I was playing a battle royale game last night, where the goal was to use weaponised flatulence to be the last man standing. I think it was called Fartnite. HA HA! Bad jokes, I have plenty of them. Anyway, the Fortnite bug has bitten me, and lemme tell ya it’s a ferocious little critter that has already rewritten the parts of my brain that were previously dedicated to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

Fortnite in its present state is a lean mean killing machine, but that doesn’t mean that its formula can’t be improved. Update V.3.3 is aiming to do that, with developer Epic Games having hinted at some of the changes earlier this week in an developer diary. Here are the full patch notes and cosmetics that you can expect to see in Fortnite Battle Royale when the servers go offline from 9:00am GMT for a few hours:

Remote explosives

Shamrock Reclaimer Outlander (Save the World)

Charge your abilities by defeating enemies and be the lucky charm we’ve always needed!

Llamas

 

Bug Fixes

 

• Improved server performance and reduced bandwidth usage when players are jumping.
• Korean, Japanese, and Chinese languages will display properly in the UI when changing languages while playing the game.

Battle Royale weapons and items

• Remote Explosives added.
  • Rare rarity.
  • Found in Supply Llamas, Treasure Chests, Floor Loot or Supply Drops.
  • Stacks of 4 (Max of 10).
• Smoke Grenade has been vaulted.

Bug Fixes

• Updated the ‘No Scope Hunting Rifle’ name to simply be ‘Hunting Rifle’.
• Fixed missing environmental impact FX on Hunting Rifle projectiles

Gamplay

• Limited Time Mode: Blitz
  *NOTE: This mode will be enabled on 3/19.
  • Blitz has much shorter storm times resulting in faster & more intense matches!
    • Maximum match length is 15 minutes.
  • The match will start with the storm circle already closing in over the island.
  • Adjustments to loot availability:
    • Increased chances of treasure chests spawning from 50-70% to 80-90%.
    • Increased chances of ammo boxes spawning from 65-80% to 85-95%.
    • Floor Loot spawns nearly 100% of the time.
    • Supply Drop spawn interval lessened from 180s (+/- 30s) to 80s (+/- 20s).
    • Supply Drop descent time shortened from 60s to 30s.
    • Launchpad spawn likelihood greatly increased.
  • Harvesting resources doubled.
  • Resources found in loot increased from 30 to 100.
  • Treasure chest health increased from 200 to 500.
  • Ammo box health increased from 120 to 250.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue causing the unintentional rotation of stairs.
• Fixed an issue causing an eliminated player’s collision to stick around temporarily, making it difficult to pick-up their dropped items.

UI Bug Fixes

• Fixed the News window not displaying once you select Battle Royale.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes made characters appear with the wrong orientation when previewing items in the front end menu.

Art/Animation

• Updated the circular bullet impact FX so that they help indicate the direction the shot came from.

Audio Bug Fixes

• Fixed gunshot sound stuttering that would occur when firing an automatic weapon at low ammo counts.
• Fixed issue that caused gunfire and other sounds to play at louder volume than usual.

PERFORMANCE

• Optimized shield effects on players to improve overall frame rate.

And here’s what you can expect to see changed up in Save the World’s PVE mode:

SAVE THE WORLD

This patch includes a reversion of the Critical Chance re-balance done in the v3.2 update, and a pass to fix bugs and balance problems with the stat caps.

GAMEPLAY

• Next chapter of Spring it On! unlocks – ‘Luck of the Storm’.
  • Battle lucky Husks, uncover treacherous treasures, track mythical spokescreatures, and brave springtime storm shenanigans!
  • Quest rewards include an Epic Leprechaun Survivor + your choice of one of three Legendary St. Patrick’s themed Heroes:
    • Luck Demolisher Wildcat
    • Highland Warrior Wildcat
    • Battle Hound Jonesy
• Rebalanced Stat Caps.
  • Party shared F.O.R.T. stat caps have been reverted to their old balance relative to the personal F.O.R.T. stat caps.
    • One high-level friend can share enough F.O.R.T. stats to boost your duo to the 4-player balance point, if they are far enough above your level.
  • F.O.R.T. stat caps in Stonewood have been reverted to the end-of-zone threshold.
  • F.O.R.T. stat caps have increased across the other three locations.
    • They begin being offset upwards in mid-Plankerton, and this offset increases at higher difficulties.
    • These caps are now at or above the caps present at launch:
      • In the top 2 difficulties of Plankerton.
      • In the top 3 difficulties of Canny Valley.
      • In the top 4 difficulties of Twine Peaks.
  • Weapon level caps have been increased to match character level caps.
    • Increased starting cap from 12 to 20.
    • Caps increase in increments of 10 until they reach 50.
  • The points where Weapon and Character level caps increase has been moved a few difficulties earlier.
• Set base Weapon Skill to 50 for all heroes.
  • This allows low-level players to effectively use high-level guns while playing in high-level areas.
  • As a result of this change the Weapon Skill skill tree nodes no longer function. We will replace or remove these nodes in a future patch.

Bug Fixes

• Stat caps for Storm Shield Defenses were lower than intended and have been raised to their intended levels (equivalent to end-of-zone missions).

WEAPONS + ITEMS

• Critical Chance weapon and trap perks increased from 11.5% / 16.5% / 21% to 14% / 21% / 28%.
  • This reverts the change made to Critical Chance in the v3.2 patch.

HEROES

• Shamrock Reclaimer Outlander is available in the Event Store.

Bug Fixes

• The Outlander subclass Flash now unlocks Loot Llama at level 1 and ‘Phase Shift’ at level 2.
• Fixed issue stopping Flash Eagle Eye and Flash A.C.’s abilities and traps from scaling with Tech.
• Fixed issue stopping Flash Eagle Eye and Flash A.C. from interacting with Fragments at level 1.
• The Speed Boost Pad no longer grants Utility for every activation.

AUDIO

• Added sound for adding item to storage locker.
• Added sounds for clicking items in the Collection Book.

Sounds good, and you should all try it out so that I can have a team in Squads who’ll form the perfect flesh-barrier protection for me against more talented players online.

Last Updated: March 15, 2018