Well, the 1st birthday bash for Fortnite has ended. Hopefully, you were able to complete the three challenges and earn your birthday cake backbling. Just to recap, last week saw the re-release of the guided missile into the game, as well as the high explosives game mode. This week’s patch introduces the double barrel shotgun, a new game mode called Steady Storm, fixes and improvements to many gameplay aspects and some new UI functions. There are a few things to cover in this week’s patch so without further ado, let’s jump in and take a deeper look into the new additions and recent changes.

Double Barrel Shotgun

The double barrel shotgun would appear to be similar to the heavy shotgun. It comes in both legendary and epic rarities. The gun can be found as floor loot, inside chests, supply drops and vending machines. The double barrel shotgun packs a punch at close range, but damage starts to drop heavily at distances. The gun fires 10 pellets similar to other shotguns, the spread is larger, and there is a 2-second delay when switching weapons. The epic variant of the double barrel shotgun deals up to 143 base damage per shot at close range (compared to the heavy shotgun’s 73.5), and the legendary variant deals up to 150 damage per shot at close range (compared to the heavy shotguns 77 damage). This shows that the double barrel shotgun is more powerful than the heavy shotgun. It will be interesting to see how much this changes the meta in terms of shotguns.

Limited Time Mode: Steady Storm

Steady storm is a new limited time mode available now in Fortnite Battle Royale. The mode contains only one storm that closes in over the course of 15 minutes. There are no safe zones, it’s up to players to keep watch of the storm and estimate where it will close in. The storm does 10 damage per second to anyone who is consumed. Profile stats such as K/D and wins, as well as challenges, are tracked in the mode.

Vending Machine Changes

Everyone’s favorite vending machines have had their formula revamped to spawn more often, cost less and have a better chance of spawning at a higher rarity. Common vending machines have had their spawn chance reduced, common weapon costs have been reduced from 100 materials down to 75. Uncommon and rare vending machines have both had their spawn chances increased by almost 6.0%. Materials required for uncommon items has been reduced from 200 down to 150. Rare vending machines require 225 materials to make a purchase, versus the 300 it originally was.

Epic vending machines spawn chance has been increased from the measly 5.45% up to 18.67%. The cost of materials for items has been reduced from 400 to 300. Finally, legendary vending machines have their 3.64% spawn chance increased to 8%, and material cost that used to be a painful 500, is now only 375 materials. Consider that on many fronts.

Other Changes

Players who enjoy remote explosives will be unhappy to learn that the drop counts and stack sizes of the explosives have been reduced. The drop count for remote explosives have been reduced to three (from the original four), and the max amount of explosives you can have in a stack is six.

A higher accuracy penalty has been added to dual pistols, SMGs and hunting rifles for jumping and sprinting.

The weapon fire position will now follow the player more closely when crouching and uncrouching.

New Additions

First and foremost, the biggest addition in patch v5.20, one of the most requested features to be added to the game is the ability to check challenges in-game. Daily and suggested challenges have been added to the map screen in-game.

Players are now able to honk while driving the ATK as if the vehicle didn’t make enough noise already, why not give your enemies even more warning of your whereabouts. Grenades now have a new equip sound which is a strange and random addition.

The patch also introduces a wide array of bug fixes for gameplay, audio, UI, etc. This is everything included in the v5.20 patch. It’s interesting to see how much will remain the same, and how much ends up changing before the v5.20 content update.