So, I play Fortnite now; unexpected, I know. I started last season and thought I’d try and provide some guides for the new season as it releases. Let’s get going!
Season 9 of Fortnite sees some big changes occur to the island as the future is now! Areas have been updated into neo-tokyo-esque cities, slip-stream wind tunnels have become commonplace transit alternatives and the volcano has become a power plant. Pretty cool, huh?
Well, that isn’t all!
With a new season, comes a new Battle Pass and many new challenges to complete and cosmetics to showcase. Not only does every skin have a set of quests attributed to it, but there is also a new challenge set called Fortbytes. We’ll get to those in a bit…
Week 1 Challenges
First off, let’s have a look at the new challenges available in Week 01.
These tasks are mostly straightforward and will seem very commonplace to regular players, but there are a couple of quirky tasks in there. Most notable, these of slip-streams and the presence of sky platforms.
The sky platforms are this season’s analogue for pirate camps and are fairly obvious, as soon as you skydive into your first match.
They all look the same and take the form of a platform suspended by four large air jets. There are seven spread across the island and you need to visit all seven of them to complete the challenge. They can be found at the circled locations below.
The next new addition are the slip-streams. There is a primary slip-stream running from the Fatal Fields, up to The Block. However, there are two smaller slip-streams locked around Neo-Tilted and The Mega-Mall; two new locales.
The two-stage quest asks to you to use the slip-stream at Neo-Titled for Stage 1 and then the slip-stream at The Mega-Mall for Stage 2. I suspected you would need to travel around the location for the quest to complete, but you only need to enter the slip-stream to complete the challenge.
While these challenges are very simple, they do force you to interact with the new features and I suspect they are going to play a big part in the success or failure of this season as they really change up the movement potential of players.
UPDATE 01 : The final challenge for week 1 is a multistage challenge which involves dealing damage from various heights. The easiest way to do with is probably to get to a high, vantage point and sniper unsuspecting opponents. Personally, I found playing the LTM Team Rumble to be an easy and efficient way to get a lot of damage and eliminations for my challenges.
There is no wrong way to eliminate unsuspecting foes, eh?
Utopia Challenges
After completing all the challenges in a week, you will unlock the associated module in the Utopia Challenges.
These rewards alternate between Battle Stars and Banner cosmetics. To earn these rewards you have to crack the secret, hidden within a loading screen you earn after completing the challenges for the week.
By accessing your locker, you are able to view the new loading screen and discern the location of the reward. The Week 01 loading screen is as follows:
As you can see, us Switch players get a pile of junk overlaying the artwork, but the clues are still apparent. The background is vague and unhelpful, however, you can see an etching on the minion, front and centre. Even with the tooltip blocking part of the design, the symbols can be read as I5, J5, I6 and it can be assumed the final one is J6.
Based on my experiences from the last season, I know this is a set of co-ordinates to be visited On the map, you will find that these co-ordinates point you just south of Lonely Lodge:
The Battle Star can be found at the bottom of the hill, by the side of the road. It is easy to get to and quite an open position. Just watch out for opponents, depending on your game mode.
Style Challenges
Unlike last season which had four sets of style challenges, Season 9 brings a set of style challenges for every skin set, adding thematic cosmetics to each skin and style; very cool.
Upon buying the Battle Pass, you will have access to the Rox challenges and the Sentinel challenges. Let’s see what they are, below.
Again, these are all straightforward and will be unlocked over the course of the season. It is great to see emotes and accessories being made available for every character throughout the season, rather than just at the end.
As far as the requirements go, you can see many of these rewards are gated by the new system…
Fortbytes
This season introduces a new feature; the Fortbytes! This is a new challenge system that presents the same style of challenges we all know, but presents them in a different fashion.
When the season started, only a few of these Fortbyte challenges were available, but you can see the timer counting down to reveal more on a daily basis. Completing these challenges reveals a piece of an image behind the puzzle pieces, claiming it will “solve the mystery”.
As far as gameplay is concerned, these are fairly arbitrary challenges regarding XP and battle tiers. However, there is currently one secret-finding challenge available, so i am sure more will follow in time.
Fortbyte #36
Fortbyte #36 requires you to use specific skin and travel to a specific location. First, you will need to swap to the Sentinel skins and travel towards the snow biome. Upon finding the “frozen island”, the Fortbyte will appear and allow you to interact with it, like any item in the game. There are only two islands off the south west coast of the map and below you can see which one to travel to, to find your Fortbyte.
UPDATE 01 : The next couple of Fortbytes have been revealed; #24 and #47.
Fortbyte #24
The clue for this Fortbyte is “Found within Fatal Fields.” This is both straightforward and vague; Fatal Fields is quite a large area. After several attempts at scouting the area, I eventually found the Fortbyte located inside the main farm house, in a study. You may need to break a chair to get over to it.
Fortbyte #47
This Fortbyte’s clue is “Between a Reboot Van, a pirate camp and a crashed battles.” The only part that sticks out to me is the crashed battles which can be found north of Loot Lake. There are two notable Reboot Vans nearby, so through trial and error, I managed to find the Fortbyte located below, in the jungle.
This is all I have at the moment. I hope you have found this interesting and useful. When I have completed the tasks, i will update the article with details. Until then, I will be back next week with the challenges for Week 2 of Season 9.
Enjoy ^^
All screenshots were captured by Ellie and her foxy friend via the Nintendo Switch. The game depicted is owned by Epic Games and the log is owned by Foxy, the fox.
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