What to expect in major Apex Legends update coming in December

Developers Respawn Entertainment are planning on releasing a big update for Apex Legends Season 3 at the start of December, and they’ve revealed some of what will be included.

It’s been a while now since the last big update was released for Apex Legends, but players won’t have to wait much longer, as Respawn have revealed that the next one will go live on December 3.

The update is set to include several quality-of-life improvements, new cosmetics items, changes to progression and the level cap, and more.

The developers talked about some of those quality-of-life changes in their November 27 episode of the Apex Devstream, and it seems most of those improvements are being made based on player feedback.

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Below, you can find a full breakdown of all these changes that will be coming via this patch, as well as the full Devstream video itself.

Friendly fire added to Firing Range

Respawn will be enabling friendly fire in the new training area known as the Firing Range, which will allow players who load into the mode together to be able to inflict damage upon each other.

This has been a highly requested feature because it would allow players to be able to practice against each other, and warm up much more effectively while not being limited to shooting at just immobile targets and AI dummies.

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In fact, enabling friendly fire in Firing Range could open the door to a whole new type of competition within the training zone itself, much like the exciting build fights that take place in Fortnite Battle Royale’s Creative mode.

Change to looting death boxes

Another change that will be introduced in this update will be giving players the option to stop automatically leaving the looting screen of a death box when taking damage.

This is something players have been asking for quite some time, as many have expressed their frustrations about the game’s current looting system, which immediately kicks a player out of the looting screen if they start taking damage from enemy fire.

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While on paper this may sound like a good thing, the problem is that players often try to manually leave that screen on their own to take cover, and the combination of that with the automatic removal ends up causing many to just go straight back into the looting menu.

Fortunately, Respawn have taken note of these complaints and will be adding an option for players to have that automatic feature turned off, allowing them to just stop looting whenever they so choose, even when taking damage.

Improvement to health/shield item slot

Implemented via this update will be an improvement to the health/shield item slot, which will now automatically switch from a healing item to a shield cell once a player has full health.

For example, if a player uses a healing item to get their health bar up to the max, that slot will automatically swap to a shield cell so that the player doesn’t have to open up the wheel and select it manually.

“You have refilled your health, you will now automatically swap over to a shield cell as your next item,” they explained. “It doesn’t work in reverse. The idea being if I have just refilled my shields and my shields are at full health and I take a little bit of damage, I’m going to want to go to shields right away to refill that.”

There will also be a change made to how colored objects, specifically Helmets and Armor, look in the colorblind mode after players were complaining that it was hard to tell what rarity some of the items were.

The color that indicates rarity will not be made much more vibrant so that those with colorblind mode enabled will be able to distinguish them much more easily.

Here is the full November 27 episode of the Apex Devstream, which also includes a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the new World’s Edge map and a showcase for some incredible themed-artwork created by the community.

For more information about the new progression system, change to the level cap, and a look at the new cosmetic items, make sure to check out our Apex Legends December update info page.