‘Fortnite: Battle Royale’ Update Vaults A Weapon, Adds New Grenade, Dynamic Resolution, And Weapon Tweaks

Fortnite: Battle Royale is undergoing some interesting changes with a new update delivered Thursday to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The huge multiplayer shooter is celebrating the start of the Lunar New Year while also adding a new grenade and vaulting an original weapon. There are some important under-the-hood changes as well with the 2.5.0 update to improve the overall performance on consoles.

Shrines

Epic Games added four Chinese shrines across the Fortnite: Battle Royale Map to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Each shrine will contain one to three Treasure Chests that have a good chance to drop high-level weapons and gear.

Here is the list of the known location of the four shrines.

• Northeast of Pleasant Park (Grid D3)
• Northeast of Fatal Fields (Grid G8)
• Southeast of Tilted Towers (Grid E6)
• West of Tomato Town (Grid F4)

Buh-Bye To The SMG

We are back. Happy (Belated) Valentine's Day! https://t.co/123Pe10m18

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) February 15, 2018

The Submachine Gun has been taken out of the rotation in Fortnite: Battle Royale due to the weapon pool in the game growing larger and larger. Epic Games will continue to do this with different items and weapons as more are introduced. There is no guarantee these will return either.

It is important to note the Tactical Submachine Gun will remain. It is only the standard SMG of White, Green, and Blue rarity that is being rotated out of the loot pool.

Hello Impulse Grenade

A new grenade has been introduced to either help clear out enemies or give a boost to teammates. The Impulse Grenade will cause a small explosion that propels players away from a location. As the video below shows, this can be used to clear out a nest of enemies or help a friendly player fly into an adversary’s base.

The Impulse Grenade can only be found in Treasure Chests and Supply Drops and is only comes in Blue rarity.

Console Resolution Improvements

The developers have enabled dynamic resolution on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This will allow the game to run at a more consistent framerate by adjusting the resolution to something the console GPU can render quickly during heavy action.

Additionally, the Xbox One X now supports full 4K resolution, and Epic Games has made some general performance improvements for all platforms.

Weapon and Item Tweaks

The chance to receive a Crossbow, Minigun, or Chug Jug was decreased by 20, 12.5, and 15 percent respectively. Additionally, the Scoped Assault Rifle headshot damage was decreased to 200 percent but has been made “perfectly accurate while scoped.”

Meanwhile, the Tactical Machine Gun receives a healthy buff with a magazine size increase from 30 to 35 rounds and the firing rate increased from 10 to 13.