Apex Legends Beginner’s Tips and Guide

by RexTheOnion

Burst damage is king: Like in most fps games dating all the way back to the quake rocket launcher and railgun, burst damage weapons exchange reliability for more damage, but if you can hit your shots reliably they will always be better at high levels. The peacekeeper is very powerful if you can hit shots, same for the snipers and wingman, if you truly want to be high level in this game these weapons are the ones you’ll want to watch out for, they’re insane and I have a feeling the wingman will be getting a nerf to its fire rate at some point.

Another great thing about the burst damage weapons in this game is that they don’t need very many attachments to scale into the late game, keep an eye out for a purple shotgun bolt for the peacekeeper and the skullpiercer rifling for the wingman, the former making the shotgun all around much more effective and the latter making the wingman’s headshots do even more damage. If you intend on taking the wingman into late game you’ll also really want a purple magazine for it, increasing it’s poor 6 shots to a 12 shot mag, which is insane.

Burst damage is king but: This game is incredibly balanced from what I can tell, yes at high levels burst damage weapons will most likely be favored but other guns in this game are incredibly good, and quite frankly most people aren’t good enough with burst damage weapons to be a problem.

The spitfire lmg in this game is incredibly good, rocking a high round magazine while other guns are dealing with base 18 bullet mags, and also shreds at short range and has good accuracy at long ranges, it is also incredibly reliable, so before the noob with his wingman can hit you once you’ve shredded his shields.

a couple other standout weapons that aren’t burst damage is the r99, the fastest firing smg, it uses light bullets so you’ll always have ammo, and if you can get a couple attachments for it(the extended mag holy fuck), will destroy even in the late game.

the prowler is also incredibly strong, although it’s burst fire can be hard to get used to for some players, and the scout is a very reliable dmr type rifle that is good at every range in the game and uses light ammo.

all the assault rifles are pretty good, a bit worse than the guns I’ve just talked about, I think the flatline (uses heavy ammo) is the best of the bunch but I could be wrong, I would advise sticking to short to medium range with them as they seem very inaccurate at longer ranges.

Try to move around a fuck ton vs people with burst damage guns since, like I said before, they’re hard to hit with, and you have the advantage the longer the fight goes.

When to pick up the devotion: The devotion is the energy based lmg and it’s insane, it’s so good at consistent damage that it does burst damage, so basically it just does a fuck ton of damage, it has a charge up time kind of like a minigun would in another game, so when you press the trigger it has to spin up, but once it spins up it shreds armor and health alike and is incredibly accurate at range, putting it above the very strong spitfire in my opinion, even with the awkward charge up time.

So you might say, what’s the issue? it sounds crazy op, well, ammo, energy ammo seems incredibly rare and this thing chews through it like nothing else, this rarity isn’t really a problem with the energy sniper the triple take, but 40 rounds goes a lot further in a sniper than in an lmg.

In the end it’s a big gamble picking up this gun, if you grab it and waste half the game looking for ammo and attachments and in the last 10 minutes you have to ditch it for something without much ammo and no attachments because you ran out of ammo, it sucks. But if you find it alongside a couple spawns of ammo and it’s signature attachment the turbocharger which makes the spin-up time even less and turns the thing into even more of a beast, you should definitely roll the dice.

Play with your team: This may seem obvious but it’s incredibly important, this game does have a lot of potential for outplays and high skill moments but it is incredibly hard to win a 1v2, let alone a 1v3, I’ve only managed it a couple times and there was a lot of luck involved and I have a suspicion that the other guys were pretty unfamiliar with fps.

So revive your teammates at all costs, focus fire on one enemy at a time, call out to your teammates once you’ve downed someone and need to fall back to heal. Don’t loot while your teammates are dying etc, it seperates the pretty good from the great.

Now you may be saying “I don’t have any friends so I can’t play.” First, get some friends, that’s messed up, second, this team has an insanely good pinging system that allows very smooth voiceless communication, especially for a br game. Stay tightly grouped up, and you should be fine.

Bonus tip, if your team has been wiped but you somehow escape, you can double back and wait out the enemy team, grabbing your teams revive tags and getting them to a respawn point, it doesn’t always work and you will have to regear, but it can keep you in the game.

Run towards the explosions: Aka don’t play like a bitch… or do if that’s how you have fun but I’m writing this guide with the assumption that you want to get better, and camping the entire game only to be destroyed in top three by an entire squad of no-scoping wingman wielding madmen is probably not the best way.

the best way to get better at this games core mechanics is to fight at all times, drop immediately and fight, if you hear gunshots, fight, if you see people, fight, if people see you, don’t run, fight, this will make sure you’re getting better faster than someone who runs and hides the entire time, because by the time you’ve both put in 50 hours they might have slightly more top 3 placements than you, but you’ll have more wins and be a better shot.

And finally, running towards gunfire is actually a very good strategy not just to get better at the game, but also to win, when you hear gunfire you have an advantage over the shooters, you know where they are and they don’t know where you are, you will have to fight in these games eventually so you should attack when the odds are stacked in your favor, aka when the enemy doesn’t know where you are, but you know where they are.

the only time when this isn’t true is if you are very weak for some reason, such as getting very bad loot or being downed and respawned, or during end game, during end game (5ish squads left alive) you may want to watch from the sidelines while other teams fight, swooping in once combat is done to kill the winning team, the reason for this is that the map is much smaller so going into an existing team fight has a greater chance of another team coming in and killing all of you.

Loot: Loot isn’t terribly complex in this game since they do a lot to really make things easy on you, spam e on stuff and it will generally be an upgrade, a couple things to look out for:

Armor: Armor is really important, purple armor is an insane advantage during a gunfight vs someone with blue or white armor, and no armor is a death sentence. When you’re looting if your shields have been damaged you can accidentally switch out your armor for worse armor, this can be handy during fights if you are low on shields but don’t have time to heal, you can loot a dead enemy (or teammate :() and refresh your armor, although be careful not to drop your slightly damaged purple armor for white.

Don’t carry around a bunch of useless shit: Holy god I’ll see my teammates dumb like 90 fucking stocks on the ground, you don’t need all that, here is a simple priority list for pickups.

• attachments for your guns
• ammo for your guns
• large health kits
• large shields
• small shields
• fire grenades
• frag grenades
• small health kits (these suck ass but I guess they could possibly maybe someday come in handy.)

Characters: I can’t comment too much here because I only play bloodhound and I just don’t have enough time played but I can give some tips.

play one character: If you really want to improve mastering one character is much better than jumping around to every character, I haven’t even played some characters, because my heart only belongs to my favorite eldritch horror, but I realize I’m a bit extreme, play a couple of characters, find the one you like, and stick with it.

Also, personal pet peeve, don’t die once and decide that the character that killed you is op and then switch to that character, That’s just dumb as hell.

A couple other things I’ve noticed about characters:

• Bangalore’s smoke is amazing for reviving teammates.
• Gibraltar’s airstrike seems incredibly powerful, I hesitate to call anything overpowered yet but this thing wrecks, get inside once you see the red circles on the ground.
• If you have a lifeline give her any ultimate accelerants since her ult is generally the most “worth it” of all the ults, you can never have too many drops in between fights.
• idk wtf Wraith does but one of her abilities makes her hard to see and not take damage, but not impossible to see, watch her closely and kill her when she comes out of it, also don’t go through her portals, that’s just asking for trouble.
• Finally, for my bloodhound mains out there, your q is very visible to other people, be careful with that.
• Use your ult right before a fight starts, it can either be used from a distance because now everyone is incredibly easy to snipe, or you can rush with a shotgun and kill their entire team.
• another insane use for your ult is you can see through enemy and friendly smokes, I very much want to run a team of bloodhound, caustic, and Bangalore, but none of my friends have caustic yet, seems insane.

Hope this “guide” was somewhat helpful, this game is amazing and very easy to get into, so I don’t even know if a guide is that necessary, but I hope you got something out of it.

TLDR: Drop hot and fight to get practice, play as a team, shoot em in the head.