Fortnite Chapter 2 launches with new areas and mechanics

10:32 AM ET

Kelly CohenESPN

Hey Fortnite fanatics: It’s time to start Chapter 2.

Fans of the game have spent the past 36+ hours itching see what was happening to their beloved game, and now there is a whole new world to conquer.

Season 10 ended Sunday afternoon with everything (shockingly) getting sucked into a black hole. Fortnite players woke up early Tuesday morning to the game’s second installment that includes a brand new map and a handful of changes.

What Players Can Expect

Epic Games officially launched Fortnite Chapter 2 at 6 a.m. EST, in which players can drop into this Season 11 world and explore a new island with 13 locations.

The new installment is water-centric, which means new swimming abilities, fishing objectives and boats. There are also new characters to support to your team, which includes new healing powers, the ability to carry teammates and celebration moves like high fives.

The new world also features new hideouts — this includes a dumpster — explosives and weapons to do combat with.

You can swim in #Fortnite and the boats are legit. pic.twitter.com/sTxLzoBIsj
– Brandon Davis (@BrandonDavisBD) October 15, 2019

How Did We Get Here

When players logged around 2 p.m. EST on Sunday, anticipating the end of Season 10 and the beginning of Season 11, they could only access a single mode: “The End.”

A handful of rifts and rockets showed up, and a large meteor crashed into Loot Lake. Next came an explosion, everything was sucked into a giant rift, leaving behind only a black hole.

The game was unplayable, and every medium Fortnite was on showed only a black hole. Social media? Black hole. Streams? Black hole. User reaction ranged from excited to not pleased. People were concerned about their items V-Bucks and contacte the Epic support line. No joke.

Fortnite is known for revamping with a new theme every few months, so what happened this week is no shock (though this is by far the most drastic stunt pulled by Fortnite).

The game is extremely popular worldwide. March 2019 was the last time Epic Games released a statistic about the number of registered accounts: 250 million players.

Social reactions

Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf recently won the first Fortnite World Cup, and he was quite pleased Tuesday morning.