Hello, fellow Apex Legends player! Before we get to the title of this article, the Apex Legends 20 Step Program, I have a question. A short question. A simple, yet complicated question. I want you to answer in your head with a “yes” or “no”. Don’t hesitate, just answer:
Is Apex Legends an easy game?
Yes!
Of course, it is! Be the last one standing by any means necessary!
Good news for you, you are ahead of the curve.
You can proceed leisurely into the guide. Let us know if there are any tips or tricks you would include to help better build a player’s foundation.
No!
Don’t fret. Apex Legends can be a frantic, hectic game. At its heart, though, it is a fairly straightforward game.
When you read the following tips, keep in mind a couple of things. One, you aren’t going to flip a switch and do all of these tomorrow. Two, even if you do most of these things, you still may not find success right away. Stick with it!
Disclaimer 1: Keep in mind that battle royale games have varying elements of skill, strategy, and randomness (i.e. luck). In most situations, placing the blame solely on one of these rather than the others will lead you astray. Balancing these 3 pillars of battle royale video games will have you celebrating in Victory Royale more often than not.
Disclaimer 2: This guide only covers the strategy pillar mentioned in Disclaimer 1. It was originally written to have each tactic be incorporated in order. Ultimately, this became very complicated. So, please pick and choose strategies that can be incorporated today to see the most benefit.
Apex Legends 20-Step Program
1) Don’t Die
I lied. This is the first one you need to think about adding to your thought process. Today.
Some of the other tips may come back to this simple concept. Even still, in most situations, you need to be thinking about the following terms. “Am I doing things that will increase my chances of survival?”
Put simply, being alive makes you relevant. If you are relevant, you can help your team. So do everyone a favor and don’t die.
2) Dude, where’s my team?
How many times have you ventured off looking for that particular attachment only to be swarmed and eliminated by an enemy squad? Better yet, since all of our readers are pros, how often have you had a third “rando” do this?
Either way, this is incredibly frustrating.
There’s nothing wrong with sticking close to your teammates. In fact, it’s encouraged.
Further, it’s vital to success at high levels. 3 will always beat 1, so try to always be within shouting distance of your teammates. There’s enough loot to go around without the need for your journey to find that level 2 standard stock.
3) Is this thing on?
I don’t know, Winston, is it?
For all those who aren’t Overwatch-literate, make sure you are communicating with your teammates. Now, what do I mean by communicating?
Apex Legends has an elaborate ping system that allows for communicating without opening your mouth. You can ping an enemy, a piece of loot, and even the next direction you want to move.
If you are too timid to talk to strangers, at the bare minimum use the pings! To close this circle, make sure you are also listening and responding to your teammates’ pings. If they say there is an enemy close by and you are in violation of tip 2, get your hiney over there!
4) Third-party, third-party, and third-party some more.
Life isn’t fair. So why would you want your fights in Apex Legends to be fair?
When possible you should be shooting people who are not only not shooting back at you, but who are also shooting at another team. If this isn’t obvious, think back to the number of times you die after hearing “Ambush ambush! There’s another team!”
Being the third, or sometimes fourth, fifth, or sixth team to show up to a fight can be the matter of life and death. How can you make sure you’re entering the fight at the right time? This isn’t easily answered but always try to be in a place where you are not in violation of #1.
Don’t get so aggro that your team is now in a horrible, not-easily-escaped position.
5) It’s over! I have the high ground!
Well, I just finished talking about not being in a bad position, so let’s talk about good positions. In any combat game, having high ground is critical. I could go into an entire article as to why this is the case.
Think about it this way, if you are above someone when you shoot down, you are more likely to hit their head. Hitting their head does more damage. Conversely, if you are above someone, you can usually use that high ground as natural cover to avoid bullets.
6) Don’t over-loot
The best loot is the loot you take off the cold bodies of your victims.
No, that isn’t a quote from Revenant or Caustic. That’s actually a quote from me!
In all seriousness though, stop wasting time looting for 5-8 minutes while miles away from the action. Instead, you could be expertly third-partying battles and stealing loot from them.
You are much more likely to find a level 3 body shield from an enemy than a random bin when you are in mid-game. Basically, it’s a built-in service to improve your loot.
Lastly, if you wanted to explore and gather items, you might be playing the wrong game.
7) Don’t over-ping
Have you ever had a teammate ping everything in a loot box? If you haven’t, in your next game ask a friend to do so. Then, come back here and tell me how many of the items pinged you could recite back.
There apparently is an art to knowing what is worth the ping. If you are playing with friends you can begin to get a feel for what types of guns (and therefore, hop-ups) they want. If it’s someone who hates snipers, don’t bother pinging sniper scopes or that Charge Rifle.
Also, and it’s sad I have to say this, don’t ping a level 1 body shield when everyone on the team already has level 2. This has happened enough times that I needed to include it in this guide.
8) Don’t over-communicate
Yes, I know I just got finished telling you to communicate and ping for your teammates in #2. I’m not walking back on that idea.
One of the most important things you can hear in this game is the sounds being created on the battlefield. By sounds I mean, gunshots, footsteps, doors opening and closing, revives initiating, and more. So, if your teammates are talking so loud that you are can’t hear these vital things, you are essentially losing a critical sense.
As an exercise, try playing a round or two on mute and see how you perform. So next time you are in a downed state, think twice before telling your living teammate that there is a person in front of them, shooting them. I’m fairly sure they are aware of this.
9) Master the jump
Okay, using the word “master” may be a bit misleading. We, as an Apex Legends community, all could use a pep talk in being the jumpmaster.
It feels like no one wants to do it and no one thinks they are decent at it. What makes matters worse is we are illogically critical of other people’s jumpmaster abilities.
As long as you aren’t jumping to a location the jump ship has already passed, there usually isn’t a bad landing location. Jump anywhere between 400m and 700m and you should be fine. If you need to go further distances, alternate between nose-diving and flattening out to maximize your distance. That’s it!
If someone gives you a hard time about it, make them be the jumpmaster next. We are all in this together.
If you still feel discouraged, check out The Gaming Merchant’s guide. It’s under 3 minutes.
10) Land together
Now that we just collectively calmed our minds about being the jumpmaster, let’s address the other 2 members: land together!
Now, what does “together” mean in this context? Choosing a building large enough with loot drops to accommodate all three members is ideal. However, it’s not always a possibility. In those cases, I try to land one building away with a plan A and B of escaping.
What this does NOT mean is landing:
- in another area altogether
- on the opposite side of a large area like Skull Town (Season 1-2), Capital City (Season 3), or Sorting Factory (Season 4)
- at a very small building with your teammate and stealing the only gun inside
Whew! I think that’s enough for one day. Be sure to check in next week for the second half of this TAG Guide: Apex Legends. For now, go ahead and try to focus on 2 or 3 of these in your next jump into World’s Edge.
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