Fortnite update out now (version 8.20)

Posted on March 27, 2019 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch eShop

A new Fortnite update is now available for download, and it’s a fairly substantial one. Version 8.20 includes the limited time mode Floor is Lava, Poison Trap, plenty of improvements and bug fixes, and more.

The full patch notes are as follows:

BATTLE ROYALE
WHAT’S NEW?
Floor is Lava – Limited Time Mode
The Volcano has sprung a leak…Drop, loot, RUN! Hold the high ground and be the last one standing in this spicy new LTM.
Poison Dart Trap
It’s a Poison Trap! Catch your opponents off guard with this new addition. But remember, watch where you step…
New Foraged Items
It’s Bananas! Regenerate health and zoom around after taking a bite from a Pepper, heal up with a tasty Banana, or relax with a Coconut to gain health/shields.
LIMITED TIME MODE: FLOOR IS LAVA
Summary
Lava gradually rises from the lowest parts of the map, and it’s hot! Drop in and quickly loot and gather materials so you can be the first to reach the high ground.
Mode Details
A few minutes into the match, the lava will begin to rise.
The lava moves at a steady speed until the entire map is covered.
Touching the lava will apply damage directly to your health and bounce you up in the air.
You can build on the lava.
Players will be given a small number of materials every second, to help out in those “entire map is on fire” situations.
WEAPONS + ITEMS
The Baller no longer applies damage to players on collision.
The knockback/bounce effect will remain unchanged.
Future Baller Iterations
We’ve noticed a lot of discussion around the Baller, so here’s an update!
We’re not satisfied with the current use of Ballers, specifically in the late game. With the v8.30 update, we will release a change that will allow players to shoot through the glass of The Baller.
Non-glass parts will still have collision and block damage from bullets.
Siphon/Material Changes
In v7.40 we implemented a few Pop-up Cup settings as a test in core modes. After monitoring a combination of gameplay, data, and feedback, we’ve gathered necessary info to conclude this initial test. We feel it has resulted in an unhealthy level of aggressive play, diminishing other viable strategies. The following changes have been reverted in all core modes:
50 Health (or Shield) based on your health when the Elimination occurs.
50/50/50 materials dropped on Elimination.
500/500/500 Cap on materials.
Harvest rate increased by 40%
That said, these mechanics have proven to be positive in our competitive playlists. All changes above remain enabled in the new Arena Game Mode.
Infantry Rifle
Converted to hitscan, meaning this weapon no longer fires projectiles (snipers) and now fires the same as other Assault Rifles.
Base damage reduced from 45/42 to 42/40.
Uses the same damage fall off profile as existing assault rifles.
Poison Dart Trap
Available in Uncommon Rarity.
Can be placed on walls, floors, and ceilings.
Found from Floor Loot.
Can be triggered up to three grid cells away.
Fires Poison Dart projectiles a distance of three horizontal grid cells (four vertical grid cells).
Targets hit by darts will receive a damage-over-time effect that applies damage directly to health, bypassing any shields.
10 health damage per tick.
8 total ticks over 7 seconds for a total damage of 80.
Subsequent hits will refresh the duration of the effect, but the amount of damage per tick does not change.
New Foraged Items
Bananas
Instantly grant 5 health when consumed.
Can be found in the tropical biome.
Coconuts
Foraged by damaging palm trees.
When consumed, Coconuts grant 5 points of effective health over a short time. That means it will replenish shields if the player is at max health.
Can be found in tropical and desert biomes.
Peppers
When consumed, peppers instantly grant 5 health and also increase the player’s movement speed by 20% for 10 seconds.
Can be found in the desert biome.
The Buried Treasure directional indicator is now attached to the player and emanates from the area of the treasure map in order to improve visibility, especially while moving.
The indicator will continue to pulse every 3 seconds while the item is equipped.
Pirate Cannon adjustments
Adjusted the collision of the Pirate Cannon to ensure the driver’s seat is always enterable without needing to nudge the cannon.
Moved the seat prompt locations for easier entry into the cannon.
Increased the radius of cannonballs and player land explosions from 200 units to 250 units.
Reduced cannon impulse/knockback when firing a cannonball while driving or when launching a player. This is unchanged when coasting.
Adjusted the equip time of the Epic / Legendary Pump Shotgun to match the Uncommon / Rare versions.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where Clingers were damaging players through walls when stuck to another player.
Fixed an issue preventing Glider item pickups from displaying their stack count.
Smoothed out the motion of grenade projectile trajectories, which were lagging behind by a tick.
Balloon Fixes
Entering a vehicle no longer plays the release sound of balloons if you have no balloons.
The balloon rope will no longer remain on your back when you run out of balloons.
Pirate Cannon Fixes
Fixed an issue where players were flying out of a Pirate Cannon in a different direction than expected.
Fixed an issue preventing the ability to enter a Pirate Cannon when close to other geometry.
Fixed the ability for players to finely tune Pirate Cannon’s ability to aim side to side.
Fixed an issue causing Buried Treasure to spawn loot on the Starting Island.
GAMEPLAY
Marker pings are now allowed while DBNO.
Added a unique elimination message when eliminated by a Lava surface.
Increased relevancy distance for players being able to see explosions.
That’s not all! Increased infinite dab from 13 hours to 14 hours in the lobby.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue with the icy feet effect remaining on indefinitely while emoting.
Traps now do damage directly to The Baller vehicle instead of dealing damage to the driver.
Fixed issue causing some traps to be inside thicker structures, making them hard to see.
Fixed a rare occurrence of a player being invulnerable while DBNO.
Fixed the camera sometimes traveling too far when cycling to another player.
EVENTS
New Feature: Arena Game Mode (Solo & Duos)
Compete any time and gain ‘Hype’ to advance to higher leagues and unlock exclusive tournaments, such as the Fortnite World Cup Online Opens.
Each League is broken up into several Divisions, with players working their way from Open League to Contender League to Champion League.
Scoring will update from division to division, with an increasing amount of Bus Fare lost with each match at higher divisions.
Note: Matchmaking in Arena is based on players with similar Hype. As a result, players in higher divisions may experience longer than normal wait times before a match is found.
New Tournament: Luxe Cup (March 30th & 31st) [$100,000 in Cash Prizes!]
Duos Game Mode
Participation in this event requires players to have reached Contender League in Arena play prior to the start of the event.
The prize pool will be distributed across all server regions, with official rules and details released later this week.
Format:
March 30th – Round One: All Eligible Players
March 31st – Round Two: Top 3000 Players from Round One
PERFORMANCE
Fixed an issue where poor server performance could cause undesired effects on clients such as unnecessary movement corrections.
Added a fix for a rare server crash.
Made a small server performance improvement related to the Baller vehicle.
Updated animation budgets to be more performant on higher scalability settings.
Improved file I/O performance on PS4, this reduces the occurrence of late streaming buildings.
Improved file I/O performance when skydiving on all platforms by changing what data we prioritize loading first.
ART + ANIMATION
Adjusted lighting in Battle Royale.
Increased lighting contrast in areas with shadows.
Increased vibrancy in colors.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where the destruction effects were not playing on the Baller when it’s destroyed.
AUDIO
Re-scaled audio volume settings to avoid clipping artifacts.
What used to be the 0.5 setting is now mapped to 1 (maximum loudness)
If your volume was previously above 0.5 you will need to adjust the volume on your television or whichever device you’re playing on to achieve the same level of loudness.
Footsteps from spectated players’ teammates are now played at a reduced volume.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where some items didn’t have proper audio when dropping them from inventory.
UI
Changes to the ping graph for the net debug HUD.
Red vertical lines added that indicate packets were reported lost that frame.
There’s now a setting to control if pinging while ADS/Targeting places a danger marker.
On the Battle Pass page, scrolling down on the mouse wheel moves the contents right and scrolling up on the mouse wheel moves the images left.
Bug Fixes
Fixed issue with Main Menu icons becoming off-center.
Fixed a bug that was causing a player’s Squad Fill preference to reset to “Fill”.
Fixed an issue where scopes would be missing reticle lines on low settings.
SPECTATING
Bug Fixes
Fixed an occasional awkward camera movement that would occur when switching to different view targets while spectating.
MOBILE
Dedicated use buttons now support hold to swap.
Voice Chat has been reactivated on iOS.
Emote button now supports hold to replay last emote.
Updated the Baller button icons.
Updated the battery icon to indicate the device is charging. Refreshes visibility every 2 seconds.
Cycle left button added to the HUD layout tool.
Added loot pickup stream UI.
This is the part of the UI that tracks how many resources and ammo you’re picking up.
Net Debug Stats is now movable in the HUD Layout Tool.
Enabled Squad Communication and Emote buttons while DBNO.
Bug Fixes
Fixed field of view on 21:9 devices.
Fixed an issue with quickbar and extra buttons that made it possible to cause fire state to be stuck on a continuous loop.
Fixed an issue causing the camera to jump on initial touch input.
This will also fix the issue where HUD control buttons are missing when starting a match on some Android devices.
Fixed an issue causing incorrect building pieces to gain focus when editing.
Fixed missing outline effect for squad members.
Fixed minimap remaining on screen during Victory Royale sequence.
Fixed not being able to select building material while being a passenger in a vehicle.
CREATIVE
WHAT’S NEW?
Creature Spawner
Ready to create some serious PvE challenges? Use the Creature Spawner to setup fiendish challenges for you and your friends.
Shooting Range
Line up the targets and hone your skills using this new gallery available in Creative Mode!

ISLANDS
Portals added in the Creative Hub to access the Battle Royale Island.
Added a waterfall along the edges of the Playground Hub.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where spectating players would still be considered to be on the island, even after leaving.
Fixed an issue with creative replays not properly showing the correct time of day.
Fixed an issue where some trees and rocks were floating on the Volcano Island.
Fixed an issue where waterfalls didn’t have sound effects on the Volcano Island.
Fixed an issue where rocks were losing their material and defaulting to dark blue rocks on the Volcano Island.
Known Issues:
If you’re unable to build on the Volcano Island, the island setting “Unlimited Material” need to be set to On.
GAMEPLAY
Added siphon settings to Creative Game Settings.
Health Granted on Eliminations – Mix of values from 0 to 1000.
Wood/Stone/Metal Granted on Eliminations – Mix of values from 0 to 999.
Added a new scoreboard for Creature Eliminations that tracks how many creatures you’ve eliminated.
Added a new win condition – Creature eliminations to win, with a mix of values from 1 to 1000.
Moved the Challenge gallery and Chest & Ammo gallery from the gallery tab to the devices tab in Creative inventory.
The goal is for anything that is interactable to be in the devices tab.
Organized the devices tab in the following order: Galleries, Traps, Vehicle Spawners, Spawners.
Organized the consumables tab – Resources, Ammo, Health, Shields, Grenades, fort throwables, and the rest.
Bug Fixes
Improved Islands to restore faster after a game has ended.
Starting game now ensures all players have downloaded the key game data before starting. This fixes game start issues for players on slower connections.
Texture data should be reappearing on all buildings that lost their texture data. Griptape Obstacle Course is now fixed!
Fixed an issue where being eliminated and entering a vehicle at the same time would cause the player to lose most controls.
Fixed Game Settings resetting if “My Island” menu was opened before the island was ready to start a game.
Fixed an issue where the camera occasionally behaved oddly when starting and ending games.
Fixed an issue where the camera behaved oddly after respawning.
Fixed an issue where the spectator camera would occasionally get stuck in the sky when the spectated player respawns.
Fixed an issue where the camera would occasionally flip upside down for a brief moment after respawning in the sky.
Fixed an issue where players could get stuck in a strange state when respawning while the game ended.
Fixed an issue where players would start games in building mode instead of holding their pickaxe.
Fixed an issue where the Treasure Map could appear in Chests in Creative Mode.
WEAPONS + ITEMS
Infinity Blade
This Mythic melee weapon can be found in the Weapons Tab in Creative Inventory.
Primary Fire delivers a powerful sword slash. It deals big damage to enemies and destroys structures in one blow.
Alternate Fire allows the player to leap great distances, destroying objects in its path. Upon landing, it delivers damage and a knock-up to nearby players.
The wielder of the sword is also granted additional abilities:
An increased pool of max Health and Shields (200 Health/200 Shields).
Regeneration of effective Health over time up to max Health and Shields (1 HP per second).
An instant burst of effective Health upon elimination of an enemy (50 HP).
Increased movement speed (130%).
If a player picks up the Infinity Blade, all other inventory items aside from building materials will be dropped.
When the wielder of the Infinity Blade picks up an item (aside from building materials), the Infinity Blade will be dropped.
The Infinity Blade will be dropped when the wielder is knocked out or eliminated.
Blade in Stone will be included in the next major release.
CREATIVE TOOLS + PHONE
Coming to a future patch… Multi Select. With a button press you’ll be able to select multiple items with the phone to copy and place. This feature needed more to fix issues.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug with the phone tool that made it difficult to see the object highlight when pointing at extremely bright objects.
Fixed a bug where music blocks would prevent you from selecting other props behind them, even if pointing above the blocks themselves.
PREFABS + GALLERIES
Added New Dirt, Grass and Cobblestone Floor Galleries.
Grass is a flat grassy texture.
3D Grass Floor tech is currently a work in progress for the next major update!
Added a New Tropical Rock Gallery.
Updated the Volcano Rock Gallery to include additional rocks.
Updated the Ring Gallery to include more lighted beams and a lighted grate.
Added new General Props Gallery A and Gallery B.
Known Issues
Large rock in the Tropical Rock Gallery has lava rock textures. This will be addressed in a future patch.
Ice Cliff Gallery pieces, when selected with phone, are way up in the air, which makes placement difficult. We’re working on a solution for a future patch.
Ice Cliff Gallery pieces have jump collision issues.
Bug Fixes
Particle props will now delete when resetting the Island.
Ice Cliff Gallery pieces will no longer be destroyed when building through them.
Fixed an issue where certain particle props would begin flickering when many particles were placed. The visual effects remained visible even after deleted or island restart.
Fixed an issue where the ‘Lava Tiles Gallery’ had invisible collision.
Fixed an issue where the spark particle visual effects flickered when walked through.
Fixed an issue where the collision bounds for Visualizer Gallery pieces are much higher than the pieces themselves.
Removed the consumable apples from the ‘Cozy Cabin’ prefab. They weren’t working correctly in Creative and will be added back once we’ve resolved the issues.
Fixed an issue where the Jungle Temple Gallery has no green inner corners.
Fixed an issue where the grass was clipping through some props or assets in the Mine Cart Gallery, Industrial Gallery A, Cabins Prop Gallery and General Gallery A.
Fixed an issue where the ‘Cabin Prop Gallery’ had an invisible collision when deployed above ground.
DEVICES
Creature Spawner
Spawn up to 20 creatures at a time on your island.
Select from 6 types of creatures, from a normal fiend, up to a Megabrute.
Set the number of creatures to spawn from 1 to 20.
Set the total available number to spawn from 1 to infinite.
Set how fast they should spawn with the wave timer from 1 second to 5 minutes.
Set how close the player needs to be for the spawner to activate from 1 tile to 15 tiles.
Set distance away from players for the creature(s) to despawn between 1-15 tiles.
Set various properties on the spawner: Visibility, Invincibility, Destroying pieces on spawn, and Spawn effects.
Set the number of tiles from the spawner the creatures should spawn from 2 to 6. Currently, this is limited to creatures spawning exactly that distance away from the spawner. A future update will allow creatures to spawn in more confined spaces.
Limited to having 32 spawners per island.
Known Issues
Creatures will sometimes get stuck on indestructible pieces.
Generating the AI navigation map can take a long time. Players may see long loading times on really complex islands.
Music Sequencer doesn’t always eliminate Creatures.
Shooting Gallery
Select from 14 different types of shooting targets with 12 options that can be set to create a different play.
Targets can be either stationary or on a moving rail. Moving rail targets are limited to 200 for performance.
Use the Total Score scoreboard type for building Shooting Gallery games.
Set the score per target from -20 to 20 for when it’s knocked down.
Set score multiplier for hitting the bullseye when knocking the target down.
Set which team receives a score for knocking down the target.
Set the amount of health a target has before it’s knocked down from 1 to 5000.
Set the amount of time it takes for a knocked down target to reset from, Never Reset, 2 to 600 seconds.
Set the maximum number of times a target will pop back up from infinite, 1 to 10.
Set a time delay to hide: Off, 1 second to 20 minutes.
Set the starting position up or down.
Set proximity from the player for a target to pop up. Once activated target will stay up unless a time to hide is set.
Set the hinge location base or center.
Set the bullseye to instantly knock down the target to on/off.
Make your targets move up and down with Hop Time: 0.5 seconds to 20 seconds.
Known Issues
Targets spawned from the gallery will reset to the Standing target if they are not modified or copied with the phone when a player leaves and rejoins their island.
Hitting the bullseye will not cause critical damage multiplier on the Standing target and Round targets.
If a thrown device grenade reaches the maximum quantity limitation for the moving targets, the spawning targets will replace the earliest placed ones.
Added new options for the Team Settings & Inventory device.
Spawn Location – Sky, Spawnpads
Spawns – Infinite, 1 to 10
After Last Spawn Go To – Spectator, Team 1 – Team 16
Drop Items on Death – On, Off
Health granted on elimination – Mix of values from 0 to 1000
Wood / Stone/ Metal granted on elimination – Mix of values from 0 to 999
Creature Eliminations To Win – Off, Mix of values from 1 to 1000
Instant Reload – Weapons do not require reload animations upon depleting magazines.
Poison Dart Trap
Available in Uncommon Rarity
Can be placed on walls, floors, and ceilings
Can be triggered up to three grid cells away
Fires Poison Dart projectiles a distance of three horizontal grid cells (four vertical grid cells)
Targets hit by darts will receive a damage-over-time effect that applies damage directly to health, bypassing any shields.
10 health damage per tick
8 total ticks over 7 seconds for a total damage of 80
Subsequent hits will refresh the duration of the effect, but the amount of damage per tick does not change.
Added new material options for the barrier: Space Black, Gloss Black, Sky Blue, Red Forcefield, and Blue Forcefield.
Challenge Gallery and Treasure Gallery have been moved to the Devices Tab.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where damage Traps (ie. Spikes) would trigger on players and vehicles when a game was not active.
Fixed an issue where unmanned vehicles would trigger elimination audio cues when sitting in the Elimination Zone and Music Sequencer.
Fixed an issue where players who are unaffected by a damage volume device would trigger elimination audio cues.
Fixed an issue where Music Sequencer damage option was causing loud sound effects.
Fixed an issue where the Music Sequencer damage sound effect was triggered when the player was standing close to it.
Fixed an issue where the Sentry would trigger multiple hit sound effects from the Music Sequencer, when damage was turned on.
Fixed an issue where teams were able to destroy their own Objective Device while boosting with a Quadcrasher.
Fixed an issue where player-built wooden floors would clip through Player Spawn and Player Checkpoint Plate.
Fixed an issue where the Max Initial Team Size setting on the Team Settings & Inventory device wouldn’t apply as intended when set to Unlimited.
UI + SOCIAL
Improved the loading experience when joining and leaving games.
Allow games to start only after the Island has fully loaded.
Smoothed the transition of fade-in and fade-out of loading screens.
Changed the “Leave Match” button to “Leave Playground” when in Playground mode.
HUD indicators for Devices/Traps placed on Islands are now hidden.
HUD elements are now hidden when transitioning into and out of games.
Improved transitioning to spectator mode when a game has “join in progress” disabled.
Bug Fixes
Replaced the lighting bolt in triangle with an exclamation point in triangle for damage zones.
Fixed an issue where the mobile HUD stayed visible during game transitions.
Updated string in Creative Mutator to say “Return to Hub” instead of “Return to Creative Hub” as the menu option has changed names.
Fixed an issue where some game UI elements would sometimes not appear correctly.
Fixed an issue where players weren’t notified when they joined a game as a spectator.
Fixed an issue where Device tooltips appeared while playing a game in Playground.
Fixed an issue where rich presence wasn’t clarifying whether a player was in Playground or Creative when selecting a server.
Fixed an issue where the Hub was still being referred to as the “Creative Hub”.
Fixed a misspelling in the My Island menu.
Fixed an issue where the Sky spawn location was referred to as “air”.
Fixed an issue where players would occasionally remain on the “Restoring Island” screen after a game ends.
Fixed an issue where game settings would get set to defaults if the player open and closed the My Creative Island menu after entering their island.
PERFORMANCE + STABILITY
Bug Fixes
Fixed various stability issues.
GENERAL
UI
Quantity selector slider and settings slider will now accelerate over time when using a gamepad.
Bug Fixes
Fixed some issues with being able to click survey answers with mouse buttons other than the primary (left) button.
Fixed an issue with the bottom bar being missing/obscured on the player reporting screen.
Updated the controller settings screen so the text for the header “Controller Configurations” can grow vertically as opposed to growing wider. This stops text from going behind the next column.
SOCIAL
Added a “Joinable Parties” section to the Social Panel to provide a quick overview of the parties that your friend(s) are in with at least two members.
Party Invite list is now merged into this list. In the case of an invite, the sender’s name will get highlighted in the party entry, and the entry itself will have a different background.
The “Game” Voice Channel has been added and allows speaking to and hearing only the people in:
Your Battle Royale Squad
Your Save the World Team
Your Creative Island’s Voice Chat
New options have been added to the Social Panel when clicking on yourself. In addition to being able to set Online / Away, you can now
Adjust your party’s Privacy settings
Change the Voice Channel you want to use during active gameplay.
Choose “Party” to speak with everyone in your party, and “Game” to speak to the game-specific channel.
GAMEPLAY
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where traps could be hidden under the terrain.
Fix for switching to Save the World when joining a friend in Battle Royale’s party
Fixed launchpad transition animations triggering incorrectly if you immediately attached to a zip line
Fixed traps not triggering when inside their triggering range, but behind a building piece that gets destroyed
PERFORMANCE
We’ve increased the bandwidth cap for all game modes.
This should help with network performance issues across all platforms.

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