Games
The latest battle royale game to take the world by storm is Respawn's Apex Legends, and this is how you can dominate in your early matches.
Who saw that one coming? If you'd have said a week ago that right now we would be playing a free to play battle royale game from the team behind Titanfall, chances are everyone would have laughed in your face. EA would never do a surprise launch for something that big, marketing budgets have to be spent. But here we are, Apex Legends is a thing, and already fully playable by everyone for free.
It's also pretty damn good. Despite battle royale being the hottest trend in games since League of Legends made many, many millions of dollars and everyone wanted to make a MOBA, we haven't really seen a true AAA battle royale-only game from a major studio launch. It was a massive risk to just put this out into the world with effectively no public testing. Thankfully, EA have hit gold with this, as Apex Legends is certainly one of the best BR games out there.
It's also pretty different to the likes of Fortnite and PUBG, and for players coming from those and other battle royale games, there are a few mechanics that might be a little confusing at first. That's why we've been grinding away at Apex Legends to make sure that you have the best tips available as you're starting out.
1. Always stay with the Jumpmaster
One of Apex Legends' best ideas to make you work together with your team is by having one person control the drop out of the plane. Most of the time this means that your entire squad will land in the same area, and you can actually fight together from the start, instead of having to work across miles of hostile territory to reach each other because one person decided to drop on the other side of the map.
If you aren't the Jumpmaster, though, there's a button to drop solo, which far too many people seem to do. Unless your Jumpmaster is seemingly AFK, and taking you to the worst place possible, you really should stick together for the majority of your drop. It means you can take on those early game fights and have a better chance of surviving. Don't drop alone, it's a bit of a rude thing to do really.
2. Enemy death crates show what level loot is inside
When you take down an opponent, they drop a big box of loot, and most of the time you're going to want to run over to check what's inside. That can be a pretty risky move however, and if you get all the way over there only to find out all that was inside was a pistol with no ammo, you're going to be disappointed.
There's a way to avoid this, though, as every death box will be a certain colour, and those colours tell you what the highest quality loot inside is. If a box is just plain grey, you know the loot is of the lowest quality. However, if a box is glowing gold, you know that at least one item in there is of the highest quality. You might want to skip a blue box if you're already kitted up pretty well, but a purple or pink one might be worth checking out. Once you learn this tip, you'll never run over to a grey box again, unless you're in a really dire position.
3. The colour of damage numbers show what level armor foes have
When you shoot an enemy, in true video game style, numbers will pop out of them to show how much damage you did. But what you might not realise is that those numbers can also tell you what strength armor they have. If the numbers are just plain white, that means they have level one armour. Blue numbers indicate they have level two armour, and purple numbers indicate level three armour. Then, if the numbers are red, that means they have no armour at all. If it's yellow, that means you hit a headshot, but it gives you no info on what armour they have.
4. Don't quit the game just because you died
If you're playing Apex Legends with a group of randoms, it's pretty tempting to just quit as soon as you go down. You don't really care if they win or not, and the thought of watching them for another 20 minutes sounds a little boring. But, if your team manages to grab your banner from your death crate, then there's a chance you can be back in the game, and that's a big deal. We've even won games with a group of randoms where they revived us mid-round.
All your team has to do is grab your banner quickly after you die, and, by taking it to a spawn beacon, you'll be back in the game. Sure all your gear is gone, but you're back, and the game isn't over. However, if you quit out as soon as you die, that chance of revival is gone.
5. The red balloons with ropes hanging down allow you to move around quickly
You might have noticed that dotted around the map are some giant red balloons with a vertical zip line attached to them. It took us a while to figure out what these were, but it turns out that if you climb up them, you can then fly from the top of them to cover some serious ground. If you're running from the circle, climbing up one of these and gliding to the safe zone could be just what you need, so don't ignore them.
6. You can land directly on the supply ship
This somewhat depends on the path of the drop ship and the supply ship, but you can land on the loot-packed supply ship straight from your first drop. The supply ship starts its path at the same time as the drop ship, heading to a location where it will eventually stop and offer up loot to whoever's near it.
However, with some accurate dropping you can board the supply ship before it gets to that location, take all the loot for yourself, and jump off before those waiting have a chance to figure out where it's all gone. It's a risky play, because if another team has the same idea you're stuck on a very small ship and have to fight for the loot, but if you're alone, it will certainly set you up for a strong game.
