Swords Are Officially Coming To ‘Fortnite’, But That’s Not All

This wasn’t really a huge surprise, since Epic decided to debut Season 7 of Fortnite: Battle Royale with the image of tactical Santa leading a Snowman army with a menacing-looking Sword in hand and then followed that up with the Ice King wielding a similar, blue variant of the same weapon. But now it’s confirmed via the official Fortnite Twitter: Swords are coming to Fortnite, sooner rather than later.

Swords have been a part of Fortnite: Save the World since launch, so it’s not entirely surprising that they’re now making their way into Battle Royale. Currently, the only melee weapon available in the game is the pickaxe, and it’s not a particularly viable combat option even in the wake of a recent buff that doubled its damage against enemy players. The sword, we assume, will be a lot more powerful, though weapons like these tend to take a lot of balancing to feel right. Typically, swords are high risk, high reward weapons in games that feature them: they can do huge damage up close but leave the attacker vulnerable as the close the gap. Anyone who’s played even a little bit of Halo knows the pain of being shotgunned even as you lunge in for the kill with an energy sword.

I doubt that Epic will go with the one-hit kill that we see in other games, but it wouldn’t be impossible for the sword to do something like 100 damage, which would wind up being a two-hit kill in most situations save a completely unshielded opponent. The other big questions surround range: a quick, Halo-style lunge or a broad sweep would make this a much more effective weapon, and a hitbox that looks a little more like the pickaxe would be much more limiting.

Interestingly enough, that’s not all this teaser is showing off. It also shows Polar Peak in a significantly more melted state, confirming recent reports that there’s an entire castle and village hanging out underneath there. That seems to be the narrative of this season: the iceberg has slammed into the island and will slowly melt as spring approaches: it’s unclear if we’ll lose the ice biome entirely by season’s end or if we’ll just see more reveals of this kind, like the return of Greasy Grove.

Expect swords to arrive this week, as Epic usually teases items that are coming in the next update. We’ll see how it goes.