APEX 1.11.6 is live. Here is what changed since 1.7.18.
Two new factions: WARBORN and VANGUARD
Both factions are now fully playable. Like NEXUS, all faction nodes and capstone ranks are permanent — they survive ascension and hard reset. The faction choice overlay appears at every ascension.
THE WARBORN
An ability-driven faction built around burst damage and kill momentum.
Column A — Mortar artillery:
- Field Artillery (A1): A crosshair tracks your cursor, locks, then fires a mortar (~1 shot/s) dealing 100% normalized shot damage in a 50 px radius. Click to freeze/unfreeze the crosshair.
- Heavy Ordnance (A2): Mortar radius expands to 150 px, damage triples to 300%, hits stun for 0.5 s.
- Carpet Bombing (A3): Each mortar strike fires 4 additional blasts 100 px N/S/E/W from the primary impact.
Column B — Active abilities (keyboard):
- Rallying Cry (B1): Key
1— Overdrive: ×3 fire rate for 5 s, 60 s cooldown. Each wave clear shaves 1 s off all cooldowns. - Fury (B2): Key
2— all damage ×2 for 4 s, 60 s cooldown. Each wave clear extends active ability durations by 0.5 s. - Avatar of War (B3): Key
3— Annihilation: strips 30% current HP from every enemy, 60 s cooldown. Each wave clear removes another 1 s from all cooldowns (−2 s/wave total with B1).
Column C — Rush Stacks:
- Blood Rush (C1): Kills grant Rush Stacks (+3% damage each, cap 1000). Stacks decay 3 s after the last kill.
- Rampage (C2): +1% fire rate per 10 Rush Stacks.
- Unstoppable (C3): Decay is paused at wave start until the first kill. Mortar hits reset the decay timer; mortar kills grant stacks; overkills grant 2.
Capstone — ETERNAL WARRIOR: Each rank raises the Rush Stack cap, reduces all ability cooldowns, and causes projectiles to deal bonus current-HP% damage to enemies.
THE VANGUARD
A long-game faction centered on wave farming and shard compounding.
Column A — Wave weaving:
- Advance Guard (A1): Enemies gain +2% movement speed per wave cleared within the run. Wave 10: +20%. Wave 50: +100%. Demands faster clears — pairs naturally with Tide Surge.
- Tide Surge (A2): Killing 50% of a wave (boss must die first on boss waves) immediately advances to the next, carrying survivors over. This replaces the old Wave Rush prestige upgrade.
- Spoils of War (A3): On an early switch (Tide Surge trigger), each surviving enemy grants +5% damage and +5% crit damage until the next switch.
Column B — Shard scaling:
- Eternal Tithe (B1): Each ascension grants bonus shards equal to the ascension count (3rd ascension = +3 extra shards).
- Shard Mastery (B2): Doubles the per-shard passive damage coefficient. Stacks with Battle Hardened: 0.10 × 1.5 × 2 = 0.30 per shard.
- Iron Vault (B3): On ascension, gain 1% of current shards as bonus shards.
Column C — Ascension engine:
- Battle Hardened (C1): ×1.5 to the per-shard coefficient (0.10 → 0.15).
- Momentum (C2): Shards awarded on ascension multiplied by (1 + 0.1 × ascension count).
- Tidal Convergence (C3): Every wave advance via Tide Surge skips 10 waves simultaneously.
Capstone — ENDLESS WAR: Each rank raises the Tide Surge threshold across all factions to 75% and multiplies the obliterate check power.
New prestige upgrades
Several high-end shard upgrades have been added:
| Upgrade | Effect |
|---|---|
| Void Surge | ×1.20 global DPS multiplier per tier — all weapons (5 tiers) |
| Echo Shot | Chance to fire a free extra volley after a multi-shot salvo — up to 75% at tier 5 (5 tiers) |
| Forge Eternal | +50 flat base damage per tier, applied before all multipliers (5 tiers) |
| Shard Covenant | Wave-start damage bonus proportional to total shards (3 tiers) |
| Eternal Arsenal | +5% fire rate and +1 simultaneous target per tier, beyond the shop caps (4 tiers) |
| Apex Predator | Execute threshold applies to Bosses; +50% fire rate burst for 3 s on any execute kill (3 tiers) |
| Overcharge Amplifier | Extends the overcharge shot multiplier from ×4 up to ×6.5 (5 tiers) |
| Detonation Field | +15% explosion radius per tier plus a 1 s slow on blast (4 tiers) |
| Arc Mastery | +1–3 extra chain lightning jumps with ×1.20 escalating damage per jump (3 tiers) |
Wave Rush removed
The Wave Rush prestige upgrade is gone. Any previously purchased tiers are refunded in shards on load. Its function is replaced by VANGUARD A2 (Tide Surge), which works identically but integrates with the rest of the VANGUARD tree.
Prestige upgrade rebalancing
All existing prestige upgrades had their base costs and cost multipliers adjusted to fit the expanded shop. Notable changes:
- Auto-Buyer: baseCost 1 → 2, costMult 3.0 → 2.5
- War Chest: extended to 10 tiers (up to 1M starting currency), costs scaled accordingly
- Critical Strike: extended to 10 tiers (100% crit chance at max), baseCost raised
- Bounty II: baseCost raised, costMult 1.8 → 2.0
NEXUS node updates
- A2 (formerly “Optimal Roster”): Now grants +1% damage per filled pet slot rather than auto-managing slot assignments. The description and tooltip have been updated.
- A3 (Stack Cascade): Tooltip now lists all 10 rarity tiers by name for clarity.
- C3 (Recursive Growth): Tooltip now shows the concrete example with 4 slots filled.
Chain lightning
The chain lightning damage model changed: each jump now deals 60% of the previous jump’s damage rather than full damage. This reduces the runaway scaling that made chain lightning dominant in long runs.
Pool size tuning
Pool sizes were reduced to better fit the actual gameplay budget: enemy pool 512 → 2048 (corrected), projectile pool 8192 → 1024, particle pool 8192 → 1024. The previous values were over-allocated relative to typical wave sizes.
Auto-ascension mode
A new autoAscensionMode preference is saved to apex_prefs. When active, the game ascends automatically as soon as pendingShards > 0. State is restored on page load alongside quality and volume preferences.
Save key additions
apex_faction_capstones— new key storing permanent capstone ranks for all three factions (SINGULARITY, ETERNAL WARRIOR, ENDLESS WAR). Capstone ranks now survive hard reset.apex_save— now also persists VANGUARD per-run state:vanguardSpeedBonusandvanguardSpoilsStacks.