Fortnite Update & New Weapon Coming Tuesday, August 28th

New Fortnite Content Updates Coming Soon: One Of The Additions Might Shock You!

Because It’s a shockwave grenade.

Get it?

Nevermind.

Epic Games have confirmed in a recent round of developer notes that Update 5.30 will be rolling out to PC users and XboxOne / PS4 players on Tuesday, August 28th. They have also stated that the update is to hit Switch players at a later date.

In addition, despite what prior announcements had suggested, the new weapon to be added is not the shockwave grenade, though Epic does state the grenade will be added “soon”. It is possible that the grenade had been initially planned for this update, but complications were found with the way the game interacts with objects in the world. In any case, we won’t be seeing it in this coming update.

Don’t let that fool you, however. This update will still bring a lot of new content into the ever-changing Battle Royale landscape. So without further delay, let’s dive right in:

The Rift Grenade is a new device that will be coming to Fortnite’s Battle Royale landscape, an addition that I had hoped for and anticipated ever since its ever-changing map first introduced rifts on the map. The grenade is quite simple: Throw it, and a ‘rift’ is created upon its landing point. The resulting rift is neutral, and all players (allies or enemies) can take advantage of it during its limited activation period. From the footage shown, the rift appears to take players to a random point on the map, although it may also take players to one of the existing static warp points.

Hopefully, however, the rift grenade has been coded such that a created rift will not dump players out in the middle of the storm to die.

Edit: Upon further examination, it doesn’t look like you ‘throw’ this item: It’s activated on top of you, instantly teleporting you and creating a rift in your wake that warps anyone and anything else it comes in contact with, including the golf cart. It’s an instant ‘get out of jail free’ card of sorts.

Save The World mode will also be receiving two significant updates, in the form of a new gun – The Blunderbuss Assault Rifle, which epic promises will have plenty of ammo and deal plenty of damage. From the name, we’re guessing that it won’t have plenty of range – perhaps functioning as a sort of assault-shotgun for when things go haywire and enemies start breaking through your defensive lines.

Horde Challenge Week 3 also comes to save the world, offering a significant difficulty level and a “Legendary Reward” to those brave enough to face its challenges.

There’s also yet another limited-time mode: Score Royale. The objective here is to be the player who scores the highest number of points during the allotted time. Epic gives a full breakdown of the  score values on their page, but here are a few examples:

–50 Points For Opening A Supply Llama: More Llamas have been added this time around, but they give less supply to balance this.

–100 Points For Eliminating An Enemy: Nothing new here. Skills and Kills still pay the bills.

–30 to 100 Points For Finding Coins: This mode has an emphasis on travel and exploration, and discovery events like these (In addition to opening chests and ammo boxes) have been given point rewards.

In addition, there is a score cap: In solo play, one player amassing 2000 points will be the winner, and that cap will go up for those playing in Duos or groups. These high score caps lead us to assume that respawns might be on here: At 100 points per kill, 2000 points for a win in a lot of kills, and not something anyone but the best of the best could ever hope to achieve. Also, no respawns would kind of kill the point of the whole ‘score to win’ thing, because the people who stay alive would end up getting the most supply llamas, kills and coins anyway, leaving the mode with little variance from traditional battle royale.

It’s possible that Epic hopes this new Score Attack mode will be a way for Battle Royale to transition into Esports, as their previous attempts at a competitive scene for the game have not gone well.

Be sure to check out this mode and all the new content that will be hitting PC and next-gen console servers on Tuesday, as well as Switch and mobile at a later date!