Fortnite update 2.5.0, or 1.43 on PS4, has officially arrived to bring new Impulse Grenades and map changes to Battle Royale. On the Save The World side, celebrate the Lunar New Year with new weapons, Heroes and the Spring It On event. These are the full patch notes.
OVERALL NEW FEATURES
- Enabled dynamic resolution and high-quality temporal upsampling on PS4 and Xbox One. Full 4K on Xbox One X.
- Added a key binding for "Toggle Pickaxe" on PC
- PC + Mac Social Panel has been expanded to make browsing long lists of friends easier
- Added distinctive sound variations when starting to build with Wood/Stone/Metal
- Standard SMG temporarily removed
- Fixes for login errors, network errors, progress bars and Discord invites
- Shortnered PS4 patch download times
BATTLE ROYALE NEW FEATURES
- Impulse Grenade: Blue rarity, Treasure Chests and Supply Drops only
- Shrines: Thematic New Year shrines are hidden across the map.
- Enabled "Net Stats" option for PS4. This feature shows your ping time to Epic’s servers and overall bandwidth usage while playing.
- UI indicates button to open map
- Elapsed time now in matchmaking UI
- Ammo widget above health bar displays ammo for any selected utility item
- Scalable HUD
- Footstep audio now has above and below step sounds for wood, stone and metal.
- Volume based on player location, not camera
- Surrounding sounds are more clear while building.
- Wood, stone and metal sounds when placing structures
- Added sound for when Crossbow is ready to fire
SAVE THE WORLD NEW FEATURES
- Lunar New Year Heroes featuring four new kits: Berserker (Close range, War Cry, Shockwave), Thunderstrike (stuns to deal damage), Riot Control (DECOY and Plasma Pulse), Flash (uses Phase Shift to escape)
- Dragon Weapons: Dragon’s Roar (semi-auto with fire damage), Dragon’s Might (shotgun with firecrackers), Dragon’s Claw (sniper with homing rockets), Dragon’s Fury (rocket with extra explosive cloud), Dragon’s Tooth (medium sword with fire damage), Dragon’s Fang (heavy spear with fire damage)
- Spring It On Event
- Quest Rewards Include: Love Trooper Jonesy, Legendary Soldier, Legendary Dragon ranged weapons, Legendary melee defender, Firecracker Tickets (used to buy Spring Llamas), V-bucks and event gold
- Opt-In Difficulty: Increases difficulty up to 5x for additional Seasonal Gold and Firecracker Tickets.
- Heartbreaker Crossbow added: Valentines-themed super crossbow with high damage that consumes heavy ammo. Can be purchased with Seasonal Gold.
- Weapons and Hero Perks that increase damage to 'knocked down' enemies now function while husks are in their recovery animation.
- Reduced health, stability, and score awarded for defeating minibosses by 20 percent
- Reduced enemies spawned around minibosses
- Added Cozy Campfire Trap Schematics to Loot Llamas
- Crafted weapons now come preloaded with exactly one clip of free ammo appropriate to the weapon (ammo perks excluded).
BATTLE ROYALE BUG FIXES/TWEAKS
Weapons
- Scoped Assault Rifle is now perfectly accurate while scoped.
- Scoped Assault Rifle headshot damage decreased from 250 percent to 200 percent
- Revolver now uses Medium ammo.
- Crossbow drop chance decreased by 20 percent
- Minigun drop chance decreased by 12.5 percent
- Chug Jug drop chance decreased by 15 percent
- Tactical Submachine Gun: Magazine buffed from 30 to 35, firing rate buffed from 10 to 13
- Fixed Sniper Rifles occasionally not registering hits when aiming downward with high network latency
- Fixed an issue with projectiles failing to hit nearby players when hitting another target
- Fixed an issue allowing players to fire around walls with the Crossbow and Minigun if they stood very close to the edge of the wall
- The reload-failed messages will no longer display on weapons that do not have a clip to reload (i.e. - Minigun).
- Removed per-bullet rounding on shotgun damage calculation
- Fixed an issue which caused the Minigun's barrel to continue to glow after use
Gameplay
- Fixed an issue which prevented players from using the first weapon picked up on consoles
- Fixed an issue where under certain network conditions, players could be damaged by bullets passing through structures built at the last second
- Fixed an issue which allowed shots to pass through doors right after they were closed.
- Fixed an issue which allowed players to pick-up an extra weapon/consumable while holding a trap
- Fixed shield hit effects playing when taking falling damage
- Fixed supply drops hovering mid-air if the object beneath them was destroyed
- Fixed a possible crash that could occur while firing weapons before boarding the Battle Bus
World
- The Soccer Stadium and other buildings should now load properly.
- Fixed an issue which caused treasure chests to be empty in rare cases
- Fixed an ammo crate in Lonely Lodge that didn't spawn ammo
Performance
- Optimized performance of player animations to improve overall frame rate
- Optimized dust cloud and shield effects on low settings for better performance
- Eliminated various hitches caused by certain skins and items being loaded at unexpected times
- Character models, weapons and environment assets now utilize a Level of Detail system to improve performance.
- Improved smoothness of level streaming by loading content on a background thread.
- Major tweaks to FX settings, targeting Medium to Low specifications
UI
- Fixed an issue where PS4 players were not getting credit for playing with friends
Audio
- Lowered teammate footstep volume slightly.
- Lowered the volume of the Sniper impact sound
- Lowered the volume of emote music when in the pre-game phase
- Fixed an issue which prevented other players from hearing the Minigun's spin up sound
- Fixed some audio panning issues when equipping the Minigun
Art/Animation
- Improved visual FX when moving through deep water
- Fixed Royale Knight's head clipping through the back of her helmet
SAVE THE WORLD BUG FIXES
Rarity Evolution & Recycling
- The cost to increase the rarity of a Hero now costs more Training Manuals and evolution materials depending on the star level of the Hero.
- When two-Star or higher Schematics, Heroes, Survivors, Survivor Leads and Defenders are recycled they will now refund all evolution materials spent evolving the item.
Hero Balance
- Plasma Pulse: No longer bounces when placed, fire rate increased from two to eight, base damaged reduced from 80 to 14.
- Goin' Commando's minigun is now flagged as a Ranged Weapon, causing it to benefit from Debilitating Shots and various other Soldier perks.
- Outlander's Phase Shift will no longer interrupt most actions when activated.
- Long Arm of The Law makes Anti Material Charge no longer stop on the first building hit.
- In The Zone: Increased reset timer between hits from three seconds to five seconds
- Hearty Strikes base heal amount decreased from 12 to 10
- Firewall Perk: Melee attacks against the Constructor's shield trigger an energy pulse dealing Energy Damage and knocking back nearby enemies in a 0.5 tile radius (16 Second Cooldown).
- Firewall Bonus: Melee attacks against the Primary Hero's shield triggers an energy pulse dealing Energy Damage and knocking back nearby enemies in a 0.5 tile radius (48 Second Cooldown).
- Flak Vest Perk: Reduces damage dealt by 60 percent with a drop of 15 percent for each successive hit. Regen is 15 percent every 10 seconds if lower than the 60 percent threshold.
- Structural Strike: When Anti Material Charge hits a building it will refund some of its energy cost and have a reduced cooldown.
- Survivalist: Killing an enemy with an ability or weapon recovers three base health/second (scaling with Hero level and Tech) over three seconds. Additional kills reset the healing duration. Will not activate on full health
- Soldier Support Specialist: Weapon lifespan buff reduced to 80 percent while War Cry is active, buff now unlocks at level 30. Practiced In Combat perk at level 18 and Blitz removed from level 30
- Damage of Tactical Perk 'China Shop' now properly increases with Hero level.
- Fixed an issue causing Constructor and Machinist Harper to have the Legendary stats at all rarities
- Fixed issue where Blitzen Base Kyle Hearty Blows did not specify that its activation required a Hardware melee weapon
- Updated tooltips for TEDDY and Shocktower abilities to explain that each ability adds to the max Fragment Charges capacity by one.
Gameplay
- Twine Peaks Quest Glimmer of Hope should no longer list Retrieve the Data as an objective twice. Ride the Lightning should now be listed instead.
- Clarified the description of Life Leech Attacks Storm Zone mutation
- Affliction can no longer deal critical hit damage.
- Fixed an issue where players could occasionally not level up after outpost tutorial
- Fixed an issue where light swords heavy attack animation was interrupted by movement
- Fixed players seldom being unable to collect Bluglo when near a player-made building
- Fixed some ammo boxes being difficult to loot
UI
- Fixed a case of text overrun in the Store tab
- It is no longer possible to add to a partial stack in Storm Shield Storage when the item limit is already exceeded.
- Updated the tooltip for Survivalist tactical perk to clarify that it doesn't stack with the Survivalist hero perk
- Fixed weapon perk lists disappearing temporarily in particular cases
- Fixed item level indicator not updating in certain situations
- Updated the Grenade Generation perk tooltip to properly list 20 instead of 30 required kills
Audio
- Sounds for new abilities, Firewall and Flak Vest.
Those looking for a huge Save The World update now have one. The Spring It On event features seasonal Llamas that can be purchased for 1,000 Firecracker Tickets. These Llamas contain one Lunar Hero or Dragon Weapon. If you kept up to 3,000 Seasonal Gold from the previous events, that will be converted into Firecracker Tickets at a three-to-one ratio. That means you’ll essentially get a maximum of one free seasonal Llama.
Missing from this update is the Universal Inventory menu that allows players to set up their loadout before spawning into the world. That’s expected to be added to the game on Monday.
There isn’t a ton to do with the 2.5.0 update if you’re exclusively playing Battle Royale, but paid campaign customers have tons of new event content. Especially considering the Season 3 Battle Pass can only be purchased with in-game V-bucks, now’s the time to start questing and completing Daily Challenges.
Fortnite is in early access across PS4, Xbox One and PC. The 2.5.0 update should be live across all platforms.
What do you think of Fortnite’s latest update? Are you enjoying the Impulse Grenade and new events? Tell us in the comments section!
