Fortnite’s reboot vans are here, and now I have even more time to yell “please get over here!” at my teammates. Advertisement Last week, Epic announced reboot vans for Fortnite. The vans let teammates in the popular battle royale game respawn each other. They were added to the game today, appearing at points of interest around the map in today’s 8.30 update. As the patch notes detail, they take 10 seconds to respawn a teammate once activated. Revived players return to the game with a gray pistol, 100 wood, 36 ammo, and 100 health, which is a change from the system in battle royale rival Apex Legends, where players respawn with nothing. Unlike Apex, the vans don’t vanish once used, but operate on a two-minute cooldown. The vans didn’t figure into the matches I played this morning, unfortunately. To get revived, another player needs to pick up your reboot card from among the loot you drop when you die and take it to a van. No one picked up one of my cards. Since I’m a good person, I did attempt to collect theirs, but I was often killed by nearby enemy players before I could get to my team’s cards. The feature is new, so it’s possible not everyone understands how to use it. Echoing my experience, one player wrote on reddit, “It’s cool to revive someone with the van but lets be honest, when you kill 4 guys in a row and you have 20 hp and 50 of wood it’s gonna be pretty hard to get that card and revive your mate.” Following that logic, players drained from a tough fight may prioritize their own health and resources rather than trying to reboot other players. Deciding if and how to get a teammate’s banner to revive them is part of the fun of Apex Legends, where the game’s agility makes it possible to swoop in, rescue a teammate, and escape. The clunkier, slower movement of Fortnite makes these dramatic rescues harder to pull off, which may have turned my teammates off from rescuing me. Or, given that I was playing with random people and it’s not that hard to continue in a Fortnite match without your teammates, reboot cards just didn’t feel like a priority to the people I was playing with. On reddit and Twitter, a few players have posted clips of using the vans, but they aren’t that widespread yet, making it hard to tell how popular the vans are turning out to be. Players can be downed in the game and revived before a meter expires. Normally, helpful teammates will revive you. In a stream I watched today, one player begged his teammates to let him die so he could test out the van. Given that you have 30 health when you’re revived as opposed to 100 health if you reboot, dying and rebooting might be a better option health-wise if the situation is safe enough. One player posted a clip of them respawning from a van just after their teammate was killed and then taking out an enemy with the low-powered gray pistol. In the comments, readers discuss that the player appears to have five seconds of invulnerability after respawning. There’s no indication of this in the patch notes, but players are wondering if it is a way to counter others from camping the vans. If true, it’s an interesting choice, especially given that you can shoot and damage other players without taking damage in return. Some dislike this feature, with one writing on Reddit that this makes you “basically a god for 5 seconds.” Advertisement Fortnite’s 8.30 patch also added a new event, Buccaneer’s Bounty, which is a daily series of limited-time modes and in-game challenges. Storm damage has also been changed, with “the initial instance of damage [starting] 1 second after entering the Storm.” See the patch notes for the rest of the game’s changes and bug fixes.<doc-sep>The phantom vans we spotted when Fortnite Season 8 arrived are exactly what everyone suspected: respawn stations. During the latest Fortnite Dev Update video, Reboot Vans were formally announced and detailed by a man in a banana suit. They mostly work as expected, and they're arriving next week. Here's the rundown if you don't want to watch the the scary banana: Eliminated squadmates drop reboot cards. Much like Apex Legends, you'll need to sweep over the remains of your teammate and pick up an item if you have any hope of bringing them back. Surviving squadmates can activate reboot cards at any van. You'll then need to go out of your way and likely into danger to find a reboot van to bring a bud back. It's a small price to pay for friendship. The reboot process kicks off a loud audio cue and sends a beacon of light into the sky. If it was too easy to bring teammates back, matches would never end. Rebooting a bud is also loud, bright invitation from any nearby squads to finish off the rest of your team. Once the reboot process finishes, that van will be need to recharge before it can be used again. I'm not sure how this will play out, but it makes each van a more contestable, valuable resource. We still don't know how long it takes for the reboot process to finish or for each van to recharge, but we'll find out when the update hits next week. Personally, I'm pretty excited to see how the vans reinvigorate squad play, if they do at all. Squad mode was gutted once the siphon mechanic was removed (health given to players for every kill), so respawns could be the panacea Fortnite players are longing for. It could also be the thing that gets my friends to finally play Fortnite with me, but I'm not holding out much hope. Apex Legends exists, after all.<doc-sep>Epic has finally unveiled Fortnite's new respawn system - possibly the game's worst-kept secret ever - in a dev update video. The vans were first spotted last month when players discovered a bug which displayed the model in-game. With such an obvious appearance, players quickly guessed they were supposed to be used for respawning, but nobody knew quite how it would work. Until now. The vehicles themselves are called reboot vans, and players will need to grab reboot cards from their fallen comrades in order to resurrect their squad. Players then bring these to a van and wait for their teammates to be beamed down from the sky. Star Trek has certainly gone in a new direction. For some battle royale fans, this may sound awfully familiar. The reason for this is the fundamental elements of the respawn system (ignoring surface differences such as vans instead of beacons) are essentially the same as the one in Apex Legends. In both games, players must pick up a tag, run to a set point, and must wait to respawn their teammates while a noisy visual cue appears to alert surrounding players of the respawn. One of the only major differences between the two is Fortnite's vans become temporarily unusable after a respawn, although it's unclear as to whether this applies to all players or just the newly-respawned squad. Another potential difference not detailed in the video is whether players will have limited time to collect the reboot cards - a mechanic used to add urgency to rescuing squadmates in Apex Legends. Fortnite also recently introduced a squad communication system, which some suggested was similar to Apex Legends' much-praised ping system. The main difference here is Fortnite's system is much more basic. The ability to respawn teammates was one of the key selling points for Apex Legends, and helped separate the battle royale from other titles. Perhaps Epic knew it could get some flak for suspiciously introducing these mechanics post-Apex Legends, as in February Epic explained in a Reddit AMA it was considering both squad communications and respawns. Epic suggested it had been considering the respawn mechanic "for a while", although the end result still seems pretty similar to Apex Legends'. The vans are due to (officially) make an appearance in update v8.30, which should arrive sometime next week.<doc-sep>The latest Fortnite battle royale dev update video confirms that the new Reboot Vans will go live next week, and the devs have detailed how they’ll work. Epic Games latest dev update reveals that the respawn feature will go live in Fortnite next week when the Reboot Vans roll out in update v8.30. Back in February, Epic said it was looking at adding a single-occupancy vehicle as well as a respawn mechanic in the same vein as Apex Legends’ respawn beacons. Last month, as Season 8 kicked off, vans were discovered on the map, with a bit of datamining revealing that they were referred to as Second Chance Vans. Watch on YouTube Both the Reboot Van and Reboot Cards will be introduced in the update. Players can pick up their downed-squadmates’ Reboot Cards and activate it at the vans to get them back into the game. Once activated, a “beacon and audio cue will be set off”, making nearby players aware that there’s a reboot in progress, as well as how many players are arriving. Squadmates will spawn in one-by-one on top of the van. The van will be have an as-yet unspecified cooldown period. Fortnite recently made news when Prince Harry decided that it should be banned, so we should thank our lucky stars that he’s not our ruling monarch.<doc-sep>
Fortnite may be in a controversial state of balance right now, but that hasn’t slowed Epic down from updating the game. The developer announced on Friday afternoon that next week’s Fortnite patch will include one of the biggest new introductions since launch with Reboot Vans. These are special vans parked around the world that allow you to respawn fallen squad mates. This feature, which Apex Legends helped popularize, will work similarly to other battle royale games. When a squad mate dies, you’ll have to collect their Reboot Card. Reboot Cards will drop along with an allies loot when they get eliminated. Once you have the Reboot Card you, or any other squad member, can take it to a Reboot Van and bring the teammate back to life. Using a Reboot Van is always a risk, according to Epic. Activating a van causes a loud honking sound — not unlike the one the Battle Bus makes at the start of a match. It also sends a column of light into the sky, and lets surrounding players know how many people will be respawning. Fans have speculated about a respawn feature since the beginning of season 8, when vans were initially visible in the game’s replay mode. Players immediately pegged the vans as respawn points, especially in light of Apex Legends launching with the feature just a few weeks earlier. It’s unclear how the addition of respawns will affect Fortnite. Epic removed health-on-elimination because the developer said it was causing too much aggressive play. With the addition of respawns for squad mates, Epic may feel the game can support a more aggressive play style, since eliminations won’t be as punishing. We’ll have to wait until the Reboot Van launches with Fortnite patch 8.30, which should be on either Tuesday, April 9 or Wednesday, April 10.