Epic Games revamps their map, patch notes, and more.
Season 7 Launch trailer
Battlepass overview
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiJ5nIB7Aik[/embed]
Weapons + Items
- X-4 Stormwing Plane
- 5 total seats.
- Seats 4 passengers (on the wings) and a pilot.
- Has a mounted machine gun. Be careful, it can overheat.
- Players will go into the skydiving state when exiting the X-4 Stormwing.
- Use the roll buttons for sharp turns.
- Pressing both will fly upside down.
- Double tapping roll buttons will do a barrel roll.
- Can boost and airbrake for extra mobility.
- Balloons
- Balloons have been reworked so that while they are equipped, it is possible to use weapons and items.
- Players can attach up to 3 Balloons to their back, lifting off the ground when the 3rd Balloon is attached.
- Press jump while in the air to release Balloons one at a time.
- Reduced stack size from 20 to 10.
- Updated scope crosshair on Scoped AR and Thermal AR.
- Vaulted Items
- Note: Each new season gives us an opportunity to evaluate the current item rotation. Our goal is to have a reasonable number of items to learn, while avoiding duplicates or overlapping functionality. Based on recent (and upcoming) item additions, we’ve selected the following for vaulting.
- Shadow Stones
- Port-a-Fort
- Chiller
- Clinger
- Double Barrel Shotgun
- Shockwave Grenade
Gameplay
- Map Updated
- New Biome: Iceberg
- New Location: Frosty Flights
- New Location: Polar Peak
- New Location: Happy Hamlet
- Other unnamed Points of Interest (POIs) have also appeared across the island.
- Icy Surfaces can be found in snowy areas.
- Players will slide on certain frozen surfaces.
- Ziplines can be found around the Iceberg and near Expedition Outposts.
- Latch on and zip from one end to the other.
- Aim, fire, or use items all while conveniently traveling on Ziplines.
- Minimap updated.
- Increased the chance of final circles ending on the outer edges of the map.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug causing weapon impact effects to play when shooting friendly players, even though no damage was being dealt.
Events
- New Tournament: Explorer Pop-Up Cup
- Material cap set to 700/500/300 for Wood/Stone/Metal.
- Players receive 100/50/50 Wood/Stone/Metal on elimination.
- Resource rate increased by 40%
- +50 effective health on elimination.
- Safezone Changes
- Increased chances of Supply Drops in later circles.
- Circle 9 now travels twice as far but takes twice as long to close.
- Some tournaments will now feature a limit on the number of matches that can be played during an event session.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue which prevented players from receiving elimination rewards if a player they downed was eliminated by the Down-But-Not-Out timer ending or if their team was fully eliminated.
Performance
- Optimized spawning pickups when a player is eliminated.
- Optimized the performance of the Dynamite fuse.
- Switch audio performance improvements — falling sounds no longer hitch.
- Minor Switch rendering optimizations to help general framerate.
Audio
- Reduced the volume of bullet and pickaxe impact audio on the starting island.
- Added a hit notification audio cue when a vehicle you’re riding in recieves damage.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue that would cause in-air glider audio to continue playing when eliminating a gliding player.
- Fixed an issue that would cause vehicle audio loops to get stuck on.
- Fixed “crackling” audio heard on Mobile/Switch when shooting weapons or emoting.
UI
- The Calamity, Dire, Ragnarok, and Drift Challenges have been moved to a new section at the bottom of the Challenges tab.
- Added filtering and updated the layout of the Locker.
- Vehicle Damage Numbers have been added!
- Vehicles now have a unique damage number pop color and show damage numbers.
- Polished the Store layout to support a larger number of tiles without needing to scroll.
- Minor update to the player feedback UI to add reporting categories and a list of other players in the current or last-played match.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Battle Pass information from being displayed in the Lobby tab for players that have not purchased a Battle Pass.
- Fixed the header entry in the daily Challenges screen to work correctly when clicked.
- Moved the Nvidia Highlights button to the top right of the Battle Royale lobby to avoid conflicts with chat click zone.
- Fixed an issue where the Two Factor Authentication screen could sometimes cause input to become unresponsive.
Replay
Bug Fixes
- Nameplates will no longer sit above other HUD elements, such as the map.
Mobile
- 60 FPS enabled on the iPad Pro 2018.
- 4x MSAA Anti-Aliasing turned back on for iOS.
- Improved performance on all Galaxy Note 9 devices as well as the North American variant of the Galaxy S9 Plus.
- Added support for the Samsung Galaxy A9 (2018).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed the black border on the iPad Pro 2018.
- Fixed graphics settings on previous supported iPad Pro models.
- Fixed incorrect quality settings for iPad 6th Generation.
- Fixed occasional shadow flickerings in the game lobby.
Creative
This is an early release so you may experience client crashes, loss of progress, or other unexpected errors.
Overview
- Creative Hub provides access to your own island, the islands of other friends who have joined on the server, or featured islands selected from the community.
- Player Islands are your creative space that automatically saves.
- Players will be able to keep a server active for up to 4 hours at a time.
- Battle Pass owners will start with 4 islands to allow for different creations. On December 13, all players will receive 4 islands.
- Friends can visit your island and island owners can set permissions to determine if your friends can edit/build while visiting.
- The My Island menu is accessible through the Main Menu in-game while on your island.
Gameplay
- Phone
- This is the in-game tool your character holds that’s used to edit, copy, and manipulate props in the world. Experiment with its features to discover all the things it can do.
- Fly mode allows players to quickly travel around their island and create in mid-air.
- Double jump to start flying.
- My Island menu
- The “Game” tab starts and stops player-created games. When a game is stopped your island reverts to its pre-game state.
- You may experience functionality issues with this feature as we continue to make improvements.
- The “Game Settings” tab sets health, fall damage, spawn location, etc and can be changed at any time through the My Island menu.
- The “Island Tools” tab resets your island back to its original state and sets who can build on your island.
Creative Inventory
- Accessed from the inventory menu.
- Inventory allows you to spawn prefabs, devices, weapons, or consumables.
- Use Inventory to create your own chests or llamas for your island filled with items you select.
- Prefabs are pre-made structures the player can place on their island with throwables.
- Devices are placeable items that allow you to create games.
Prefabs
- 8 obstacle courses
- 25 buildings from Battle Royale
- 34 galleries of building tiles and props
Devices
- New Devices
- Ice Block
- Damage Rails
- Speed Boost
- Timer
- Scoreboard
- Player Spawn
- From Battle Royale:
- Spikes
- Chiller
- Bouncer
- Launch Pad
- Mounted Turret
- Cozy Campfire
Performance
- The memory bar at the bottom of the HUD provides feedback on how much you can build on your island.
- This will change as we gather more data on performance and memory usage.
Social
- Players will have the ability to join in progress games with any of their Epic friends, even if they are not in a party together. Find your friend in the social panel and select Join Creative Server. Your friend must have their Privacy option set to Friends or Public to allow those who aren’t in a party to join.
Replay
- Replays will record the entire 4-hour play session, however, these will be saved in 30-minute individual files.
- Replays are off by default and can be enabled in the settings.
Mobile
- Creative buttons added as well as a new “Creative” visibility setting. Buttons with extra functionality are in the HUD Layout Tool.
- The “Creative” visibility is off in the tool by default, so buttons will be hidden until they are turned on.
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