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TIPS AND TRICKS FOR NEWFRIENDS!

-TOC-
i)General Tips
ii)Legend Overview and Legend Specific Tips
iii)Weapons
iv)Other Shit

----===GENERAL TIPS===----

==PINGING: It might be obvious from the tutorial, but pinging is your best friend. The ping system is incredibly robust in Apex Legends, with pretty much every single command you need being accessed from the quick dial upon holding down the ping button. It's also recommended to ping anything above common rarity out for your squadmates if you don't need it, which is done by hitting the button while hovering over a piece of loot. Did you know you can also ping out things you need in your inventory? Simply open it up, hover over the item you want to request (for example, a backpack or sniper optic, and even ammo) and press the ping button. Your character will call out to your allies saying they need it, which can help if your teammates aren't shit or deaf. You can also ping specific items inside killed enemy's lootchests in a similar way.

==LOOTING: Looting is fairly straightforward, but there are certain things that aren't clearly explained. You might have noticed two zones that spawn as soon as the game starts- "High Loot Areas" and "Loot Barges". High Loot Areas always contain at least one yellow rarity item at the time of writing, but they're fairly small and a lot of people like to go for them. Loot Barges, on the other hand, don't seem to guarantee one of these yellow items, but have a lot of loot boxes with a higher chance for purples and blues. They fly to a location on the map slowly (which is shown on your map by a blue glowing token), and once they reach it ziplines will spawn so people who didn't drop on it can reach it then. Before this, you can't get to a loot barge without dropping on it or using a mobility-centered Legend ability.

Yellow rarity items that aren't optics or attachments almost always have some hidden passive but otherwise function near similar to purple rarity items. For example, the yellow Knockdown Shield has the same health as the purple one (at time of writing), but allows you to self revive once.

When you kill somebody and they drop a lootchest containing their items, their chest will glow the colour of the highest rarity item they hold. It changes when you take that item to reflect the new highest. This way, you can see if it's worth risking to run over and grab stuff from it or to leave it alone for the time being.

You'll find little triangle dudes out in the environment, punch them or shoot them and some high level loot will pop out.

==DOORS: It's best to always close doors behind you, because the benefits outweigh the tenth of a second it takes to press the button to close it. Firstly, enemies won't know you've been through an area. But more importantly, they have a higher chance of wasting their time trying to loot an already scavenged area if they think nobody's been there. Additionally if you're playing somebody like Caustic, doors can be your best friend as people have a way higher chance walking into your traps and taking damage if they don't think anyone has been through an area.

YOU CAN PUNCH DOWN DOORS! Nobody seems to know this, but it's incredibly useful. Caustic gas canisters and killed player's lootcrates can block doors, which can lead to you dying if you're trapped in a gas chamber or trying to run away. Just melee it twice, and it'll explode off of it's hinges. Also useful if an enemy keeps trying to be cheeky and close one in your face while you're storming their position.

==FINISHERS: When you've downed an enemy and they're crawling around, you can walk up to them and press the action key to finish them. This has a few benefits but more negatives:
+It instantly kills them, saving ammo and potentially time
+Lets your squadmates do something else while you instantly kill them since everyone knows it's happening
+It's cool as fuck and makes people pissed off
-You're locked in the animation until it completes or you get shot
-You're not invincible
-The animation lasts around 5 seconds
-If you kill all enemies in a squad, all downed enemies immediately die, so in most situations it's pointless to waste your time finishing somebody
Overall I'd say finishing is something that you should do if you know the situation is safe and you're not going to kill the other remaining squad members, or if you want to be a showoff and really style on somebody in particular. In other situations it's too risky to be worth bothering when meleeing a downed enemy only takes a second or so more and doesn't lock you in the animation.

==ZIPLINES AND BALLOONS: Ziplines can be taken upwards as well as downwards. This might seem like common knowledge, but most people assume they just work like real life and can only be taken downwards. Pathfinder ziplines are permanent as well, as far as I know.

But what are those giant balloons flying in the sky with ziplines attached to them? If you zipline up one of them and reach the top, you can glide off of them. Not only do you get vision of the surrounding area, but you can quickly navigate to upper floors and far distances with much less effort.

==WATER AND STAMINA: Water reduces movespeed in some areas. Avoid travelling through it if possible. Swamp is especially dangerous because of this.

While you can infinitely run, and running faster while holstering your weapon is always the same movespeed, "Stamina" does still exist. If you spam sliding eventually you'll slide less and less distances until you just can't slide anymore. The cooldown time seems to be about 5 seconds without sliding, but this might be adjusted in the future.

----===LEGEND SPECIFIC TIPS===----
==BLOODHOUND: Your ability is incredibly short range, and works in a circle around you even though it seems like a cone. While the cool effects of the ground pulsing seem like they're just for show, enemies can see them too and also hear the pulse go off. For these reasons, don't ever spam your ability in open fields or airy areas and restrict yourself to using it around corners or in buildings.

Your ultimate has a really low cooldown and lasts a whopping 40 seconds, so every time you get in a gunfight that actually has engagement you should be popping it. You can even see enemies through Bangalore smoke or Caustic gas with it.

Your passive shows how long ago certain things happened with the little border around it, which is by far it's most useful asset. Your ultimate improves this to make your passive proc a lot more.

==GIBRALTAR: Your shield defends against bullets both ways, so people can't shoot out of them. This includes teammates. You might accidentally end up screwing yourself over if you thunderdome yourself in with another enemy and end up being on the losing half.

Your explosive ultimate doesn't hurt allies, but it stuns them the same way you'd be concussed if you were normally hit by it. While sometimes you might need to use it even if there's danger close, you should avoid it as much as possible for this reason.

==LIFELINE: CARE PACKAGE IS INCREDIBLY USEFUL! Eat up all of the ultimate accelerants you can. Ask teammates for them. Use them immediately. It scales off of time in the battle, so early on it won't really give much rare loot but later it'll give far greater rewards. Either way, the extra syringes and shield boosters can never hurt.

Enemies can use your healing drone. Since it has incredibly short range this knowledge might be useful if you want to chuck a grenade on their heads, but normally you shouldn't be letting it's position get compromised.

==PATHFINDER: When dropping, you should always ping out areas to suggest (or just go for them, you greedy dropmaster) if they have beacons. Using one as Pathfinder shows the next ring, and this can be used as many times as there are next rings. However, you can only have one "next ring" visible at a time, so you might have to wait for it to change rings before using the beacon.

Your ultimate zipline has a low cooldown and is way faster than your team running, so if you want to get somewhere fast and have your team all funnel in at the same time you should be constantly using it. It also has incredible range, longer than people might expect. Of course, enemies can take it too.

You can use your ability to zipline to areas enemies can never get to normally, making Pathfinder the best choice for people who like sniping. Keep in mind you might stick out like a sore thumb though.

==WRAITH: Enemies can take your ultimate portals. Watch out for this. They also know when people are taking them, as they see a trail fly by while you're going through the environment. You can use this to your advantage if you plan well with defensive legends like Caustic.

You're not invisible when you stasis, there's a small trail that gets left behind. It's kind of hard to follow, but it's still there.

==BANGALORE: Bangalore is probably the most straight forward legend, and there isn't really many tips with her as everything is clearly explained. Just keep note that your ultimate stuns allies the same way it would stun enemies, so don't use it near them unless you absolutely have to.

Your smoke has a low cooldown so unless you're going to piss off a teammate with it or confuse them you should be using it a lot during firefights to switch covers.

==CAUSTIC: Caustic's gas canisters do shield piercing damage, and increase in damage over time spent in them. You and your teammates are also invulnerable to the damage (but your teammates are still affected by it being a bootleg smoke grenade). The damage is very low, and a lot of people are catching onto this, but if you cover a wide enough area in gas and people come charging in they might get a little more than they bargained for. Not only do they have to fight through smokescreen, but they also are taking 4-10 damage per second while engaging in a firefight. As far as I know, your ultimate's gas stacks with gas canister's damage, so you can use both to deal more DoT in a concentrated area.

Caustic's gas canisters block doors. Yes, you can make literal gas chambers with this. Just remember that enemies can kick the doors down.

You can shoot the inflated sac of the gas canister to instantly make it spray without having it be triggered by enemies. This makes his canisters better Bangalore smokes with a longer deploy time and shorter range. Also, if you're playing against Caustic, make sure to shoot the base of the can instead of the sac to destroy it without it blowing up.

As Caustic, you're immune to enemy caustic gases as well, presumably because you're wearing a gas mask. Just take note which gas canisters are yours and which are the enemy's so you don't lead your allies into death accidentally.

==MIRAGE: You can use your decoy during drop. This might confuse enemies or make them think more people are dropping at a spot than usual, since it's super hard to see what legends people are playing while dropping.

Your passive isn't as useful as it might seem, since your decoy also crawls around and you have a slight outline around you while crawling. While it might bungle up a few people trying to go for quick kills on downed players, normally it's negligible since enemies will either kill the decoy, then you, or ignore it altogether.

----===WEAPONS===----

==INTRO: I don't want to talk much about weapon balance here mainly because the weapons are probably going to be nerfed and buffed and shuffled around and I want to keep this guide as generally relevant as possible. Nevertheless, there are some cool tips with certain guns that should be noted.

==YELLOW GUNS: You might notice this game has no weapon rarity, and all the weapons are functionally the exact same with none being objectively better than others (balancing aside). That's kind of incorrect, but it doesn't mean this game has tiered weapons like fortnite or other battle royales.

Yellow rarity guns drop at an extremely low rate (people are reporting at under 1% in normal loot tables) out on the field, but are primarily obtained from care packages and High Loot areas. Care Packages *must* be the ones that randomly drop, and not lifeline ones. There's a very high chance of getting yellow loot from them. High Loot areas guarantee at least one yellow drop in them, but are a target for mass drops at the start of the game.

A yellow rarity gun has every single attachment slot filled with yellow rarity attachments, but otherwise function exactly the same as their common counterpart. They might have attachments that make them act differently, but the damage is the same and if you took off all the attachments they would basically be a common gun.

There are exceptions though: there exist yellow rarity guns that aren't in the normal loot table. These guns do ridiculous amounts of damage, can only be found yellow, and have no similar counterpart in the common weapon droptable. For example, the Mastiff is a shotgun that shoots in an only-horizontal spread with no vertical deviation and has a large magazine size. The downside to these weapons is that you can never get more ammo for them, once you're out... you're out.

==FIRING MODES: You probably noticed there's a firing mode chip for the Prowler, but did you know that a few other guns have burst modes? Check out the gun HUD, and look to see if there's a button you can press to switch it. Most guns that have this option only go between full auto and single fire.

==ALTERNATOR AND FLATLINE (AND SPITFIRE): If you've played titanfall 2, you already know what's up with these. Their recoil is purely side-to-side, and barely deviate at all vertically. This is why the hipfire box for them is so weird on your HUD. I have no idea if the Spitfire functions like it's titanfall predecessor, but if it does keep in mind that it starts out wildly inaccurate but slowly gains accuracy the longer you fire it.

==DEVOTION: "How do I use it?" The Devotion is an LMG that has an extremely specific purpose: hallways and tight spaces. It's wind up time and extreme recoil make it insanely hard to track targets, but it's damage per second is probably the highest in the game if you hit every shot. It tears through the highest level knockdown shield in a quarter of a second. Unless you become god at tracking targets in open spaces and mitigating it's recoil, you should really only be picking this one up in a place that has a lot of hallways or tight spaces.

==TRIPLE TAKE (AND PEACEKEEPER): The Triple Take has no bullet drop at all, and fires three bullets instead of one (while only taking one ammo per shot). This comes at the cost of having way less damage, which is reduced even more if you only partially hit one of your three shots.

HOWEVER, if you get a hop-up chip called Precision Choke, aiming down your sights charges up the triple take until all three shots are basically one bullet. It takes a while to charge but once you do the Triple Take becomes a monster at long range if you can afford to aim long enough to get it there.

Peacekeeper (the shotgun) also uses precision choke, but keep in mind you also have to aim down sights with it to get it to work. If you like hipfiring shotguns, this might be a disadvantage for you.

----===OTHER STUFF===----

==APEX CRATES: Currently, you get one Apex Crate per level, but that seems to scale down to about two per level later on all the way down to none after a certain amount of time. We don't know if this is going to be changed or if crates will be rewarded from seasons, but for the time being they're limited resources that only become harder to get with time. You can check the in game shop to see their rarity table, however...

==HEIRLOOM SETS: ...there's one more secret to them. Heirloom Sets are sets of three items that sometimes come out of Apex Crates, and are incredibly rare. You will always get all three of the set at once, meaning that if you get a set it will be your entire Apex Crate contents. Regardless, you get to open another free crate after you get a Heirloom set, so it's a straight up bonus rather than potentially wasting all three drops for something you don't want.

Heirloom sets usually have the most unique cosmetic changes, and none of them are listed in the cosmetics tabs of their respective characters. The only way to know what they are is to get one, hear word of mouth, or look them up.

==CRAFTING MATERIALS: You can't get duplicates from Apex Crates, so you'll notice you start to get crafting materials after a while. These come in rarities as well, presumably reflecting what the drop would have been if it wasn't a duplicate. You can use these to craft cosmetics you want instead of getting them via Apex Crate.