In this weekend’s Fortnite Championship Series tournament, player Tfue found a new use for the fishing rod when he used it to grab weapons and materials from afar in the middle of a fight. This appears to be a feature, not a bug.
The fishing rod was introduced in Fortnite’s Chapter Two. Its primary use is to grab fish and weapons from the new map’s water. As reported by Dexerto, the fishing rod seems to have been recently tweaked to allow players to use it on land as well. In the video below, Tfue uses this new functionality in the midst of an FNCS match to snatch materials from across the map and drop them for his teammates.
In another match, he uses the rod to scoop up loot from a downed player without risking his position.
(clip via Dexerto)
In a reddit thread about the matches, many players write that they feel Tfue’s play highlights the need for patch notes, which have been conspicuously absent in Chapter Two. “Since when was this a thing?” one player writes, to which another responds, “We wouldn’t know, there’s no fuckin patch notes.”
Other players agree that while Epic’s lack of transparency is achieving the sense of discovery the developer seems to be going for, it also leads to unexpected tactics like this. For a casual player like me, an item doing something unexpected is fun, but I might feel differently if I had tournament money on the line.
Epic loves to roll out changes, many of which—like the baller and mech vehicles—have a significant impact on competitive play. The fishing pole’s ability to fish on land will definitely impact how competitive players behave.
On the Fortnite competitive reddit, for instance, a player demonstrates how the fishing rod can be used to transport materials even if you’ve reached maximum capacity, with other players pointing out that it’s a clunky strategy, but one that could definitely affect competitive play. The fishing rod is unlikely to cause a major shakeup of the competitive scene, but we can see that players are already finding creative uses for it.
Leave a Reply