Apex Legends Season 4 map changes – Planet Harvester, Survey Camp, more

Apex Legends developers Respawn Entertainment made some major map changes to World’s Edge in Season 4: Assimilation, such as adding the new Planet Harvester, Survey Camp, splitting Capitol City in two, and more.

Apex Legends Season 4 finally launched on February 4 after weeks of anticipation, and it came as part of a massive update that made changes to all facets of the battle royale.

As expected, there were some huge changes made to the World’s Edge map, and Respawn even released a separate blog post explaining why they decided to make such alterations.

Two new points of interest were added – the giant Planet Harvester at the heart of the map and a smaller, less central location called Survey Camp.

In addition, Capitol City, the biggest location in Season 3, was actually split into two separate zones called Fragment East and Fragment West.

• Read More: Apex Legends Season 4 update patch notes

A full breakdown of all these major map changes can be found below, based on the information provided in the official Season 4 map updates blog post from Respawn.

The Planet Harvester

Probably the biggest new addition to World’s Edge is The Planet Harvester, which is a gigantic metal mining facility located at the heart of the map.

It features a constant beam of red light that goes into the sky, which players will be able to use “for a better sense of directionality and understanding of the center of the map.”

The gigantic structure has numerous levels that teams will be able to engage each other on, and Respawn have apparently designed it to keep fights “largely self-contained,” so that third parties are “a little more predictable and hopefully easier to defend against.”

Capitol City split in two – Fragment East and Fragment West

The presence of The Planet Harvester has apparently caused the map’s lava faults to rupture and split Capitol City into two separate zones called Fragment East and Fragment West, separated by a giant fissure.

The reason why Respawn chose to make this change is that Capitol City is known to be a hot-drop location and teams who land there are often victimized by third parties. Now, the only way to get from one zone to the other is to take the provided zipline, fallen skyscraper bridge, or use Pathfinder’s or Octane’s Ultimate Ability.

• Read More: All tiers and rewards in Apex Season 4 Battle Pass

Initially, the large fissure was designed to eliminate players who happen to fall into it. However, Respawn decided that was too harsh and added a new feature called Updraft, which is heated, pressurized air that slowly lifts anyone who falls into the giant crack.

In order to avoid players using the Updraft as a bailout during gunfights, they’ve made it so anyone who falls in will take 25 damage and “travel slowly, in third person; you are essentially a flying loot piñata for any nearby enemy players.”

Survey Camp and Weapon Racks

Survey Camp is one of the new POIs in Season 4, located in the snowy area between Epicenter and Skyhook.

Respawn explain that the idea behind this new location was to “relieve the pressure of locations like Capitol City, Refinery and Epicenter, and create some potentially new rotations, like moving through the train tunnel to get to Skyhook.”

• Read More: All buffs & nerfs in Apex Season 4 update

Because Survey Camp might appear too small to be an appealing landing spot in terms of loot, the devs have spiced it up a bit with new Weapon Racks, similar to the ones found in the Firing Range training area.

These racks will contain guaranteed weapons at the start of every match, giving players an extra incentive to land there instead of the more hot-drop locations.

While these are all of the major map changes made for Season 4, there could very well be other smaller and minor updates to World’s Edge which players will have to discover for themselves after getting to explore for a bit.

Apex Legends Season 4 is now available for free on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.