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It feels like yesterday we watched a rocket shatter the space-time continuum in the sky above Fortnite's map, but we're already just a few weeks away from Fortnite Season 6, which means big map changes, a new battle pass, a new theme, and plenty of new skins.
The ball—er, cube is already rolling towards a Fortnite Season 6 reveal, with a massive lightning storm from a shrinking rift summoning a mysterious purple artifact. Players have been poking and prodding the purple cube as it slowly traverses the map in search of clues: where it's going, and what will it do once it gets there? So, tinfoil hats firmly planted on our heads, here's everything we know about Fortnite Season 6 so far, along with a bit of wild speculation.
What's up with the cube?
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Good question! We don't know. But plenty of people are making plausible guesses. If you're new to Fortnite, here's the short version of the 'story' so far.
A missile launched and broke the sky. A viking village and desert and a temple dedicated to the worship of a tomato appeared out of the cracks, bringing in locations and characters from varying time periods. The space-time police weren't happy about this, and as alluded to in the description under the Enforcer skin released just last week, it's time to restore order.
Order means closing the rift, which happened over the course of a few weeks and culminated in a lightning storm that eventually summoned a massive seemingly sentient cube to Fortnite's island. Little has been discovered about the cube since it showed up. It's bouncy, it zaps out bolts of lightning when shot, and it's covered in strange runic symbols. It made a short pit stop on August 28 to print a rune into the ground and deploy a low-grav field, and will presumably so do again before the season is up. It's begun moving again approximately every two hours, crawling towards an unknown final destination.
The low-gravity arena is here to stay.
Some players think it's heading to somewhere just outside of Salty Springs, citing the direction all the stone heads that appeared with the rift are facing. Others believe it's heading to Loot Lake, citing some datamined scripts that reference a 'lake' as a potential final destination. We're keeping a watchful eye on our big, blocky friend and will update with any new happenings as quickly as possible.
When does Fortnite Season 6 start?
While Epic hasn't announced an official start date, seasons typically start right after another ends. That positions Season 6 for a September 20 start date. Expect the time to move by a few days depending on how prepped Epic is with whatever changes the team is working on.
What will the theme of Fortnite Season 6 be?
I'm guessing worlds will continue to collide, but not via cracks in time this go-round. There's not much to go on in this regard, but (tinfoil hats on?) look at the background in this recent tease for the Capoeira emote. Squint. Squint harder. Looks a bit like a castle, yeah?
While it doesn't exactly back up the stone mirage, battle pass items have hinted at things to come before, which makes the 'Crazy Castle' spray stand out. It's even titled with the usual alliteration saved for major points of interest.
Epic tends to use old test maps for these promotions, so that castle could just be a strange configuration of trees and the missing viking village and villain base might only be missing because it's an old map—but I want to believe. Maybe the cube will somehow send the entire map back in time, reshuffle the locations and the eras they're attached to.
What kind of map changes will Fortnite Season 6 see?
Besides the possibility of a castle area, we have no idea what the map changes will look like. We do have an inkling about where they'll take place though. FNBRLeaks sums it up succinctly in this thread.
The basic idea is that when the rocket launched last season, almost every major area it passed over has been affected since. The thruster landed in Anarchy Acres and it's gone now, replaced by Lazy Links. It popped out over Tilted Towers, which currently has a new building under construction. It flew over most of Moisty Mire, which is a desert now, and burst out by the hill near Greasy Grove, which is home to the chilly viking village. The only location that hasn't seen a change where the rocket appeared? Loot Lake.
Loot Lake has been quite the contentious area since Fortnite BR first launched. As a wide open area that slows movement and basically requires building, it's not necessarily a fun location until the endgame when players have enough mats to bridge the waters. Personally, I don't hate the area, but its size and proximity to the center of the map make it an annoyance to bump into more often than not. While I don't think the water needs to go completely, changes to the area are long overdue. If the cube is indeed headed to Loot Lake as the datamined script implies, then we're expecting a makeover on the scale of the new desert location.
Plus, as much as I like the desert area, it makes the map look a touch lopsided. There have to be some people at Epic that agree and won't let such an aesthetic injustice stand. I'll be surprised if another chunk of the map isn't reworked in a similar way, new color palette, biome, and all.
What new items will we see in Fortnite Season 6?
A trend is emerging with the technology introduced each season and the items that spring from them. In Season 4 hop rocks were consolidated into bounce pads before disappearing in Season 5. And in Season 5, rifts might be going away for good, but rifts-to-go maintain their sky-diving teleportation powers in a cheap snow globe. It's likely that the cube will introduce some new form of technology that affects movement in some way, which will then be turned into its own item or items. No matter what we see, with Fortnite's arsenal filling out, Season 6 will almost certainly see the most unpredictable new tools.
What kind of skins will we see in Fortnite Season 6?
Cube-themed skins. Expect angles and sides.
Truthfully, we're not sure yet. If time-travel is explored further this season then we could see more cultures and time periods arrive as skins. More knights, a king, a queen, a jester, and other medieval archetypes are likely to show up if the castle is the real deal. Fortnite's skins are so varied anyway that it's safe to expect anything.
How much will the Fortnite Season 6 battle pass cost?
If previous seasons are anything to go by, the Fortnite Season 6 battle pass will cost 950 V-Bucks, or approximately $10.
