Fortnite: Chapter 4 / v4.0 Patch Notes — New Weapons, POIs and Mobility

Update v4.0 is live, and it opens a brand-new season with a spectacle: a massive meteor tears across the sky and reshapes the island forever. Beyond the headline event, this patch delivers new points of interest, a gravity-defying consumable, a batch of new weapons, and a set of combat and quality-of-life changes that meaningfully alter how fights play out. This summary distills the most important changes so you can drop in already knowing what is different.

New Map and Points of Interest

The season's story is "brace for impact." A colossal meteor crashes into the map, permanently altering the terrain and opening fresh hotspots to explore. Veteran landing spots you knew by heart may now look unfamiliar, so treat your first few matches as reconnaissance — the old routes no longer hold, and new sightlines reward players who adapt quickly.

The headline new location is Risky Reels, a fresh map hotspot spawned by the meteor's fallout. It joins the rotation of contested drop zones, so expect heavy early traffic and plan your landing accordingly. While you investigate the crater's secrets, remember that the season also introduces a new Battle Pass with 100 tiers of rewards, including fresh skins and emotes — a good reason to grind the new challenges as you learn the changed map.

New Weapons and Combat Items

The patch adds a military-themed weapon set, broadening the arsenal with distinct roles. The Whisper 45 is a suppressed semi-automatic pistol; the Specter is a fully automatic submachine gun with a high rate of fire, and its purple and orange rarities ship with a built-in suppressor. The Ground Pounder is a fast-firing, accurate semi-auto shotgun built for close pressure, while the Bald Eagle is a slow, heavy pistol that trades speed for big damage and knockback — its damage and knockback were bumped by 30%. Rounding out the set is the Crossbow, a sniper-class weapon whose projectile suffers no damage falloff, making it deadly at any range.

Several existing scoped sniper rifles also received range buffs: their effective range was extended from 20 tiles to 50 tiles, removing damage drop-off and rewarding players who hold long sightlines. A few weapon rules changed too — the crossbow was disabled in battle royale this patch, the rocket launcher's reticle now stays fixed and no longer blooms with movement, and aiming down sights now displays a damage readout. The pickaxe also hits supply llamas harder, dealing 50 damage per swing.

Mobility and New Mechanics

The standout new item is Hop Rocks, a consumable spawned by the meteor that temporarily alters gravity when used — letting you leap higher and fall slower for a short window. It is a genuine mobility tool: use it to reach rooftops, escape the storm edge, or reposition in ways enemies will not expect. Treat Hop Rocks as a tactical reset button rather than a gimmick.

The Spawn Island also received attention this patch. Players can now freely dismantle objects there (the Battle Bus excluded), the visible draw distance on the island was tripled, and network movement on it was optimized — so the pre-match warm-up feels smoother and more useful for practicing builds. Combined with Hop Rocks, vertical play and pre-fight positioning are stronger than ever this season.

Combat, Hitbox and Gameplay Tweaks

Headshot logic was reworked in an important way. Shots coming from above or at eye level that travel toward a player's head are no longer blocked by the torso — bullets now pass through obstructing limbs such as hands or arms and correctly register as headshot damage, with one exception: shots from below still count as body shots. This applies to every weapon except the rocket launcher and grenade launcher. Hand hitboxes were also slightly shrunk, making stray limb hits less punishing.

Other combat refinements include visible damage numbers in spectate mode, and a fix so that knocking a player off the island now registers consistently with the fall-death system — including displaying the fall height when you cause a fatal drop. These changes reward precise aim and punish lazy sprays, nudging the meta toward calculated engagements over raw volume of fire.

UI, Performance and Quality of Life

The patch rounds out with a healthy layer of polish. The locker now lets you set preferred skins and adds a "Random" button that picks from your favorites (or your whole collection if none are favorited); emotes are no longer capped at six slots; and new bindable keys were added for emotes. Auto-run now shows an on-screen indicator, friendly player arrows shrink as they get close, and the default fifth and sixth weapon keys changed from X/Z to 5/6. The game also added 4:3 aspect-ratio support.

On the technical side, performance was improved for many players on screen at once, item-collection errors were fixed, and Level-of-Detail details were tweaked for Shifty Shafts and Flush Factory. Console optimizations landed as well, and mobile received its own upgrades: drag items in the quickbar to drop or swap, long-press the move key for three seconds to toggle auto-run, new "Repair Build" and "Switch Weapon" buttons, reduced aim-assist at long range, and correct grenade trajectory display.

The patch also polished presentation across the board. The replay system now shows the match's player roster and returns you to the replay menu on exit, while shotgun and revolver reload animations were corrected and the hunting-shotgun animation was refreshed. Landing dust is now visible to all players, storm-affected trees gained new wind animations, and audio got finer touches — shotgun reload sounds only play once a shell is ready, landing sounds now vary by fall height, and new hit sounds were added for bushes, shrubbery, and cornstalks. All told, v4.0 is less a tweak and more a seasonal reboot — new ground to learn, new toys to master, and a faster, cleaner match from bus to victory.