Introduced in a recent community event, it looks like the armor is here to stay.

By William Hume

UPDATE: July 15th, 2020 We reached out to sports garment company Evo Shield via Twitter: “We do not have any involvement.”

The fourth major event in Apex Legends has concluded but a piece of equipment is staying put- The Evo Shield. Introduced as a part of the System Override Collection Event in the limited time Deja Loot mode the developers have always considered adding the shield full time to all matches based on player feedback. And the players have spoken.

Evo Shields according to the developer are the first major item change in the game introduced in patch 4.1. They initially function as the lowest level armor at around 1 pip or 25 hit points and level up as the player deals damage. This equipment, according to the developer is good for ‘hot drop’ players who want to gamble combatting other players early on to see if they can level up their armor with frequent encounters against weaker or less experienced players. The maximum amount of armor for Evo is 5 pips or 125 shield points (equivalent to a full red body armor) which is available after dealing damage of 1000 hit points. The developers do not mean to use Evo to replace gold body armor. Rather they want to offer players a strategic choice from the beginning of play. However, in true Apex Legends fashion you can’t take it with you. If you are killed by another player they can loot it from your deathbox.

An interesting battle strategy that’s come up in the Apex Legends community per Reddit utilizes the Evo Shield. As Crypto, the player can use his drone from a point of relative safety to survey the battlefield picking up damage points using EMP from far off teams and swapping out armor for your teammates. In the playthrough we witnessed from SoaR content creator BacKoFFmyJanKzz uploaded to YouTube on March 3rd, JanKzz managed to utilize the new Evo shield quite effectively throughout the match. However a full Crypto/ Evo spam strategy like the one suggested is too slowly for fast pace professionals. 

Leading his two man squad with Chicken9Man, he racked up kills and damage maxing out his shield to Red quite easily until his partner was downed outside a tight closing ring late game. He quickly found himself in a losing close quarters battle against SacrificialLamb4 who was armed with a gun shield.

So far, the Evo Shield has not turned out to be the over-powering game changer players and developers alike worry about when it comes to balancing highly competitive and popular eSports but further updates will tell. Some gamers have called for the Evo Shield to recharge itself after player inflicted damage rather than using the standard shield cell battery. But that would reward less defensive strategies and likely lead to unbalancing. As you can see in JanKzz’s playthrough he finds the levelling up of the armor to be as rewarding as his partner finds it beautiful, but it does not turn him into anymore of a bloodthirsty terminator than Jankzz already is.

• Scale: White Light (25 shield points), Blue Medium (50 shield points), Purple Full (100 shield points), Red Extended (125 shield points)

System Override Collection Event —

Official EA Press Release: https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/system-override?isLocalized=true