'Apex Legends' Season 2 Challenges and Battle Pass Explained

We’ve known since early June that Apex Legends Season 2 would include Fortnite-style daily and weekly challenges as part of the new battle pass, and since Season 2 went live on Tuesday, we finally know exactly what they’ll look like.

Late last week, developer Respawn Entertainment shared details about Season 2 challenges via a Reddit post. Lead Product Manager Lee Horn tossed a delightful amount of shade at Fortnite, saying, “As we’ve previously mentioned, we’re endeavoring to balance gameplay purity with variety and fun, so this Season’s challenges will not require a YouTube tutorial to figure out.”

Usually two out of every seven weekly Fortnite challenges are the epitome of esoteric, requiring mastery of the island’s geographical landmarks and the ability to dance. All of the Apex Legends challenges, however, just require that you play the game — and do it well.

“Six of your ten Weekly Challenges will grant an entire Battle Pass level as a reward,” Horn wrote in the Reddit post. “The remaining Daily & Weekly Challenges grant STARS which, combined with match XP, contribute to a repeatable Weekly Challenge that grants a full Battle Pass level with each completion.” In practice, 9000 experience stars grants a full battle pass level.

Most challenges are straightforward in Apex Legends. On the first day of Season 2, the three daily challenges were as follows:

• Block 100 damage with Gibraltar’s dome shield
• Deal 200 damage in Market
• Get 2 kills while Beast of the hunt is active as Bloodhound

Each week, it also seems like completing 5 and then 10 total daily challenges together award another two battle pass levels.

The Week 1 challenges have players deal damage in specific places, get knockdowns with certain weapons, and play games as particular characters. There’s also more straightforward examples like dealing 3500 damage or outliving 300 opponents. All of these challenges will take time, but they also seem very doable.

For anyone looking to cruise through the Season 2 battle pass as quickly as possible, we have some tips.

If you drop the 2,800 instead of 950 Apex Coins for the Season 2 battle pass bundle, you already start at Tier 25. The raw cost hovers around $30 versus $10, so it really depends if it’s worth it to the player. However, there’s plenty more strategy involved in optimizing time spent in the game.

Focus on the daily challenges as your first priority. Three daily challenges grant 9000 total stars, equating to an entire battle pass level thanks to a weekly recurring challenge. (The price for this seemingly doubles per use but resets each week, meaning that after cashing in 9000 stars for a battle pass tier, it jumps up to 18000.) These daily challenges also count towards 5 and/or 10 daily challenges as part of another two weekly recurring challenges, each of which grants yet another battle pass level.

Translation: If someone completes the daily challenges on July 2, 3, 4, and one of them on July 5 (10 total), they’ll get two battle pass tiers from the experience stars (27,000 star cost) and two more from the other two weekly recurring challenges. That might sound like a lot of work for five tiers, but spread out across the entire season makes it easier.

Log on daily to play three matches as a different character, and get one kill each time. Official notes for Season 2 say, “You can also earn an extra 500 Battle Pass XP for your first kill of the day with each character (max three unique characters per day).” That’s a bonus 1500 XP for getting at least one kill in three matches with different characters per day.

Play a variety of characters throughout Season 2. Incentivizing character variety is a stroke of brilliance from Respawn, compelling players to not doggedly focus on playing a single character. A new Season 2 feature grants bonus XP to characters based on survival time after a match, up to a weekly cap. “Each character can earn up to 25,000 bonus Battle Pass XP starting the first week of Season 2, and the cap increases each week,” official notes say. Anyone who wants to progress in the battle pass faster should monitor this progress and play a different character every match.

Overlap daily challenges with weekly challenges. If there are daily challenge to “deal 200 damage in Market” and “get 2 kills while Beast of the Hunt is active as Bloodhound,” then you should also pay attention to weekly challenges like “get 30 knockdowns with shotguns” and “scan 5 traps as Bloodhound.” Play as Bloodhound, go to Market, find a shotgun, and spam his abilities while also scanning for traps.

With all of these tips, maxing out the Season 2 battle pass to Tier 100 should be easy.

Apex Legends Season 2 is available now.