Apex Legends Season 15 Start Date, Patch Notes, Catalyst, And Everything We Know

Apex Legends Season 15 kicks off tomorrow, adding playable character Catalyst, battle royale map Broken Moon, and a whole lot more (as detailed in the Apex Legends Season 15 patch notes). Ahead of the start of Season 15, we've collected and detailed everything there is to know about what you can expect to see.

Perhaps what's most surprising about Season 15 is what we don't see. Season 15 is the first new season of Apex Legends where Respawn isn't implementing balancing tweaks for anyone on the existing roster of playable legends. That means no major buffs or nerfs to characters this time around. The seasonal patch is fixing quite a few bugs though, including a welcome fix to that annoying bug that made Vantage's passive ability frustratingly broken. She won't be telling her teammates that a whole squad is still alive when it's only one or two people anymore. Hallelujah!

Start date

Respawn is sticking to its pattern and having the new season start on the day that the previous season ends. In this case, Season 14 concludes on November 1, so Season 15 begins on November 1.

New legend: Catalyst

Season 15 adds Tressa "Catalyst" Smith to Apex Legends. Catalyst is a defender who specializes in area denial, slowing enemies in their tracks to give her teammates time to heal up, reaccess the situation, and counterattack. Compared to her competition, Catalyst probably won't shake up Apex Legends' meta, but she still sounds like a fun character to play as. Her abilities are detailed below.

• Passive Ability: Barricade - Reinforce doors, strengthening them and locking them to enemies. Spaces where doors have been destroyed can also be reinforced.
• Tactical Ability: Piercing Spikes - Throw out a patch of ferrofluid which turns into spikes when enemies are near. Catalyst remains immune to enemy spikes.
• Ultimate Ability: Dark Veil - Raise a permeable wall of ferrofluid. Enemies who walk through will be slowed and partially blinded for a brief time.

Catalyst is the first anti-scan legend to come to Apex Legends, possessing an ultimate ability that work's similarly to Apex Legends Mobile's anti-scan legend, Rhapsody. Dark Veil can't negate all forms of scans, but the inky-black wall can prevent characters like Bloodhound and Seer from spying on Catalyst and her teammates. Characters like Crypto aren't as easily stopped.

"[Dark Veil] is something that we had to play with a lot, because obviously not all of the scan abilities work in this singular directional way from you to the target, but can be triggered through other actions," Apex Legends game engineer Chris Winder told GameSpot. "So Crypto, for example, if you fly the Crypto drone over the top of the wall to scan characters, then you'll be able to scan them and share that information with the team. What we tried to lean on was particularly the source of the scan, rather than the communication of whether you can see the scan or not. If they are scanned, then you'll be able to see that, but you'll need to navigate the wall in some way to try to get that scan. But if you're looking through the wall, then you're not going to be able to."

New map: Broken Moon

Alongside Catalyst, Season 15 adds Apex Legends' fifth battle royale map, Broken Moon. In an interview, Respawn told GameSpot that Broken Moon contrasts heaven and hell, portraying both the dark and light sides of the moon. Broken Moon builds on the Afrofuturism of Catalyst and Seer's home planet, Boreas, with nods to African culture across the map.

Broken Moon adds a new traversal system to Apex Legends called zip rails, which twist and curve around the map, allowing players to travel more quickly from one point of interest to another. They work a lot like zip lines but propel players a lot more quickly.

"The majority of [zip rails] I would say are on the outer perimeter of the map," Broken Moon lead level designer Jeff Shaw told GameSpot. "There's a few that bring you towards the interior, but one of the main goals for these was to create this interconnectedness of the edge of the map because we found when you land or when you choose an edge POI, at that point, because of the ring behavior and stuff, you beeline to the middle or towards the ring. So adding these allows you to play the edge of the map a lot more efficiently."

New battle pass

As per usual, Apex Legends Season 15 launches with a new battle pass to work through. The two legendary character skins this time around go to Revenant and Ash, and the two legendary reactive weapon skins are for the Charge Rifle. Beyond that, the battle pass is filled with new banner frames, emotes, and kill quips, as well as a bunch of lunar-themed rare and epic-tier character and weapon skins.

New cosmetics: Gifts and Stickers

Season 15 adds a cosmetic Gift system to Apex Legends, allowing you to buy cosmetics with Apex Coins and give them to your friends. With this new system, you'll be able to gift both single items (like an individual legend or weapon skin) or full bundles.

Alongside the new Gift system, Apex Legends Season 15 adds a brand-new cosmetic type: Stickers! Stickers can be applied to Shield Cells, Shield Batteries, Syringes, Med Kits, and Phoenix Kits, allowing you to further personalize your experience.