Free-to-play battle royale shooter Apex Legends is finally introducing cross-progression as part of its 19th season, and ahead of its arrival next Tuesday, 31st October, developer Respawn Entertainment has detailed how the whole thing'll work.

Cross-progression, once launched, will enable players to access their progression data, cosmetics, and currency via a single EA account across all platforms. Crucially, the cross-progression migration process is both automatic and mandatory, meaning there's a fair amount those who play across multiple platforms will likely want to know in preparation.

For starters, players who've accrued different progress levels across multiple platforms will soon have all that smushed together into a single account. Respawn will generate the stats of this new account based on what it's calling a player's "primarily platform" - that is, the one with the highest level reached across all platforms. Stats/progress of all other accounts will be lost.

The good news is that most cosmetic content and premium currency amassed across multiple platforms will be merged into this new single account - but there are exceptions. Apex Coins acquired on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, for instance, will be merged into a single wallet, but Apex Coins on Switch remain restricted to that platform.

As for cosmetics, all acquired content (including unlocked Legends) will be accessible on all platforms, with a few exceptions here too; essentially any cosmetic item that's exclusive to a specific platform will remain so after a player's accounts are merged, and will only be accessible there.

Respawn also notes players may lose access to some content associated with specific stats during the cross-progression process. This'll happen if that content was tied to an account not designated as the primary one when multiple accounts are merged. A few additional exceptions rising from the merging process are detailed in Respawn's blog post.

When Apex Legends' 19th season - officially titled Ignite - launches next week, it'll also introduce new hero Conduit, map changes, and more, as detailed elsewhere on Eurogamer.