Fortnite Season 6, entitled Darkness Rises, is out now, and it brings some fairly major changes to the game. As you would expect given the time of year, Darkness Rises includes all manner of Halloweeny stuff, including some ghoulish skins, a spooooky map update, and the new Shadow Stones, which basically turn the player into a living shadow when consumed. Also, completely unrelated to the spookiness, Darkness Rises also adds new adorable pets you can earn. D’awwww!
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Check out a quick Darkness Rises cinematic trailer, below.
Here’s the Fortnite Season 6 update notes:
Battle Royale
Weapons + Items
Shadow Stones
- Consumable typically found around corrupted areas of the map.
- Using a Shadow Stone will apply ‘Shadow Form’ for a brief period.
While in Shadow Form:
- Unable to use weapons.
- Become invisible to enemies when stationary.
- You become more visible and leave behind a Shadow Trail when moving.
- Gain increased movement speed, jump height and fall damage immunity.
- Gain a new ability, Phase, can be activated by pressing the Primary Fire button.
- Phase: Propels you in the direction you are facing, and allows you to pass through objects.
- The effect lasts 45 seconds but can be exited early by holding down Alt Fire button (aim down sights).
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- Vaulted Impulse Grenade, Suppressed Submachine Gun, Light Machine Gun, Bouncer, and Remote Explosives.
- All of the weapons/items added to the Vault in patch v6.0 will currently remain available in Playgrounds.
- Added momentum functionality to Grapplers. When hitting a moving object (vehicle, player), its momentum will be added to your launch force. This only happens when the momentum would be a net gain, you cannot lose momentum.
- Grappler charges reduced from 15 to 10.
- Double Barrel damage reduced from 143/150 to 114/120.
- Reduced Dual Pistol floor loot drop chance from 1.49% to 0.88%.
Gameplay
New Locations
- Floating Island
- Corrupted Areas
- Corn Fields
- Haunted Castle
- Drop in and find the rest in-game!
Custom Controller Bindings
- Choosing your configuration has changed to a selector on the left side of the menu.
- After selecting Custom, the right side of the menu becomes buttons that are selectable. When a button is clicked, it opens a list of actions that can be assigned to that button.
- Mode selection (Combat, Build) has changed to selectable by triggers. When in either Combat or Build mode, the actions for that mode and the actions that span between modes will appear in the “actions list” to select from.
Console – Input-Based Matchmaking
- Players using a keyboard and mouse on PS4 will now be put into the PC matchmaking pool.
- Start matchmaking with your preferred input device. You will be queued with the input type you press the “Play” or “Ready” button with.
- If you start matchmaking with a keyboard and mouse, then you’ll be queued in the PC matchmaking pool. However, you’ll be able to switch to a controller mid-match if you’d like.
- If you start matchmaking with a controller, then you’ll remain in your platforms normal queue. However, you’ll be unable to switch to a keyboard and mouse mid-match.
- PC players are unaffected by this change. If you use a controller on PC then you’ll remain in the PC matchmaking queue.
Storm Circle Changes
Safe Zone 4
- Wait time reduced from 90 seconds to 80 seconds
- Shrink time increased from 60 seconds to 70 seconds
Safe Zone 5
- Wait time reduced from 90 seconds to 70 seconds
- Shrink time increased from 40 seconds to 60 seconds
Safe Zone 6
- Wait time reduced from 60 seconds to 30 seconds
- Shrink time increased from 30 seconds to 60
Safe Zone 7
- Wait time reduced from 45 seconds to 20 seconds
- Shrink time increased from 25 seconds to 50 seconds
- Radius increased from 1250 to 1650
Safe Zone 8
- Wait time reduced from 30 seconds to 15 seconds
- Shrink time increased from 25 seconds to 40 seconds
- Radius increased from 625 to 1090
Safe Zone 9
- Wait time reduced from 30 seconds to 15 seconds
- Shrink time increased from 25 seconds to 40 seconds
- Moving Safe Zone circles in the late game now move 50% further from the previous safe zone.
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- Moved the ATK horn to down on the D-pad to allow for autorun.
- Traps can no longer be placed on wire fences.
- You can now build through Shopping Carts.
Performance
- Optimized texture binding rendering code on Switch. This improved CPU and GPU performance, resulting in smoother gameplay and higher resolution rendering.
- Optimized performance when many players are on screen.
- Game thread optimizations
- Optimized movement for supply drops.
- Improved performance and memory for Android devices running Vulkan. This affects the S9+ Adreno, Note 9 Adreno variants.
- Memory optimizations for mobile to reduce the chance of encountering low performance when many apps are in the background
Audio
Players will now have an option in the Locker to select their preferred music choice. Unlock new music from the Season 6 Battle Pass.
Changed the processing of footsteps to add more contrast between above/below. Below steps now sound more “echoey” like they’re coming from the basement.
- Footsteps will decrease in pitch the farther they are below you, and increase in pitch the higher they are above you.
- The volume of footsteps blocked by terrain, buildings, or player built structures has been increased slightly.
- Find more information on footstep audio updates here.
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- Increased the distance that you can hear open/close Glider sounds.
- Increased the audio range for players skydiving to match that of players gliding.
- Added a doppler pitch effect to the gliding audio.
- This creates that “car pass by” effect as players fly overhead.
UI
- Updated the Locker layout to fit more item types.
Art + Animation
- Added improvements to Storm visualization, including rain lightning effects which will increase as the Storm intensifies.
Replay System
- Replay playback speed can now be adjusted with a controller when the replay HUD is hidden.
- Moved “High-Quality FX” flag to Lens settings, and automatically hide certain aperture focus settings if the depth of field effect isn’t active.
- Replays now correctly use the movement keys set in the Input settings.
- Inverted the default direction of the third person camera to make the controls consistent with all the other cameras.
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Save The World
General
Enabling Multi-Factor Authentication on your Epic account will now grant the following rewards in Fortnite Save the World:
- 50 Armory Slots
- 10 Backpack Slots
- 1 Legendary Troll Stash Llama
Missions + Systems
Level-up and evolve your favorite items during the Cram Session mini-event!
- Mini-Boss Mission Alerts are active, and up to 10 can be completed per day.
- For the duration of the event, Mini-Boss Mission Alerts will drop two XP, Evolution Material, RE-Perk, or Perk-UP rewards instead of one.
- Mini-Boss Mission Alerts will drop Gold instead of Tickets.
- Mini-Boss Mission Alerts will not drop Heroes, Schematics, Survivors, Mini-Llamas, Transform Keys or V-Bucks during this event.
- Added four quest lines, each of which has ten stages that grant increasingly better one-time rewards upon completion. (Hero/Schematic/Survivor XP, Evolution Materials, PERK-UPs, or Gold).
- Has repeatable quests that award Elemental PERK-UPs , RE-PERKs, and Evolution Materials.
- XP and Evolution Materials granted by Mini-Boss Mission Alerts will now scale up more smoothly with mission difficulty.
Performance
- Fixed a hitch when equipping an ability that uses a placement indicator.
- Fixed a hitch when the pickup message appears.
- Fixed a hitch caused by equipped item widget.
- Fixed a hitch related to hero feedback audio.
- Fixed a hitch in the initial tutorial level.
- Fixed a hitch during the first storm shield defense.
Heroes
- The Event Store will feature MEGABASE Kyle for the duration of Cram Session.
Weapons + Items
Added Ratatat Machine Pistol to the Weekly Store
- Ratatat is a fast firing automatic pistol. Extremely effective at hip firing and close range encounters.
- Available until October 3 at 8 PM Eastern Time.
The Weekly Store will also feature some returning items during Cram Session. The Hydraulic “Pulverizer” Hammer is back this first week.
- The Pulverizer delivers very high knockback at a slow swing rate and has a heavy smash attack that knocks back nearby foes.
- Available until October 3 at 8 PM.
- Crosshairs on the HUD will more clearly indicate when a ranged weapon has perfect aim.
Gameplay
- When enemies attack player-built structures from close range a red outline of the enemy will be visible through the wall, making it easier for players to spot them.
Enemies
New Riot Husky enemy added!
- The Riot Husky carries a refrigerator door that will block most player attacks from the front.
- The Riot Husky will bash players with his fridge door.
- The Riot Husky will be able to spawn with elemental modifiers.
UI
- The unopened Llamas pop-up on the Loot Tab now lists the names of each unopened Llama.
- Added the option to show network data stats to the HUD.
Audio
- Added Music to Down But Not Out state to better communicate danger.
The update also includes the usual array of bug fixes – if you need to know about ever minor tweak, you can check out the full, unabridged notes right here.
Of course, Fortnite Season 6 also comes with the standard Battle Pass, which includes the new pets, and a couple progressive outfits, which you can add to as you work your way through the pass. The Battle Pass costs 950 V-Bucks, or the equivalent of about $10 in real-world cash. You can check out a quick video overview of the Season 6 Battle Pass, below.
Fortnite is available on PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and mobile platforms.
