Patch Notes
v42.30 brings a new conversations template for building LLM-powered characters, carryable items that aren't weapons, in-editor Content Pre-Checks, and analytics benchmarks for your island's performance. New content includes the Witch Broom and Slap Candy Corn.
New Conversations Template
The conversations template is a playable introduction to the conversations feature, which you can use to create LLM-powered characters with distinct personalities and voices that can talk, react, respond to player actions, and even influence gameplay.
In the template, you step into the world of a used-car salesperson working with NPC buyers. Haggle over prices, pitch add-ons, and close the deal while learning how to craft prompts, generate randomized characters, and use Verse and structured output to turn conversations into meaningful gameplay outcomes.
You can take these techniques into your own experiences and genres. For example, the negotiation loop could be a fantasy innkeeper bargaining over magical pets, or a quest giver assigning a task based on what the player says they're looking for.
You can find the template in the Project Browser.
Rocket Racing Islands Now Unpublished and No Longer Playable
UEFN islands built with Rocket Racing templates have been unpublished and are no longer playable. Publishing has been disabled for updates to new or existing Rocket Racing islands.
We have migrated Rocket Racing developer tools, such as the Track Spline Tool, Boost Pads, Volume Hazards, and Spawner devices that can be used to create and publish racing games without the use of the template. For more information on converting your islands that used the Rocket Racing template into a regular island, see Converting Your Island Into a Brand Island.
Note: Your Vehicle Locker is not affected — you can continue using your customized cars in Fortnite.
Custom Weapons: Held Items
You can now build carryable items that aren’t weapons. The new held_item_template is a ready-to-customize entity prefab (it ships with a torch as the default mesh and icon) that you can reskin into lanterns, tools, banners, or other prop players can equip.
UEFN Analytics Benchmarks Now Available in Creator Portal
Benchmarks are percentile goals that you can use to compare your island's performance against top islands in your genre. They now live in the Creator Portal for click-through rate, bounce rate (5-minute), average session length, D1 retention, and D7 retention.
They appear directly on the Creator Portal analytics charts you already use. Toggle them on for supported charts, and your island's metric line appears against shaded percentile bands and a dashed cohort median.
Benchmarks provide context that allows you to validate hypotheses and diagnose specific areas of improvement within your game. For instance, if your bounce rate is trailing peers while your CTR leads, this could indicate that the experience you’re promising to players in Discover doesn’t match the experience they’re getting in game.
Check out benchmarks in Creator Portal analytics now for insights into your island's opportunities for growth.
Verse Paths Are Now Displayed More Consistently Throughout UEFN
New projects display Verse paths in more locations across the editor than those of traditional Unreal Engine paths. This continues the move toward Verse paths as the standard way to identify content in UEFN.
You now see Verse paths in the Content Browser, source control dialogs, validation errors, Reference Viewer, asset tooltips, and copied asset references. Fab-referenced assets and content packs also appear under their Verse paths.
This change applies to newly created projects. Existing projects are unaffected, and no action is required.
Verse Compatibility Change
In 42.20, we've made a backwards-incompatible change to the Fortnite.com/Marketplace API and moved it to the /UnrealEngine.com/Marketplace Verse path instead. If you have previously relied on these APIs, there are now aliases that will make sure your existing code that relies on those APIs works. However, if you previously had a using {/UnrealEngine.com} statement in your code that brought the entire UnrealEngine.com namespace in and also defined a Marketplace symbol locally, that will now conflict.
To avoid symbol disambiguation issues, you can:
Remove the using
{/UnrealEngine.com}statement, orRename the local Marketplace symbol you have locally, or minimally qualify it if possible.
If you encounter any issues while making this change, you can reach out to Epic by using the In-Editor reporting or posting in the Issues and Bug Reporting forum.
Memory Thermometer: Upcoming Changes
In recent releases, Memory Snapshot and Timing Insights have given you real visibility into how your experiences perform. The next step is to bring memory reporting into that same workflow.
The publish memory requirement is moving into the profiling tools. You'll still be able to run the memory calculation manually, but it will also run automatically on every cook — so any session launch or pushed change produces a new value. If your project exceeds the threshold, the Game Performance report at the bottom of the editor will tell you, and a per-asset memory digest will show what's driving it.
Memory will also be reported in real units. The publish limit is still 100,000 units, but will display as 300 MB. The budget isn't changing — the number will just match what other memory tools show, making it easier to compare against your own measurements.
In a future release, we'll remove the memory thermometer from running sessions. With just-in-time reporting and the per-asset breakdown in place, memory guidance will live in the profiling tools.
Content Browser and Inventory Updates
New Items
Witch Broom
This is the Ch6S4 version of the item.
Slap Candy Corn
Applies the Slap effect when consumed
New Weapons
Easy Ride Pumpkin Launcher
Exotic
New Prefabs & Galleries
Lavish Lair Set
Lavish Lair Set
Bug Fix
Fixed the Drop Pod UI when swapping between Ch 7 and a legacy HUD.
UEFN Source Assets on Fab
You can now upload UEFN source assets to Fab - complete, editable systems built with Verse and Scene Graph that other developers can open and modify directly in UEFN. Publishing opens October 15, and you keep 88% of net revenue on every sale. Read the full post for how to prepare your listing.
To get started, see Upload Unreal Editor for Fortnite Source to Fab.
In-Editor Content Pre-Checks
Content Pre-Checks now flag potential content violations much sooner, inside the editor as you build, This helps you find and fix potentially violating content earlier. Notifications, Content Browser warning icons, and a dedicated Moderation Message Log show you which assets are affected, and what the potential violation is.
These notifications are early informational flags and not final decisions — they do not block further building in the editor or publishing. Your assets, along with the rest of your island, will still go through moderation review at publish.
For more information see the documentation.
Ability Templates
We’ve made some updates under the hood so that you are no longer required to create your own ability context when creating an Ability Template. This means an ability template can be created without ever using Verse code. A side effect of this is fort_template_ability is no longer a parametric class. Any code written using it will need to be updated to reflect this change.
Example: test_fort_template_ability := class(fort_template_ability): is the new correct way to use it if you require specialization.
Targeting queries are now an array of the fort_target_affiliation enum. We’ve removed Any and replaced it with Neutral. This allows you to get much more granular with who you want to target with your ability. If you were using these in code before, you will need to update your code to compile.
Fort_ability_animation_element_span now uses AnimationSequence instead of Animation for the animation being set. It also uses a play_animation_layer enum instead of the fort_ability_anim_layer. This means you will need to select the animation in any animation_element you were using previously. If you were using these in code before, you will need to update your code to compile.
Added a fort_ability_status_effect_removal_point. This new point removes the selected status effects from the target of the ability.
Offer Validation Error Details for In-Island Transactions in the Creator Portal
You can now see details on offer validation errors in Creator Portal, so you can quickly diagnose and correct any issues affecting offers on your islands.
The Technical tab of your project page now groups these by error type, offer, and link mode, with filtering by link mode or error and sorting by newest or oldest.
Select any row to see details for each error type—for example, the exact prices that fell outside the allowed range or offers that exceed max entitlements—each with its own count and most recent timestamp. You can also filter by link mode or error, and sort by newest or oldest.
Use these error details to find and fix issues with offers fast, so you can get your in-island transactions back up and running.
For more info, check out the Offer Validation Errors Dashboard section of the Technical Performance documentation.
New or Updated Documentation
Roadmap Updates
No major roadmap changes to highlight this release, but check out the new cards we have recently added to the UEFN public roadmap.
What’s Next for Verse Skeletal Animation
The Verse Skeletal Animation feature was released as an Experimental feature in 41.00 and will remain Experimental at this time. We’re developing a new API to replace the current one, so we don’t plan to fix bugs or make significant improvements to the version of Skeletal Animation currently available.
If you’re experimenting with Verse Skeletal Animation now, know that the current API will eventually be deprecated and you may need to update workflows built on it. We’ll share more details about the new approach and the path out of Experimental as development progresses.
Share Your Feedback
Have a feature you'd like to see, or feedback on an existing one? Submit it in Feedback & Requests on the Epic Developer Community forums. For bugs, use Issues and Bug Reporting.
Release Notes
Community Bug Fixes
The following fixes are from issues that you submitted to us on the forums. Thank you for your patience and for reporting these issues!
Fixed an issue that prevented players from hearing each other through proximity voice chat.
Fixed an issue that caused unsuppressed Ballistic weapons to play broken, muffled audio when fired by another player.
Fixed an issue that caused consumable items to be removed from a player's inventory on respawn.
Fixed an issue that prevented the Hexylvania Alight Torch 02 prop from displaying its flame VFX in Performance Mode.
Fixed an issue that prevented the Affects Landscape setting from being available on VK WaterBody Islands, causing them to overwrite existing landscape sculpting.
Fixed an issue that caused Exotic weapons with built-in custom wraps to produce validation errors when registered in an Item Placer.
Fixed an issue that prevented Sidekick style options from applying, leaving the Sidekick on its default style.
Fixed an issue on mobile where players could still move when all inputs were consumed.
For a full list of all scheduled fixes for v42.30, refer to this search on the Epic Developer Community Forums.
Fortnite Ecosystem Updates and Fixes
New:
Improved the render command pipelining on some hardware for Windows by improving CPU parallelism in the Performance Rendering Mode.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed an issue that would cause a crash on the server due to a dangling object reference to the floor on the physics thread that got accessed during world destruction when using ChaosMover for the Newton character.
Fixed a rare issue where text input could be ignored on Windows.
Fixed an issue that prevented Dynamic Resolution from being disabled without user consent on Windows if the user passes through incompatible settings.
Fixed an issue that would cause a crash when creating spline meshes.
Fixed an issue that would cause a crash when undoing the deletion of a Gameplay Effect Component.
Fixed an issue where warnings would incorrectly appear on valid tags in a Gameplay Tag Container with the Categories specifier.
Fixed an issue where the warning toast would not appear when merging Mapping Sets in the Input Mapping Context editor view.
Fixed an issue that was preventing the SkinnedMesh Node processing from correctly resolving for InverseBindMatrices. This fix also corrected drifts between BindPoses and Scene hierarchies, as well as issues with multi-root skinned mesh files.
Bug Fix:
Fixed an issue in the Material editor shader count that was including local vertex factory shaders when static mesh usage was off. This fixed both the count in the material editor viewport and in the platform stats.
UEFN Updates and Fixes
Bug Fixes:
Fixed an issue where RemoveWidgetBinding was always returning True for nonexistent bindings ‘Add an explicit MovieScene->FindPossessable(BindingGuid)’ existence check.
Fixed an issue in the Material editor shader count that was including local vertex factory shaders when static mesh usage was off. This fixed both the count in the material editor viewport and in the platform stats.
Editor
New:
We now enter reasons in the logs when assets need to be resaved while launching a session in UEFN.
Restarting the session from the editor is now faster.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed an issue that caused the landscape editor to crash when a brush stroke started in a deleted region. This issue was only seen when viewing the landscape at a steep angle.
Fixed an issue where publishing a project would fail to cancel correctly.
Fixed an issue where copying actors from an editor older than 5.1 into an editor newer than 5.1 would cause a crash.
Fixed an issue that caused a garbage collection leak when unloading a module that had generated Python types.
Editor UI
New:
Added the Copy File Path / Copy Package Path / Copy Verse Path context menu options to source control and package dialogs.
Bug Fixes:
Landscape material UX : Changed the RVT Texture Sample material expression's color to be similar to the regular texture sample.
Fixed an issue that was causing the Find in the Materials menu to show up in every window.
Fixed the text formatting in the Clear Source Files Cache dialog box.
Fixed the following UI issues in the Entity Prefab Editor multi-viewport support:
The Maximize viewport checkbox is now correctly ticked when the viewport is maximized.
The hidden tools in the Prefab Editor Viewport toolbar are now correctly accessible through the menu when the toolbar becomes too small to display them.
Fixed the naming of the multi-viewport panel options.
Environments and Landscapes
New:
Improved the landscape paint mode Layer Allow List by changing the cursor and target layer action indicator when using add to / remove from target layer allow list
Bug Fixes:
Fixed an issue that caused a crash when loading an old landscape without edit layers.
Fixed an issue with the landscape that would cause an assert when fallback grass-name fixup collided with an existing grass name entry. This fix now leads to a warning log and a Map Check warning with an action to let the user force-rebuild landscape grass data.
Fixed an issue with the landscape shortcut keys (comma, period, escape) being detected when editing a text box.
Fixed shader warnings when entering landscape paint mode.
Fixed an issue that would prevent terrain properties on WaterBodyIsland to be correctly exposed.
Fixed an issue that would cause a crash when right-clicking a landscape proxy actor.
In-Game UI
Bug Fixes:
Fixed an issue where an erroneous ‘Party members cannot change game modes while in a UEFN edit session’ error could appear on the loading screen while launching a UEFN edit session.
Fixed an issue where the Ready Up button would fail to appear when selecting a UEFN island.
Mobile: Virtual Pointer, Touch Input, and HUD Updates
Bug Fixes:
Addressed issues in which the interact and pick-up button icons couldn’t be overridden.
Fixed an override issue in which the visibility of the shoot/fire action was dependent upon the aim button being held.
Scene Graph
Bug Fix:
Fixed an issue that was preventing dispatching of Verse-based scene events (OnReceive) on clients.
Physics
Bug Fix:
Fixed an issue where Rocket Launchers and Shockwave Grenades failed to apply impulse force correctly on Physics-enabled islands. Rocket Launchers now push characters on impact, and Shockwave Grenades correctly launch both characters and physics props without pulling them back to the explosion point.
Verse Updates and Fixes
API
Bug Fixes:
Fixed an issue where equipping an item via Verse caused players to lose the ability to aim or shoot.
Fixed an issue where the RemovedAmount value was always zero when the scene event RemoveItemEvent was fired.
Language
New:
The <localizes> attribute has been optimized to perform better when being loaded on the server. Having a large number of these attributes in a single module was causing islands to hang during load in previously (2000+).
UEFN MCP Fixes
New:
Added support for binding Verse event field to UMG Widgets.
Bug Fix:
Fixed dialogue popups stalling MCP progress and needing user input.
Upgrade Notes
Scene Graph
API Change:
Any existing setup where OnReceive could have been called on the client will now be ignored (prior it was likely to cause a crash), with a log message being emitted. The setup needs to be reworked to not rely on client based OnReceive invocations.