Apex Legends Heirlooms: Pity System, Glitches & Season 29

An heirloom is a cosmetic melee weapon or item set exclusive to a specific legend, complete with custom animations, inspect sequences, and audio cues that loudly announce to every lobby that you either got very lucky or have a spending problem. The tradition started with Wraith's Kunai back in the early days, and Respawn has been printing them ever since. At present, nearly every legend has one, with a few stragglers left waiting in cosmetic purgatory.

You cannot simply buy an heirloom outright. Instead, you acquire 150 heirloom shards, a special currency that drops from Apex Packs at a rate the game politely describes as "less than 1%." Once you have those 150 shards, you visit the Mythic Store and choose any heirloom currently available. The flexibility is genuinely one of the few merciful design choices in this entire system with a proper Apex boost.

The pity system is Respawn's way of saying they care about you, while also ensuring you open at least 500 packs before feeling cared for. How to get heirloom shards in Apex Legends is one of the most searched questions in the community, and the answer has always been the same: you open packs, you pray, and somewhere between pack one and pack 499 you will either get lucky or you will not. On pack 500, the system is contractually obligated to deliver shards: assuming it is working correctly, which we will get to shortly.

Here is what counts toward your 500-pack counter and what does not, because of course there are exceptions:

The pity counter also resets the moment you receive shards. If you pulled shards at pack 200, congratulations: you are starting over from zero. That is the system's version of a warm hug.

Important

There is no in-game tracker showing you how many Apex rank boost you have opened toward your pity counter. You are expected to either remember, use a third-party tool, or simply develop a personality trait around existential uncertainty.

If opening hundreds of random packs sounds unappealing, collection events offer an alternative path. When a new heirloom launches, Respawn typically wraps it in a collection event featuring 24 exclusive cosmetics. Collect all 24 and the heirloom unlocks automatically: no shards required.

The pricing for this route typically lands around $150 to $170 if you buy everything with Apex Coins, though using crafting materials can trim that cost. This is considered the "budget-friendly" option. Please hold your applause.

• 24 event-exclusive items must be collected in full
• Event packs do not contribute to the regular Apex pack heirloom tracker
• Missed the event? The heirloom still goes to the Mythic Store afterward
• Crafting materials can reduce the total cost if used strategically
• The heirloom is immediately available upon completing the set: no waiting, no drama

Every Major Heirloom Glitch, Ranked by Audacity

Over the years, Apex's heirloom system has malfunctioned in ways that range from mildly irritating to breathtakingly chaotic. Consider this a hall of fame for the times Respawn's code forgot its own rules. For those researching Apex Legends heirloom glitch history, this is the comprehensive record.

Season 8 The Anniversary Counter Reset Bug

The Anniversary Collection Event heirloom pack had a charming side effect: opening it would reset your 500-pack pity counter. For players who were 400 packs deep and grinding toward the guarantee, this was received approximately as well as you would expect. Respawn patched it quickly and reimbursed affected players with the shards they should have received. A rare moment of corporate accountability.

Season 15 Every Heirloom, Free, For Everyone

This one was genuinely spectacular. By rapidly cycling between the lobby screen and the main menu until the game's UI began to lag, players could cause the currency display in the top right corner to glitch. In this bugged state, the equip option would appear for every heirloom in the game, regardless of ownership. For several days (possibly a couple of weeks: accounts vary), the entire community was running around with every heirloom simultaneously. No bans were issued. The community manager confirmed that distinguishing intentional use from accidental triggering was functionally impossible. EA's quarterly earnings meeting presumably did not celebrate this.

Season 20 The Hacker's Gift Economy

A hacker identified as Destroyer2009 gifted thousands of Apex packs to multiple content creators, including approximately 2,500 to one streamer and over 4,000 to another. Respawn's response was remarkably relaxed: all affected players were allowed to keep and open every single pack. The crafting materials and heirlooms obtained were theirs to keep. The moral of this story remains unclear.

Season 20+ The 25,000 and 33,000 Pack Apparitions

Two separate players discovered inexplicable pack counts on their accounts: one with 25,000 packs appearing after opening a single gifted bundle, another who simply logged in one morning to find 33,000 packs waiting. The 33,000-pack account could not open them, and within hours the packs vanished entirely. Nobody has been adequately compensated for the psychological damage with a proper Apex account boost.

This is the most recent confirmed bug, and the one that triggered actual compensation. The Apex Legends pity system bug affected accounts that owned all but one mythical item and had leveled the Horizon Prestige skin to level two or three before March 17, 2026. For these accounts, the 500-pack guarantee was silently not functioning. Respawn confirmed the issue and sent 150 heirloom shards plus a legendary pack to affected players. In a twist that delighted the community, at least one content creator received the compensation despite not meeting the stated criteria, suggesting the patch's scope was itself slightly buggy.

Partial Heirlooms

At various points in Apex history, players reported receiving only individual components of an heirloom set when opening packs. Equipping these partial sets would crash the game, and the components were revoked. Nobody was particularly surprised.

Cross Progression: The Heirloom Thanos Snap

When Apex finally rolled out Apex Legends cross progression: a feature players had been requesting for years: it was implemented with the kind of elegance that has come to define Respawn's relationship with its community. Cross progression allowed players to merge their accounts across platforms. The merging logic would automatically select the highest-level account as the primary, with all content flowing to that account. Sounds reasonable. Here is where it becomes entertaining.

If a player had heirlooms, prestige skins, or high-value cosmetics on the lower-level account, those items did not transfer to the higher-level primary account. They simply ceased to exist in any accessible form. Additionally, if both accounts contained duplicate cosmetics, no refund or compensation was issued for the duplicate: it was quietly absorbed and forgotten, much like the player's will to continue.

Cross-Progression Note

Cross progression was mandatory. You could not opt out. You could only discover what you had lost afterward.

For a period, Respawn shifted focus toward universal heirlooms: items like the Buster Sword R5, introduced via the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth collaboration, which could be equipped by any legend regardless of identity. The community's reception to this direction was lukewarm at best and openly hostile at worst. A universal heirloom solves the accessibility problem and fails the personality problem simultaneously. It is a glowing stick that belongs to nobody.

Legend-specific heirlooms Apex Legends work differently. They are designed around a specific character's lore, personality, and animation style. Bloodhound's Raven's Bite means something in the context of Bloodhound's mythology. Octane's Butterfly Knife means something in the context of Octane's entire disregard for personal safety. They create identity in a game that has increasingly struggled with long-term player motivation.

Developer signals from recent AMAs and the Apex season 29 heirloom updates suggest the pendulum is swinging back. Leaks point to legend-specific releases being prioritized again going into the latter half of 2026. A whip heirloom was reportedly found in data mining activity for Season 28 Split 2, and the conversation around heirloom trackers and reward transparency has become loud enough that Respawn appears to be listening, at their own pace for a Apex badge boost.

Why Legend-Specific Heirlooms Win the Argument

1. They restore player identity by tying high-value cosmetics to a specific main
2. They scale infinitely as the roster grows, providing unlimited content pipeline
3. Players are demonstrably more motivated to spend when the reward feels personal
4. They provide visual clarity in competitive play: Hal's heirloom tells you which legend Hal is on
5. They connect cosmetics to lore, creating genuine cultural moments around each release

The Live Heirloom Tracker: What Everyone Wants

The community has requested a live Apex heirloom pack tracker for years. Other games implement this. Gacha titles, competing battle royales, even other EA properties have systems that tell players exactly how close they are to a guaranteed reward. Apex's current approach is to simply not tell you, leaving players to track their own pack counts manually, use third-party calculators, or simply guess. This is described by nobody as a good experience.

A tracker that displayed something as simple as "You are 312 of 500 packs in" would eliminate the anxiety loop that currently drives a significant percentage of the community's complaints. It would also remove the casino-adjacent quality of the experience, which may explain why it has not yet been implemented. Recent developer commentary hints this feature is being considered. Believe that when the counter appears in your UI.

Third-Party Tools

Community-built pack calculators exist that estimate your pity progress based on account level, battle pass completion, and purchase history. They are not perfectly accurate. They are better than nothing, which is the official in-game offering.

The Pathfinder Incident

In the interest of comprehensive documentation, one additional anomaly deserves mention. A content creator discovered that their Apex Legends prestige skin glitch had self-activated: the Pathfinder Prestige skin: which they had deliberately left unleveled and untouched: had somehow leveled itself to maximum. The account showed roughly zero Pathfinder playtime over the relevant period. No damage dealt. No games played on the legend. The skin simply decided it was done waiting. No other player has reportedly experienced this. It remains unexplained.