Apex Legends: All The Season 2 New Features, New Character, And More

Apex Legends has now launched Season 2. Respawn has been vocal about learning lessons from its first season, and has already outlined a wide array of changes to expect from the second season. Those include a new character, a revised challenge system, ranked leagues, and more.

Apex Legends Season 2 Patch Size

Apex Legends Season 2 has launched as of July 2. The patch for Season 2 is noticeably larger than usual. On PC it is more than 18GB, and on Xbox One and PS4 it is more than 20GB. Respawn says this is to add extra content, but also to add a fresh build of the game that removes outdated parts and replaces it with more efficient code. Respawn says this will not be the norm, but occasionally players may need to download large file sizes.

New Character: Wattson

Just like the last season, Season 2 has introduced an entirely new Legend to play as. This time it's Natalie Paquette, aka Wattson. The young science genius and daughter of the man who built King's Canyon grew up around the Arena. She's important to the lore of the game, and more significantly, she represents a large difference in play style from other characters.

Wattson uses her scientific wizardry to construct defensive electrical barriers and pylons to control the battlefield. You can read more about her playstyle to learn all about the latest addition to the roster.

A recent trailer also appeared to hint at a second playable character coming in Season 2 as well.

How The New Challenges Work

The update has also revised how challenges work, with a new series of daily and weekly objectives aimed at keeping players engaged while reducing the grind for rewards. Completing daily or weekly challenges count toward your Battle Pass, and over half of the challenges will grant a full Battle Pass level. Other challenges grant Stars which will count as progress towards a Battle Pass levels.

Daily challenges are given in groups of three tasks assigned randomly from a pool of 200, such as dealing damage in a particular area or playing as a specific character. Those award 3,000 Stars apiece. Weekly challenges are doled out in sets of seven. These will be much longer and are intended to last multiple play sessions. Four of the seven reward 6,000 Stars while the remaining three grant an entire Battle Pass level. An additional three special challenges are also available and will reset on a weekly basis, giving Battle Pass levels and Stars. Read more details about Apex Legends' Season 2 Challenges.

Ranked Leagues

Season 2 has introduced another new feature, Ranked Leagues. The revised ranking aims to help with matchmaking with a new score system across six competitive tiers: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and Apex Predator. Each tier has four divisions, except for Apex Predator. Each ranked match costs a number of Ranked Points (RP) that increases based on your tier. You earn RP during the match from kills and your overall placement in a match. The maximum you can score in a match is 17 RP.

All players start in Bronze, and you'll earn rewards at the end of the season. Respawn has said it is still determining what the rewards will be, but for now it knows it will be giving out special badges based on your highest rank achieved.

Other Apex Legends Season 2 Changes

Season 2 introduces a handful of other changes. King's Canyon itself will have landmarks destroyed by invading Flyers and Leviathans, making for a very different map. The L-Star Legendary Gold energy-based weapon has been added, paying homage to Titanfall 2. Check out a full wrap-up of Apex Legends Season 2 changes.