Fortnite: Battle Royale seems about to add an environmental item that will allow players to be resurrected by allies after being eliminated in a match. They are Respawn Vans, which were first leaked by dataminers and then clearly showed off during an official Fortnite tournament livestream.
Players in the tournament were unable to use the van since it was a Solo competition, which means there would be no one to let them respawn. That’s why it’s impossible to be sure about how these Respawn Vans will work, or even what their real name is. But we can guess how this item will work once it’s introduced in Fortnit. This is based on respawn mechanics that are in place today both in a few Fortnite limited-time modes and that exist in the world’s second-biggest battle royale game, Apex Legends.
Related: How to qualify for the Fortnite World Cup through Open Qualifiers.
How respawning works today in Fortnite
Players who are eliminated in Solo, Duos, and Squads default playlists are gone and removed from play for good. It’s impossible for a player who was eliminated to appear again in the same match of a standard game mode in Fortnite’s current patch.
There are a few game modes that have respawn enabled, which are usually big-team modes that have a goal that’s different from being the last character or team standing. The most notable respawn-enabled modes are Team Rumble, Food Fight, and Disco Domination, which are rotating in and out of Fortnite every few weeks.
In these special game modes, players who are eliminated are taken out of play for five seconds until automatically respawning in mid-air, as if they had just dropped from the Battle Bus. They can activate their glider or continue their free fall until they reach the ground and are ready to fight again with the same loadout and materials they had before. Respawn is available throughout the entire match to all players.
How Respawn Vans could work
With an environmental item like the Respawn Van, we expect respawning to work like in Apex Legends. When a player is down, their allies will be able to retrieve some kind of item on the area they were eliminated. This item should be carried to the Respawn Van, an ally should have to interact with the van for a few seconds, and then the player who was eliminated first would come down from the sky just like in a respawn-enabled game mode.
Characters who are eliminated in default playlists drop all their loadout on the ground, which might mean that respawning in these modes will make the player drop with nothing in their inventory, forcing them to loot everything again.
We have yet to understand how these vans will really work, but this is how we expect their basic mechanics to be like. Fortnite players should expect Epic to release them anytime in season eight.
