Introducing Fortnite Battle Royale Chapter 4 Season 1, live today

Chapter 4 of Fortnite’s Battle Royale is here. Go forth and uncover the new ways to explore the Island — propel yourself with the Shockwave Hammer, ride inside of a snowball, commandeer a dirt bike, and hurdle over obstacles in your path. Embark on your own unique path across the Island while augmenting your gameplay with new Reality Augments. Drop into an all new Island with Doom Slayer and Geralt of Rivia by purchasing and progressing the Chapter 4 Battle Pass.

The New Island… make it your domain

Chapter 3’s finale assembled a brand new Island! Explore places like the Brutal Bastion among the mountains, The Citadel ruled by “The Ageless,” the Shattered Slabs mining facility, and more!

Not your ordinary steed..

Grab your trusty dirt bike steed. The Trail Thrasher is a formidable travel companion due to its speed and agility. Grab the Trail Thrasher, land a sick trick (or two), and bring a new meaning to mounted combat in Chapter 4.

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Become mighty with reality augments

You’ll be granted a randomized choice of two Reality Augments at different intervals during your match. The longer you survive in the match, the more Reality Augments you’ll collect. Reality Augments can do things like let you drive without using fuel, give you different weapons, grant you Glider redeploy for the rest of the match, and more.

Hurdle your way to victory

Sprinting at an obstacle will now have you hurdling over or onto them. Use this maneuver to surprise your opponents and gain the high ground. Get creative with a combination of sprinting, mantling, and hurdling to outplay your opponents.

Take up new weaponry

There’s a whole new arsenal of weapons scattered across the Island. Launch yourself with the Shockwave Hammer, fire ballistic blades with the Ex-Caliber Rifle, and bring the thunder with the Thunder Shotgun. Also be sure to check out the Maven Auto Shotgun, Tactical Pistol, Red-Eye Assault Rifle, and Twin Mag SMG.

Claim your territory

Stick around a point-of-interest’s (POI’s) capture point to capture it. POI’s you’ve claimed will display your team’s Banners, making sure your competition knows who controls the territory. Capturing a POI will reward your team with loot, and in a POI under your squad’s control, Chests and opponents will be marked. Stay vigilant, others may try to claim the POI first.

Nature can be your greatest ally

Be aware of your surroundings, but in a good way — you never know what advantages are nearby. Grab some Slap Berries to gain Effective Health and short-term unlimited Energy regen, build a snowball and roll inside of it, and use Kinetic Ore to pull off some physics sorcery on your opponents.

The Chapter 4 Season 1 Battle Pass

This Season’s Battle Pass summons a new cast of combatants. With this Season’s Battle Pass purchase, you’ll immediately unlock the Selene Outfit, and by progressing in the Battle Pass, you can unlock Outfits like the ruler The Ageless, and the in-your-nightmares Doom Slayer. Later on in the Season, you’ll be able to unlock monster hunter for hire, Geralt of Rivia himself.

Behold Fortnite in full Unreal Engine 5

With the release of the new Chapter, Fortnite Battle Royale now makes use of Unreal Engine 5’s newest, most innovative features, via Unreal Engine 5.1.

Unreal Engine 5 ushers in a generational leap in visual fidelity, bringing an unprecedented level of detail to fully immersive worlds, including the Battle Royale Island. Next-gen Unreal Engine 5 features such as Nanite, Lumen, Virtual Shadow Maps, and Temporal Super Resolution are now available in Fortnite Battle Royale on PlayStation 5.

Nanite, Lumen, virtual shadow maps, and temporal super resolution

Nanite

Nanite provides highly-detailed architectural geometry. Specifically, buildings are rendered from millions of polygons in real time, and each brick, stone, wood plank, and wall trim is modeled.

Natural landscapes are highly-detailed too. Individual trees have around 300,000 polygons, and each stone, flower, and blade of grass is modeled.

Lumen

Lumen reflections provide high quality ray traced reflections on glossy materials and water.

Lumen provides real-time global illumination at 60 FPS. You’ll see beautiful interior spaces with bounce lighting, plus characters reacting to the lighting of their surroundings. (For example, red rugs may bounce red light onto your Outfit.) Also, Outfits that have emissive (a.k.a. glowing) qualities will scatter light on nearby objects and surfaces.

Virtual shadow maps

Virtual Shadow Maps allow for highly detailed shadowing. Each brick, leaf, and modeled detail will cast a shadow, and character self-shadowing is extremely accurate. This means that things like hats and other small details on characters will also cast shadows.