Where are my Heirloom shards?
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: Winters Haunt Event 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%. CM Official Game Update 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.
Players/Parents, video game control is in your hands. Account Security 101:
Guest blogger Asmodeus566 is a member of the EA Community Superuser Program. First off, I would like to remind everyone that account security starts with the account holder. Keeping track of your account, what it is connected to, ensuring that it is up to date and that others do not access it, is the responsibility of the account owner. If others use your account and get a ban on it it is your fault not theirs and not EA's. Account Security/Safety 101: How to keep your account and hardware safe: Use strong passwords for you game accounts. Keep track of your game account information (ownership) and to what other accounts they are connected to. Use strong passwords for the associated e-mail account. Keep track of your e-mail accounts and what they are connected to. Keep your gaming accounts, associated e-mail accounts and passwords up to date, log in to them at least once a month so that they do not become disabled or de-activated. Do not use e-mail accounts that you cannot fully control, like those provided to you through, schools, universities, workplace and or other organizations etc. If the organization. revokes your e-mail or you leave the school, switch workplace etc and no longer have access to that e-mail, you will end up having issues you do not want or need. Do not share either of these passwords with others. Keep note of your passwords in a safe place. Enable two factor identification for both the game and associated e-mail accounts. Do not let others use your game account (friends and family alike) because if they do something wrong on your account it is still your fault. Nobody wants to have a sanction on their account because somebody else did or said something wrong. Do not use internet café’s to access your account to play. You do not know what software is on the hardware there. You do not know if the hardware at the cafe has a hardware ban. All of this can affect your account in a negative way. I would suggest only accessing your account with your own trusted hardware, gaming on another person’s hardware brings some of the same risks as above. I would also suggest not letting others use your hardware to play with their account, because if they get a hardware ban on your hardware while using it, it can have a negative effect on your account. Buying used hardware comes with risks as well. The hardware could have been banned, and this is not an EA problem, but a problem between the buyer and the seller. Play nice with others, in other words do not de-mean, harass or bully others in Chat or over voice coms, both can be reported and that can also have a negative effect on your account. Use non-offensive user/gamer tag/club tags, if you get a warning about user/gamer tag/club tags, change it, doing otherwise can lead to a negative effect on your account. Play fair, boosting and teaming are cheating. Play fair, using cheating software or hardware is not fair and is really only cheating yourself. Do not buy and or sell accounts. Do you really know what has been done with the account? What cyber information are you giving up? What risk is there that the account is already banned? What is the risk to your hardware and personal information? Re-read the Terms of Service agreement and the Terms of Sale agreement. You agreed to play this game and adhere to it. EA User Agreement and EA Terms of Sale About points 7, 8, and 9, where a number of players or the entire family are using the same hardware and there has to be trust there, talking together about the does and don’ts on the use of the shared hardware should be done. This will ensure that everyone can enjoy what they do on the shared hardware and everyone's account can be safe. If you believe you have been hacked take appropriate measures to secure your account and associated e-mail account: Secure a Hacked EA Account If you believe that a sanction (Suspension/Ban) placed on your account was by mistake you should reach out to the Terms of Service team: Information about locked/banned/suspended accounts Contacting EA help: EA Help Hopefully these tips will help keep your account safe so that you can keep on gaming. I can usually be found on the EA Apex forums in English and sometimes on the Apex German (Deutsch) Forum, So if you need some help, post on the Apex Legends forum and tag me. See Spoiler below for German (Deutsch) translation.
How I approach the new year of FC.
For me, the beginning of the year is the most exciting. My favorite part about early year play is that golds matter, In Forms matter for more than SBCs, packing a good card feels exciting and finding that perfect chemistry between your good cards and players from your favorite club...it all just feels great. There aren't more promo cards than base cards. 1 Icon or Hero can open up so much team building. Grinding for those cards provides a very satisfying win when you finally pack one or trade enough to purchase one. The hard part is how do I get there? I have taken a very different approach over the past few years that has made a huge difference in my enjoyment of the game. In the past, I would spend a lot on points at the beginning of the year (like 36,000-48,000) and then to keep it going, I'd get more points 1-2 times each month during promos all year long. I just continually would spend points on packs hoping to hit the lottery and get rich. I did not have a healthy balance between real money and grinding the game. That imbalance ruined the game for me. Even in years where I'd pack some great cards. . .I'd be bothered knowing in my mind how much I spent. Worse yet, in the years I wouldn't really pack anyone valuable, the resentment and frustration would build. I realized that resentment was the source of most of my frustration with the game. It ruined the experience for me. As with everything in life, I had to find a balance that works for me. Trading helped me to find a better balance. What I do now is allow myself a little kitty to start the year. In the past two years its been from 12,000 to 24,000 over the first month that I use to build up a trade pool. One thing I may do this year is be patient and wait for player packs instead of just ripping packs day 1! Time will tell on this one. My objective is to get enough value from those points to fill up my trade pile. Pending the coin value of the cards I hit and sell, I'll focus on 82-84 rated cards or if I get lucky and hit some more valuable cards, focus on higher rated "meta" cards. If I hit anyone really valuable, that's awesome. . .icing on the cake and I'll maybe use a little for my first squad. But my objective is to fund my trade pile. Trading early on can be very fruitful and afford you a very nice team and continued coin income (if you keep at it). I know not everyone has the money to do this. There are alternative ways to building up a trade pile. Starting with some points, I'm simply skipping the introductory trading method, called the Bronze Pack Method and jumping right into trading golds. If you're unfamiliar, I just checked. . .ask ChatGPT and it gives a great rundown of how this works. I try to trade very heavily the first 2 months of the game. This is when trading truly is at its best. As there are so many new people starting out, this is when you can be selling Adama Traore for crazy amounts. There are a few methods for the early game. The Lazy Buyer Method (TL;DR buy players cheap, and list at 2x,3x with a full trade pile), predicting In Forms and purchasing their golds before release, purchasing In Forms and waiting for them to be required in SBCs (which can cause their base price to inflate), trying to predict cards that will fit good SBCs or playing it just like the stock market. The market is very volatile early on. There are less risky methods (Lazy Buyer) that will consistently generate income or more risky methods where you target a certain card and purchase many of them hoping they inflate and you can sell. Having a diverse trade pile (lazy buyer) will be less risky because you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. This isn't a blog on trading, its a blog to help people who might have been where I was before. I love this franchise but I let it take an unhealthy grip on how I game. I found a balance that works for me and the last 2 years I found myself less angry, less frustrated, and enjoying the game longer and longer. I hope this helps others! Looking forward to all the changes to gameplay. Looking forward to Tournaments. SBCs. . .it's going to be a good year!
