Fortnite Battle Royale adds new potion and character customisation in Halloween update

Fortnite has been given the customary Halloween once over in an update that adds some ghoulish cosmetics including a pumpkin rocket launcher, but the more substantial changes come in the popular (and completely free) Battle Royale game mode. Developer Epic Games has added a new potion called Slurp Juice, which regenerates one point each of health and shields per second for 25 seconds, and can get you back up to full health. Previously, knocking back the game's only potion would boost your shields by 50 points instantly.

Players will now automatically pick up ammo and building materials on the floor, too. That's useful, because items often fall in clumps and it's hard to collect bullets without also accidentally swapping out weapons.

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As promised, character customisation has arrived via a new 'Locker' menu. You buy character skins, gliders and pickaxes with V-Bucks, which you can purchase with real money or accumulate by playing the game's PvE campaigns (which are not free). Items for sale will rotate on both a daily and weekly basis, and are purely cosmetic.

Epic has also introduced leaderboards in Battle Royale for the first time, so you can see where you rank among your friends. There's more minor changes under the hood, including a reduced accuracy penalty for assault rifles while moving. Read the patch notes for the full details.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.