Fortnite’s new patch is live and there’s a lot of new topics to touch on in the Fortnite v8.40 update breakdown. A few new LTM’s, petting pets and new weapons are the highlights of this weeks patch. While the last few updates have not been the greatest, this one seems to be the same. A few new additions and not too many fixes, Epic took it easy this week. However, there are still plenty of new things to be excited about.
Air Royale LTM
The Air Royale LTM is a fresh new take on planes. Now a duos mode, each plane has three lives and cannot touch the ground for longer than a few seconds. Every plane has a player on the wing and the driver can fly through chest spawns. Inside these chest spawns are guns or ammo depending on the rarity. If the player has purple weapons and runs through a green chest, the player will keep their guns and receive ammo.
With a storm overhead, it slowly comes down during the end of the game. That means planes have a height limit late game and are forced to fight each other. Each chest offers different equipment for the pilot as well, including laser beams and rockets instead of the turret. Floating Medkits can be found around the map as well. Players can get lives back by hijacking enemy planes too. Just don’t hit the ground or death is imminent.
This game mode is very simple and fun. If the team has a good pilot and a decent gunner on the wing, kills come naturally. Avoiding multiple plane engagements and singling out weak players is the key to this one. Make sure to fly around Medkits and stay on an enemy after they’ve taken damage. This ensures nobody steals the kill from the team. Fly through as many chest spawns as possible too, it will keep the team’s ammo stock very high.
New Weapons
After some backlash towards the infantry rifle on its release, it is now a hitscan weapon. While this change is a few weeks old, the infantry rifle is much better than it was previous to the update. Due to its increased popularity, Fortnite now has epic and legendary variants of the infantry rifle. Doing 42/44 damage, the new rifle variation still has an eight bullet clip and is super accurate. Since the weapon is single fire the bloom is very minuscule, making this weapon awesome at all ranges.
With a heavier sound and heavier damage, the new rifle hits players hard. Since there is no bloom the infantry rifle is great for those long range engagements. It is also a great weapon since it hits for so much damage, a player will die after just over half the clip. The grenade launcher also has a new visual change, it shoots eggs again. This is a common theme around Easter, and the exploding eggs are back. This is only a visual change.
Gameplay Additions
Players are now able to pet dogs on other players in-game. This is a cool idea, but there is a bit of work to do on the petting animation. The video below showcases a not so smooth pet of a dog inside of Fortnite.
New: Following an update, you can now pet the dog in Fortnite pic.twitter.com/U1nkfHIHSr
— Can You Pet the Dog? (@CanYouPetTheDog) April 17, 2019
The friend XP bonus has been re-imagined and now grants players with more XP. Now players receive friend XP universally rather than it being player dependent. That means if a player plays with one friend, they will get the same amount of XP as if they were playing with a whole squad. This change should make it easier for players to reach level 100 and breeze through tiers. For casual players and people who do not play as much, this is a very helpful change for them.
Bug Fixes
While there are no major bug fixes in this patch, there are a few minor ones. Players can now ping coconuts as normal and emote when they are bound to number keys. Traps also should not have an issue of placing inconsistently or inside of walls anymore, which makes them much easier to see.
There was also an issue fixed with turbo building that would not allow the player to build if they did not manually switch materials. This bug was super annoying and messed up a lot of people, but it is fixed before any more World Cup Qualifiers which is nice.
Some players really wanted better changes and fixes and voiced it to Fortnite on twitter. For weeks pro players have been pleading for Fortnite to fix player morale and listen to the community. Normally they do, but lately, pros like Sypher PK and Liquid Poach have called them out.
I don't get how there is no major bugs being addressed in any of these patches. There is game breaking bugs that have been in this game for months and are constantly complained about on Reddit and pros have even made lists for EPIC and still nothing, but thank god we can pet dogs
— FaZe POACH (@Poach) April 17, 2019
Extras
There are also a few extra things that were updated on the side. Performance with PC’s with less than four cores does not fall below standards now. This should help players with lower quality systems maintain quality during late game. The Boom Bow animation has been fixed to better show its damage radius. Certain aspects of the Reboot Van are no longer too loud and have been lowered.
There is also a new mimic feature in the dance wheel when looking at someone. As long as the player owns the emote, they can mimic the dance move of the other person. UI elements now sort to the top for extra space if certain aspects are hidden. If the player hides the minimap, all the UI info should move up, saving screen space.
The full list of patch notes can be found here.
Feature Image Courtesy of Epic Games
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