Fortnite v9.10 Patch Notes: Hot Spots, Semi-Auto Sniper, and Much More

Take a look at a breakdown of the v9.10 patch and what it means for Fortnite players.

Fortnite v9.10 is live and comes with a long list of additions, changes, and bug fixes.

One of the shining areas of 9.10 is that Epic finally changed the damage color when taking shield damage. The red was incredibly confusing and made you feel as though you were getting lasered every time. Hopefully, this will make taking damage a lot less disorienting in the moment.

Let's get into the other additions and changes included in the Fortnite patch notes.

Hot Spots

Hot spots appear to be another element that Fortnite has borrowed from Apex Legends, but it has a bit of a twist. Apex Legends introduced tiered loot areas when it released, and Fortnite is doing something similar here.

Each match, there will be a named location that will be listed in gold. This will indicate the presence of loot carriers, which offer high-quality weapons.

There will always be one hot spot with a 25% chance of two hot spots and a 5% chance of three.

Each hot spot will have 12 to 16 loot carriers. Each loot carrier drops a rare or better weapon and two stacks of ammo.

Weapons

The Semi-Auto Sniper is back, which no one is probably too excited about.

According to Epic, "Since the Thermal Rifle and Scoped Revolver have both recently been vaulted, this week we wanted to bring back an oldie but goodie to round out the medium/long-range item line-up."

Shadow Bombs saw a slight nerf in terms of their availability. Epic reduced the availability from floor loot (.835% to .677%) and from chests (4.65% to 3.98%). They also reduced their drop count from three to two.

"Shadow Bombs have seen a lot of late-game use, and we wanted to encourage risk vs. reward when picking the item up. By leaving maximum stack size the same & reducing availability, the item’s potential remains the same but swapping a spot for it early on is riskier."

The Combat Shotgun saw a similar adjustment. Epic reduced the drop chance of this gun as well: 2.015% to 1.409% from floor loot and 2.183% to 1.846% from chests.

Epic is probably going to have to nerf this weapon eventually. It's quickly become one of the most powerful guns in the game.

Gameplay and Bug Fixes

Epic didn't add too much on the gameplay front outside of the new Hot Spots. They added a crosshair while sky diving for better marking, and improved blueprint equipping in high-latency situations.

There have been a ton of bug fixes in this patch, including one of the most annoying bugs in the game: Dropping part of a consumable item stack no longer interrupts using the consumable.

This bug has been in Fortnite for what seems like months. Finally, we can drop shields, bandages, and medkits while using them.

Here are the other things that Epic fixed with this patch:

Weapons and Items

• Shadow Bombs correctly leave the players inventory when no charges are left.
• Shadow Bombs are consumed properly when quickly picking up a replacement item during activation.
• Combat Shotgun now applies appropriate environmental damage falloff.
• Ability to move is no longer lost if Rift-to-go was used with Balloons.
• The Bush now correctly attaches to players in specific animations, such as skydiving.
• Resolved inconsistent behavior while using Flint-Knock pistol during crouch.
• Air vent audio is now correctly removed upon on destruction.
• Boogie Bombs now properly prevent affected players from skydiving.
• Camera issues when exiting a Mounted Turret have been resolved.
• Remote Explosives will now open and close with doors they are stuck to.

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue with auto material swap canceling turbo build if the client can’t predict the material amount quick enough.
• Updated Environmental and Cozy Campfire Trap collision to better allow players to walk over campfires.
• Players can no longer fire/reload weapons while reviving a DBNO teammate.
• Contrails are no longer stuck on the player if they dropped from the bus directly into a Slipstream.

Performance

• Fixed a regression in level streaming performance introduced in v9.0. This should significantly improve loading times for buildings, and reduce instances of players landing on low-LOD meshes.
• Reduced hitches shortly after landing, especially on lower-end hardware (e.g Switch)

Audio Changes

We already received information on the audio changes Epic was going to be making with this patch. We'll have to see how all of this shakes out and if it fixes the longstanding problems with the Fortnite audio.

Here are the changes and bug fixes Epic made.

• Improved enemy jump sounds.
• Reduced the time that it takes the enemy in-air audio loop to kick on, for better awareness of an enemy dropping in on you from above.
• Boosted the volume of nearby footsteps and landing sounds of enemies not in line of sight.
• Tighter spatialization of close-range pickaxe sounds from other players.
• Added clearer sound when an enemy confirms an edit on a building piece within ~2 tiles of your position.
• Removed glider audio tell for players traveling through a Slipstream.
• Your emote music is now prioritized over other players emotes in the front-end.
• Emote music is now full stereo when in the front-end.
• Added a new Headshot + Shield Break sound, for when the two events occur at the same time.
• Lowered the minimum velocity required to trigger a landing sound

Bug Fixes

• Walking up on the edge of a building piece plays correct material specific footstep audio.
• Enemy pickaxe sound now plays correctly from impact point and not from player using the pickaxe.
• The Boom Bow’s fire sound has been fixed to not cut off when switching weapons immediately after shooting.
• Firing weapons no longer lowers building sounds.

What do you think about the hot spots, the Semi-Auto Sniper, and the other changes made to Fortnite? Let us know on Twitter: @FortniteTracker.