Apex Legends Season 31: Cipher — Strongholds, Akimbo Wingman and the Crypto Rework Explained
Apex Legends Season 31: Cipher landed on November 3, 2026, with a new mid-game Stronghold airdrop, a dual-wielded Akimbo Wingman, and a full rework of Crypto's drone and EMP ultimate. Here's exactly what changed and how each system works.
Apex Legends’ Season 31 update, Cipher, went live on November 3, 2026, and it changes more than just the battle pass skins. Respawn added a brand-new mid-game airdrop called a Stronghold, gave the Wingman pistol an akimbo mode with its own rebalanced stats, and tore Crypto’s kit down to the frame to rebuild his drone and EMP around faster, more aggressive play. Ranked also got its first Legend ban-voting system. Here’s exactly what changed, what each system does mechanically, and how to adjust if you played the previous season.
1. What Is Season 31: Cipher?
Cipher is the thirty-first seasonal update for Apex Legends, Respawn Entertainment’s free-to-play battle royale, published by Electronic Arts. It launched on November 3, 2026, at 10 AM Pacific Time across PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch 2. The season's headline systems are a new Stronghold structure that drops alongside Care Packages, an akimbo variant of the Wingman pistol, a full rework of Crypto, and the first version of Legend ban voting in Ranked. The map rotation for Pubs and Ranked runs Storm Point, E-District Night and Broken Moon, while the Mixtape rotation (District and Broken Moon through November 9, then a wider rotation into January) runs on a separate schedule.
2. Strongholds: The New Mid-Game Airdrop
The biggest structural addition in Cipher is the Stronghold, a heavily armored structure that drops into the match alongside the usual Care Packages. During Round 1’s ring closure, two ordinary Care Packages drop. During Round 2’s closure, one Care Package and one Stronghold drop together, giving squads a reason to fight over a specific building instead of just rotating.
How landing and locking work
When a Stronghold lands, it crushes and kills anything underneath it, then deploys up to four indestructible barriers and two Hardlight frames around itself if there’s room. Until a team captures it, the structure is locked down hard: nobody can enter, Loba can’t pull loot out of it with her Black Market Boutique, and Alter can’t breach its walls with her portal.
Capturing it
Capture progress only ticks up while exactly one team is alive inside the zone, and multiple squads can contest the same Stronghold at once. Progress is shared globally (it doesn’t reset if your team steps out), doesn’t decay over time, and fills faster the more teammates you have standing in the zone. Whichever team is inside when the meter hits 100% gets the capture. On a successful capture, the doors and roof hatch pop open and every living member of the capturing squad earns a full Legend level — on top of the loot inside.
What’s inside
A captured Stronghold holds one Care Package-tier weapon, three Gold-tier guns, three Amps and two Corrupted attachments, making it one of the densest loot pools in the game once it’s open. That loot density is exactly why squads are willing to third-party a Stronghold fight instead of avoiding it.
3. Akimbo Wingman: How Dual-Wielding Changes the Gun
The Wingman heavy pistol can now be dual-wielded, and Respawn rebuilt its stats around that change rather than just bolting akimbo onto the old numbers. The ammo type switched from Sniper Ammo to Heavy Ammo, so it now uses Heavy Magazines and spawns at Heavy Ammo Arsenals instead of sniper loot pools. Base damage per shot dropped from 50 to 45 to account for the second gun.
Looting a second Wingman while already holding one automatically slots you into Akimbo mode — there’s no separate attachment or crafting step. Once akimbo, the headshot multiplier falls from the single-gun value down to 1.25x (56 headshot damage), fire rate ticks up slightly, reload takes longer, recoil increases, and magazine size doubles. The two pistols fire in alternating quick bursts rather than simultaneously, and holding the trigger down keeps queuing up the next burst automatically. That tap-fire queuing is also new for burst-fire weapons generally, not just the Wingman.
Net effect: Akimbo Wingman trades per-shot precision and headshot payout for sustained close-range pressure and a much bigger magazine, which makes it a different tool than the single Wingman rather than a strict upgrade.
4. The Crypto Rework: From Cooldown Drone to Battery Drone
Crypto got the deepest rework of the season. His passive, tactical and ultimate all changed shape, not just their numbers.
Passive
Ally.MoveTo — the teammate movement-speed boost that used to be a Level 2 upgrade — is now part of Crypto’s base kit from the start, though the boost itself is slightly smaller than before.
Tactical (the drone)
The drone no longer runs on a simple cooldown. It now runs on a battery that gives it 25 seconds of action before it has to recall, and recall itself takes 6 seconds. Once it’s back, there’s no extra cooldown before redeploying — battery management replaces waiting. The drone also handles and moves faster while flying. Its scan now sweeps a full 360-degree zone around it instead of only whatever the camera is pointed at, though it can no longer scan loot bins or doors the way it used to. A manual mark option was added too: hitting the shoot button while in drone mode marks an enemy for 8 seconds, on a 4-second cooldown, and the mark persists even if the drone gets recalled or destroyed mid-mark. Marked enemies can’t be re-marked until the current mark expires.
Ultimate (the EMP)
The EMP can now be triggered either from an already-airborne drone or by deploying a fresh one on the spot if Crypto doesn’t have one out. With line of sight to a target, it deals full shield damage and a heavier slow; without line of sight, it falls back to 50 damage and a lighter slow. Crypto no longer damages himself when he triggers it.
Upgrades
At Level 2, Got Eyes On You (marks last 4 seconds longer) replaces the old Ally.MoveTo upgrade slot, since that perk is now baseline. At Level 3, Charged Up adds 10 seconds of drone battery life in place of the old Hackathon perk.
5. Lifeline, Revenant and Legend Ban Voting in Ranked
Crypto wasn’t the only Legend to get touched. Lifeline’s D.O.C. drone now heals her while she glides, her tactical cooldown dropped from 25 to 15 seconds, and her upgrade tree was reshuffled: Level 2 swaps in Enhanced Radio (longer D.O.C. assign range) and adds Improved Flight (better glide handling and duration), while Level 3 adds a flat 60-second ultimate cooldown reduction and Revive Shield, which has D.O.C. project a shield while reviving a teammate.
Revenant also got faster: his tactical cooldown fell from 20 to 15 seconds with a quicker charge time, and his ultimate cooldown dropped from 180 to 150 seconds. His Level 2 upgrade, Ever Lasting, now extends his ultimate by 10 seconds on a knock, and Level 3 offers a choice between Silence (his tactical landing releases a silencing pulse) and No Escape (his tactical refreshes when his passive marks an enemy). On the nerf side, Loba’s tactical cooldown rose from 25 to 30 seconds and her ultimate cooldown rose from 120 to 150 seconds.
Ranked play also introduced Legend ban voting for Diamond and above this season: each player requests one Legend to ban, a Legend’s odds of being banned scale with how many players requested it, and the system removes two Legends from the match. If fewer than four unique Legends get requested, the system fills the remaining slots with the previous week’s most-played Legends so there are always at least four candidates in the pool, and once a Legend is banned it can’t be selected by anyone that match.
6. Quick Recap and Where to Learn More
- Strongholds are a new airdrop structure that locks down until one team clears the zone, then hands out a Care Package weapon, three Gold guns, three Amps and two Corrupted attachments — plus a free level for everyone who captured it.
- Akimbo Wingman runs on Heavy Ammo, hits for 45 instead of 50 per shot, has a 1.25x headshot multiplier at 56 damage, and doubles magazine size with alternating bursts.
- Crypto's drone now runs on a 25-second battery with a 6-second recall and no post-recall cooldown, scans a full 360-degree radius, and can fire a manual 8-second mark; his EMP can launch from the drone or a fresh deployment and no longer damages him.
- Lifeline and Revenant both got meaningfully faster cooldowns, while Loba's tactical and ultimate both got slower.
- Ranked adds Legend ban voting at Diamond and above, removing two Legends from the pool each match based on player requests.
If you're easing back into Ranked after the changes, it's worth pairing this with our breakdown of the full Season 31-32 ranked roadmap for how Legend banning fits into the bigger Leagues 2.0 picture, and our beginner's guide to Legend classes and game modes if Crypto's new kit has you considering a class switch. Players coming off the previous patch may also want the rundown of the Marked midseason changes for context on what Cipher built on top of. For the rest of our ongoing coverage, visit the full walkthroughs archive.
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