Fortnite’s eventful summer is coming to a close, meaning that a new Battle Pass season is on the horizon. The battle royale game is getting into the holiday spirit through a Halloween-themed update that’s packed with cool new stuff.
Called “Darkness Rises,” Fortnite season six will have 100 unlockable levels for its Battle Pass, which will dole out a variety of spooky items for users, like an awesome-looking werewolf skin.
Also, as always, there are huge map changes — including a haunted castle, corrupted areas, corn fields, and a floating island at Loot Lake.
In terms of new weaponry, players can now find “Shadow Stones,” a consumable that will render you unable to use weapons — but you’ll also become invisible, so long as you’re stationary. Shadow Stones also give the player the ability to phase through objects, much like a ghost — you won’t suffer fall damage, and you’ll move faster. The Impulse Grenade, Suppressed Submachine Gun, Light Machine Gun, Bouncer, and Remote Explosives, meanwhile, have all been vaulted.
Some weapons have been tweaked as well: the Grappler will now take momentum into consideration when you hit a moving object, while the double-barrel shotgun has been nerfed.
But the biggest game-changer in the update is a cosmetic: pets, which you can carry around with you. Yes, this means you’ll be able to give your John Wick a dog. Epic Games are geniuses.
Pets, like other skins introduced in this update, will come in a number of different colors and configurations. You can read the full patch notes for 6.0 here.
Season five was Fortnite’s best yet, largely because it was so surprising — something always seemed to be happening, no matter when you were logged on. To recap: the season began with a mysterious alien visitor that zipped around the sky, leaving rifts in its wake. These rifts went on to shoot lightning on the desert portion of the map, which progressively got faster until they manifested a giant purple cube. Nobody knew what the cube meant at first, but it was engraved with runes and was indestructible.
Later, when the cube started slowly moving around the map, it not only marked the ground with symbols, it also emitted a low gravity dome that replenished people’s shields. And last week, the cube submerged into Loot Lake, which then turned into a bouncy body of water. As all of this unfolded, smaller events dotted the map — Tomato Town, for example, suddenly became a disturbing temple dedicated to the Tomatohead skin. Season five also introduced a heist-based limited-time mode that was unlike anything Fortnite had ever seen before. Together, all of these crafted one of the most vibrant games on the scene yet.
With season six, it seems that developers Epic Games seek to maintain Fortnite’s momentum as the best service-based game on the market.