How The Survival Slot Will Change Apex Legends Forever

Apex Legends is about to get a whole lot harder. Apex Legends’ Chaos Theory Collection Event has brought so much with it; not only a Caustic town takeover (at Water Treatment), not only a new item in the form of the Heat Shield, not ONLY balance changes to the Legends themselves, but the most important thing of all – a new backpack slot named the “Survival Slot”.

The Survival Slot in your inventory will now, according to the dev notes, “eliminate the choice between normal loot and situational utilities like a Mobile Respawn Beacon or a Heat Shield”, meaning you have no excuse to not carry around one of these life-saving devices.
 

What Is The Heat Shield?

The Chaos Theory Collection Event has introduced a brand-new utility item – the Heat Shield.

Added as part of the Ring Fury Escalation Takeover, the Heat Shield acts as a protective bubble (akin to Gibraltar’s dome) which protects you and your team from the effects of the ring, and the new Ring Flares. It doesn’t last forever (especially in the final few rings), but affords you even more healing and reviving opportunities, by speeding up healing by 50%, and revives by 25% (not when in the safe zone).

The most key part of this new item’s inclusion is the fact that it will remain in the game after the takeover is finished – as will the Survival Slot.

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Respawn Want You To Respawn

Mobile Respawn Beacons have been in the game for a while now, but their usage is low – weird, when you consider how crucial and game-changing they can be in late-game rounds, when the normal Respawn Beacons have been swallowed up by the ring.

The most likely reason for this is the fact they take up a normal slot in your backpack, where a lot of players would rather save that for essential items such as syringes, shield cells, or even ammo.

However, Apex players are sleeping on the absolute power of the Mobile Respawn Beacon, for a few reasons. One being – it makes a lot of noise. Placing it results in a massive noise of the Beacon landing, which can alert nearby teams to your position, especially in those crunch-time final circles. But, time it properly (AKA, during gunfire) bring back your team, and it can be the difference between winning and losing.

The new Survival Slot should see a massive increase in the usage of Mobile Respawn Beacons, meaning those final rings may be way more populated than before.

RIP The Ring 

When those final rings are moving in, chances are the kill feed will show you quite a few players in your lobby who have succumbed to its fiery, fatal effects – but that may be about to change.

The Heat Shield protects you and your team from damage, and even lets you heal and revive faster. The strategic possibilities of this are endless; camping the ring for better placements in Ranked is one, another is the ease in which you can heal up and get back into the battle after a tense fight on the edge of the ring, where you may have otherwise succumbed to the singe anyway, even if you won.

Whatever happens, predicting a massive meta change in how matches play out is not baseless, and it’s likely that Apex Legends will change forever thanks to the new Survival Slot.

 

Images via Respawn Entertainment