Crypto is the new hotness in competitive Apex Legends, thanks to Season 22

Season 22 introduced a slew of changes to Apex Legends, but unlike many previous seasons, one Legend change has had a huge impact on competitive team compositions. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the ALGS Split 2 Playoffs 2024, where most of the 40 competing teams had the Legend in their roster.

The ALGS (Apex Legends Global Series) is where teams from around the world battle it out to show they’re the best and, hopefully, take home a decent chunk of the $1 million prize pool. Compositions are always reflective of what the best teams and players in the world are using, whether professionally or casually in ranked mode. I’ve never seen Crypto being run in a top-ranked team, and I’ve only seen him once at an ALGS event. Following his buffs in season 22, though, he’s become a viable character who is all but essential for playing Apex Legends at the highest level.

What happened to Crypto?

When the updates in Apex Legends season 22 were revealed, Crypto’s changes caught my eye the most. His Surveillance Drone ability’s cooldown was reduced from 40 seconds to 30, and it was given a huge buff. Thanks to a new ability called Off The Grid, Crypto becomes cloaked while using his drone, and while scans can still reveal him, he’s hidden from Threat Vision skills.

This is pretty powerful because a player running Crypto can now serve their teammates by popping the Surveillance Drone and checking for all nearby enemies before everyone moves on. In a game like Apex Legends, you want to make sure that if you die, it’s because you messed up, not because you didn’t notice an enemy team hidden in a corner.

Furthermore, Crypto’s drone will show an enemy player for 4 seconds, giving a team a massive amount of information they can act on immediately. If you catch two or three teams in your area, you can move on them before the drone is finished, getting the jump on those who thought they were safe.

As the match goes on and players level Crypto up, they can increase the drone’s scan duration so it lasts for 5+ seconds. The information from those scans can then be improved yet again by picking the correct perk to reveal enemy players with live tracking for the duration of the scan. In simple terms, Crypto players can upgrade the Legend to the point where the team can spot enemies through walls within a certain radius, see where they move, and how they react to an attack.

Crypto has never been this good in Apex Legends, with the only players using him being those who have trained themselves to be experts in making his abilities and skills work for them. Now, Crypto is essential because a team with the information he provides can preemptively move and take out their enemies.

At the top level, Apex Legends is a game about knowledge, not strength, especially at the top level. If you know where the enemy is, what abilities and ultimate they can pull out, and which ones your team has at its disposal, you stand a much better chance of winning than a team that might be able to work out what weapons and skills you’ve got under your belt, but has no idea where you’re moving.