For fans of Fortnite Battle Royale, it has already been an exciting week as a number of leaks and reveals have shown off a lot of content for season 6. Known as Darkness Rises, the island has taken on a spookier theme with new locations such as the haunted castle and new consumable items like the shadow stone which can be found in corrupted areas of the map. After all these reveals, season 6 has finally arrived and players can now read through all of the new content and changes in the Update 6.00 patch notes.
Gameplay Changes
For the incredibly popular Battle Royale side of Fortnite, season 6 has once again altered the map slightly. Four new areas have been highlighted including Haunted Castle, Corn Fields, Corrupted Areas, and Floating Island, though Epic is teasing even more to discover once players drop in. The storm circle has also been tweaked, reducing the wait time for each time the storm shrinks, though increasing the timer slightly during the shrinking phase.
Other quality of life updates now allows players can also now customize their controller bindings through the game settings. Console players can now matchmake with other users using similar input devices. While this change doesn't affect PC players, PS4 players using a keyboard and mouse can now queue up with other keyboard and mouse users.
Weapons and Items
New to Update 6.00 are Shadow Stones, which are a new consumable that work similarly to the Hop Rocks of season 4. These new items can be found scattered around corrupted areas of the map and grant the player a shadow form when consumed. In this state, players become completely invisible when standing still, gain increased movement speed, jump height and fall damage immunity, and can use a new ability called phase to warp forward and through objects. However, in this shadow form, weapons can't be used and players also become more visible and leave behind a Shadow Trail when moving.
In addition to Shadow Stones, the Vaulted Impulse Grenade, Suppressed Submachine Gun, Light Machine Gun, Bouncer, and Remote Explosives have all been added back into the vault. However, Epic has confirmed that these items will remain available in the Playgrounds mode. Grapplers now feature a momentum mechanic, which is added to launch force when a player hits an object such as another player, or vehicle.
Skins and Cosmetics
As previously detailed within the new battle pass, new skins for this season seem to feature a Halloween or Fairytale inspired look including an evolving Werewolf skin, a battle-hardened Red Riding Hood, Loot Llama DJ, vampire mistress, and a potential return for the Skull Trooper.
Pets have also been added to the game, although instead of being an AI character that runs with the player, they're actually a new form of back bling. When equipped, the animal companion pops out of the backpack and fully animate as though they're riding along with the player. Certain skins come with specific animals like the pet dragon for the werewolf skin or an iguana for the vampire. As always, these can be mixed and matched once they're unlocked.
Save The World
For fans of the Save the World, PvE side of the game, Epic Games has also added plenty of new content there as well. The Cram Session mini event is now live and offers plenty of new rewards for players to obtain like XP and Evolution materials. In addition to new quest lines, players can take part in 10 Mini-Boss Mission Alerts per day to received gold as well as the previously mentioned evolution materials. The event store has also been updated with MEGABASE Kyle hero character and a revolving door of weapons like the Ratatat Machine Pistol and Hydraulic “Pulverizer” Hammer.
Making things a little more difficult during this event is the Riot Husky, a beefy enemy that uses a refrigerator door to block frontal weapon fire. If that wasn't bad enough, these enemies feature a damaging melee attack when close enough can spawn with elemental modifiers.
In addition to all of the new content detailed above, Update 6.00 includes plenty of bug fixes and quality of life updates for the game. With a lot of new Battle Royale style games on the horizon such as the popular Blackout mode within Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Epic will need to keep evolving the experience to keep a tight hold on its player base.
For the full list of fixes, changes, and content additions, check out the full Fortnite update 6.00 patch notes.
Fortnite is available in early access on Android, iOS, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.