Apex Legends - How to unlock Legends fast

Apex Legends offers a wide variety of different Legends, who all come with their own styles and abilities. Unfortunately, players are only granted access to six of the Legends when they first start playing Apex Legends, with many more locked out.

With so many Legends – and more being added regularly – most players will want to unlock as many as possible, widening the gameplay possibilities. New Legends are unlocked in a couple of different ways, and they can all be unlocked for free if you are willing to put in the time and effort.

We’ll cover all of the most important things to consider for building your Legends roster. Here’s how to unlock Legends fast in Apex Legends.

Buy Legends with Apex Coins

If you are looking to find out how to unlock Legends for free, then skip right ahead to the next section.

However, there’s no getting around the fact that by far the fastest way to unlock Legends is to spend your real-life cash on Apex Coins, which can be exchanged for the Legends.

Each Legend costs 750 Apex Coins as standard, and you can buy Apex Coins from many retailers including CDKeys or the Xbox/PSN Stores.

Generally the cheapest bundle is 1,000 Apex Coins, and you’ll do well to get these for much less than $10. Given this will only be enough for one Legend (with 250 left over towards the next one), this is a pretty expensive way of expanding the roster.

Even if you are tempted by the convenience, it’s probably a good idea to balance it out by unlocking some of the Legends for free.

Unlock Legends with Legend Tokens (free)

Alternatively, new Legends will cost you 12,000 Legend Tokens. These cannot be bought, but are earned for free by levelling up.

You will gain 600 Legend Tokens each time you level up, with the caveat that your first 3 levels will not gain anything.

Therefore, from level 4 onwards you must level up 20 times to get the necessary 12,000 Legend Tokens to earn a new Legend for free.

It gets gradually harder to level up each time, with the EXP requirements bumped up for each level. However, this isn’t quite as demanding as it used to be.

Even if you manage to hit the level cap (technically level 2000, across 4 Tiers), you will still gain your 600 Legend Tokens without levelling when you hit enough EXP.

How to unlock Legends fast with Legend Tokens

The first thing you’ll have to do is manage your own expectations. This is a free-to-play game, which is designed to encourage in-game purchases. It’s not going to be that fast for free, even for the best players.

To unlock Legends fast, you simply need to level up as quickly as possible. To do this, you will need to know how EXP works.

EXP is awarded based on the following criteria:

1 EXP for every 4 HP of damage you inflict

3 EXP per second you stay alive (with a bonus of +5% playing with one friend, or +10% playing with two friends)
25 EXP for reviving an ally
50 EXP per kill

50 EXP bonus if you kill the player leading the match
200 EXP for respawning an ally
300 EXP for finishing in the Top 5

500 EXP if you kill a Champion from the previous match
500 EXP for your first kill of the day
500 EXP for being in the Champion Squad

900 EXP for winning a match

Generally you will need 18,000 EXP to gain a level, though this obviously depends what level you have currently reached.

Play to survive

The biggest EXP rewards come with aggressive play for racking up kills, dealing damage and winning matches. However, you shouldn’t underestimate the potential EXP rewards of simply staying alive. 3 EXP per second is 180 EXP per minute – more than gaining 3 kills.

Obviously the best case scenario is to stay alive and amass lots of kills, but this is the time to be realistic with yourself. If you are still learning the ropes, survival is the best way to gain EXP. Pick your moments and try and stay close to the rest of your squad. This also gives you a chance to revive them when they are downed, which gives a solid EXP reward as well.

Play with friends

The potential 10% bonus to your survival EXP is nothing to be sniffed at when you are gaining those levels.

If you have two friends alongside you, this is an extra 18 EXP per minute. Even if you don’t know many people who play Apex Legends, there are bound to be plenty of other players online in exactly the same boat. You could enquire on Apex Legends forums to see if any solid players want to become your friends to enjoy the mutual EXP bonus.

Play every day

There’s a huge bonus for getting your first kill of the day. Even up and coming players should be able to snatch a kill before long.

If you haven’t got time for a full-on Apex Legends session, it’s worth logging in for a few minutes until you get that kill. This will keep your EXP ticking over and gain your levels faster.

Purchase your Legends wisely

Even by improving your skills and sinking many hours into Apex Legends, it’s still a pretty slow process to unlock them all for free.

The best advice we can offer is to make sure you are unlocking the Legends you really want, so it doesn’t feel like such a grind.

You can access every Legend in the Firing Range for free, so take them all for a spin and figure out which one works best for your preferred playstyle. You can even activate the dummies in the Firing Range to get some more realistic practice.

Alternatively, you can watch some of the Legends in action online, so you get a sense of how top-level players make the most of their abilities. More importantly, you may also realise which Legends you don’t want.

Most players end up mastering a smaller selection of Legends and specialising. If you’ve got an idea of which ones you will use most, then it will save you from having to even purchase some of them.

That’s everything you need to know about how to unlock Legends fast in Apex Legends. Whatever happens, there’s going to be some time and effort involved, but hopefully you can get the Legends you want before long. For more Apex Legends content, check out the articles below: