We talked a bit about what might change in Fortnite Season Four last night, now let’s take a look at what has actually changed.
First, let’s check out the new map for Season Four.
We can see multiple impact craters from several meteors that struck the map. The Dusty Depot has been completely obliterated. This might not have a huge impact on the meta-game in terms of map positioning and the flow of players from one point to the next, but seeing the topography change will likely make more players play conservatively for a short time.
The Season 4 Battle Pass is has also arrived and comes with 100 tiers of new rewards including new cosmetic items, emotes, and now sprays. But along with new added content, some content has been removed. Much like the guided missiles, the Crossbow has now been deleted from the game, likely for affecting balance too much.
If you’re like a quick overview of some of the new content, you can check out the trailer for this season below.
And as one would expect, Season Four marks the deployment of a new patch to the servers. Some changes to damage profiles and weapons are in the game now. We’ll just have to wait and see how these manipulated values affect game balance though.
There are performance improvements also in this update. Check the full notes over on Epic’s site.
GAMEPLAY
- Structures on the starting island can now be destroyed. Not the Battle Bus, though.
- Headshots are now prioritized when other body parts are in the way.
- Incoming headshots (from above or straight on) will no longer be blocked by your character’s other body parts.
- For example, a shot that hits your target’s hand will be able to penetrate through and hit their head if your aim was on point. You’ll be credited headshot damage instead of normal damage.
- Headshots from below that are blocked by a body part (legs, torso, hands, shoulders, arms) will do normal damage, except for impacts very close to your character’s head.
- This change affects all weapons, except for the Rocket Launcher and Grenade Launcher.
- Slightly reduced the hitbox size of player hands.
- Damage numbers are now visible when spectating a player.
- Knocking a player off the island will award elimination credit like normal fall damage.
- Fall distance is now shown in the elimination feed when a player is forced to fall by an opponent.
- On the starting island, you can now see other players (and player-created structures) about three times further away than before.
UI
- You can now mark cosmetic items as favorites in the Locker.
- ‘Random’ option added to each cosmetic equipment slot in the Locker.
- This will randomly choose between items you’ve marked as favorites each match (or from all owned items if nothing is marked as a favorite).
- You are no longer limited to just the 6 slots on your emote wheel for Sprays and Emotes and can now use any of the ones you own in a match!
- The Locker slots act as a page of presets, but you can cycle through to any emotes marked as a favorite and then all emotes, sorted by type (PS4: L1/R1; XB1: LB/RB; PC: Mouse Wheel; Mobile: Buttons added next to radial menu).
- Added new “Locker Emote Slot” button bindings, which allow you to immediately trigger any of your 6 Emote or Spray presets.
- While Auto Run is active, an icon is now displayed.
- Improved the look and feel of the Game options tab.
- Slightly decreased the size of the arrow over players heads when they are close to you.
- The fourth and fifth weapon slots will now default to keys 5 and 6 instead of Z and X when using the “Reset to Defaults” option.
- The 4:3 aspect ratio is now supported.
WEAPONS + ITEMS
- The Crossbow has been vaulted.
- Rocket Launcher aim reticle is now a fixed size regardless of player movement.
- Hit markers are now displayed when looking through a scope.
- Increased pickaxe damage against Supply Llamas, now dealing 50 damage per hit.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where a weapon could have no ammo when dropping it immediately after picking it up.
- Improved pickaxe swing responsiveness when switching from a weapon to the pickaxe and immediately holding the swing button.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Hunting Rifles from auto reloading if it was fired immediately after a reload.
- Fixed an issue that allowed grenades to be thrown in rapid succession while sprinting.
- Fixed an issue where aiming a grenade throw and then switching to build mode wouldn’t cancel the throw.
- Fixed an issue with the Builder Pro configuration that caused the players weapon to fire while trying to build in some cases.
- Clingers will now properly cling to falling Supply Drops.