Fortnite v42.40 Guide: Loot Hacks, Honey & Willow Sprites, Quack Mastery and Oct 17 Power Hours

Fortnite update v42.40 is live on Thursday, October 15, 2026, and it is a full Override mid-season drop rather than a quiet hotfix. Epic's Battle Royale Communities Team posted the v42.40 Fortnite Override Battle Royale Update Notes the same morning, with matching threads for fixes and improvements, Fortnite OG, Reload, and Save the World. This guide starts with BR, then covers the other modes only where those Epic threads spell them out.

If you have been grinding Fortnitemares since v42.30, today is the patch that refreshes the Loot Hack board, drops two new Sprites, opens the final Sprite Mastery page, and puts Trick or Treat Sprites Power Hours on the calendar for Saturday. Our earlier v42.30 Fortnitemares downtime and Gravegate guide, Fortnitemares 2026 overview, Chapter 7 Season 4 Loot Hacks guide, and Chapter 7 Season 4 Sprites guide are the season context. Numbers and names below come from Epic's own posts unless I label them otherwise.

What changed in Battle Royale first

Override's BR notes open with loot, Sprites, Power Hours, then quality-of-life. That is the right reading order for most players. Here is the loot and Override board before we dig into each system.

New Loot Hacks worth hacking first

Epic's exact new hack list is Thorne's Vampiric Blade, Finger Guns, Gatekeeper Shotgun, Hunting Rifle, Slap Splash, and all Sprite Variants. Finger Guns get the playful "Pew pew!" line in the notes, so expect them to show up in highlight clips even if they are not the strongest option on paper.

How to spend Sprite Dust today:

• Check the Loot Hack board as soon as you load in. The board rotated, so dust you saved for Super Shot or Healing Overdrive does not buy those Overrides anymore.
• Prioritize hacks that fit your role. Shotgun players will look at Gatekeeper and the Sweeper buff together. Mid-range players will look at Hunting Rifle. Utility players will look at Slap Splash and Sprite variants.
• Do not assume every Sprite Variant hack is equal. Read the Sprite section below before you burn dust on a variant you will never equip.

Vaulted loot and Overrides

Out of the pool:

• Midas' Masterpiece (Rift Anomaly)
• Witch Broom (Pocket Item)
• Overrides: Super Shot, Big Boom, Action Hero, Healing Overdrive

If your muscle memory still opens the hack menu looking for Healing Overdrive, that is gone. Rebuild around the new board instead of forcing an old Override into a lobby that no longer supports it.

Sweeper Shotgun fire-rate buff

Epic lists one balance line for BR weapons: Sweeper Shotgun got a slightly increased fire rate. There is no published percentage in the notes, so do not invent one. In practice it should feel a little snappier in close fights. Pair that with Gatekeeper arriving as a Loot Hack and you have two shotgun stories in the same patch.

New Sprites: Honey and One Wish Willow

Two Sprites land with the patch, and one of them is a community Design A Sprite winner.

Honey Sprite

Honey Sprite is the Design A Sprite winner. Epic's effect text: chance to spawn bees at the hit location when you deal damage with a ranged weapon. That rewards consistent chip damage more than a single big elim. If you already play spray weapons or keep pressure from mid-range, Honey is the natural equip.

One Wish Willow Sprite

One Wish Willow Sprite does two things:

• On elimination, it can extract the enemy's equipped Sprites.
• When you take damage, it pushes nearby enemies away.

There is a catch Epic put in bold spirit even if the notes do not use the word: you are marked on the map if you remove it. Treat Willow as a high-risk, high-reward Sprite. Great when you are hunting Sprite carriers. Bad when you are trying to stay unspotted after a fight.

Final Sprite Mastery page and Quack Sprite

The final page of Sprite Mastery rewards is now available. That page includes:

• New Quack Sprites
• A new Style for the Pixel Polli Outfit

Quack's ability is a multiplier for the rest of your Sprite loadout: it boosts every Sprite you are carrying with extra Sprite XP whenever it gains XP. If you still have Mastery pages left, finish them before Saturday's Power Hours so Quack and the Pixel Polli style are unlocked while Trick or Treat variants are up.

Accounts that already sit deep into Sprite Mastery and Fortnitemares quests are the ones that feel this patch the most, because the final page and the Saturday Power Hours stack on the same grind.

Power Hours: Trick or Treat Sprites on October 17

Epic scheduled Power Hours: Trick or Treat Sprites for Saturday, October 17. Convert the stamps carefully. America/Chicago is on CDT (UTC-5) in mid-October.

What Epic says you get during the windows:

• Everyone drops with an enhanced Freddy's Nightmare already in hand. Move faster while it is equipped and slash through players who are not ready.
• The Trick or Treat Sprite variant appears more often.
• 1-Up Tokens and Portable Extractors may drop from Chests.

Epic's warning line is "Don't doze off." Treat that as a joke about Freddy and as real advice: Power Hour lobbies are louder, and the enhanced Nightmare means early fights start closer to melee range than a normal drop.

Practical plan for Saturday:

• Be logged in and queue-ready a few minutes before 1:00 PM CDT.
• If you miss Round 1, Round 2 is 8:00 PM CDT the same Saturday (that is Epic's 9 PM ET / Sunday 1 AM UTC window).
• Spend the morning finishing Sprite Mastery if you are close to Quack.
• Expect Chest loot to matter more than usual because of the Token and Extractor rolls.

Like-for-Like Weapon Upgrades

This is the biggest everyday QoL line in the BR notes. Walk over a higher-rarity version of a weapon you are already carrying and you will automatically swap up. Epic tells you to enable it under Settings > Game > Combat with Auto Pick Up Weapons toggled on.

What that means in a fight:

• You no longer have to open your inventory to upgrade a blue AR to a purple AR of the same type.
• Floor loot and chest loot that match your current guns become free upgrades instead of inventory puzzles.
• If Auto Pick Up is off, you will not get the behaviour. Check the setting once after the patch.

Combined with the new Loot Hack board, Like-for-Like is why inventory management should feel lighter in Override today than it did yesterday.

Locker sorting and Discover refresh

Locker: Most Used, Last Used, Least Used

Epic added Locker sort options for Most Used, Last Used, and Least Used. That is a quality-of-life win for anyone with a large cosmetic library. The same Cosmetics section also fixes randomized presets not shuffling correctly on "Play Again," Randomize consistency, and a long list of Outfit and Back Bling display bugs (Madison Beer hair highlights, Air Pilot Style on The Guardian, Ironmouse Worm Back Bling hidden by hair, and more). Those fixes matter if you own the items. They do not change combat.

Discover UI rolling out gradually

Epic says Discover got a new look: more expressive tiles and modules, videos that play as you browse, cleaner logo treatment, and new tile shapes. Important caveat from the notes: this is rolling out gradually to more players over time. If your Discover still looks old after the patch, that is expected, not a failed download.

Gameplay fixes players will feel

The BR and Zero Build fix list is long. The ones most players will actually notice:

• Holding Sprint while strafing, then moving forward, triggers sprint again as intended.
• Forward Diagonal Angle at 77 or higher no longer slows sideways movement.
• Mega Buster charged shot deals its intended area damage again.
• You no longer get stuck after defeating and possessing one of Freddy's Animatronics.
• Prop Hunt Override visually transforms you the first time you use it.
• Hunter Scavenger Override no longer loops the enemy-marking sound in the Storm.
• Custom vehicle keyboard bindings apply in-game instead of reverting to default.
• Slightly reduced head sizes on certain Outfits (Bugs Bunny, Sonic the Hedgehog, Decora Ironmouse) so Big Head Mode does not block ADS.
• Cheat Code interact fixes in Wonkeeland and Golden Grove.
• The Guardian no longer spawns under the terrain as a Hired Follower.

Mobile players get Auto Fire no longer mistriggering with the Loot Hack menu open, Sprite and Override effect UI that can be repositioned in the HUD Layout Tool, and Reboot Van on-screen icons that work again. PC notes list stability improvements, better Intel GPU crash reporting, AMD launch crash fixes, and hotfix delivery delay fixes.

Known issues Epic is still working on

From the fixes thread, keep these in mind:

• Some PC players may see IS-UP-IZ04 when installing. Epic says updating the Epic Games Launcher should resolve it.
• Mortuus X Titanium Legacy Style may show light purple instead of white until 43.00.
• In OG, the Cube beneath the Floating Island shows a health bar but cannot be destroyed until 43.00.

Fortnite OG: Retail Row Cube Monsters and Moisty Palms

Epic's OG thread for v42.40 opens with two Rift Zones.

Retail Row returns with Cube Monsters

A Rift Zone swallowed Mega Mall and rewound it into Retail Row. Cube Monsters spawn from Obelisks around the area. Destroy the Obelisks to slow the spawns, or fight the monsters and siphon health with every elimination.

Moisty Palms prop hunt

The Reality Wave hit Paradise Palms and turned it into Moisty Palms, a swampy mix of desert and marsh. Crouch inside the Rift Zone and you transform into a random prop. Props can still take damage, so crouching is camouflage, not invulnerability.

OG loot pool

New / in: Legendary Tactical SMG, Zapper Trap, Shield Bubble.

Vaulted: Burst SMG, Combat Shotgun, Drum Shotgun, Proximity Grenade Launcher, Storm Scout Sniper Rifle, Storm Flip.

Unvaulted: Suppressed Assault Rifle, Flint-Knock Pistol, Bouncer.

Tilted Town also got chest and terrain cleanup (empty weapon chests fixed, shopping cart removed from terrain, seams and jagged edges cleaned).

Reload: reboot timers and Squid Grounds weekend

Reload's v42.40 notes redesign how reboot timers work in Duos and Squads.

More actions reduce the timer, base time goes up

Epic added more actions that cut teammates' reboot timers, and increased the reboot time by 15 seconds at each game stage phase to make room for those actions.

Timer reductions Epic lists:

• Opening ammo / small boxes: -1 second
• Opening chests: -2 seconds
• Opening rare chests: -4 seconds
• Every 30 points of damage dealt: -1 second
• Downs and elims: unchanged from the previous ruleset (Duos 2 / 3 / 5, Squads 2 / 4 / 10 for down / elim / wipe)

New Time To Reboot by stage:

• Duos: 27 / 27 / 27 / 29 / 31 / 31 (was 12 / 12 / 12 / 15 / 15 / 17 / 17)
• Squads: 45 / 45 / 45 / 50 / 50 / 55 / 55 (was 30 / 30 / 30 / 35 / 35 / 40 / 40)

Playstyle shift: you buy down the longer base timer by looting and dealing damage, not just by getting elims. Passive hiding while a teammate is dead costs more than it did yesterday.

Squid Grounds weekend: October 15-19

Squid Grounds takes over for an exclusive weekend, October 15-19. After that weekend, Epic says a fresh map rotation will drop. Ranked and Unranked both get Nitemare Island, Squid Grounds, and the Stranger Things map during this window.

Reload loot pool

Unvaulted: Iron Pump Shotgun, Morphite Tactical Shotgun.

Vaulted: Gatekeeper Shotgun (still available on Nitemare Island), Twin Hammer Shotguns.

Hunt match modifier also now awards more gameplay items per Hunt win (previously it was mostly Kado Thorne's Siphon weapons).

Save the World: Challenge the Rift, Portal Combat, Grave Feather

STW's v42.40 notes are a content drop, not just fixes.

Challenge the Rift

In a Mission, deposit four BluGlo into a Rift to summon a battlefield and a Mini-Boss showdown. Rewards on a kill: Gold, PERK-UP!, and an Evolution Materials Cache.

Rules Epic spells out:

• Anyone can step into the circle to join.
• Nobody leaves until the Mini-Boss is down.
• If you are eliminated and respawn outside, you cannot re-enter.
• The barrier blocks outside attacks.
• Structures and Traps inside are cleared at the start.
• If nobody inside is left standing, the Mini-Boss vanishes with no restart.

Portal Combat questline and Grave Feather

Complete the Portal Combat questline by November 18 to unlock Grave Feather, a new Legendary Soldier. Standard perk Ghoulslinger adds 15 Crit Rating to Lefty and Righty. Commander perk Ghoulslinger+ adds 45 Crit Rating, and Crits have a 40% chance to summon a Phantasm that deals Energy damage to a nearby enemy.

Lefty and Righty themselves got uptime perk reworks: Double Agent Evelynn's "Where's Lefty" is now cooldown reduction (30% Support / 66% Commander), and Noir's "Pump Metal" adds flat duration (5 seconds / 20 as Commander).

Door to Darkness and Willow return

The Door to Darkness questline returns with Gold, Candy, and the Willow Hero (Legendary Outlander whose ability damage rises as health drops). Heroic Hours also get their own Homebase display above the Quest Log board.

Shop leaks vs live patch: keep them separate

Secondary coverage sometimes pairs v42.40 with Item Shop leak names (Obsession, Hamikuma, and similar). Those are not in Epic's v42.40 Override notes. Treat them as unconfirmed leaks until they appear in the live shop or in an Epic post. This guide does not list leak skins as patch content.

How to play Override after v42.40

Short checklist for the first sessions:

• Open the Loot Hack board and spend dust on the new set, not the vaulted Overrides.
• Equip Honey or Willow based on whether you want ranged pressure bees or Sprite-stealing fights.
• Finish Sprite Mastery for Quack before Saturday if you can.
• Turn on Auto Pick Up Weapons so Like-for-Like upgrades work.
• Set a Saturday alarm for 1:00 PM CDT and a backup for 8:00 PM CDT Power Hours.
• In Reload, loot and deal damage to cut reboot timers instead of camping.
• In OG, decide early whether you are fighting Cube Monsters at Retail Row or prop-hunting at Moisty Palms.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Fortnite v42.40 come out?

Epic posted the v42.40 Override Battle Royale notes on October 15, 2026, the same day as the update. The staff threads for BR, fixes, OG, Reload, and Save the World all went up that morning.

What are the new Loot Hacks in v42.40?

Thorne's Vampiric Blade, Finger Guns, Gatekeeper Shotgun, Hunting Rifle, Slap Splash, and all Sprite Variants. Midas' Masterpiece, Witch Broom, and the Super Shot, Big Boom, Action Hero, and Healing Overdrive Overrides are vaulted.

What do Honey Sprite and One Wish Willow Sprite do?

Honey has a chance to spawn bees at the hit location when you deal ranged damage. Willow extracts enemies' equipped Sprites on elimination and pushes nearby enemies when you take damage, but removing it marks you on the map.

When are Trick or Treat Sprites Power Hours?

Saturday, October 17. Round 1 starts at 1:00 PM CDT (2 PM ET / 6 PM UTC). Round 2 starts at 8:00 PM CDT the same Saturday (9 PM ET / Sunday 1 AM UTC).

What is Quack Sprite?

Quack Sprite is on the final Sprite Mastery rewards page. It boosts every Sprite you are carrying with extra Sprite XP whenever it gains XP. The same page also unlocks a new Pixel Polli Outfit style.

How do Like-for-Like Weapon Upgrades work?

Walk over a higher-rarity version of a weapon you already carry and the game swaps you up automatically. Enable Settings > Game > Combat > Auto Pick Up Weapons.

What changed in Fortnite Reload reboot timers?

Base reboot times went up by 15 seconds per stage, and more actions (looting containers and dealing damage) now reduce the timer. Duos stages are 27 / 27 / 27 / 29 / 31 / 31. Squads are 45 / 45 / 45 / 50 / 50 / 55 / 55.

Is Squid Grounds in Reload ranked this weekend?

Yes. Epic says Squid Grounds takes over for an exclusive weekend from October 15 to 19, and both Ranked and Unranked players get Nitemare Island, Squid Grounds, and the Stranger Things map.

What is Challenge the Rift in Save the World?

Deposit four BluGlo into a Rift during a Mission to start a Mini-Boss arena fight. Clear it for Gold, PERK-UP!, and an Evolution Materials Cache. Nobody leaves the circle until the boss is down, and a full wipe ends the encounter with no restart.

Are Obsession or Hamikuma part of the v42.40 patch notes?

No. Epic's official v42.40 threads do not list those as live shop items. Treat secondary leak coverage as unconfirmed until Epic or the live Item Shop confirms them.