Apex Legends Season 13: Storm Point map changes, new POIs and IMC Armories

When Apex Legends released Storm Point in season 11, it was received with a lot of fanfare. A tropical map set in a beach island setting with PVE enemies was the perfect addition to the game.

A season later though, the players' opinion of the map has changed drastically. The map's large size goes against it and POIs are stretched thin across its wilderness. Primary complaints revolved around how long it took to find fights and the sheer distance players had to cover. Come Season 13 and the map is receiving its first major update, with new POIs and improved PVE elements.

Among the most interesting changes to the map is this large dead sea monster that serves as a new POI. It envelops the North Pad, Checkpoint, and The Mill locations on the map and serves as one single POI called Downed Beast. Players can literally explore and fight inside the beast. They'll be able to enter it from openings like large battle wounds and its gigantic jaw that lies wide-open. Players will find plenty of high-tier loot inside the beast.

The developers refer to it as an organic combat zone. An interesting term considering most of the combat zones in the game are abandoned buildings and structures. From the looks of it in trailers and Respawn's blog post, it'll definitely be a nice change of scenery.

IMC Armories will provide players with an interactive POI where players can fight waves of Spectre Bots and earn high-tier loot in the process. Props to the developers because this is a great way to introduce more interesting PVE elements and an interactive loot zone.

Specters add an interesting element to Storm Point's PVE wilderness. These IMC armories are a great way to add a challenge that rewards players for taking it up. It merges the PVE elements from World's Edge (Bloodhound's arena) with loot vaults and explosive holds from World's Edge and King's Canyon.

Storm Point will also receive a few quality of life changes in Season 13. In addition to the Downed Beast POI and IMC Armories, an additional prowler nest appears near The Cenote.

The developers have also made some changes to the wildlife around the map. Additional rocks and terrain around prowler nests have been placed so that players and AI can traverse around these and engage in more dynamic combat.

A rock archway near the spider nest north of the Command Centre will also bring the nests closer together. It's safe to assume that the spiders will behave more like swarms thanks to this change, and players will need to be more careful around them.

Storm Point is a pretty large and expansive map. It's great to see the developers take player feedback seriously and give the map a fresh lease of life. The old "blow it up to make a new POI" formula with King's Canyon and World's Edge was getting old. This dead sea-monster approach is interesting and we'll see how the meta changes around Season 13 with it.

Season 13 of Apex Legends is now playable. You can read our analysis of the patch notes only on esports.gg.