Apex Legends: Cipher Patch Notes - Akimbo Wingman & Strongholds

Season 31 of Apex Legends begins on November 3rd, and the Cipher patch is the update that kicks it off. It adds a second way to run the Wingman, a new airdrop structure called the Stronghold, and big changes to Ranked, alongside the usual balance passes and bug fixes.

If you're squading up for the new season, you'll want to know what changed before you drop in. We will go over every change in the Cipher patch, from the headline weapon and structure to Legend tweaks, map work and smaller fixes. You can read the original post on the official Steam patch notes.

Apex Legends Cipher Highlights

• Akimbo Wingman: loot a second Wingman and you automatically enter Akimbo mode, with a doubled magazine and burst fire.
• Strongholds: locked, bunker-style structures that airdrop near the mid game and reward a level up when captured.
• Legend Banning: Diamond+ Ranked matches let players vote for Legends to be banned from each match.
• Scoring adjustments: Challenger and Goliath matches change your entry cost when a lobby is lopsided.
• Legend changes: Crypto, Lifeline and Revenant are buffed, while Loba's cooldowns go up.
• Wild Cards: now granted at the start of Rounds 1, 2 and 3, and Replicators are gone from Wildcard.

New Weapon: Akimbo Wingman

The Wingman's firepower is being doubled. The Akimbo Wingman is built for close and mid range, and you'll find it in ground loot or at Heavy Arsenals.

• Ammo type changed from Sniper Ammo to Heavy Ammo, so it takes Heavy Magazines and spawns on Heavy Ammo Arsenals.
• Base damage decreased from 50 to 45.
• Loot a second Wingman to automatically enter Akimbo.

Akimbo Mode

• Headshot multiplier decreases to 1.25x, for 56 headshot damage.
• Rate of fire increases slightly, but reload time and recoil also increase.
• Magazine size is doubled.
• Each gun fires one after the other in a quick burst, and holding the trigger releases subsequent bursts.

New Structure: Strongholds

Strongholds join the existing Care Packages and Replicators as airdrops near the mid game. They're locked bunker-style structures that deploy dynamic cover and hold valuable loot. To open one, your team has to capture it by controlling the zone around it.

Airdrop Timing

• 2x Care Packages drop during Round 1 closing.
• 1x Care Package drops during Round 2 closing.
• 1x Stronghold drops during Round 2 closing.

Landing and Cover

• Strongholds crush and kill players and objects underneath them on landing.
• If there's enough space, they deploy up to 4 indestructible barriers and 2 Hardlight frames.
• They can't be accessed or entered until captured, and Loba can't steal from them and Alter can't breach them until then.

Capturing a Stronghold

• Capture progress is made whenever only 1 team is alive in the capture zone.
• Capture is contested when more than one team is present.
• Progress is globally shared and can't decay, and it's faster with multiple teammates present.
• The team in the zone when progress reaches 100% is the capturing team.
• When captured, the doors and roof hatch open and each living member of the capturing team gets a level up.

Stronghold Loot

• 1x Care Package weapon
• 3x Gold guns
• 3x Amps
• 2x Corrupted attachments

Legend Changes

Crypto

The devs say Crypto is a difficult Legend to play, and that he often camps in his drone instead of fighting with his team. These changes push a more aggressive drone style.

• Passive: the Ally.MoveTo( ) speed boost towards teammates is now in the base kit, with a slightly reduced boost.
• Tactical: the drone now has a 25s battery instead of lasting forever. Recall time is 6s, and you can redeploy right after recalling with no cooldown.
• Marking: enemies in the drone's line of sight can be scanned and marked for 8s, with a 4s marking cooldown. You can't re-mark an enemy that's already marked.
• Scan zone: now 360 instead of just camera view, and it no longer scans lootbins and doors.
• Ultimate: the EMP can be triggered while piloting or from a self-deploying drone, as long as Crypto has an undestroyed drone that isn't out in the world. With line of sight it deals full shield damage and a heavier slow. Without it, it deals 50 damage and a lighter slow. Crypto won't damage himself.
• Upgrades: LVL 2 is now Got Eyes On You (enemies remain marked for 4s longer), and LVL 3 is now Charged Up (10s longer drone battery lifetime).

Lifeline

• Passive: D.O.C. now heals Lifeline while she is gliding.
• Tactical: cooldown reduced from 25s to 15s.
• Upgrades: Enhanced Radio moves to LVL 2, Improved Flight gives better glide handling and duration, and LVL 3 gets Ultimate Cooldown (60 second reduction) and Revive Shield.

Revenant

• Tactical: cooldown reduced from 20s to 15s, with a faster charge time.
• Ultimate: cooldown reduced from 180s to 150s.
• Upgrades: three new Upgrades are added, namely Ever Lasting (10s Ult extension time on knock), Silence (landing from a Tactical leap releases an AOE pulse that silences enemies) and No Escape (Tactical refreshes when an enemy is marked by Passive).

Loba

The devs feel the uptime on Loba's abilities is a little high.

• Tactical: cooldown increased from 25s to 30s.
• Ultimate: cooldown increased from 120s to 150s.

Axle

These changes come from the October 1st, 2026 hotfix.

• Passive: sliding lateral control reduced by 50%.
• Tactical: sliding lateral control reduced by 25% for Nitro Gate users, increased aim assist is disabled under Nitro Gate, and the initial push speed drops from 700 to 650.
• Ultimate: max knock-up magnitude reduced from 700 to 650, and max drone chase time from 10 to 8s.

Weapon and Attachment Changes

The L-Star returns to the floor, and the Akimbo Mozambique enters the Care Package. Burst weapons also get a feel change: the Prowler PDW, Hemlok Burst AR, Nemesis Burst AR and Akimbo Wingman now support tap fire queuing in auto fire bursts.

• Akimbo Mozambique (Care Package): damage per pellet 17 ⇒ 18, tightened blast pattern, decreased reload speed, Executioner Hop-Up added, and it heals 15 shields per second. Stockpile is 80 (40 per gun), or 110 with Wildcard.
• EVA-8 Auto: Double Tap Trigger removed, Disruptor Rounds added (375 points to unlock).
• Hemlok Burst AR: the Breach AR is gone and the burst version returns, with Burst and Single firing modes. Body damage is 21 and headshot damage is 29. The Elite variant is removed from all gamemodes.
• L-STAR EMG (floor loot): base damage 21 ⇒ 19, shots until overheat 28 ⇒ 22, base stockpile 168 ⇒ 88, clip recharge 22s ⇒ 18s, Redline Hop-Up removed.
• Nemesis Burst AR: increased vertical recoil.
• Peacekeeper: increased rate of fire, and shotgun bolts now improve both rechamber rate and rate of fire.
• Prowler Burst PDW: increased recoil and the Selectfire Hop-Up removed. The devs say it was out-competing nearly all other SMGs and ARs.
• Rapid Sniper Stock: rate of fire multiplier 1.2x ⇒ 1.1x on the G7 Scout, Longbow DMR and Triple Take.

Map and Wildcard Changes

The patch rolls out 99 quality of life fixes across the map rotation, with a heavy focus on Storm Point, Olympus and World's Edge.

• Pubs and Ranked rotation: Storm Point, E-District Night and Broken Moon.
• E-District Night: a lighting pass that lifts deep shadows, adds localized light fixtures and cuts visual noise so player silhouettes stand out.
• All maps: updated lighting and materials, standardized world lighting, reworked fog, and slower auto-exposure adaptation.

In Wildcard, Wild Cards are now granted at the beginning of Rounds 1, 2 and 3 via a selection UI at the top of your HUD, and Replicators have been removed. The map rotation runs District and Broken Moon from November 3rd to November 9th, 2026.

Ranked Changes

Legend Bans

Each Diamond+ player can request one Legend to ban at the start of a match. A Legend's chance of being banned equals its share of all requests, and the system currently selects 2 Legends to ban. If fewer than 4 unique Legends are requested, it adds requests from the previous week's most played Legends.

Challenger and Goliath Matches

• Challenger Match: discounts entry cost by 30% when your Squad Tier is 2+ tiers below the Lobby Tier.
• Goliath Match: increases entry cost by 50% when your Squad Tier is 2+ tiers above the Lobby Tier.

Squad Tier comes from the average RP of each squadmate, with premade squadmates treated as equal to the highest RP in the premade. The Lobby Tier is the median of all Squad Tiers.

Ranked UI

• The Waiting for Players screen now shows Squad Tier, Lobby Tier, entry cost and match type.
• A new Ranked tab in the inventory menu shows RP goals and scoring rules.
• The kill feed shows RP earned on each kill, and a new message shows Placement RP when a squad is eliminated.

Ranked Ladders

• Ladder 1: 11/10/2026 to 11/15/2026
• Ladder 2: 11/17/2026 to 11/22/2026
• Ladder 3: 11/24/2026 to 11/29/2026
• Ladder 4: 12/1/2026 to 12/6/2026
• Ladder 5: 12/8/2026 to 12/13/2026

Cipher Bug Fixes and Quality of Life

• Fixed players being able to bunny hop during the Death Box respawn interaction.
• Mirage's decoys no longer float in place when deployed during skydiving.
• Crypto can no longer use weapons in the Olympus Boxing Ring.
• Caustic's Nox Gas Traps can now be placed in Somers University.
• Resolved over 35 rat and hiding spots, and over 15 instances of Alter's abilities clipping players out of bounds.
• Cubemap textures are now streamable, and disk usage is down by about 30 GB on most platforms compared with Season 29.0.
• Fixed a crash to desktop when a Bluetooth audio device disconnected during a match.
• Fixed Steam achievements not unlocking after winning matches as support or recon Legends.

And that covers all of the changes in the Apex Legends Cipher patch. For more on the new season, check out our look at the Ranked roadmap for Seasons 31 and 32, and our older breakdowns of Legend changes and weapon changes.