We're preparing to kick off Online Test 5 of the Fortnite Alpha! OT5 starts on 9/29 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. Check out what's new below.

Major Features

TL;DR

New Primary Mission - We’ve added a new mode called Power The Reactor. We’ve also changed how mission rewards work.

New HUD - We’ve added a new in-game HUD, from new hotbars for combat and building to pretty new status bars.

Card Packs - The card packs are now llamas, and you can purchase V-bucks with real money in addition to earning them through gameplay.

More Things - We added a new model for the female soldier, improved the Home Base UI, and players now have shields!

Primary Missions

•  Added new primary mission "Power The Reactor" to Plankerton and Canny Valley.
•  Mission rewards now change based on your performance.
• Completing Speed Runs and Bonus Objectives will increase mission rewards.
• Not participating in missions like Retrieve the Data will give minimal rewards.
• Harder missions (such as Close Three Gates), will give better rewards than easier missions (such as Retrieve the Data).
• All mission rewards have been rescaled to support.
• You will now fail the Launch the Rocket mission if the launchpad health reaches 0.
• Gate and Multi-Gate now can be failed. You get up to three chances to complete the gate mission depending on Zone threat level. Three chances for green, two for yellow, one for red.

Power The Reactor

New in-game HUD

• Pressing Escape, I, or holding down Alt now bring you to a unified screen with mouse control. Crafting and Inventory have been merged into one window so you can have both visible at once. Options and Friends are accessible using the buttons in the top right.
• The first slot in your quickbar is now dedicated to harvesting tools. You can put crafted pickaxes into that slot, but if you try to empty the slot it will return to the default stick.
• Slots 2-4 in your quickbar are now dedicated to other weapons. You can drag weapons into those slots from your inventory.
• Slots 5 and 6 are dedicated to your Home Base gadgets. You select these before entering the zone.
• Z,X, and C now activate your Hero Abilities, which you unlock as you level your Hero.
• R reloads your gun like before, but now also rotates your previewed building piece or trap.
• As part of this change we have reset user keybinds, so you will have to rebind them if you have customized them.
• Many other parts of the HUD have been updated and improved.

New Shield, Health, and Stamina Bars

New Hotbar for Building

New Hotbar for Combat

New Inventory, Crafting Menu and Slotting in the Hotbar

Improved Home Base building UI

• Added preview videos to building tooltips and when selecting new building plots.
• You may now preview a building at your Home Base before building it.
• Improved UI for slotting Chiefs and Crew that better previews how it will change rating.
• Improved layout for showing the bonuses given at different building rating levels.
• You can mouse over the Commander Level display to see what rewards you will get when you level up.
• Chiefs and Crew now show more information in their icons to indicate how they should be slotted into buildings.
• Many of the stat bonuses granted by Home Base buildings have been updated.

Vindertech Store Refurbishing

• Vindertech has taken over our store, and have refurbished the entire place! As such, they have updated not only the goods themselves, but also the packaging and the opening process in general!
• New and Exciting Product Packaging!
• Better Upgrade Packs!
• Increased Visual Fidelity!
• Enhanced Opening Experience!
• Fun For Everyone!
• More crazy expanding packages!

Vindertech Store

New V-bucks Store

• As part of the ongoing Vindertech refurbishing of everything store-related, you can now purchase V-bucks with real money in addition to earning them through gameplay.
• Accessible via the V-bucks counter in the upper right of the HomeBase UI or from the Vindertech Store.

New Player Shields

• All Heroes now have a permanent regenerating shield. Damage will be absorbed by the shield instead of damaging the character's health, until the shield has been depleted.
• The Resistance stat has been repurposed. It now increases shield strength and regeneration rate by 1% per point.
• Base Hero health has been increased significantly
• Enemy damage vs characters has been increased significantly, to account for the increased Hero health and the addition of shields. Damage vs the fort/environment is unchanged.
• Fortitude now additionally increases Health Regeneration by 1% per point, to keep it in sync with the increases it grants to maximum health.
• Health items like potions are no longer usable from the quickbar. You can use them from your inventory by double clicking them, but in combat you are probably better off running away to let your shield recharge.

AI Patrols

• Mysterious patrols of enemies will periodically spawn throughout the day and night.

Patrols

Release Notes

AI/Enemies

• Balance pass on all enemy types, in an attempt to strongly focus each enemy type on a particular role in the battle.
• Husks apply pressure to the objective and are countered by building. They now do reduced damage to structures.
• Husky Husks act as battering rams that open paths for the Husks. They now do increased damage to structures. Their "burp" poison gas attack was removed. They are less likely to break off and chase players who attack them.
• Pitcher Husks harass players with ranged fire, keeping them on the move. Reduced their damage to structures. Tuned frequency of throws.
• Dwarf Husks hunt any players they see, rather than prioritizing the objective. Increased damage vs players (especially for their jump attack).
• Bombshell Lobbers are now far more likely to attack structures, rather than attacking objectives directly.
• Poison Lobbers projectiles will no longer damage structures.
• Blaster and Flinger melee damage reduced, especially vs structures.
• Added radar icon and icon above head for players marked for death by the Taker.
• Taker soul suck attack now does low damage for a period of time before switching to high damage.
• Made multiple Pitcher Husks not throw at the same player too frequently.
• Pitcher Husk has a new longer throw animation with a bit more anticipation before the projectile is released. Reduced the cooldown time between throws so the overall frequency of throws is unchanged.
• Fix for Bombshell sometimes using melee attacks against walls it should be using artillery against instead.
• Fix for Sploder going after an already exploded tank that he had dropped.
• Elemental enemy variants will be introduced to the mix more gradually. Order of introduction was also changed: Lightning, then Fire, then Ice.
• The Husky Husk, Propane Tank Husk, and Blaster have new animations for attacking floors and ceilings. Attack timing and damage should now be consistent when they attack floors, ceilings, and walls.
• Fixed AIs navigating incorrectly around Launch the Rocket objective while it wasn't active.

Art

• Improved animation for right click attacks on hammers and harvesting weapons.
• Improved the in game map background art.
• Added more icons to help the player understand what they get from Home Base attributes.
• New impact FX for the Pitcher Husk.
• Improved Pitcher Husk throw tell. Player should now have more time now to anticipate the projectile.
• Pitcher Husk now holds the projectile!
• New shell eject FX added for all applicable weapons in game.
• New VFX for Rocket Launcher.
• Smasher now runs upright as his default locomotion to fix abrupt/popping transitions from idle to movement.

Gadgets

• Fixed a bug where gadget use was not preventing weapon downsights aiming.
• Fixed a bug where Stationary Bot Turret projectiles would sometimes stick around after hitting a target.
• Fixed an exploit involving duplicating supply drops.
• You can no longer place the teleporter in places where you can not stand.
• M80s and Bottle Rockets are no longer instant use gadgets, and instead can be placed into your quick bar as a weapon.
• Changed functionality of Supply Drop.
• Still drops wood, stone and metal every time.
• Instead of dropping a fixed set of items at each level, it now drops a random ingredient, trap or ammo.
• Provides 1 random drop at upgrade 1.
• Provides 2 random drops at upgrade 3.
• Provides 3 random drops at upgrade 5.
• Upgrade 2 Wood/Stone/Metal reduced from 80 to 75.
• Upgrade 4 Wood/Stone/Metal increased from 80 to 100.
• Upgrade 5 Wood/Stone/Metal reduced from 120 to 100.

Gameplay

• Adjusted the difficulty for all the Threat Levels in the game so that, instead of scaling dramatically with the Power level of the party, they are centered around fixed points and only scale a small amount. The difficulty "gaps" between Low/Medium/High Threat hexes in Plankerton and Uncanny Valley have been increased significantly as a result of this change.
• Re-balanced Fall damage to be a percentage of maximum life. Fall damage now penetrates shields. Fall damage will not kill you unless you fall from higher than seven stories.
• Fixed a bug where hit react animations were not playing for remote players.
• Fixed player hit reacts so they play properly when attacked by husks.
• Fixed a bug where players would be stuck in a state where they could only build and repair structures.

Heroes

• Fortitude, Offense, Resistance, and Tech are now displayed at the top of your inventory, and are grouped in the "Core Stats" section of the detailed stats display.
• Offense now only increases weapon damage, instead of all outgoing damage. As a result Trap damage will fall in line, and no longer scale with both Tech and Offense.
• The Offense stat will no longer boost the damage of pickaxes and other harvesting tools.
• Tech now increases Ability/Gadget damage in addition to Trap damage.
• Fixed an issue where Energy Regeneration would sometimes stop unexpectedly.
• Health regeneration now stops at 30% instead of 50%. Regeneration rate was unchanged.
• If a character has not taken any damage for 6 seconds their shield will begin to recharge, returning from depleted to full strength in ~4 seconds.
• Hero abilities are no longer craftable. Instead, all previously crafted hero gadgets now have an energy cost and a cooldown.
• Adjust cost of Grenade to 40 Energy
• Adjust cost of Throwing Stars to 25 Energy
• Adjust cost of Smoke Bomb to 30 Energy

Soldier

• New female Soldier model is now playable!
• Adjust base damage of Soldier Grenade from 400 to 240.
• Explosive Optimization now reduces the Energy cost of Frag Grenade by 50%.6

Outlander

• Outlander fragments are now placed similarly to traps, though they do not require a floor piece. You will need to confirm the placement before activation.

Ninja

• Adjust the base energy cost of Mantis Leap from 25 to 50.
• Shadow Stance now reduces the energy cost of Mantis Leap by 80% while it is active.
• “Pain Mastery” moved from Ninja Gear Tier 4 to Blademastery Tier 4.
• “Three Mantis Style” moved from Ninja Gear Tier 1 to Ninja Gear Tier 4.
• “Utility Belt” moved from Mobility Tier 2 to Ninja Gear Tier 1.
• “Dim Mak” moved from Blademastery Tier 4 to Mobility Tier 2.

Home Base

• Increased starting crew slots from 1 to 2. It still caps at 5 for now.
• Levels 1-5 of the Hospital now provide Fortitude bonuses.
• Fixed incorrect descriptive text for several buildings and expansions.
• Upgrading a building after initially building it will no longer zoom out of the building during that session.
• Upgrading homebase buildings now increases the max upgrade level of the appropriate schematics or workers in the vault.
• Building a sub-building now requires a confirmation and upgrading does not.
• When assigning personnel to a building, synergies with the presently occupying personnel are highlighted and pulse.
• When hovering over a chief/crew member to occupy a building's slot, the chief/crew member being previewed will have highlighted icons for any traits that match other slotted workers.
• Worker tooltips now show which building the worker is currently occupying, if any.
• Gym's Air Conditioning expansion should now grant max energy bonuses.
• Power Station upgrade tab should now properly state the resource it generates. New Description: Generates power that fuels the economy. Stat: +1 Gold Production. Also changed Power Max Capacity to Gold Max Capacity.

Items

• Added grenade and rocket launcher schematics to card packs.
• Changed Rocket launchers and Grenade launchers to not cause building damage. Note: we do plan on having specific weapons do building damage in the future.
• Pickaxes are now referred to as Harvesting Weapons. Updated Outlander traits to reflect this change.
• Pickaxes can no longer be disassembled.
• Added construction parts and gold rewards to account levels 2, 3 and 4.
• Improved the random schematics given out on a few commander level rewards, such as a legendary at level 50.
• Card Pack updates
• Most of the daily packs are now four cards instead of five cards.
• Improved overall distribution of cards from upgrade packs.
• Significantly reduced appearance of ordinary crew members in upgrade packs.
• Added additional bonus pack types for daily packs.
• Increased overall appearance rate of bonus packs.
• Increased overall ability to acquire higher rarity items from packs.
• Improved baseline quality of upgrade packs.
• Made numerous adjustments to item distribution in card packs to increase overall variety in many (but not all) cases.
• Crafting Ingredient Updates:
• Increased Nuts 'n' Bolt ingredient requirements for lower-tiered schematics.
• Increased Mechanical Part ingredient requirements for Ceiling Trap: Zapper.
• Lowered Rare Power Cell ingredient requirements for Tier 9 and Tier 10 ranged weapons from 2 to 1.
• Lowered Rare Mechanism ingredient requirements for Tier 6 melee weapons from 2 to 1.
• Crew/Chief changes:
• Missions that reward survivors were working on an outdated tier system, so blue survivors became far too common from missions relative to upgrade packs. Fixed the issue, which means that overall quality of survivors from mid and high end missions is lower.
• Adjusted chief/crew names to more appropriately match rarity.
• Unique chiefs now have gender-appropriate silhouette portraits.
• Ranged Weapon changes:
• Several sniper rifles now have scopes.
• New gun: Deathstalker. Accurate burst fire assault rifle with a scope. Does not have special art yet.
• Normalized ranged weapon durability based on rate of fire. All weapons should last about the same amount of time with sustained firing, instead of some weapons arbitrarily decaying faster or slower.
• Certain ranged weapons should no longer craft instantly.
• Razor: Increased Clip Size 5 -> 15
• Razor: Now fires a three round burst. In OT4, it was firing a three round burst instantly for 1 ammo. Now it has stagger between the bullets of the burst and costs 3 ammo.
• Nighthawk, Exterminator, Dragon, Bolt Revolver: Fixed a bug that prevented these weapons from stunning enemies as intended.
• Nighthawk: Increased damage by roughly 10%.
• Nighthawk: Increased crit chance 5% -> 25%.
• Nighthawk: Increased crit damage 50% -> 60%.
• Nighthawk: Reduced rate of crosshairs expanding with rapid fire.
• Hammershot: Reduced Clip Size 15 -> 10.
• Hammershot: Increased crosshairs growth rate slightly.
• Hammershot: Reduced Firing Rate 4 -> 3.5.
• Trap Changes:
• Reduced Electric Surge trap damage from 500 to 350.
• Traps now have a stack limit of 20. Carrying more than one stack counts against your backpack quantity limit.
• Traps now yield appropriate ingredients after they are disassembled.
• Player Jump Pads now have 500 durability.
• Ceiling Trap: Electric Surge should now only produce 1 trap when crafted.
• Fixed the long standing issue where traps would sometimes be placed offset from the intended location.
• Increased qty of ingredients required for ceiling electric traps. Decreased qty of ingredients required for wood spike traps
• Beware the gnomes.
• Increased XP gained for recycling Premium and Prime schematics.
• Increased recycle value for common items.
• Enabled recycling on some low level weapons that are given out for as starting/level rewards.
• Premium and Prime weapons were gaining durability based on the old rarity system, which lead to them having up to twice the durability of their standard counterparts in some circumstances. They now gain 20% durability against items of the same tier.
• Reduced overall durability scale on high end weapons a bit.

Performance

• Adjusted the video settings auto-detect feature to more accurately determine the appropriate settings for slower machines.

Primary/Secondary Missions

• Fixed an issue causing the located message to replay every time a player approached the Launchpad during Launch the Rocket.
• Gates no longer allow you to build walls around the gate before placing Atlas device only to be destroyed when placing Atlas.
• Removed Launch the Rocket from Stonewood. It is still available in Plankerton and Canny Valley.
• Balance adjustments to BluGlo Rewards. Increased amount rewards for encampments and BluGlo Siphon.
• Fixed extra BluGlo spawn that would happen on completion of Whack a Troll.
• Fixed bug preventing dead players from receiving rewards for secondary missions.
• Fixed player losing all BluGlo when falling off of the world.

Social

• Fix to ensure global chat works after logging out and back in.
• HItting "Enter" in the front end or in a zone will focus the chat box.
• You can now initiate a whisper to a friend on the same team via the gear menu for that player.

UI

• Hexes now display recommended Homebase power rating.
• Daily rewards tooltips now use a consistent style.
• Gold and construction part tooltips now use a consistent style in the homebase panel.
• Replaced "Account" text with "Commander" text on the Zone Results Stats screen when displaying the account level for clarity and consistency of terminology.
• Made the first item the default selected item in the vault when selecting a tab.
• Fix the UI to correctly preview damage numbers for weapons that will be created from crafting. Before, it was showing higher damage than you would receive.
• Fixed an issue where the hero level for other players incorrectly appeared as "1" sometimes upon joining a lobby.
• Fixed an issue where the selected hero model would not appear in the front end
• To match the new HUD layout, you can now Pin a maximum of 2 schematics at once
• Updated keybind list to match the new HUD layout and fixed several keys that should have been bindable but were not, like L.
• BluGlo no longer appears in the HUD alongside building materials (since it isn't a building material). It has been moved to top right corner of the primary mission info.
• Double Clicking an item in your inventory will now try to Use or Equip the item
• Revised the score update stream to stack events and show multiple messages at a time, so it won't show minute-old updates after a lot of point-earning events occur
• The M-key map now correctly displays uncovered fog of war when player joins game in progress.