Fortnite Season 6: start time, Lava Lake, cube path, map changes, leaked skins and more

With Season 5 soon drawing to a close, speculation about Season 6 is rampant, especially with the mysterious cube still rolling around the map.

When does Fortnite Season 6 start?

The start date for Season 6 of Fortnite is September 25 according to the latest in-game challenge messages. That leaves a gap between the end of the Week 10 Challenges which should stop on Thursday September 20. Now, that might seem a little odd, especially as Epic hasn’t yet begun to officially tease Season 6 images as it has in the past. So what’s going to happen between September 20 and 25?

Fortnite cube countdown

This is leading many to expect something big will happen in Fortnite during that five day gap – most likely, the mysterious cube that’s been doing the rounds will arrive at Loot Lake and cause the map to change. Recent datamined files point towards a volcano erupting and changing Loot Lake entirely. It’s a big area and there’s not a lot of reason to visit it – player’s tend to skirt around it more than anything else – so it might be time for a new location in the same way that Moisty Mire eventually became a desert by the start of Season 5.

The cube is almost at Loot Lake already. Is it time to rename it Lava Lake?

Linking into the theme of change and building on the current Viking theme in Season 5, players have translated the runes on the Viking ship to mean “renewal” and “transformation” which, with the current Ragnarok challenge, might mean that the map will be totally destroyed to make way for something completely different and new. Players will remember that the rocket launch happened a while before Season 4 ended so it’s not unreasonable to expect that a big event will go down in the last remaining weeks of Season 5.

The cube has been rolling around the map for some time now, and most recently took a detour to Tilted Towers. However, it’s now on its expected path to Loot Lake, so any changes are likely to happen when it arrives in the next 24 hours or less.

What’s going to change for Fortnite Season 6: skins, pets, balloons

As well as physical changes to the Fortnite map for Season 6, we’d also expect a number of other changes.

A new consumable will be introduced with Balloons. These can either be used to lift the player to new heights, or as a way of descending without splatting to the floor. Here’s the leaked artwork for them.

Next week's item: balloons. You can stop your fall or soar into new heights with it. That's the official item image. pic.twitter.com/XzivT0yP6V

— DieBuddies (@TwoEpicBuddies) September 18, 2018

Depending on the success of High Stakes we could hopefully see another stand-alone event like this in Season 6 as well as a revamp of the popular Playground mode which was a welcome break from the sometimes overwhelming Battle Royal.

Halloween is also in the middle of Fortnite Season 6 and fans are wondering will we see the return of the Skull Trooper or something equally exciting this year? The skin was a favourite amongst fans and instrumental to Fortnite’s initial success so expectations will be high.

Pets and weapon skins are also rumoured to appear this upcoming Season. Weapon skins are the next logical financial step for Fortnite so it would make sense that they would introduce them eventually; the same could be said about the introduction of pets. Music packs could also be a very interesting or possibly annoying new addition to gameplay.