It’s amazing what a little mathematical knowledge can reveal, and running a few calculations for Apex Legends reveals a startling secret — you only earn a very small fraction of the total emotes / cosmetics in the game for free.
A very, very small amount. That speaks to the deep list of customization items, and it’s important to understand that it is totally possible to unlock both extra Legend characters without dropping a penny on premium currency. In my book, those premium heroes are the most valuable commodities on the store page.
But not everyone agrees. If you’re the type of person that absolutely has to have everything, be prepared to drop some big bills to earn every skin, emote, execution, and more. One Apex Legends ultra-fan, u/RocketBun on Reddit, wrote a lengthy examination of the F2P system, and came to a pretty surprising result.
More Apex Legends guides on Gameranx:
- Apex Legends: 26 Useful Tips & Tricks You Might Not Know About (Yet!) | Beginner’s Guide
- Apex Legends: 10 Ways It Improves On The Battle Royale Formula
- Apex Legends: The Best Legends & Ultimate Combos | Team Synergy Guide
- Apex Legends: Best Weapon Combos We’ve Found (So Far) | Loadout Guide
- Apex Legends: Here’s How Microtransactions & Loot Boxes Work | F2P Guide
- Apex Legends: Check Out Every Special Ability | Character Classes Guide
- Apex Legends: How To Unlock Free Playstation & Origin Cosmetics
- Apex Legends: All The Legendary Hero Skins Available (So Far) | Cosmetics Gallery
How Much You Can Unlock Playing For Free | F2P Guide
As a F2P-player, you’ll be able to unlock bonuses through XP. You’ll earn XP by playing Battle Royale sessions — you’ll earn XP for earning kills, rescuing allies, becoming champion, or just surviving. If you invite friends to your party, you’ll earn +5% survival XP for each friend, for a total of +10% survival XP.
Leveling up gives you two types of rewards — you’ll get Legend Tokens and Apex Packs. Legend Tokens are special currency that you can use to purchase Apex Packs, or purchase the two premium heroes in the store.
Apex Packs are capped at 45 packs total. At Level 50, it takes much longer to earn an Apex Pack. So, if you’re a totally free player and don’t want to spend any money, what is the total amount of items / heroes you can earn?
- F2P Free Unlocks:
- 2 Heroes Can Be Unlocked — By Level 43, you should have enough Legend Tokens to unlock both heroes.
- 45 Apex Packs Can Be Unlocked — With 3 items in each Apex Pack, you’ll earn a grand total of 135 items.
If you add up all the hero skins, emotes, banner border, quip, intro, execution, weapon skins, and more, you’ll find that there are about 1850~ cosmetic items in the game. This isn’t an exact number, because every character seems to have a slightly different amount of “junk” items (banners, quips, pose, etc).
So, you can earn about 135 out of 1850 items. If you don’t spend premium cash, you’ll only be able to get about 7.29%~ of the total cosmetics in the game. This extremely low number probably isn’t a surprise for F2P veterans. Even if you wanted to earn everything in the game, which is actually slightly easier than most because there are no repeated cosmetic drops, you’d have to spend at least $560 on Apex Packs. That’s a pretty hefty price for a free game.
