Fortnite 5.20 Update Tosses The Double Barrel Shotgun Into The Mix

Fortnite's weekly patch has gone live and, in the midst of a meta that seems to revolve around SMGs, it has added a new type of shotgun. The Double Barrel Shotgun has been added to the game, and it might be powerful enough to swing the meta away from SMG dominance. There's also an interesting new limited-time game mode being added to Fortnite with this patch, and it's one that promises to keep players on their toes.

First, let's talk about the Double Barrel. This weapon will only be found in epic and legendary varieties, so don't expect to be too terribly common. Still, it'll be found in floor loot, chests, supply drops, and vending machines, so keep your eyes open and you'll likely encounter one before long.

As you'd probably imagine, the Double Barrel is capable of dishing out a lot of damage at close range – epic Double Barrels can do up to 143 base damage at what Epic calls "extreme close range," while legendary ones will do up to 150. You'll shoot the Fortnite-standard 10 pellet burst with each shot, but the Double Barrel has a larger spread and a lower critical damage multiplier than other weapons in its class. Perhaps due to the fact that the double Pump meta is still fresh in the minds of players, there's also a two-second cooldown on the Double Barrel when swapping weapons.

This week's limited-time game mode is called Steady Storm, which is mostly like a normal Fortnite match but with one key difference: the Storm never stops moving. Instead, it constantly closes in over the course of 15 minutes, and with no safe circles to pause in, you'll need to make sure that you're always staying ahead of it. That's especially important because the Storm will deal 10 damage per second from the start of the game, so anyone caught in it won't last very long.

Other changes coming along with this update include a vending machine rebalance that increases their spawn rate and decreases the costs associated with buying items from them. Epic has also made a couple of minor tweaks to the Playground LTM and implemented quite a few bug fixes, so even though this patch is fairly content-light, it still accomplishes a lot. Be sure to read through version 5.20's full changelog to see everything that's coming along with this patch.