Fortnite

Fortnite
Active since 2018-06-30
Artifacts from the hugely popular Fortnite are appearing in the real world.
Type	Official
Creator	Epic Games
Discovered	2018-06-30

Main Page > List of Investigations > Fortnite

The Fortnite ARG was an ARG created by Epic Games that appeared to promote Season 5 of Fortnite Battle Royale, a free-to-play battle royale game developed and published by Epic Games. The ARG revolved around a rocket launch that created mysterious rifts spanning the map, leading into the 5th season of Fortnite: Battle Royale, which began on July 12th, 2018.

Rocket Launch

Spectrogram of Audio #1 from the Rocket Launch

Video of the Rocket Launch.

Spectrogram of Audio #2 from the Rocket Launch

Throughout June 2018, Epic teased that the rocket would eventually be launched by a character known as The Visitor, who appeared as a skin that could be unlocked by completing weekly challenges in the game. On 2018-06-29, Epic stated that a one time event, the launch of the rocket, would take place the next day at 18:30 UTC. A video of the rocket launch can be seen on the right. During the rocket launch, audio was played while the rocket was in the sky. The same audio was later found in two different forms in the game's files, Audio #1 and Audio #2.

Players, curious about the audio files, decided to analyse their spectrograms. Audio #1's showed the skulls that were present on the TV screens around the map prior to the rocket launch event. Audio #2's shows two sets of numbers that decode to four different coordinates on the game's map. Both are pictured at the right.

Decoding the left set of numbers from Audio #2's spectrogram as ASCII values and the right set of numbers as binary integers results in the following translation:

066 - B, 0b0110 - 6
072 - H, 0b1001 - 9
073 - I, 0b1000 - 8
073 - I, 0b1001 - 9

The coordinates B6, H9, I8, I9, were speculated to be locations related to a leaked game mode that would be taking place at the end of Season 4. Soon after the rocket launch, a massive rift formed in the sky. Shortly afterwards, smaller rifts started to appear in different locations around the map, and over time they both destroyed and created new objects. As of present, rifts have appeared in the following locations (see this map):

Lonely Lodge (J4) - Taking the Lonely Lodge sign
Motel (D2) - Taking the Motel sign
Tomato Town (G4) - Taking the tomato on the building
Retail Row (H6) - Taking the NOMS sign
Greasy Grove (C7/B7) - Taking the Durr Burger on the building
Mountain East of Snobby Shores (B6) - Placed an anchor
Hill North East of Prison (I8) - Placed a horse-drawn carriage
Big tree under second 'I' of Moisty Mire (I9) - Placed dinosaur bones

Players speculated that these rifts were teasing new locations for Season 5.

Worlds Collide

IRL Durr Burger which appeared in the California Desert along with Agents investigating it's "anomaly".

On 2018-07-06, a Twitter account, @selashiloni, had tweeted out about finding a Durr Burger in a California desert at 15160 E Ave S, Llano, CA 93544. The account tweeted multiple videos of the burger, and a police car that was to look like the police car located in the game. Soon after, multiple actors playing agents arrived to the site, setting up a tent with many different items on a table and wrapping caution tape around the burger. Despite poor connection and blazing conditions, many brave players who ventured to the site documented their visits, allowing for a glimpse of what the site was like when it was open to the public.

Durr Burger Site

Photo of the items on the desk inside the tent at the Durr Burger Site.

Durr Site Tent

Agents pitched a tent with 13 different items on a desk underneath. A photo of the items on the desk was taken by a Reddit user and can be seen on the left.

The items on the desk are listed below:

1. Business Cards	
2. Energizer Hard Case Professional Work Light	
3. UFO Contact From Reticulum by Wendelle C. Stevens, William J. Hermann, and Sharleen M. Spivak	
4. Gods From Outer Space by Erich Von Daniken	
5. The Flying Saucer Reader by Jay David	
6. Flying Saucers 101: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About UFOs and Alien Beings by Harold E. Burt	
7. Super Book of UFOs, Unidentified Flying Objects by Michael Shulan	
8. Empire Level E280 16-Inch Heavy Duty Professional Combination Square w/Etched Stainless Steel Blade and True BlueR Vial	
9. Flying Saucers: Fact or Fiction? by Max B. Miller	
10. Realistic Walkie Talkie	
11. Betty Crocker's Hamburger Cookbook by Betty Crocker	
12. To Men of Earth (Including: White Sands Incident) by Daniel W. Fry Ph.D.
13 (Not Marked, Under 3). UFOs Over the Americas by Jim Lorenzen and Coral Lorenzen	

Players speculated heavily about the items but their purpose remained unknown.

Police Car at the Durr Burger Site.

Durr Site Police Car

On-site with the agents and the burger was a police cruiser which resembled ones in-game. During a visit, players examined the car, discovering the numbers 212/code> on the inside of the gas cap,the vehicle's VIN (Vehicle Identification Number), and a license plate reading "7WKD070."

It is possible that the license plate is an allusion to the process of the Blockbuster Challenges during season 4, due to the duration being seven weeks, hence <code>7WK; however, a link for D070 cannot be made.

Durr Site Agents

At the Durr Burger location, multiple agents handed out cards with different agent numbers and a phone number, (712) 380-4091, on the back of the card. The agent numbers were decoded by using a phone keypad to translate the numbers:

Cards given out by agents with phone number on back side.

Agent #3678 - FORT
Agent #3742 - EPIC
Agent #6483 - NITE

Spectrogram of the second sound file which replaced a prior when calling the telephone number, which decodes to C7.

When calling (712) 380-4091 on 2018-07-06, you would get this audio, with a higher quality version available here. When analyzing under a spectrogram, nothing of significance was found.

On 2018-07-08, the sound file played when calling the number from the cards handed out by the agents was changed. The new file can be found here. Spectrogram analysis of this file, pictured right, reveals a hidden code similar to the ones found in the rocket launch sound file. Decoding this code with the same method as the previous codes yields C7, another coordinate from the in-game map.

Loot Llamas

On 2018-07-09, people around Europe found many of the game's Supply Llama's in different real life locations spanning multiple countries. Players speculated that the llamas may be related to the recently teased C7 coordinate in the spectrogram of the second audio from the agent phone number. In the C7 region, a tent, a police car, and the former Durr Burger could be found, with a phone booth in the center, much like the phone booth that this llama was found in.

• 

  London, England

• 

  Cologne, Germany

• 

  Barcelona, Spain

• 

  Warsaw, Poland

• 

  London, England

• 

  Cannes, France

• 

  Paris, France

The list of locations in the order of the images is as follows:

1. London, England (51.513021, -0.124785)
2. Cologne, Germany (50.935569, 6.948483)
3. 420 Avinguda Diagonal, Barcelona, Spain (41.395601, 2.156354)
4. Warsaw, Poland (Unknown)
5. London, England (Unknown)
6. Cannes, France (Unknown)
7. Paris, France (48.8539483, 2.3611878) (Currently MIA/robbed)

The Llamas' Call

Spectrogram of the third sound file, which played when pressing 6 after calling the agent phone number and decoded to coordinates, 48.8539483, 2.3611878.

On the early hours of 2018-07-10, a new sound file was discovered by dialing 6 while calling the agents' phone number. Spectrogram analysis revealed the presence of a set of coordinates reversed. The coordinates (48.8539483, 2.3611878) pointed to a location in Paris, France, which turned out to be the location of the 7th llama.

Video of the moment the cube appeared.

A 6-Sided Mystery

Path of the cube according to the game's files.

Time passed as rifts continued to grow and shrink across the map. Then, on 2018-07-24, after several days of increasingly-frequent lightning strikes emanating from rifts, a huge glyph-encased cube ripped into the game after a series of violent strikes. Watch it on the right!

Players have noted that shooting, approaching, and colliding the cube causes it to strike back, blasting the player away and resulting in a strange death message when causing the player to die. The area surrounding the cube is encompassed by a magnetic forcefield which causes a low-gravity effect within its reach. The cube seems to emit a variety of sounds.

The glyphs covering the cubes surface, pictured below, are difficult to glimpse in the game. They, as well as many other elements from the ARG, have been made available for all to inspect on github.

• 

  Rune AG

• 

  Rune AB

• 

  Rune AR

• 

  Rune BB

• 

  Rune BG

• 

  Rune BR

• 

  Rune BA

Movement On The Cube Front

Shortly after the cube appeared, it began making a series of movements, usually pausing 103 minutes between each.

Cube Soup A La Loot

On September 19th, 2018, the cube melted into Loot Lake in a spectacular fashion, rendering the water purple and granting it extra-bouncy properties.

Video of the Cube melting into Loot Lake

Darkness Rises

The Season 6 trailer uploaded on September 27, 2018 revealed that the cube had not melted, but actually found its way to the bottom of Loot Lake. The trailer also shows the cube lifting the middle island out of Loot Lake, leaving a vortex hole. Soon after, Loot Lake was renamed to Leaky Lake.
The cube, along with the new floating island started moving towards the 7th rune, and upon reaching the rune, the cube lifted it out of the ground and presumably started draining its powers. And then it continued to the next rune and so on and so forth, until it reached the 3rd rune, located near Dusty Divot.
Being the last rune the cube was visiting, all other runes started floating towards the island, where they formed a circle and then fell to the ground. The cube made its way back to Leaky Lake, where it beamed up some sort of portal laser.

Season 6 Trailer

Fortnitemares 2018

During the 2nd iteration of the Fortniteamres event (October 28), the cube's sky portal had gotten bigger and bigger, up to a point where the cube started cracking. It kept cracking until November 3rd. On November 3rd at 01:00PM EST, the cube split and started dripping its power hourly, bit by bit.