Epic Games has released a brand new patch for both Fortnite – Save The World and Fortnite – Battle Royale modes that bring the game up to version 1.7.1. Important additions in this patch include the Battle Eye anti-cheat system for PVP, player statistics for Battle Royale, an adjustment to both monster & hero damage in PVE and changes to the Horde Bash PVE special event.
Here is Epic Games’ description of their inclusion of Battle Eye:
“What are we doing about cheaters?
In this release, we’ve added a report button in-game which will allow players to swiftly report cheaters. What’s more, we released a blog last week detailing our current and future anti-cheat plans”
Horde Bash is a co-op multi-base defense mode where four players party up to defend against ten waves of Husks. What is unique about Horde Bash is that each player has a prebuilt base and there is no resource collection on the map (unlike Survive The Storm from a few weeks back). One of the problems with the new mode has been that players of all levels are required to unlock the difficulties one at a time. Matches could last upwards of an hour and many users complained that this slow progression for storm tickets was just not worth it.
In response, Epic Games has made it so that Tiers 1 through 3 of challenge mode will be unlocked by default. Also depending on where you are in campaign progression, you’ll unlock Horde Bash fights in different campaign zones.
Challenge the Horde
- Progression is now determined by the players progress in the Save the World campaign
- If the player has finished Plankerton Outpost 3 in the Save the World campaign, then all of Stonewood and the first three Plankerton zones will be unlocked in Challenge the Horde mode.
- Quests now have a minimum difficulty rather than a required one.
- If a quests states: Complete “Challenge 3 in a rating 9 zone,” the challenge can now be completed in any zone 9 or higher rather than in a zone with 9 difficulty specifically.
- When entering a Tier 1, 2 or 3 zone, all challenges within that zone are now unlocked by default.
- This will make progressing through the mode quicker.
The last large noteworthy addition in this patch is a general buff to Hero health and damage dealt alongside a smaller buff to Monster health as well. Extra damage & health for heroes will scale higher during end game content and high-level challenges – so this adjustment is aimed more so at players looking for the hardest content in the game rather than those just starting out.
Here’s an outline of the Hero changes for higher level play:
- Increased ability damage, health, and shield values on all heroes.
- All of these values increase depending on the on rarity of hero
- Increased by 10% every 5 levels, to a maximum of 30% for Uncommon up to 60% for Legendary
- These values were previously scaling relative to weapons without alterations and were falling well behind the curve at high levels as a result.
- No change at low levels, gradually scaling up with difficulty.
- Hero abilities and gadgets will have greater impact on monsters at higher levels.
You can find the full patch notes here – they include small details like specific weapon buffs to PVP weapons and the fact that the bus at the begining of Battle Royale has had its speed increased by 30%.
