay trailer. Experiment and have fun!

Apex Legends Season 7 LTM: Olympus Preview

To help you understand and explore the map without fear of getting shot, Respawn is introducing a new playlist called Olympus Preview. This mode teams you up with 30 Legends on Olympus and allows you to roam the map to learn map drops, loot areas, and practice your routes to the endgame. Circles are still on, and once circle 4 finishes, players are brought back up to the plane to start the second skydive run. There are a total of 3 runs before the match ends. This mode is only available for one week.

A new social feature called Clubs

With this season, Respawn is introducing clubs. Join a club with like-minded legends and make it easier to find your champion squad. Don’t see a particular club you like, then create one and let your friends know to join! Get to know everything about Apex Legends Clubs here.

Steam release

Boot up Steam and start downloading and play Apex Legends! If you’re coming from Origin, all your progress and unlocks will carry over. And for a limited time, log in to Steam and receive these Half-Life and Portal inspired weapon charms:

• PotatOS Gun Charm
• Headcrab Runner Gun Charm
• Wired Companions Gun Charm

Read more about Apex’s Steam debut here.

Ascension Battle Pass

The Season 7 Battle Pass is all about that high fashion. Level up your Pass to unlock skins like the Wraith “High Class” and Octane’s “Fast Fashion”.

Challenges are no longer points-based and now grant between 1 to 5 stars, depending on their difficulty. Collecting 10 stars will take you to the next Battle Pass level. Respawn has also added tabs to the challenges menu in the lobby that allows you to toggle between daily, top weekly, and event challenges. Within a match, players can open the map and see this same widget in-game.

Quality of Life updates in Apex Legends Season 7

Attachment Swap Improvements

When replacing an attachment with one from the ground, if the old attachment is an improvement for your other weapon, the old attachment will get automatically transferred.

Replicator Updates

• For Season 7, Respawn has removed weapons from the crafting pool and have replaced them with Shield batteries. The high-level attachments will still be tailored towards a weapon category.
• Respawn now prevents other players from picking up items you crafted for the first 5 seconds after crafting.  This can be disabled by pinging the item.

Air Drop Clarity

• The colors of the beams have been changed to differentiate between normal airdrops, Lifeline’s airdrops, and Replicator airdrops. Normal drops are a light tan, Lifeline’s drops are blue, and Replicator drops and teal.
• All the airdrops’ landing area FX while it’s coming down matches their colors.
• Airdrop beams still stay visible when close to the airdrop, instead of fading when you get close. The beam still disappears when the pod is opened.

Misc

• The Arc Star now shows an Arc Star model when one is thrown near you, instead of a grenade.
• Added a new VO line when you are using a Phoenix Kit.
• Added a new VO line when you drop a Holo Spray.
• You can now ping ammo in your inventory to request more from your squad.
• Made modifications to The Ring to reduce the amount of unplayable space in the circles.

Map Rotations in Apex Legends Season 7

Regular Map Rotation

For 2 weeks, Olympus will be the only map you can play on. After that week, Apex Legends will go into a normal rotation between Olympus and World’s Edge. Respawn will be vaulting Kings Canyon for the time being.

Season 7 Ranked Rotation

The first half of Ranked Split will be played on Olympus. The second half of ranked will be played on World’s Edge. For more information on this season’s ranked updates, check out the ranked blog here.

Legend Meta

Bangalore

• Rolling Thunder: Reduced the time it takes for explosion from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.

Caustic

• Nox Gas Trap/Nox Gas Grenade: Legends no longer get a blurred vision effect while in the gas. Damage updated from 4-10 ticks of damage to 6-12 ticks of damage.

Mirage

• Psyche Out/Life of the Party: Decoys now have 45 health

Octane

• Swift Mend: Doubled healing rate (from 0.5 hp/s to 1.0 hp/s)

Wattson

• Perimeter Security: Increased damage per touch from 10 to 15.

Loba

• Black Market: Ammo taken no longer counts towards Black Market’s maximum. You can scoop up all the ammo in range.

Rampart

• Sheila: Now takes 1.25 seconds to fully spin up, down from 2 seconds.
• Amped Wall: Now takes 3 seconds to fully build, down from 4 seconds.

Pathfinder:

Hitbox: Pathfinder has a tall but extremely skinny hitbox. A lot of his model isn’t actually shootable, and particularly his arms and legs do not represent a lot of shootable area either. Here is a before and after comparison of Pathfinder’s hitboxes.

As you can see, there is still a lot of negative space around his arms and legs. Respawn is hoping that by making it a little easier to hit Pathfinder, they can bring his win rate under control to the point where we can put meaningful power into his kit.

Grappling Hook: Respawn is making a number of changes to Grappling Hook. In update 6.1, they shipped a very conservative version of this change. Now that Respawn knows this didn’t meaningfully affect his winrate or, anecdotally, how frustrating it is to fight him, they are shipping the much more aggressive version of the change list. They also want to make it clear that players should not be punished for chaining grappling hook perfectly into other movement mechanics.

• Pathfinder no longer needs to be on the ground for Grappling Hook to be considered finished.
• The speed to which Pathfinder needs to drop for us to consider Grappling Hook finished was increased from 300 units/second to 500 units/second.
• The maximum cooldown grapple was lowered to 30 seconds, from 35 seconds; the maximum amount of travel time before a new cooldown is set is now 5 seconds, rather than being uncapped. This means that effectively, you can never incur more than a 35-second cooldown.
• The amount of distance you can travel before you hit maximum cooldown was roughly doubled.

Weapon Meta

Supply Drop

R99 Out of Supply Drop: The R99 will be returning to the normal loot pool this season, with the same stats it had before it went into the supply drop at the start of season 6.

• Damage: 12 -> 11 (from Care Package version to normal pre-season 6)
• Ammo 20/22/24/27

Prowler Into Supply Drop: The prowler is replacing the R99 in the supply drop.  Despite the Selectfire hop-up being removed from the loot pool this season, the Prowler will still have the ability to change between 5 round bursts and full-auto.

• Magazine size: 35; reserve ammo: 175

Fully Kitted Weapons

• Removed: Devotion, Mastiff, Triple Take, Flatline, Volt.
• New: Wingman, Sentinel, Havoc, G7, Alternator.

Hemlok

• Increasing horizontal recoil of the first 3 shots slightly to the right (first burst when in burst mode).
• Increasing recoil magnitude in the later stages of the pattern.
• Reducing recoil multiplier in single fire mode to help compensate for additional recoil in pattern. Recoil should mostly be increased in burst mode rather than single fire mode.
• Reducing headshot multiplier 2.0 -> 1.75 (44 -> 39 damage headshot against no helmet base character).

Havoc

• Updated recoil pattern. Kicks up, then right, then left, then up again.

L-Star

• LSTAR has a new recoil pattern that kicks horizontally at first and then settles into a relatively consistent upward recoil. Players who feather the trigger will be able to keep the LSTAR in the good portion of the recoil pattern.
• LSTAR venting time after letting go of the trigger has been reduced 0.4s -> 0.15s.
• LSTAR will now reduce heat faster when not overheated — 1.15s from 99.9% to 0% charge if not overheated, still 2.45s if overheated.

Sentinel

• Energized Sentinel now has a pure damage increase, instead of bonus damage only vs shields.
• Energized Sentinel base damage 70 -> 88.

Triple Take

• Fire rate 1.3 -> 1.2

Hop-Ups

• Quickdraw Holster Hop-up: This new hop-up attaches to the RE-45 and Wingman. When equipped, the gun becomes quicker to raise and lower, takes less time to ADS, and has reduced hipfire spread (particularly when not actively moving).  This should open up new opportunities to use the two weapons, especially in close-quarters combat.

• The Selectfire Receiver hop-up will be removed from the loot pool to make room.

Game Meta Changes in Apex Legends Season 7

Evo Armor requirements increased

Respawn increased the requirements to evolve Evo Armor in order to reduce the number of players with Red Evo Armor during the endgame.

• Level 0 -> 1 : 100 damage (from 50)
• Level 1 -> 2 : 150 damage (from 125)
• Level 2 -> 3 : 300 damage (from 250)
• Level 3 -> 4 : 750 damage (from 500)

Ring damage reduced

• Ring 1: 2% per tick (same)
• Ring 2: 3% per tick (from 5%)
  • Particularly this change should allow players enough time to pop a syringe if they are picked up in Ring 2.
• Ring 3: 5% per tick (from 10%)
• Ring 4: 10% per tick (from 20%)
• Ring 5: 10% per tick (from 20%)
• Ring 6: 15% per tick (from 25%)
• Ring 7: 15% per tick (from 25%)

Bug Fixes

Audio

• Respawn has made some advancements in footstep audio playing more reliably. They have more work being done that they’ll continue to roll out as it gets completed.

Pathfinder

• Fixed an issue with ziplines going through platforms when deployed from underneath.

Wraith

• Fixed an issue with priming a grenade canceling Wraith’s ultimate.

Octane

• Fixed an issue with getting stuck in double jump after using a jump pad.
• Fixed an issue with Octane being able to use healing items while on a zipline.

Crypto

• Fixed an issue with his drone being able to drop items from Crypto’s inventory.
• Fixed an issue with his drone not being able to fit through certain windows.
• Fixed an issue with his drone marking friendly Mirage decoys as enemies.

Revenant

• Fixed an issue with Revenant getting pushed into geo when his totem was deployed in tight spaces.

Rampart

• Fixed an issue with Rampart not being able to place an amp wall while jumping.
• Fixed an issue with Sheila teleporting when placed on a hatch in World’s Edge Staging.

For more information about Respawn’s thought process and reasons behind making the adjustments to legends, weapons, and game meta, you can check out the full patch notes provided on the Apex Legends website.