Fortnite has dropped its latest update, and it’s a big one! As we previously reported, Fortnite patch 5.40 kicks off the High Stakes event, which includes the Getaway limited-time mode, and Grappler gun, but that’s not all players are getting! The update also adds a new Save The World Hero, rebalances a bunch of weapons, and changes late-game storms, so they’ll now destroy player-built structures. Before we get into the patch notes, here’s a new High Stakes teaser trailer.
And now, here are your Fortnite patch 5.40 notes:
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Battle Royale
Limited Time Mode: The Getaway
Welcome to The Getaway! In this mode, players will race to find a Jewel and take it to a Getaway Van before everyone else to win the match!
Mode Details
Jewels:
- Jewels can be found in special supply drop safes, located along the edge of the first storm circle. The safes take a long time to open, so make sure the area is clear before attempting to claim a Jewel!
- Four Jewels will be in play on the map AT ALL TIMES. If a player escapes with a Jewel or one is lost in the storm, a new supply drop will bring a replacement.
- When a Jewel is picked up, it will be visible on the map to everyone for 30 seconds.
- Carrying a Jewel will give players health shields over time, but also slow them down by 10%.
Getaway Vans:
- Four TOTAL Getaway Vans will be in the map, three that arrive early in the match and one more that shows up near the end.
- Getaway Vans float in mid-air, Jewel carriers must build up and then interact with them in order to complete a Getaway.
- The goal is to find or steal a Jewel and take it to one of the vans in order to secure a Victory Royale.
- Once they arrive, safe drops and Getaway Vans will be visible on the map at all times.
- 12 red “Pursuit” Supply Drops land at the very beginning of the match. These carry a variety of longer-range weapons and other items, and are the only way to obtain the new Grappler in this mode.
- Resource harvesting amounts increased by 50%.
- Only Rare weapons or higher will be found in this mode.
- Rifts, Rift-To-Go and Launchpads have been removed to reduce mobility for Getaway Van engagements.
- Profile Stats (K/D Wins) are tracked in this mode, but Umbrellas are not awarded for wins.
Weapons + Items
Grappler added.
- Fire at a nearby object to pull yourself towards it.
- Can be found in Vending Machines, floor loot, Treasure Chests, Supply Drops, and Supply Llamas.
- Chain multiple shots together to travel great distances.
- Has 15 charges. Discarded when charges are depleted.
- Epic rarity.
- Vaulted Revolvers
Rarity color adjustments (NOTE: The original percentages for drops were incorrect. We have since updated the percentages to clarify the exact change to the weapons).
- Some items have been removed or modified to better reflect their effectiveness. This only affects their colors and other characteristics are unchanged.
- Removed Common Suppressed Submachine Gun
Removed Rare Rocket Launcher. Availability of Epic and Legendary Rocket Launchers increased slightly to compensate.
- Increased Epic Rocket Launchers drop chance from 0.11% to 0.73%
- Increased Legendary Rocket Launcher drop chance from 0.03% to 0.10%
Removed Legendary Bolt-action Sniper Rifle
Removed Rare Pistol
Remote Explosives increased from Rare to Epic.
Port-a-Fort decreased from Epic to Rare.
Semi-Auto Sniper rifle decreased from Epic and Legendary to Uncommon and Rare.
- Increased the frequency that the Semi-Auto sniper rifles drop to align more with their rarity class.
- Increased Uncommon Semi-Auto sniper drop chance from 1.22% to 2.06%
- Increased Rare Semi-Auto sniper drop chance from 0.13% to 0.96%
- Dual pistols decreased in rarity from Epic and Legendary to Rare and Epic.
- Suppressed pistol decreased in rarity from Epic and Legendary to Rare and Epic.
Burst Assault Rifle accuracy adjustments.
- When holding down the trigger, the first 2 bursts are more accurate.
- Spread down sights benefit increased from 35% to 40%.
- Crouch spread benefit reduced from 25% to 20%.
- Jumping/Falling spread penalty reduced from 25% to 10%.
- Sprinting spread penalty reduced from 50% to 30%.
Increased drop stack count for Boogie Bomb from 1 to 2.
Increased maximum stack size for Stink Bomb from 5 to 6.
Increased maximum stack size for Shield Potions from 2 to 3.
Gameplay
- In the moving storm phases, when the storm reaches its destination, it will cause a surge of energy that destroys player-built structures located on the storm wall.
- Motion controls now function uniformly across input types on Nintendo Switch and mobile. Options have been added to the settings to allow you to switch your motion turn axis.
- Motion deadzone has been removed.
Performance
- Improved loading performance on Nintendo Switch to reduce issues with buildings loading late (i.e. low-res buildings during skydiving).
- Fixed a large performance regression related to effects. This was causing poor framerate in the 5.30 release (especially on Nintendo Switch).
Audio
- Boosted volume of the Remote Explosives placement sound.
- Improve the quality of the sound played when dropping from the Bus on Mobile/Nintendo Switch platforms.
- Improve spatialization of the chest open sound for other players nearby.
UI
- Emote picker is now available in the lobby, no longer limited to just playing the first emote selected in your locker.
- Fullscreen map now supports touch on Nintendo Switch.
Save The World
Missions + Systems
Horde Weekly Challenge 5 is now available:
- This week, deploy your Fort against hordes of buff Husks! These enemies are hard to defeat, and bat players away with strong knockbacks!
- Win 1500 Gold for the first-time completion.
- This challenge is also repeatable for Event Tickets.
New Mega Alerts now show up on all group missions.
- A Mega Alert combines Elemental Storms with Mutant Storm modifiers, and has a Miniboss too!
- They may grant XP, evolution materials, perk materials, schematics or survivors.
- The amounts granted are considerably higher than normal Mission Alerts
- These rewards can be earned 3 times every 24 hours.
Ride The Lightning and Launch The Rocket now use direction-based spawning.
- The direction the enemies approach from will change at each stage.
Compensation for missing mission rewards
- Due to recent problems with missions failing to grant rewards upon completion we are doing a round of compensation for all players.
- Players will receive hero/schematic/survivor XP, evolution materials, perk materials, and gold, with amounts scaled based on their account progression.
- Additional resource grants will be rolled out to affected players shortly after update 5.40, scaled based on the number of missions, and difficulty of the missions, completed that failed to grant rewards.
- Players will also receive a complimentary Smorgasbord Llama, which can be opened from the Loot tab.
Increased Gold rewarded by Main Canny Valley Act 1 Quests from 100 to 150.
Many Canny Valley and Twine Peaks Quests that used to award rare Survivors, Schematics, Heroes, etc. have now been updated to instead award Gold, Perk Materials, and Evolution Materials.
- Players will receive these new rewards automatically if they have already completed these quests prior to this update.
The difficulty of normal missions in Plankerton, Canny, and Twine have been reduced.
- The number of enemies spawned will be lower, and the encounters will be less likely to spawn more difficult types of enemies.
- This affects these missions when set to 1, 2, or 3 player difficulty (via BluGlo)
- Pacing for these missions has been adjusted to allow for more peaks and valleys during the encounter.
- Storm Shield Defense spawn difficulty also reduced, in Plankerton, Canny, and Twine.
Performance
- Applied a variety of optimizations to reduce a large hitch when another player joins a game in progress.
- Made improvements to the Particle System and Sound performance when playing in a Death Burst modifier zone.
- Optimized performance of the Shielder and Super Shielder, particularly related to collision processing and movement updates.
- Made improvements to instant hit weapons performance, especially when they do impact damage and have a high rate of fire.
- Added multiple optimizations for how missions track eliminating Husks to reduce performance impact when enemies take damage.
- Smoothed server application of death effects over several frames to reduce hitches around a variety of area effects.
- Optimized network traffic when Husks die around a Storm Chest, to avoid hitching.
- Reworked how terrain and object draw distances are managed to improve framerate at each graphics setting without impacting scene quality.
- Improved UI performance by removing obsolete checks and optimizing data lookups.
- Updated Quest Screen to refresh its data only when visible.
- Reduced performance cost of an expensive per-frame check on Xbox One.
- Cleaned up logging spam to improve client performance.
- Fixed a large performance regression related to effects since the 5.30 release.
- Using many Hover Turrets no longer causes the enemies they are shooting to freeze/stutter.
- Fixed issue which sometimes prevented Patrol destination rifts from going away. Too many rifts could eventually cause perf issues or possibly a crash in rare cases.
- Removed hitch when equipping a weapon with visual elemental effect.
- Fixed a hitch when viewing the map.
- Reduced hitch when upgrading Survivors on accounts with many items.
- Fixed hitches around processing inventory updates, especially for players with many Schematics.
- Fixed some hitches related to loading assets when browsing schematics.
- Fixed some hitches related to processing stats when generating tooltips for trap schematics.
- Fixed periodic hitches near the end of timed missions like Rescue the Survivors.
- Fixed a hitch when crafting ammo.
Heroes
Harvester Fiona available in the Event Store.
- A new look for the Husk Harvester Ninja
Weapons + Items
- Increased the durability of the Grenade Launcher, Blooper, and Thumper by 65%.
UI
- Added ability to slot higher starred version of Schematics in the Collection Book.
Audio
- Increased RAY’s dialog volume.
Of course, Fortnite patch 5.40 also comes with the usual array of bug fixes – if you need to know about every minor tweak, you can check out the complete patch notes, right here.
What do you think? Excited to try out Getaway mode? It’s a pretty major departure from your standard Fortnite Battle Royale gameplay!
Fortnite is available on PC, Mac, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and mobile platforms.
