Apex Legends: How Long Does Unlocking New Characters Take Without Spending Money

We've been enjoying our time in Respawn's new free-to-play battle royale game, Apex Legends, exploring the diverse ability sets of the eight different Legends. However, two Legends, the psychotic Caustic and goofball Mirage, are locked from the start. You can either drop some real-world cash to buy both immediately, or earn in-game Legend tokens to unlock them. We've finally discovered how long it would take to do the latter.

Phil Hornshaw, who reviewed Apex Legends for us, earned the necessary 12,000 Legend tokens to unlock one of the two Legends when he reached level 23, which took him about 17 hours. Progress eventually slows, Legend tokens don't unlock as quickly after reaching level 20.

Obviously, this amount of time could fluctuate for you, as you can level up faster by completing bounties and hunting down the featured Champion. Surviving for longer periods of time, getting high kill counts, reviving allies, respawning allies, killing the Champion's squad, killing the Kill Leader, or playing with people you're friends with (instead of randoms) nets you moderate to large experience bonuses too.

Killing the Champion or their squad or surviving for a long time are the fastest ways to level up. Defeating the Champion nets you a 500 XP bonus, and it's another 500 for taking out their whole squad. You get about a 200 XP bonus for every minute you survive, according to PSU, which means you can get huge bonuses for just hiding and surviving until the very end of a 17-20 minute match. If you're playing with two friends, you get an extra 300 XP bonus if your squad makes it to the top three as well.

You might also be able to unlock new Legends and cosmetics faster once Apex Legends' Battle Pass comes out. Respawn hasn't provided a definite release date for the Battle Pass, but it's currently scheduled for March. Although Respawn has confirmed cross-progression won't be added, cross-platform play could still happen in Apex Legend's future.

Apex Legends is available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.