Respawn ships huge Apex Legends armor overhaul in Season 6 update

Apex Legends is introducing “big changes” to the way the battle royale’s armor works in the upcoming Season 6 patch, Respawn has revealed, confirming rumors the devs had a huge overhaul planned for the mid-August update.

Nearly all Apex Legends armor will now be “Evo” armor from Season 6 onwards, excluding Gold Amor. Common (white), rare (blue), and epic (purple) chest armor will start each game as pre-leveled Evo Armor from August 18 onwards.

Respawn has also confirmed all armor pieces will be able to level up to the top-powered Red armor, which boasts five armor chunks. Gold Armor will not evolve throughout battle royale matches, however, and will remain extremely rare.

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Finally, the armor overhaul will also see all Apex Legends players drop into every match with “Level 0” armor. This starting armor goes “all the way to Red.”

Respawn believes this shock Apex Legends armor rework in Season 6 will “really help with loot availability in the early game,” and allow players to avoid hot dropping right into the fight for rare loot “if they don’t want to.”

“With all the changes in Season 6, players now have the opportunity to level up their shields through damage, luck in ground loot, or through crafting!” the Apex Legends devs added.

The new Evo Armor era ⁠— which Dexerto originally tipped was on its way in early August ⁠— will also usher in some big changes number-wise for each different set of Apex Legends armor.

All armor across the board will see a 25 health-point drop in the August update. Purple and Gold Armor now have 175 health, down from 200. Red, the highest Evo level available, will now be set to 200 health points. It was previously a lofty 225.

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These changes will also see each Evo level’s requirements changed slightly. The new damage requirements are as follows:

• White upgrade damage: 50
• Blue upgrade damage: 125
• Purple upgrade damage: 250
• Red upgrade damage: 500

“This is such a big change for the whole game…” Jason McCord said in Apex’s August 17 dev stream. “What’s really exciting is we’ve now given you three different ways to get to good armor in every game.”

“We want to make sure everyone doesn’t just easily get to Red at the end of the game though. There have been a few tweaks there. We’ll be keeping an eye on that. We want to make sure we’ve got it right, but we’re confident it’s right for now.”

• Read more: All Apex Legends Season 6 World’s Edge changes revealed

McCord also took to Twitter soon after Season 6’s major armor overhaul was unveiled in the notes. He wrote, “Now y’all see why the last 45 LTMs have been “Evolved,” with a laugh emoji. “We gotta test and gather data to make decisions.”

The “big” armor overhaul isn’t the only thing Respawn is changing up this season either. The other huge swap is the World’s Edge “revamp,” which has seen Mirage Voyage and the map’s iconic train stripped away in Season 6.

• Read more: All Apex Legends Season 6 buffs & nerfs for guns, Legends

Apex also got its 14th character this month, turret-loving engineer Rampart. The Volt SMG also finally made the swap from Titanfall 2 to Respawn’s mega-popular battle royale.

Finally, new crafting mechanics were added, and a new battle pass was unveiled. Catch up on all the changes in the Apex Legends Season 6 patch notes as the battle royale enters a new era with the August 18 update.