Fortnite’s High Stakes mode hit a snag and was delayed until today’s update, in which it will debut alongside a new Grappler weapon that will hook onto anything and convey players to or away from the fray as they see fit. The new weapon is available in all modes, and can be found around the map, in vending machines, and in supply drops, just like any other weapon in the game besides the pickaxe. High Stakes mode is a new limited time mode, which means that players interested in giving it a try should do so before it’s gone. There’s no word as to when that may be.
The new High Stakes mode comes with a set of matching suits and mask skins, which are all available in the in-game shop. The mode itself sees squads dropping onto the island together to look for special safes scattered around the map. Inside those safes, which take a while to crack, are jewels. Once you grab a jewel, everybody will be able to see its location, and thus yours, on the map for 30 seconds. Carrying that jewel will give you extra health and shields, but also slow you down a bit. There are three getaway vans on the map at first, and one more will spawn later in the match. When a player gets to one with a jewel, they’ll have to build upward to reach it, since it’s floating in the air, then interact with it to leave the map and claim a Victory Royale. Once a jewel is escaped with or eaten up by the storm, a new safe will drop, ensuring that there are always four jewels. As for getaway vans, there will only be four throughout the match. Once all four have been used and four squads have claimed a Victory Royale, the match is over. There are some tweaks to make the matches more interesting, such as the removal of Launchpads and Rifts, the fact that only Rare and above weapons will appear, and the fact that there will be special supply drops made for pursuit, which are the only way to get the Grappler in this mode.
Speaking on bug fixes, the game sees a few minor ones that mostly amount to quality-of-life fixes. Players will notice that they can now continue firing while switching guns, ammo quantity counts will update properly, and the camera will no longer jitter around when you’re aiming down iron sights while sprinting, to name a few. A rare server crash has also been fixed; it was known to occasionally boot players from games or even shut down entire games at random while players were editing buildings.
