I woke up this morning to an absolute avalanche of Fortnite news and changes in the wake of the v4.4 patch. There are new things both live in the game right now, and pouring out via datamining, so much so that it’s hard to even know where to start.
For now I’ll focus on what you can actually see in the game right this moment.
After weeks of drilling, the meteor at the center of Dusty Divot, the remnants of season 3’s “comet,” has been cracked open. Inside, a landing pod that has opened to released…what appears to be a dastardly supervillain, who just so happens to be the long-awaited blockbuster skin.
While you can see the open pod in the game right now at Dusty, the supervillain himself can be seen in the leaked week 7 and week 8 loading screens via @twoepicbuddies. In week 7, we see him emerging from the pod. In week 8, we see him at the supervillain base, interacting with the rocket/missile there, implying that big, big things are coming, and the rocket may have been season 4’s “comet” all along, as whatever he’s planning is likely to reshape the game for season 5.
Elsewhere on the map, the trucks hauling hop rocks and meteor chunks have moved again, and appear to be drawing closer to the supervillain base, bolstering the theory that the meteor will be used to power the rocket.
But the largest addition to the map has nothing to do with our new villainous friend, the rocket or the meteor.
That would be an absolutely enormous soccer stadium that has been patched into the game north of Pleasant Park. While Epic has done a number of relatively small updates to the map throughout the course of the season, this is by far the largest thing they’ve inserted into the game since season 4 began, which added a number of new named areas.
It also proves that the leaked challenges yesterday were not glitched. It was revealed that one of the week 7 challenges (which you’ll need to complete if you want first crack at the blockbuster skin) included one that has you scoring a goal on three different pitches on the map. But there were only two, one in Pleasant Park and one west of Tilted. But now with this huge stadium, we now know, very clearly, where the third one is.
That isn’t all, however. Also leaked are eight soccer skins coming, four male, four female, with back bling and emotes to match, and those should be going up in the store sometime soon, I imagine. I figured Epic might save something like this for the World Cup, but here we are, where suddenly it’s both supervillain and soccer week at the same time. Thaaaaat’s Fortnite!
I can’t even keep up with everything that’s been added to Fortnite in this update. The scoped thermal AR is here, and supposedly next week’s item is a gas grenade of some sort, which has been datamined. There are other leaked skins including what appear to be other new villains, and someone wearing a gas mask to ward off against the coming gas grenade in week 8, it seems. But more on all that later.
For now, what you can do is check out the broken-open meteor, follow the path of the trucks, play around in the new stadium as you prepare for Thursday’s challenges, and say goodbye to the rocket near Snobby which may end up getting launched by this time next week. We are only a few weeks away from season 5 now, after all.
I should have predicted E3 would be an exciting time for Fortnite, but this is probably the game’s biggest non-seasonal update so far.
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