Apex Legends Season 13 Ranked Changes Guide: What’s New And How To Avoid Demotion

Apex Legends Season 13 is live, adding new playable legend Newcastle, the Downed Beast point-of-interest to Storm Point, and plenty of balancing adjustments (all of which are listed in the Season 13 patch notes). The new season also makes some interesting adjustments to the Ranked system.

Starting in Season 13, how you earn Ranked Points (RP) has changed, and you are no longer safe from demotion once you’ve reached a new medal tier–in the past, reaching Gold meant you couldn’t ever drop back down to Silver, but that’s no longer always the case. Below, we cover everything you need to know about what’s changed with Ranked and how to avoid being demoted.

Medal tiers

Season 13 introduces a new medal tier: Rookie. This new tier will sit below Bronze, acting as the introductory level for new players who are playing Ranked for the first time.

That means the new path in Ranked is: Rookie → Bronze → Silver → Gold → Platinum → Diamond → Master/Predator.

This does mean that the Bronze tier now has an entry cost, presenting a risk to queue into a Ranked match as soon as you’re in what was Apex Legends’ previously lowest tier. And on that note, entry costs have changed as well.

Entry cost

For those not in the know, queueing into Ranked will cost you a set amount of RP per match, the very points you need to earn in order to rise in Ranked. This means that to earn RP, you have to gain enough during a match to offset the amount you’re spending just to queue in.

Previously, every medal tier had a set RP cost: Bronze was 0, Silver was 12, Gold was 24, Platinum was 36, Diamond was 48, and Master/Predator was 60. That is no longer the case, as each individual division within each medal tier will now cost a different amount of RP, increasing with each division (save for the Master/Predator tier). The full breakdown is detailed in the table below.

Earning RP

How you earn RP is changing a little bit in Season 13. Respawn is hoping the adjustments lead to more rewarding teamplay, as Ranked previously only rewarded players who were good at fighting. This new system shares the love a bit, ensuring a player who’s good at other aspects of being a good squadmate–like keeping the team alive and finding loot–can still benefit.

Starting in Season 13, all living members of a squad get RP whenever someone gets a kill. Actually getting the kill or assisting with it will still net you more RP, but you no longer have to directly engage in every single firefight in order to ensure you’re actually earning RP.

On top of that, there is no longer a kill/assist cap for earning RP. If you go on a murderous rampage, you’ll keep earning RP for every kill and/or assist you get, though with lesser returns for each subsequent kill/assist down to a minimum.

Additionally, the extra RP earned for placing well is being adjusted. For most medal tiers, placing in 20-11th place with one to three kills/assists will now no longer be enough to go positive in terms of RP. Respawn is adjusting those values so that getting 20-11th place is now considered a “loss” while making it to the top 10 is a “win” where your chances of going positive have been greatly increased, regardless if you have any kills or assists.

The timing on assists have been expanded as well, so damaging an enemy within 15 seconds of them being knocked and subsequently killed (instead of just 10) will get you the assist bonus. Additionally, if an enemy you helped knock down gets revived and then immediately knocked again, you still get the assist RP bonus, despite not being a part of the knockdown that leads to their death.

You also now earn an extra 100 RP just for getting promoted into a new medal tier. For example, if you earn enough RP to go from Silver I to Gold IV, your extra RP will roll over and you’ll get an additional 100 points on top of that.

Third-party kill-stealing

In past seasons, you could third-party a team (the act of engaging a fight already in progress between two teams to take advantage of their weakened state) and kill all the members of the winning team and then finish off the already downed members of the losing team and still get RP for all those kills, even though you had no hand in actually downing most of the members of the second squad. This is called “third-party kill-stealing.”

No need to remember the term, though, because it no longer exists. In Season 13, Respawn is disabling the ability to do this, meaning you will not earn RP for finishing off players that another team already downed for you.

Demotions

Starting in Season 13, you can be demoted. That means making it to Platinum IV does not mean you’re safe from dropping back down to Gold I, for example.

To ensure there isn’t too much fluctuation (and frustration) with this, you do have demotion protection for three matches after a promotion. So if you go up to a higher medal tier, you can’t fall back down to the previous medal–no matter how much RP you lose–until your fourth match. Once you get to match four, however, there is no way to stop yourself from being demoted save for consistently winning and/or earning enough RP to remain positive.

When you are demoted, your RP value will be reduced to 50% of the previous tier. So going back to the example used above, if you’re at Platinum IV and get demoted, you’ll go to Gold I with 50% of the RP needed to get back to Platinum IV. This will ensure you don’t immediately drop again to a lower division if you keep losing.