Respawn Announces Major Twist On Apex Legends Halloween Event

It's that time of year again--the breeze is cooling, the leaves are falling, and Apex Legends is hosting its fourth annual Halloween event, Fight or Fright. Much about this event is the same as it's always been--players will have the opportunity to play the Shadow Royale LTM on a Halloween-ified version of a popular map, creepy cosmetics will be available in the store, and Revenant will be up to his usual spooky hijinks. But this season, there's one major difference: Confirming last week's leaks, the even trailer revealed that, for the first time in Apex Legends history, Shadow Royale will be played on a new map: Olympus After Dark.

Previously, Shadow Royale (and in Year 1, Shadowfall) matches have taken place solely in the "realm of Shadows," an alternate dimension in which King's Canyon has no sun and the Syndicate has been overthrown by Revenant, who is worshiped as a god by his army of Shadows. Legends themselves can be turned into Shadows during these matches, giving them incredible speed and strength that makes for fun, fast-paced gameplay. The Shadow realm is referred to as the "Beta plane" and appears to be a significant location in Apex's lore.

But despite recent developer comments claiming players were unlikely to see future events with multiple LTMs, Apex's next in-game event is exactly that. From October 4 to November 1, players will see three LTMs rotating on a weekly basis. The schedule is as follows:

• October 1 - 11: Shadow Royale on Olympus After Dark
• October 11 - 18: Gun Run on Estates After Dark, Skull Town, and Fragment East
• October 18 - 25: Control on Labs After Dark, Barometer, and Lava Siphon
• October 25 - November 1: Shadow Royale on Olympus After Dark

Based on the names of some POIs, it seems players will get to experience Gun Run on a sunless version of Autumn Estates and play Control while exploring a version of Singh Labs that's even creepier than usual, in addition to the standard Shadow Royale LTM.

Of course, no Apex Legends event would be complete without cosmetics. While the event is live, a whole host of new cosmetics will be available for purchase in the store. This is not a Collection Event, meaning there's no Heirloom Weapon to unlock by purchasing these cosmetics, but if you're looking to give your favorite character a haunting new look, these skins will definitely do the trick. Some skins are entirely new, while others, like this riff on the Clocktane skin, appear to be hair-raising recolors of previously released cosmetics.

Wraith's Voidwalker skin and Pathfinder's Memoir Noir skins will once again be available for purchase during the event, so if you missed your chance to pick up these skins the first time around, now's your chance to snap them up.

During the last two weeks of the event, a variety of cosmetics from previous Halloween events will be for sale in the store. Check out Respawn's blog post on the event to get a closer look at everything available for purchase during the event.

Lastly, the event update will bring the following changes to the Control LTM:

• NEW Timed Event: MRB Timed Event (Get the MRB and deploy it to create a temporary spawn point for your team).
• Updated Timed Event order to have the Bonus Capture event be the 3rd event to trigger, it now also rewards twice as much score as before ( old: 100 score, new: 200 score).
• Can now Ping Zones from the Spawn Screen.
• For Controller Players; automatically place the cursor on the best spawn point when they get put into the Spawn Screen.
• Players automatically pick up ordnance if they walk near it.
• Players can now emote on the Intro Podium screen.
• The Hammond Labs map now takes place on Olympus After Dark.
• Updates to Weapon Loadouts ( loadout compositions).
• Updates to weapons in Weapon Loadouts to have the same attachments available to them at the same tiers as BR ( except for scopes).
• In the spirit of Olympus After Dark; weapons that support Threat Scopes/Sights have them as an option in the optic selection menu in the Loadout Selection Menu.
• Disabled pings for healing items.
• Updates to spawn logic that should fix some rare spawn issues ( like being taken to the Spawn Screen with no points to select).
• Spawn system tuning to further try to prevent issues where players spawn in sight of enemies or, too close to enemies.

Apex Legends is free to play on console and PC. A mobile version of the game, Apex Legends Mobile, is available for download on Android and iOS devices.