A substantial list of changes and additions has hit Fortnite: Battle Royale with today’s 3.5 update, including the brand new item called the Port-a-Fort.
The Port-a-Fort is a grenade of Epic rarity. When thrown, a pre-made fort is constructed instantly at the point of impact. The fort is made of steel, is one-by-one at the bottom, and has a tire to allow you to bounce to the roof quickly. It drops in stacks of one but you can hold up to five in one stack.
Seeing a nerf in this update is the Guided Missile, one of the newer additions to the game. The maximum turn rate of the missile while in-air has been decreased by 75 percent, and its movement speed has been decreased by 15 percent. It should hopefully feel less strong now.
One of the more noticeable changes to players will be that Epic has added a short equip time to many weapons, especially those with a slower rate of fire. This change has been added to reduce the effectiveness of quickly switching between weapons for high burst damage, and it affects the rocket launcher, hand cannon, revolver, tactical shotgun, pump shotgun, heavy shotgun, bolt-action sniper rifle, hunting rifle, and crossbow.
The replay system that was first announced at GDC is a part of 3.5 as well. It includes the abilities to use custom cameras within the replays to save your matches and watch them from any angle, speed up or slow things down, and edit things like exposure, aperture, focal length, or focus distance.
Other quality of life changes include a re-balancing to the item availability in vending machines, including a 50 percent nerf to the chance of getting a Chug Jug. There’s also a new controller configuration on console called “Builder Pro,” which is optimized for the placement of building quickly. Friendly traps will also have a slight blue tint to help distinguish them from enemy ones, too.
For those who wish to communicate but not speak on their microphone, Epic has also added a Squad Comms wheel. It includes callouts such as “Enemy Spotted,” “Need Meds,” “Need Shields,” “Need Materials,” “Need Weapon,” and “Need Ammo.” It’s defaulted to the V key on PC, the right D-pad on console, and the emote menu on mobile.
The patch notes also confirmed the return of 50-vs-50 version 2.0, but it’s not in-game just yet. There’s a lot to digest in this new patch, so the next few day in-game will be interesting to see how all of the changes and additions shake out.
Update: April 11, 9:05am CT
The Guided Missile has been temporarily disabled due to an animation bug.
