Fortnite brings back vaulted item to celebrate Lunar New Year

Epic Games have announced that Bottle Rockets have been temporarily unvaulted in Fortnite to commemorate the Chinese New Year celebrations that will take place this week.

For many, New Year’s parties are firmly in the rear-view mirror, but for calendars that are based on the cycles of the moon New Year’s officially kicks off on Saturday, January 25, and nowhere will celebrations be bigger than in China as they ring in 2020 in style.

To mark the occasion, Fortnite is planning to bring some of the party back to the game too, with Bottle Rockets reappearing for the first time since March 6, 2019, when they were removed from the game after complaints that they were too weak and essentially useless.

Bottle Rockets are an uncommon item first introduced back in the v7.30 update, that when thrown on the ground sent a stream of 45 fireworks in whatever direction it was pointed at in the space of 10 seconds, exploding when they make contact with a building or enemy player, causing mayhem for a brief period of time.

The rockets deal 10 damage points to enemy players or 42 damage to structures, but due to the fact that it only lasts for 10 seconds, were fairly easy to avoid, and players could simply rebuild once they had stopped. Players can carry around six of the explosives at any one time, but can only use two at a time to avoid 250 rockets going off within the 10-second time frame.

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Of course, the Bottle Rockets are fireworks by design, so celebrations such as Chinese New Year are the perfect time to bring them back, and because they aren’t particularly powerful, they’re unlikely to shake up the meta too much before they are eventually placed back in the vault.

Bottle Rockets are now live in Fortnite, with Epic Games confirming via the in-game news feed that they would appear in the battle royale for players to use as they hunt down enemies in search of Victory Royales.

The developers have stated that they are only in the game temporarily, but didn’t reveal when they would be placed back into the vault when Lunar New Year celebrations end.