Fortnite season 3 begins with new pistol, building changes, and a ton of new cosmetics

Fortnite: Battle Royale’s third season has arrived, bringing with it some massive changes.

Fortnite: Battle Royale‘s third season has arrived, bringing with it some massive changes.

After teasing a lot of the improvements over the past week or so, they are now live in the game—or they were, until the servers were taken down again.

As usual, the patch brings with it a new weapon. This time it’s the Hand Cannon, a powerful new pistol that was teased yesterday. The Hand Cannon fires heavy ammo, the first pistol to do so, and only comes in epic and legendary rarities. Its damage stats aren’t revealed in the patch notes—but the teaser video shows it taking out a wood panel with a single shot.

The major change to the Pump Shotgun, an attempt to nerf the popular “double pump” strategy, are also contained in the update. Switching between a pair of Pump Shotguns will no longer skip the animation and allow players to fire at a more rapid rate.

The final big gameplay change are the improvements to the building system. Players can now build through just about everything in the game, and a new game option will switch between resource types automatically when one runs out. The final change is turbo building, allowing players to build the same piece at a rapid rate.

The patch also signals the launch of the season three Battle Pass. The Pass is available for 950 V-Bucks, and is thirty tiers bigger than the season two pass. It also contains way more cosmetics to unlock, with 76 new shiny things to claim. The reward for reaching tier 100 is the new John Wick-style skin, The Reaper, as well as a mystery reward.

In season three, three new types of cosmetic item are also being offered for the first time—back pieces, trails, and loading screens. Players can mix and match the skins and back pieces of all their previous skins, too. So your Black Knight can now have stone wings, or a nice bow, or even a pair of skis.

While these are all the big changes, there are even more changes in this patch to improve the game overall. Between a new orchestral score, color blindness settings, 60 FPS capability for consoles, and some tweaks to the audio and visual look of the game and menus, there’s a lot to love in this update.