New Heavy Sniper Coming Soon to Fortnite Battle Royale

If you logged into Fortnite Battle Royale yesterday, on August 12, you might have been greeted with a new update screen. This new update screen promised that a brand new 'Heavy Sniper' would be "coming soon" to the Battle Royale mode.

Just below, you can see the update screen that was implemented into Fortnite Battle Royale as of Sunday, August 12 (by way of Reddit). According to the update news from Epic themselves, the new Heavy Sniper will be available in both Epic and Legendary rarities, not unlike the new Compact SMG that was introduced into the game earlier this year, again in the Epic and Legendary rarities.

According to FortniteBattleRoyaleNews on Twitter, the base damage for the Heavy Sniper comes in at a massive 157. This is enough to kill a player with half the shield meter full, no matter where a bullet from the weapon hits you, and it goes without saying that a single headshot from the Heavy Sniper can kill anyone, even if they've got a full shield meter.

As of right now, we're not sure of when the Heavy Sniper will be introduced to Fortnite Battle Royale. An educated guess based on the history of Fortnite updates from Epic would have the new weapon launching in an update either tomorrow on August 14, or Thursday, on August 16. These are traditionally the days on which Epic has previously put out updates for Fortnite.

What is available right now in Fortnite is the slate of Week 5 Challenges, introduced into the game last week. You can head over to our Fortnite Week 5 Challenges guide, for a walkthrough on how to complete all seven challenges as part of last week.