Season 9 of Fortnite: Battle Royale is upon us, and with it comes a brand new Battle Pass. Here’s everything you need to know about the Battle Pass, including cost, content and what’s new between this Season’s Battle Pass and previous seasons.
What It Costs
The Battle Pass is available now and costs 950 V-Bucks for the basic version or 2,800 V-Bucks for the expanded Battle Bundle version. This works out to roughly $9.50 for the basic version or $28 for the Battle Bundle depending on how many V-Bucks you purchase at a time.
Of course, if you played through Season 8 and didn’t spend any of the V-Bucks you earned you should be able to purchase the basic Battle Pass for free.
The basic version will get you started on the Battle Pass with a few tiers, two new skins and an a handful of cosmetics. The Battle Bundle will get you all that plus 25 more tiers, including XP bonuses, V-Bucks and a third skin.
New Battle Pass Cosmetics
You can see a rundown of all the Battle Pass cosmetics, including wraps, contrails, pickaxes, music, pets and more found in Season 9 here.
New Battle Pass Skins
You can see a rundown of all the Battle Pass skins found in Season 9 here. Bunker Jonesy is my favorite, even though he turned Peely into a banana shake and ate him.
Tier 100 Skin
Finally, check out the Tier 100 skin and how to evolve it here.
Season 9 Challenges
There are more challenges than ever in Season 9, as Epic does its level best to keep players invested in the game day-in, day-out.
Character Challenges
As you can see in the below image, there are now challenges for each and every Battle Pass skin. Some of these include progressive outfit changes; others include challenges to unlock pickaxes or Back Bling and so forth. This is a first for Fortnite, which has been adding more challenges and customization options to skins, but never this many at once.
For instance, here are some of the challenges for Rox, one of the first two skins you unlock in Season 9:
As you can see, there’s a variety of ways to unlock Rox’s various customizations, from finding Fortbytes (see below) to gaining XP to completing weekly challenges.
One of Bunker Jonesy’s challenges unlocks a cape made out of the Peely outfit:
Fortbyte Challenges
New to Season 9 is the Fortbyte system, which tasks players with finding 100 different ‘Fortbyte’ data chips spread out across the map and awarded for hitting certain benchmarks such as placing in the top 10, gaining XP and so forth. 18 are available now, and here’s a guide to help you find one of them.
You’ll need to find these to complete an assortment of challenges across characters and the new Utopia Challenges. Fortbytes will be released every couple of days, so you’ll need to check back in regularly to see where or to find each one. This is Epic’s attempt to keep players more engaged than ever in Season 9.
Utopia Challenges
We’ve seen something similar to the Utopia Challenges every season since Season 4′s Blockbuster Challenges. Last season it was Discovery Challenges. Basically, you need to complete each week’s challenges in full to unlock a hidden loading screen. Inside that loading screen you’ll find either a hidden Battle Star or Banner, and new to Season 9 sometimes you’ll also find Fortbyte locations.
There are also weekly challenges, same as ever. You can see the challenges for Week 1 right here.
Read the patch notes for Season 9 here, including new and vaulted weapons and more.
Here’s the Season 9 Battle Pass Overview Trailer:
Watch the hilarious Season 9 cinematic trailer here.
So that’s the Season 9 Battle Pass in a nutshell. With all the cosmetics, new challenges and the entirely new Fortbyte system, it seems like a pretty good deal to me. Then again, you can play Fortnite entirely for free and there are still a number of rewards you’ll get simply by playing without paying a dime. You’ll earn these by completing the Free challenges each week. Either way, you’ll get to experience all the major map changes and other new content that landed in the game with Season 9, so you really can’t go wrong.
What do you think of Fortnite Season 9 so far? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.
