Apex Legends Designer's Notes - Season 31: CIPHER For a fully translated version of Designer's Notes, please visit here. TL;DR Below, we will share insights into meta changes coming in 31.0. We’ll discuss the thought processes behind the implementations. NEW Strongholds Introducing Akimbo Wingman Crypto, Lifeline and Revenant Buffs Loba and Axle Nerfs Prowler and Nemesis Nerfs Welcome Back, Hemlok Burst AR INTRODUCTION Welcome to the latest season of Apex, Cipher. Let’s decode the upcoming changes coming to Battle Royale with this edition of Designer’s Notes. Coming off the heels of last season, Marked, we are in a strong place for balance, and we are excited to introduce some new changes to close out the year! Strongholds are a new mid-match objective that pairs well with the loot rework we did last season. The high-end rewards they offer make the effort of unlocking them well worth it. Speaking of weapons and loot, you’ll be seeing double this season with the long awaited Akimbo Wingman. We’ve touched up Crypto as his kit was overdue for a refresh. We feel this set of changes strikes a good balance between reworking his play pattern to be more healthy, while not fundamentally ‘removing’ anything from his kit. After the last round of nerfs to Axle (details below), we’re sitting back at a solid level for legend and weapon balance. We’re making a few more tweaks this season, but generally no Legend is far and away higher than others in pick rate and the concentration of the ‘most picked’ team comp is back below 1% of all team comps in ranked. Closing out the changes we’ve brought back District night time. We heard the community conversations asking for it to return after our recent rework brought it to daytime. We plan on experimenting more with day/night changes to keep playing on our maps fresh across patches so let us know what you think. Enjoy Cipher, we hope you have as much fun playing the new content as we do! NEW: STRONGHOLDS In Cipher, we’re introducing a new type of Air Drop: the Stronghold. Each match, one Stronghold will drop, in addition to our existing Care Packages. Strongholds deliver on and evolve the risks and rewards that systems like Care Packages and Mythic Bins provided, while carving out a new space in the map for a gunfight. Their presence can shift the flow of the game through an area in ways that will change with each match, influenced by elements like local terrain and ring position at time of drop. We feel this provides an important mid game moment and a reliable vector for big loot gains that some players have been missing after last season’s update; but Strongholds deliver it in a way that is healthier and more sustainable for the game. These new dynamic structures will fall into the map much like a Care Package. Upon landing they are locked and inaccessible, in order to access the loot inside (which includes Care Package Weaponry, Gold Guns, and other rare loot), players must capture and hold the space around the Stronghold. Enemies can contest this capture and try to steal the loot for themselves. As they land, Strongholds will deploy dynamic cover in the surrounding area. With each change to Apex’s Battle Royale mode, our focus is on providing players with meaningful choices to make in each match. Apex is at its absolute best when it presents a tricky strategic choice for players, and rewards the players who took the risk and leveraged their game sense and masterful expression of mechanical skill to navigate those challenges. The Apex Care Package is iconic: A rocket airdrop that falls from the sky to deliver the one-hitter-quitter to the field, a beacon drawing all players in, players hiding in whatever nearby cover can be found while furiously looting, gunfire raining in from all directions, and a massive payoff for anyone capable of grabbing the loot and getting out. We asked ourselves: What if we just double down on that moment? What does that look like? For us, it looks like Strongholds. INTRODUCING AKIMBO WINGMAN Wingies. Wingsmen. Akwingbo. Whatever version you want to call them… The time has come for the iconic revolver to receive double the firing power. This will be the first introduction of another akimbo weapon since the system was added all the way back in S22, and we are super excited for you, the community, to get your hands on the newest addition, the Akimbo Wingman! Why Akimbo Wingman? Well, why not?! We have been looking for a new addition to the akimbo system for some time now, and when presented with the front runners, Wingman just felt like the best candidate for the job! ( But Akimbo Spitfires were tempting for a moment there ;) ) During development, a lot of work was put into trying to preserve that high skill floor, mid-range poke identity that defines the Wingman, while also lowering the intimidation factor so that more players are empowered to wield the weapon. What transpired was the creation of our first ever “burst” akimbo gun. Pulling the trigger will cause both Wingmen to fire sequentially, one right after the other. A little *pop-pop… pop-pop* if you will. We are confident this style of firing will not only allow it to stand apart from its other akimbo counterparts, but really carve its own niche in Apex’s weapon roster. LEGEND BUFFS Crypto Crypto is a difficult Legend to master, but you’ll always see people say they love having a good Crypto on their team. Unfortunately, when they’re just camping in their drone and aren’t in the fight when they need them, it causes a lot of frustration. With the changes we’re making this season, we’re striving to maintain what makes Crypto unique and interesting while encouraging players to spend less time in his drone. This should put him into a more aggressive recon role and keep him with the team. Crypto has had a very low pick rate for multiple seasons. We want to try and freshen up his kit to make him more approachable for all players. We’re adding some new functionality to Crypto's drone while trying to reduce the friction of entering and exiting it, improving its availability and making the Ultimate easier to trigger. We are also integrating some popular Upgrades and adding some new ones. Passive We are integrating the Ally.MoveTo() Upgrade (move faster to teammates) into Crypto’s base kit. He’s getting a speed boost when running toward teammates. Even though time-in-drone should be less, we still wanted to give him a way to get back to his team more quickly. Tactical Crypto’s drone now has a battery that lasts 25 seconds; after the battery runs out it will automatically recall. The goal with this is to limit the amount of time people are spending in the drone, requiring you to take quicker actions and getting back to your team. The recall time is a little longer to give it some downtime before redeploying the drone. The time the drone will be available after being destroyed has been sped up. The goal with this is to allow Crypto more access to his drone. We’ve also improved the timing going into the drone and we’ve made the scan zone a 360 radius instead of just where the drone is looking. Along with this we’ve removed the drone scanning doors and lootbins, this was to reduce the visual clutter and noise it would cause. Crypto’s drone handling has been improved in base. Since you have less time in the drone we wanted it to feel more responsive. With this, we have made the drone more visible to enemies to help pinpoint the faster moving Hack. Crypto’s drone can now mark enemies, creating an icon over the marked enemies head. This icon can be seen through geometry and will remain for 8 seconds. The drone will automatically target enemies while it’s out in the world and attempt to mark enemies it finds. While you’re piloting the drone you’ll be able to manually shoot the drone to mark enemies within a zone. The mark will persist if the drone is destroyed, recalled or leaves the scan area of the marked enemy. Ultimate Crypto’s Ultimate mostly functions the same, but we’ve made some important quality of life changes and adjusted some tuning to make the placement of the EMP be more meaningful. To trigger the EMP there are now 3 available states. If the drone is stowed and your Ultimate is available you can press the Ultimate button to deploy the drone and activate the EMP with one press. If the drone is already out in the world you can trigger the EMP on that drone by pressing the Ultimate button. While you’re piloting the drone you can trigger it by using the Ultimate button on PC, or the weapon swap button on console. The other big change to the Ultimate is the variable output on damage and slow, based on the line of sight of impacted enemies. If your Ult hits enemies, but the drone doesn’t have line of sight, those enemies will take 50 shield damage and a slight movement slow. If the drone has line of sight to the enemy they will take full shield damage and a more impactful slow. This should encourage Cryptos to use the Ultimate in more precise ways to get the full benefit of the EMP. Upgrades Since we’re integrating Ally.MoveTo() into the base kit we are replacing it with an Upgrade that will increase the time enemies are marked for to 12 seconds. Hackathon (speed up drone recharge rate) is also being removed since we buffed the timing of it in base. This is replaced by Charged Up which will add 10 seconds to the battery of the drone. Lifeline Lifeline offers great sustainability to your team but we’re seeing her pick rate drop off pretty significantly the higher you go in Ranked. With these buffs we wanted to bring back some parts of her old kits that players really enjoyed, and give her needed some quality of life updates. Passive We’ve added a new aspect to Lifeline’s glide Passive: she will get her Tactical healing while gliding. The idea behind this is that she is holding and using D.O.C for the glide so it would be nice if you got the healing benefit too. Tactical We’ve removed the Tactical Cooldown (Reduce Tactical cooldown by 10 seconds.) and have integrated it into Lifeline’s base kit. This will give you faster access to healing for you and your team. Upgrades Improved Gliding is getting some better handling alongside the duration increase. We’ll be removing BattPack (+1 battery slots) and replacing it with Enhanced Radio (Increased assign distance) which will be moving from Level 3. For Level 3 we’re adding 2 new Upgrades, Revive Shield and Ultimate Cooldown. An Ultimate cooldown Upgrade that reduces the cooldown by 60 seconds and Revive shield which brings back her old revive shield passive, creating a shield that protects the player being revived by Lifeline. Revenant Rev’s popularity really dropped off with the rise of other legends like Axle and Pathfinder. One of his biggest issues was his upgrades weren’t very interesting and weren't offering a meaningful choice. This buff largely focuses around new upgrades. Tactical Revenant's Tactical cooldown is being reduced by 5 seconds and the attack and charge up time will be faster. These are being integrated into base since we’re replacing the Tactical Cooldown ( Tactical cooldown reduced by 5s ) upgrade and Agile Assassin (attack and charge time faster) Upgrades with new ones. This should make the Tactical feel much more responsive and be more available. Ultimate Revenant’s Ultimate cooldown is being reduced by 30 seconds. We’re also removing the timing cap that wouldn’t allow the Ultimate timer to go higher than 35 seconds. Now knocks will always add 5 seconds while the Ultimate is active. Upgrades New Upgrade Every Lasting will replace the Ultimate cooldown upgrade. This will allow you to extend your Ultimate by 10 seconds when you get a knock while the Ultimate is active. Silence is coming back but in a different way. This new Upgrade called Silence is replacing the Tactical Cooldown upgrade. With this upgrade an AOE pulse will trigger when landing from Revenant's Tactical leap. Enemies hit by the pulse will be silenced for 4 seconds. New Upgrade No Escape will replace Agile Assassin (attack and charge time faster). This new Upgrade will refresh your tactical when you mark an enemy using Revenant's Passive Assassin’s Instinct (Marks an enemy when they are low health). When you see that mark, you’ll have the tools to push in and finish the kill. LEGEND NERFS Loba Loba’s buffs have made her a very popular pick and we want to give her some small nerfs to help bring her kit back in line. For this we’re just adjusting her Tactical and Ultimate cooldowns. The frequency of her abilities is a bit too fast right now. For the Tactical we’re adding 5 seconds, having it go from 25 seconds to 30 seconds and for the Ultimate we’re adding back the 30 seconds that we removed in her buffs. This will make it go from 120 seconds to 150 seconds. Axle (from 10/01/26 hotfix) Axle has been recklessly zooming around in all game modes, and it was time to take action on some of the most common frustration points that the community has called out. Passive The Nitro Gate carried less risk or tradeoffs than all other movement abilities (i.e. Pathfinder grapple and Valk jetpack stow weapons, Horizon lift comes with increased bloom). In theory, we’d like for the lateral speedster to be more fully committed to moving quickly in one direction, where she can be punished if she takes a bad angle or times Nitro Gate use poorly. But between her generous lateral control and aim assist helping with centering, the under the hood systems were doing a lot of heavy lifting to offset most of the risk we wanted to bake into her sliding and shooting gameplay loop. Tactical Disabling aim assist based on gameplay/ability context is not something we do often or take lightly. We think it’s a healthier alternative than adding randomness via increased spread and pulling some depth out of an ability that we think should be preserved for the best high-speed, unassisted aimers. Ultimate The intended design of Axle’s Kickstart drone was also missing the mark, excelling most in a way that doesn’t fit the rest of her fantasy. We wanted to hit the close-quarters strength hard, and hopefully prod players to find more optimal use as a midrange gap closing assistant. In order to get the more punishing knockback, Axle now has to fire Kickstart from farther distances so that the drone has to show its presence in-world before sending players skyward. PROWLER AND NEMESIS NERFS We have seen a ton of movement in our weapon meta over this last season. The rise of the Prowler, the fall of the R-99, the slow climb of the Nemesis. All in all, lots of healthy movement that keeps the Apex games feeling fresh season over season. In Season 31: Cipher, we have a few weapon changes coming your way, but a few to comment on here. First, we are tapping down on the reliability of two of our more popular weapons. The Prowler and Nemesis have been climbing steadily in usage-rate and win-rate all season, with very little signs of stopping. In reaction to this, both are receiving some nerfs to cool them off and bring them more in line with the rest of the weapon pack. WELCOME BACK, HEMLOK BURST AR Another, VERY notable change, is that the time has come for the Hemlok Breach AR to rotate out. It has remained incredibly popular since its release in 28.1, but we felt like its time had come. With the addition of Akimbo Wingman, the Elite Hemlok will be vaulted, and the Hemlok Burst AR will make its glorious return. We acknowledge that this season is very likely to shake up the weapon landscape in new and exciting ways, so while the team will be keeping a close eye on things, we are excited for everyone to get their hands on the changes and provide their feedback. CONCLUSION We hope you have found this blog helpful in deepening your understanding of the processes and motivations behind the development team’s balancing changes. For a comprehensive log of all changes coming in Cipher, be sure to check out the full Patch Notes dropping on November 2nd, 2026 ahead of season launch on November 3rd, 2026!