Ninja rages after discovering secret shield ‘nerf’ in Fortnite

David Purcell
NInja, Instagram / Epic Games

Epic Games may have implemented a secret change to Fortnite Chapter 2 and Tyler ‘Ninja‘ Blevins doesn’t seem to be a fan – not at all. 

The popular Mixer streamer was playing his way through the battle royale game during a broadcast on November 12, dropping at several locations on the hunt for loot.

However, it didn’t take long for him to become completely exhausted during the stream after he was unable to find shields. Starting at Dirty Docks, he opened chest after chest only to be greeted by a bunch of unwanted pistols and he’s drawn his own conclusion from the matter very quickly.

Those who have been playing Fortnite since the beginning of Chapter 2 on October 15 will know that there’s been a huge patch notes-shaped hole in every update that has been released ever since the new map arrived.

Epic Games
Ninja opened several chests, only to find zero mini shields in Fortnite.

There have been updates to the game’s official Trello board here and there, allowing people to at least record some changes, but it appears – at least from Ninja’s perspective – that the spawn rate of mini shields has been decreased without any announcement.

“Game just doesn’t want to give me minis man. I hate it. Bro, chat, what is this garbage?” he said, before his teammate, Reverse2k, claimed to have found a big pot already. “I know you do, but like that doesn’t defeat the fact that I literally just looted eight chests and don’t have a single mini.”

Whether or not this is an intentional change or not from the developers remains to be seen, although – based on the evidence here – it does seem as if something has been tweaked in-game.

Timestamp in the video below at 0:45. 

Ninja added: “Looting chest upon chest, upon chest, upon chest and getting no shield. There’s only two shield items in the game.”

It didn’t take long for the streamers to make light of the situation, though, as Jack ‘CouRage’ Dunlop joined and started to sing ‘Where are the Shields’ to the tune of ‘Here Comes the Sun’ by The Beatles.

After a few more frustrating moments, CouRage asked: “Wait, so because there’s no patch notes Tyler, do you think that they decreased the shield spawn rate this week?”

In truth, not many – if any – players have the answer to that question as they have not been informed of any tweaks with the v11.1 update, which went live on November 13.

Even in one of the rare chests he couldn’t get his hands on a mini, meaning he had to resort to other means… Eating mushrooms from the ground. A grueling process.