Fortnite adds in-game rifts — here’s what we know

Fortnite Season 5 is here and it’s brought with it a lot of major changes including new map locations, a new vehicle and a few new skins. But, the most mysterious new addition to the game are rifts.

Fortnite’s new in-game rifts look like small blue shimmers that hover in the air around the map. Their locations are mostly random, though they do seem to crop up around the same spaces more often than not. So far, it seems the area of the map with the most rifts is the new viking ship just southeast of Snobby Shores.

Epic Games

So, what do these mysterious new portals do? They teleport you into the sky of course. Each time you take a rift, a small hole opens up in the sky somewhere nearby your rift and your character breaks through, hurtling toward the ground. Technically this works a lot like when you jump out of the Battle Bus, meaning that you can fall toward the ground and then eventually open up your glider allowing you to drift to safety.

At first glance, these rifts may not seem like much more than a neat gimmick, but the first time you use one to outrun an approaching storm, or re-position for a surprise attack on an opponent, you’ll start to notice that they have a little more potential than it might initially appear.

Rifts seems a little bit like this season’s equivalent to last season’s hop rocks, and while those moved across the map as the season progressed, it’s still way too early to tell how rifts might change as the season progresses.