How many Apex packs have I opened towards my guranteed Heirloom? This is a question I have seen posted many, many times on the Apex forum over the years. As yet, there is no in-game Apex pack counter to help answer this question. So what is a Legend to do?
Guest blogger OldTreeCreeper is a member of the EA Community Superuser Program.
I have been playing Apex Legends since 2019 and I strategically bought my first heirloom in an anniversary event, with collected coin, crafting materials, EA play discount and an additional €43 in purchased coin. It was a joyous occasion for me, as I had lusted after Wraith's Kunai for some time.
I continued wondering how many packs I had opened up, but from then on I would collect up my packs by the hundred and then open them. I now made a note of each hundred opened, a simple way to keep track of the packs I'd opened as I could count to 5 😁.
Eventually I opened my first free Apex Heirloom pack. Another joyous occasion for me, as I could now get Wraith's prestigue skin. That took 3 years. I got my second free heirloom after I had opened another 495 packs.
My next 2 heirlooms came from the Winters Haunt event using collected coin, crafting materials and pack discount offers. I have that detailed in the below post:
Since the introduction of the weekly Spark Bonus packs, I now open the packs in ten's weekly (if I have them) to take advantage of the additional free bonus pack, again making a note as I go along of how many ten pack's I've opened. I am currently at 101 packs opened towards my next heirloom.
The level cap in Apex Legends is effectively 2000, so you can loop through levels 1 to 500 four times. The total number of packs you can now earn, through simply leveling up to level 2000, is 544 packs. That is a guaranteed heirloom!
The awarding of shards is automatic upon the opening of your 500th pack. The award of shards in any other pack under the 500 pack count is a random lucky event for some. If you are lucky enough to get shards from a pack in under 500 packs, the pack counter is reset to 0.
For heirloom purposes, Thematic packs are the same as Apex packs, they count towards the 500 pack heirloom guarantee. Collection event packs are different, as they just count towards the collection event reward and not towards the heirloom guarantee.
Additionally the pack counter is not reset if you buy a heirloom. Neither spending those bought shards, nor getting a free event heirloom will reset the pack counter.
If you have not counted up your packs, there are 3rd party sites that can give you a rough idea of where you are in the countdown to your guranteed heirloom, like the one below, but it's complicated imo.
Apex pack calculator
A recent community manager post included officialy published Heirloom Shard drop rates, which indicate an actual global minimum drop rate per pack percentage of 0.045%.
I think it is safe to say that everybody in the Apex community would love to see Respawn add an "opened pack" counter for heirloom purposes to the game.
I wish you the very best of luck out there, in your quest for a precious heirloom.
