Fortnite's eagerly awaited High Stakes event kicks off today with the arrival of update v5.40.
After a brief delay, the update went live early this morning.
The highlight of today's update is, of course, the new heist-themed event. High Stakes introduces the Getaway Limited Time Mode along with a
set of exclusive challenges and rewards.
In Getaway LTM, squads race to find and secure a Jewel by locating one of the special supply drop safes, looting it, and successfully making it to a Getaway Van. These safe supply drops are located along the edge of the first storm circle. A total of four Jewels are in play on the map at all times. If a player escapes with a Jewel or one is lost to the storm, a new supply drop safe will land. When the Jewel is picked up, it will be visible on the map to everyone for 30 seconds. Players carrying the Jewel will be slowed by 10% movement speed; however, it will grant them health and shields over time to compensate. In order to further reduce mobility and make things a bit more difficult for those trying to make their getaway, Rifts, Rift-To-Go, and Launchpads have been removed. A total of four Getaway Vans are also located in the map, with three arriving early in the match and one showing up near the end. The Vans are located in mid-air, so Jewel carriers must build up and then interact with them to escape.
Additionally, 12 red "Pursuit" Supply Drops will land at the very beginning of the match. These contain a variety of "longer-range weapons and other items," including the new Grappler item. New to Battle Royale, the Grappler is "attaches to anything you hit for quick traversal." While the Grappler can only be found in these "Pursuit" drops in Getaway LTM, you can find the item the regular Battle Royale mode in Vending Machines, floor loot, Treasure Chests, Supply Drops, and Supply Llamas. The Grappler contains 15 charges and the item is discarded when those charges are depleted. While you have to fire at nearby objects to pull yourself towards it, you are able to chain multiple shots together to travel greater distances.
To go along with the heist-theme of the High Stakes event, the new Wildcard outfit is now available int he item-shop. The sleek new outfit features an all-white suit with black gloves. It also comes with four swappable cosmetic masks, each inspired by the suits in a deck of cards. In addition to the outfit, you'll also receive the "Cuff Case" back bling.
Other
notable changes to Battle Royale include sending the Revolver to the vault, adjusting the rarity color of some items, and tweaking the storm's later stages. You can read all of the Battle Royale changes in update v5.40 below:
GENERAL
Bug Fixes
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Fixed an issue causing some unneeded assets to remain in memory when switching from Save the World to Battle Royale or vice-versa.
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Fixed an issue that caused camera jitter when simultaneously canceling sprint while reloading and aiming down sights.
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Fixed a rare server crash that could occur when a player edits a building.
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Fixed an issue that prevented weapons from firing when holding the fire button during a weapon swap.
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Fixed an issue causing the crosshair to drift if player rapidly presses aim down sights with sniper rifles.
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Fixed some buildings' destruction effects being played twice.
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Fixed ammo quantity counts not updating properly on the inventory screen details panel.
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Fixed broken antialiasing in handheld mode on Nintendo Switch.
WEAPONS + ITEMS
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Grappler added.
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Fire at a nearby object to pull yourself towards it.
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Can be found in Vending Machines, floor loot, Treasure Chests, Supply Drops, and Supply Llamas.
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Chain multiple shots together to travel great distances.
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Has 15 charges. Discarded when charges are depleted.
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Epic rarity.
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Vaulted Revolvers
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Rarity color adjustments
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Some items have been removed or modified to better reflect their effectiveness. This only affects their colors and other characteristics are unchanged.
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Removed Common Suppressed Submachine Gun
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Removed Rare Rocket Launcher
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Availability of Epic and Legendary Rocket Launchers increased slightly to compensate.
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Increased Epic Rocket Launchers drop rate by 18.57%
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Increased Legendary rocket launcher drop rate by 2.05%
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Removed Legendary Bolt-action Sniper Rifle
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Removed Rare Pistol
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Remote Explosives increased from Rare to Epic.
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Port-a-Fort decreased from Epic to Rare.
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Semi-Auto Sniper rifle decreased from Epic and Legendary to Uncommon and Rare.
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Increased the frequency that the Semi-Auto sniper rifles drop to align more with their rarity class.
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Increased Uncommon Semi-Auto sniper drop rate by 9.29%
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Increased Rare Semi-Auto sniper drop rate by 9.29%
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Dual pistols decreased in rarity from Epic and Legendary to Rare and Epic.
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Suppressed pistol decreased in rarity from Epic and Legendary to Rare and Epic.
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Burst Assault Rifle accuracy adjustments.
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When holding down the trigger, the first 2 bursts are more accurate.
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Spread down sights benefit increased from 35% to 40%.
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Crouch spread benefit reduced from 25% to 20%.
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Jumping/Falling spread penalty reduced from 25% to 10%.
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Sprinting spread penalty reduced from 50% to 30%.
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Increased drop stack count for Boogie Bomb from 1 to 2.
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Increased maximum stack size for Stink Bomb from 5 to 6.
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Increased maximum stack size for Shield Potions from 2 to 3.
Bug Fixes
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Fixed an issue that prevented audio and effects from playing on other players who are consuming a shield potion.
GAMEPLAY
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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.
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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.
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Motion deadzone has been removed.
Bug Fixes
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Fixed an issue causing supply drop landing effects to play twice in some circumstances.
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Fixed inconsistencies with auto-pickup when landing on pickups, and when pickups are first thrown from containers.
PERFORMANCE
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Improved loading performance on Nintendo Switch to reduce issues with buildings loading late (i.e. low-res buildings during skydiving).
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Fixed a large performance regression related to effects. This was causing poor framerate in the 5.30 release (especially on Nintendo Switch).
AUDIO
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Boosted volume of the Remote Explosives placement sound.
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Improve the quality of the sound played when dropping from the Bus on Mobile/Nintendo Switch platforms.
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Improve spatialization of the chest open sound for other players nearby.
Bug Fixes
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Reduced the spam of item pickup “bounce” sounds when pickups are sliding down hills.
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Fixed several UI sound issues.
UI
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Emote picker is now available in the lobby, no longer limited to just playing the first emote selected in your locker.
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Fullscreen map now supports touch on Nintendo Switch.
Bug Fixes
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Item shop now shows the item description when inspecting.
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Road Trip week 8 and 9 display the correct completion value now.
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Fixed issue where challenge bundles did not display the correct number of stars from the challenge tab.
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Fixed issue where style preview would sometimes not be centered in the view correctly.
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Banner rewards from the Battle Pass no longer show an empty description box.
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Fixed an issue wherein rerolling a daily quest in Battle Royale would not select the new quest.
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Style gift boxes will now show the 3D preview of the character with the style applied.
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Fixed an issue where navigating in the locker would cause some drop in performance.
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Fixed an issue where changing away from the Challenges Tab would cause some information to get stuck on the screen.
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Fix an issue where continuously clicking on the "Select Game Mode" page would prevent it from closing.
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Fixed an issue where using touch to open/close the map would cause d-pad controls to become unresponsive.
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Fixed an issue with the loading screen showing incorrect information for non-leader party members.
ART + ANIMATION
Bug Fixes
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Fixed an issue that could cause player models to not appear while in game.
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Fixed an issue with spray quality temporarily appearing pixelated for some sprays.
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Fixed the Downshift Glider rear light trails from clipping with geometry.
REPLAY SYSTEM
Bug Fixes
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Fixed duplicate elimination effects on the recording player.
MOBILE
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Added VOIP to Android.
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Expanded device support to the Essential-PH, Motorola, HTC, Sony Xperia devices.
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Major memory optimization on Android devices with Adreno GPUs. This addresses the performance degradation seen due to memory pressure.
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Implemented a new Audio Mixer, which addresses issues with sound quality and consistency.
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Items on the ground now have tooltips.
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Custom HUD Layout Tool now has a more consistent apply/cancel flow.
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The player healthbar and squad healthbars are now moveable in the Custom HUD Layout tool.
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Dragging-and-dropping an item from the quickbar now drops the whole stack. To split a stack, drag-and-drop with the inventory window open.
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Dragging-and-dropping an item from the quickbar no longer stops consumable use.
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UI prompts now appear on vehicles for entering and switching seats.
Bug Fixes
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Corrected some issues with screen resolution in certain locales on Android.
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The screen will no longer timeout without user input on iOS.
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Adjusted steering sensitivity on vehicles.
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Players are now able to thank the bus driver.
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Gyro controls are now usable regardless of orientation on iOS.
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Resolved an issue with turbo-building sometimes being stuck “on” when using the quickbar to turbo-build.
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Fixed the challenges button to use large buttons on mobile.
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Fixed an issue where toggling between pickaxe/weapons wouldn’t properly change weapons.
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Exhaust problems with the Street Racer Bike Gliders for mobile have been repaired. The Bikes should run clean now.
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No longer able to interact with UI behind the challenges screen.
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Players who are experiencing issues with abruptly going to the Home Screen when pressing jump on certain Samsung Galaxy devices can do the following to fix the issue.
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Go to Settings > Display > Navigation > Hard Press Home Button > Turn the feature off
Save the World patch notes can be found
on Epic's blog.