40.20 Fortnite Ecosystem Updates and Release Notes

The v40.20 release brings Custom Items and Inventory to Beta — you can now publish islands with the feature enabled. This release also includes Star Wars™ tools updates, new Verse fields functionality for building interactive UI, new prefabs and galleries, and updates to Fortnite Communities.

Custom Items and Inventory Enters Beta

Custom Items and Inventory is now available in Beta, which means that you can publish your islands with the feature enabled. Customize, modify, or completely replace the default player inventory system. You can create custom items with unique properties, design gameplay that reacts to player inventories, and build systems like in-game economies and crafting mechanics! 

• We’ve removed @experimental from all Custom Items & Inventory classes. You can now publish your islands with the feature enabled!

• Fortnite item entities can now be found under these paths:

  • using { /Fortnite.com/Items } and using { /Fortnite.com/Weapons }

• Item names follow this convention: [PublicFacingName]_[Product]_[Version]_[Rarity], for example:

  • CombatAssaultRifle_BR_Ch7S1_Common

  • FlashlightPistol_Creative_V1_Rare

Itemization components are no longer specific to Itemization, and can be used generally in Scene Graph. The following components have been updated and include new basic functionality:

• Inventory Component

• Fort Inventory Component

• Item Component

• Icon Component

• Description Component

• Rarity Component

• Stacking Component

Refer to the component documentation for code snippets and examples.

New Additions to the Galaxy: Updates to STAR WARS™ Tools

Starting Tomorrow: Schedule Your STAR WARS Island Release!

Plan ahead and schedule the publishing of your Star Wars island’s release in the Creator Portal. Once your island passes moderation, it will automatically publish at your chosen time — no manual launch needed.

The earliest you can schedule your island launch is when the Star Wars publishing hold lifts on May 1 at 9AM (ET). You can choose any time beyond that as well.

Hero Device Updates

You can now adjust the values for a hero's health, shield, and movement speed. Extend your gameplay with unique values that align with custom player stats. 

In addition, Leia's loadout now includes a Rebel Airstrike grenade for aerial assist. To learn more, see Hero Device. 

Theme Guard Dialogue Extended

The Guard Spawner device character set for custom dialogue has expanded to include:

• Galactic Civilians

• Rebel Troopers

• Moon Traders

• Stormtroopers

• Stormtrooper Elites

• Clonetroopers

• Clonetrooper Elites

• Mandalorians

Learning Content

To further guide your development, the following documents were updated:

• Cinematic Vehicles: New page highlighting steps to animate vehicle components, like thrusters and doors, with Sequencer.

• Lightsabers and Force Powers: Added steps to migrate the Lightsaber Workbench from the learning template into another project.

• Vistas and Biome Environments: Updated with guidance on migrating the hyperspace effect, adjusting the Twin Sun day sequence actor, and additional tips for background assets.

• Working With STAR WARS™ Islands: Latest list of assets available in the feature set.

Follow a Developer Update

On April 30 (Fortnite ecosystem release v40.30), we’re removing the Follow a Developer button from the Developer Profile Link device. The device will remain available but it will no longer include the follow call-to-action.

If you direct players to use the device to follow your profile, please update those callouts before v40.30. 

We’re adding a prompt for players to follow a developer in the Exit sidebar flow when leaving an island. Existing follower counts are not affected.

Bring NPCs to Life with AI-Powered Conversations

The new conversations (formerly Persona device) is now available as an Experimental feature. With conversations, you can create AI-powered characters with personalities and voices that can talk, react, and respond to player actions — and even drive gameplay. 

Before you get started, read the blog, check out the updated Fortnite Developer Rules and visit LLM Conversations for the full suite of documentation. Or jump right into creating with Designing a Conversation.

Content Browser and Inventory Updates

Check out all the new devices and items available in this release!  

Community Feedback:

• By community request, new instances of the Trigger Device now default to SFX and VFX are now set to Off. This does not affect already-placed Triggers.

• After receiving feedback from developers, new instances of the Mutator Zone now default to Enable VFX set to Off. This does not affect already-placed Mutator Zones.

• Due to most common usage, new instances of the Accolade device now default to Triggering Player Only. This does not affect already-placed Accolades.

New Weapons

• Enhanced Harpoon Gun

New Prefabs and Galleries

• Clawsy Lodge Reception Prefab

  

• Clawsy Lodge Bungalow Lodge Prefab

  

• Clawsy Lodge Wall Gallery

• Clawsy Lodge Floor Gallery

• Clawsy Lodge Roof Gallery

• Clawsy Lodge Prop Gallery

• Winterfest Golden Coast Reception Prefab

• Winterfest Golden Coast Prop Gallery

• Winterfest Golden Coast Nature Gallery

Debug Commands

Additional Commands

We’ve added another command to help you efficiently debug your projects. Here’s what has been added in 40.20:

• Invulnerability - Enable or disable invulnerability to prevent taking damage.

Quality of Life Additions

• Suffixes and prefixes have been added to commands like Change Team now displaying Team 10 instead of 10 in the parameter.

• Numeric input is now supported in scalar parameters.

Fortnite Communities Updates

A number of new features have been added to the Fortnite Communities web platform since the initial launch. These include:

• Community Management: Add members to your Team so they can help you moderate your community.

• Ban users: Members of the community management team can ban users for specified time limits that range from one hour to permanently.

• Filter communities by keyword: You can now type in a community’s name in the Explore Communities page to quickly find communities by your favorite developers or your favorite islands.

• Pinned posts: Pin one or more posts to the top of a channel.

• Read-only channels: Specify channels that only the Community Team can post in.

• Toggle off replies on a post: Close a post to further comments.

• Mark as read: Click the ellipsis menu next to a community or channel to clear out the activity dots.

• Improvements to images and cards in Fortnite: Posts that are shared to Fortnite now have a more clear design without cropping your thumbnail image, so you can make sure your content looks great when you first author it. The text also does not sit on top of the image in the post’s Full View in game, which improves legibility.

  

Create Interactive UI: Verse Fields Events Now Support Adding Parameters

You can now add a single parameter to an event, of type float, int, or logic, allowing your UI widgets to send values directly to Verse. This means you can build things like difficulty selectors, quantity pickers, toggles, and other interactive elements that communicate player choices to your game logic without workarounds. Previously, Verse fields events could only signal that something happened in your UI, like a button press, but couldn't pass any data along with it. 

To get started, open the Variables window in the UMG Designer, create or edit an event, then add a parameter.

Once a parameter is added to an event, you can provide a static or linked value using View Bindings. Events with a parameter are reflected in the Verse asset digest for the User Widget as a tuple containing its type, allowing you to wait for an event from Verse code to react and retrieve the value passed in the event.

New Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU) Chart in Creator Portal

You can now view your island’s Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU) in the Creator Portal account-level monetization page.

Tracked daily for your selected island and date range, ARPPU gives you deeper visibility into how your island monetizes on a per-spender basis, helping you understand depth of monetization among players engaging with your in-island transactions.

How It Works

ARPPU is calculated by dividing your daily payout (including estimated payouts) from in-island transactions by the number of unique players who engaged with an in-island transaction that day.

You can use ARPPU to:

• Evaluate how effectively your island maximizes player spending from in-island transaction revenue

• Measure the impact of your island’s updates, live events, or economy changes

• Compare monetization performance across time periods and across islands

New or Updated Documentation

Check out the new and updated pages below!

Scene Graph Pages

The new Best Practices page highlights best practices to use when developing your projects with Scene Graph.

The Known Issues page has been updated to highlight important issues you should be aware of when developing your projects with Scene Graph. It’s not an exhaustive list, but offers some insight into common issues you can run into while Scene Graph is being developed.

The Migrating Assets in UEFN and Unreal Engine has been rewritten to cover both workflows of migrating content between UEFN projects and migrating content from Unreal Engine to UEFN. 

Discord Bot

Add a Fortnite chatbot to your Discord server that greets visitors to your channel and provides a way for visitors to jump into one of your islands from Discord! For setup instructions and slash commands, see Fortnite Discord Bot.

Rocket Racing Islands Update

We’ve removed the Rocket Racing island template from UEFN, and new Rocket Racing islands can no longer be created.

Developers can continue to open, edit, and publish existing Rocket Racing Islands.

In 40.30, new tools and guidance will become available to help developers migrate or create racing experiences.

Community Bug Fixes

The following fixes address issues you submitted to us on the forums. Thank you for your patience and for reporting these issues!

• Fixed an issue where the Chapter 7 UI could appear in some game rounds.

  • Forum Report

• Fixed an issue where the output log was being spammed with TickTracker messages.

  • Forum Report

• Fixed an issue with inconsistent physics behavior that could cause objects to pass through solid geometry.

  • Forum Report

• Fixed an issue where some items were not validating when used in an Item Placer device.

  • Forum Report

• Fixed an issue where some Star Wars items were not appearing when you tried to select them as entities in the digest.

  • Forum Report

Fortnite Ecosystem Updates and Fixes

New:

• Reduced the time it takes to end a match on server and return to Edit mode.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue that caused inconsistency for items that used a cloaking effect, which prevented them from being targeted with the LockOn ability.

• Fixed an issue that caused the Infinity Blade slam attack to trigger during jumping when under the effects of low gravity.

• Fixed an issue that was causing the Quad Rocket Launcher (Rare/Epic) tiers to deal double damage in most situations.

• Fixed an issue where a few gallery items were not scaling correctly when the Phone Tool was used.

• Fixed an issue with the Phone Tool where the preview grid was not properly aligned with the wall preview on certain wall types.

• Fixed a bug where a player on a desktop would stop crouching when aiming down sights and shooting with some of the crossbow weapons.

Devices

New:

• Added a new parameter to the Class Selector device: Zone Activation VFX turns the zone pulse visual effect on and off.

Fixes:

• Added visualization to Wander Range for the Wildlife Spawner device.

• Fixed an issue where the HUD Message device did not respect the assigned Show Behavior if set to Showing.

• Fixed validation errors with Cow and Ice Cream target types for the Target Dummy device.

UI

Fixes:

• Updated the Ingredients list to use the same font size as the main resources list in the new UI.

• Fixed an issue where the Phone Tool was overlapping the new UI health bar in Creative.

UEFN Updates and Fixes

New:

• Streamlined the Push Changes and Push Verse Changes operations so most prompts and potential points of failure happen early before they can interrupt the game, making the operations faster and more responsive.

Fixes:

• Fixed a bug that caused incomplete hidden property validation, which could result in new "Illegal property override" warnings. If these warnings are on properties you need, please report them to us so that we can consider exposing them in UEFN. These warnings will become errors in a future version of UEFN.

Editor

New:

• The client now auto-starts sooner when a session is launched.

Fixes:

• Fixed Editor Preferences and Keyboard Shortcuts that did not open their respective windows.

• Fixed an issue causing walls to occasionally jitter when dragging vertically with Fortnite snapping enabled.

• With Fortnite snapping off, an issue causing Playsets to pop to an old position when moving after an undo was fixed.

• Fixed an issue where trying to cancel matchmaking when launching a session did not work.

• The low memory warning no longer shows as the rest of its accompanying UI isn't enabled at this time.

Scene Graph

New:

• Prefab Editor: When selecting a component in the TEDS outliner, the following should apply: the component should have the selected outline look in the viewport, if possible. If the component is a transform_component, the transform gizmo should be visible/usable in the viewport.

• Prefab editor outliner changes: Changed the Prefab column display name to Type. For Verse components, components now display in the Type column.

• Also for Verse components, the component type name now displays in the Label column, not the UObject name. It is also non-editable.

• Entity Prefabs: Creating a new prefab pops up a dialog for you to select a base class.

Fixes:

• Prefab Editor: Fixed sorting by type column in the outliner.

• Prefab thumbnails: Fixed issue with flickering thumbnail. Updated content browser thumbnail widget immediately when saving a prefab.

• The Max Equipment Slots Island Setting now functions correctly with Custom Items and Inventory enabled. Players switching between teams with different Max Equipment Slot settings will have their inventories updated accordingly.

• The Allow Building Island Setting now functions correctly with Custom Items and Inventory enabled. Opening the build inventory will now correctly be blocked with the appropriate message when building is disabled.

  • The following item-related Island Settings still have outstanding issues when Custom Items and Inventory is enabled: Auto Pickup, Infinite Gold, Infinite Reserve Energy, Show Gold Resource Count, Allow Item Pickup, Hide Build Resource, Infinite Durability, and Keep Dropped Items Between Rounds. Changing these settings from their defaults in the Island Settings could cause unexpected behavior when Custom Items and Inventory is enabled.

• Fixed the Drop Half button not working on custom item entities with a stack size greater than 1.

• When doing a partial drop of an entity, the entity is now properly split (cloned) to avoid both the original and the split item referencing the same entity.

• Many UI bug fixes for Custom Items and Inventory, including:

  • Item count is no longer shown when an item cannot stack or has a max stack of 1.

  • Fort Inventory widget elements are now dynamically shown or hidden in response to inventories being added to or removed from the player.

  • The ammo icon is now hidden when no ammo type is set, preventing a white placeholder square.

Environments and Landscapes

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where landscape grass crashed in some UEFN maps.

In-Game UI

Fixes:

• Fixed a crash that occurred when reloading a user widget containing Verse fields that was in a compilation failed state.

• Fixed a known bug where the Input Override panel would change from black to gray.

Materials

Fixes:

• Fixed a crash that occurred when attempting to preview a TextureObject material graph node.

• Fixed a crash that happened when attempting to use a Custom Preview Mesh that had  Nanite data in a Material Function Editor when no Material Expressions were selected for previewing.

Physics

Fixes:

• Resolved an issue where physics objects could incorrectly clip through meshes when ComplexAsSimple collision was used, ensuring proper collision response and stability. 

• Fixed an issue where trajectory and momentum became erratic after passing through a teleporter with Physics Prop Momentum Conservation set to Relative. Props now exit at the correct relative angle on all axes.

• Fixed an issue where the Prop Mover would apply additional ticks of damage before collision with an object 

Brand Island Updates and Fixes

STAR WARS

New:

• Added a Death Star Exterior material instance to the Content Drawer under Star Wars Content > Materials > MaterialInstances.

• Added 10 Lightsaber render textures to the Content Drawer under Star Wars Content > Renders > Lightsabers.

• Various weapons and items available in the Star Wars feature set have been added to the Verse API:

  • Weapons are located at /Fortnite.com/Weapons/StarWars.

  • Items are located at /Fortnite.com/Items/StarWars.

Fixes:

• Force Push and Force Pull interactions with props are currently disabled to prevent unintended destruction.

• Fixed missing material on asset faces for the Death Star doorway. FNEC_BP_StrongArm_HSFloorDoorC.

• Adjusted props to sit on ground level for Outpost Enclave Prefabs.

• Fixed an issue where Force Throw would throw objects at the player instead of where the player was aiming.

• Adjusted virtual paths of Star Wars vista materials to better clarify uses between material types.

• Adjusted LOD switch distances on background planets to prevent noticeable faceting on the atmosphere.

• Added additional LODs to background planets for mobile.

• Set the landscape material flag to work with Nanite by default.

• Water VFX pass.

• Fixed explosions not spawning after one second.

• Fixed AAT death duration and minor damage bugs related to VFX not fading out after slowdown.

• Fixed Mobile TurboLaser.

• Added Water Interaction Visual Effects to the AAT.

• Fixed an issue where explosions were not happening if the projectile was alive for more than one second.

• Extended death duration of the AAT and visual bugs related to the damage done to the AAT.

• Fixed Damage VFX to work on mobile and low settings.

• Moving AT-AT control rig, skeleton, and skeletal mesh from the Vehicles folder to the Cinematic Vehicles folder within the Star Wars Content folder.

Known Issues:

• Asset names and paths have changed and could result in errors within your projects.  Any Verse code written against the following also needs to be updated. If any of these assets were present in a level, they need to be deleted and replaced.

  • Lightsabers entity types have been moved to /Fortnite.com/Weapons/StarWars, and now follow the LightsaberName_V1 naming pattern.

  • Force Power (Weapon) entity types are now located at /Fortnite.com/Weapons/StarWars, and follow the ForcePowerName_Weapon_V1 naming pattern.

  • Force Power (Augment) entity types are now located at /Fortnite.com/Items/StarWars, and follow the ForcePowerName_LightsaberAugment_V1 naming pattern.

Verse Updates and Fixes

Tools

New:

• Added a Verse script template for creating a Verse tag.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where there would be stale/null tags left in the UI panels for entity tags when removing the Verse definitions for tags and recompiling the Verse code.

Unreal Revision Control Updates and Fixes

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where the Branch Explorer (Beta) made too many source control requests, sometimes slowing down or blocking other revision control processes until it was closed.

Fortnite Communities Updates and Fixes

Fixes:

• Improved emoji support for Community Posts in Fortnite.

• Linking a channel to an island no longer overwrites the channel name.

• Improved a scroll issue when browsing posts with many replies.

• Fixed an issue where posts were stuck in moderation.