Complete Apex Legends equipment guide – Rarity, Legendary perks, and more

While Apex Legends is largely determined by skill, like any battle royale the gear each player has managed to collect plays a major role in success.

Naturally, most loot relates to improving players’ ability to deal out damage – weapons, ammo to fire through those weapons, and attachments to make those weapons more powerful.

There’s a group of items that are more focused on enabling players’ survival, however, whether its through shielding them against threat directly, or providing utility to open up options and make life generally easier.

• Read more: Complete guide to Apex Legends map – Loot, balloons, respawns and more

Understanding exactly what your equipment is doing for you is key to success, especially when it comes to some of the special bonuses of legendary gear, so to make sure you know what you – or your opponents – might be capable of, here’s a complete guide to Apex Legends’ equipment.

Loot drones can be found in-game offering high-quality drops.

Loot Rarity

The first thing to understand about all Apex Legends loot is its rarity. Every item in Apex Legends come in three standard rarities – common, rare, and epic – which are identified by their colors of white, blue, and purple respectively. These rarities will be found around the map as regular floor or chest loot, and each tier typically offers a simple direct improvement on the perks of the tiers below it.

There is a fourth item tier, however – legendary, represented by gold – which grants the same benefits as the epic variant, but with another unique perk.

• Read more: Complete Apex Legends attachment guide – Stats, rarity, and more

Legendary items are significantly more rare than any of the other tiers, and are unlikely to be found simply lying around. Instead, they are most commonly found as a reward from supply drops, or in legendary Loot Drones.

While not all items have a Legendary tier, all types of equipment do, and their additional perks make them some of the most valuable items in the game.

Body Shield

Undoubtedly the most valuable piece of equipment you can find, the benefit of Body Shield is simply that it increases your overall health pool. There’s no substitute for simply being able to sustain more shots without being knocked down, and Body Armor also opens up a new set of resources for health replenishment in the form of shield cells and batteries.

Even a common Body Shield adds an extra 50% to a player’s health pool, meaning that if you get into a very early fight, a player with armor has a significant advantage over a player without. The epic and legendary versions, meanwhile, offer 100 health in shielding, doubling the base health.

The Legendary variant also allows players to replenish their shields fully by performing a finisher. While quite situational, it can be very useful for conserving resources when you have limited options for healing up. The Legendary Body Shield is also easiest to make use of on the likes of Bangalore or Gibraltar, who can create cover while finishing an enemy.

Body shields are one of the first priorities for players once they hit the ground.

Helmets

The second half of a player’s defensive set-up, helmets complement body shields, although they don’t actually provide extra health. Instead, they mitigate incoming headshot damage.

While headshot multipliers vary by weapon, if you’re getting hit in the head with any sort of regularity there’s a good chance you’re going to drop incredibly quickly. While wearing a helmet won’t counteract the headshot multiplier entirely, it will take some of the sting out.

The Legendary Helmet also reduces the cooldown of the wearer’s tactical and ultimate abilities. As a result, this is particularly useful for Legends like Lifeline, whose abilities are particularly valuable and take a while to recharge, but less valuable for those whose abilities already recharge quite quickly or are less powerful, like Mirage or Caustic.

Backpacks

Backpacks perform the very simple purpose of expanding how much gear you can carry at any one time, but it’s hard to overlook how valuable the rarer backpacks can be. Even just the basics of ammo for two different types of weapon and shield and health replenishers can fill out space quickly, and that’s before you start collecting grenades or holding onto attachments you might want to use down the line.

The legendary backpack, however, is arguably the most valuable legendary item in the game. Its bonus perk doubles the speed at which you use healing or shielding items, which can make a massive difference in the middle of a fight, especially for the full-heal items like Med Kits, Shield Batteries, and Phoenix Kits.  

Knockdown Shields are your only defence against elimination once you’re on the ground.

Knockdown Shields

While Apex Legends does have a respawn system – so elimination isn’t necessarily the end of your game – it takes more time and effort to bring someone back to life than to simple revive them after being knocked down. The player being respawned also starts with no loot again, while a revive means keeping all of your gear.

Knockdown shields are your only defense against elimination, giving you an extra barrier that enemies have to burn through if they want to fully take you out.

• Read more: The Ultimate Apex Legends quiz

In the case of the epic and legendary shields particularly, shooting a downed opponent to the point of elimination becomes a significant investment of time and resources. While “finishers” bypass knockdown shields, they leave the finishing player vulnerable and can be interrupted by incoming damage.

The Legendary knockdown shield also grants wielders the ability to perform a self-revive, which can be used to great effect if enemies aren’t focusing on you after you’ve been downed, and also means that even once your full squad is down, you’re not necessarily out of the game. This ability can only be used once, however.