Apex Legends’ Heirlooms represent each legend’s personality and fighting style with an exclusive melee weapon. But season 21 seeks to empower players by giving them their very own unique weapon that can be customized to their personal preference.
The official Apex Legends season 21 blog post revealed all the new features coming to the Outlands this month, including a dedicated separate article about the recently released Apex Artifacts, as well as the new universal customization options for the previously released Cobalt Katar Mythic melee weapon.
The first Artifact weapon, the Cobalt Katar, was released during the Shadow Society collection event as a potential random drop from any event packs and stood as the first permanent universal Heirloom in Apex, equippable by any legend. Previously, the Buster Sword R5 from the Final Fantasy Rebirth takeover event was also featured as a universal Heirloom but was only collectible for the duration of the collaboration and is now completely uncollectible.
With the launch of season 21, the Cobalt Katar can be further customized from its initial base state, with five unlock tracks of five items each: the Katar Base, Theme, Power Source, Activation Emote, and Deathbox. But players aren’t locked to one specific Katar track when selecting which version they wish to bring to the Outlands. They can mix and match their favorite components from each reward track, making for over 200 unique combinations.
Players who previously unlocked the Cobalt Katar during Shadow Society will automatically unlock the first four Katar upgrades in the Cobalt customization track upon logging into Apex for the first time in season 21 as part of an early adopter reward.
Additionally, players who collect all five variants of a Katar component will be rewarded with the Nitride variant, a secret sixth reward track. For example, unlocking all five standard Katar Bases will unlock the Nitride Base, which is interchangeable with all previous Katar components.
To unlock each upgrade component, players will have to spend Exotic Shards, a new premium currency separate from standard Heirloom Shards. Exotic Shards are purchasable from the in-game shop just like Apex Coins and will also be featured as earnable rewards in future events and the season 21 battle pass, which will feature 10 Exotic Shards on its track.
So far, Respawn has not revealed how much each upgrade component will cost or if the Deathbox at the end of each variant line will cost extra Exotic Shards. But players will be able to see for themselves when Upheaval launches on all platforms on May 7.
