'Fortnite' Season 6 Adds Pets, New Shadow Stone Item For Invisibility

“Fortnite” Season 6 is finally here and it comes with a bunch of changes to gameplay and new items in the battle royale game. The Season 6 Battle Pass is now available in the in-game store for 950 V-Bucks and will include a hundred unlockable items, including skins and new pets.

Changes to the Map

Season 6 of “Fortnite” brings some big changes to the map, such as the addition of a Floating Island in Loot Lake and the new Haunted Castle located on the mountain near Haunted Hills. There are also what’s being called as Corrupted Areas scattered throughout the map, which were the previous locations of the anti-gravity fields. Season 6 also brings in small changes to the map, including two new houses in the Wailing Woods area and the new Corn Fields location.

Shadow Stones and Pets

One of the new items in “Fortnite” battle royale is Shadow Stone. This is a consumable item that's commonly found in the Corrupted Areas of the map. When using a Shadow Stone, players will be in their “Shadow Form” and they will be able to go fully invisible when they don’t move. When players move while using a Shadow Stone, they will be more visible and they will leave behind a shadow trail.

Using a Shadow Stone will also increase movement speed and jump height, and players won’t get any fall damage. Players are also able to phase through objects by pressing the primary fire button. Since this is a pretty powerful consumable item, players won’t be able to use any weapons while in Shadow Form, as pointed out by The Verge. The effect of the Shadow Stone will only last for 45 seconds, but players will be able to disable it early by pressing the button for aiming down sights.

Season 6 also adds pets to the game. Pets can be unlocked from the Season 6 battle pass. Pets will be carried by players on their backs and they will react according to what’s happening around them. Pets are more of a cosmetic item, but they do make playing alone a bit more fun.

Vaulted Items

Although “Fortnite” Season 6 brings in a lot of changes, Epic Games has also decided to vault some of the weapons and items in-game. The vaulted items are the Impulse Grenade, Suppressed SMG, Light Machine Gun, the Bouncers and Remote Explosive. These items will no longer be available in regular modes, but they are still in Playgrounds.

Gameplay Changes & Improvements

Epic games has added the option for custom controller bindings. This means that gamers who play using a gamepad or a tradition controller will now be able to assign specific actions to buttons. This can be accessed by going to Settings and selecting “Custom” in the controller menu.

Epic Games has also added input-based matchmaking on consoles. This means that players who are using a keyboard and mouse on the PS4 will now be put into the PC matchmaking system. PC players won’t be affected by this change. If a player uses a controller on PC, they will still remain in the PC matchmaking queue. This change will make it a bit more fair for players who prefer to keep using their controllers on the PS4.

Other small gameplay changes include moving the ATK horn to the down D-pad button and Traps can no longer be placed on fences. Epic games has also adjusted the wait and shrink times of the Storm.

Bug Fixes

• Players will no longer be launched with greater force than intended when using the Grappler in a vehicle.
• Using a Grappler while using a Launchpad will no longer cause inventory functionality issues.
• The top half of a players model will no longer clip through walls when using the Grappler while crouched.
• Fixed a visual issue that could cause the plunger to be visible on the Grappler while the projectile is active.
• Players are no longer prevented from changing equipment when firing the Grappler while switching weapons.
• Adjusted the timing of the Heavy Sniper reload animation to match more closely to when the bullet is reloaded.
• Reduced the amount of force applied when shooting a vehicle with a Shotgun.

Performance Optimization and Improvements

On the Nintendo Switch, Epic Games has improved CPU and GPU performance. The developer claims that this will result in smoother gameplay and higher resolution rendering. Unfortunately, video capture is still disabled.

On mobile devices, specifically the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and the S9+, Epic Games has improved performance and memory. Memory optimizations have also been implemented to all mobile devices, which will reduce low performance when a device is running many apps in the background.

“Fortnite” Season 6 has a bunch of other small changes that are intended to improve the overall gaming experience. Everything that Epic Games has added or tweaked are fully detailed on the recently published patch notes.