Boxfights have been one of the most popular island types in ‘Fortnite’ Creative for years now. Players who want to test their skills in close quarters without dealing with a full Battle Royale match have been loading into community-made boxfight maps for as long as Creative has been around and it has always felt like the kind of thing that should have been an official mode a long time ago.
Epic Games is now making that happen. Arenas Boxfights drops on April 9 as a proper game mode in ‘Fortnite.’ There is also a ranked ladder tied to the mode, and Epic is handing out free cosmetics through a set of quests that go live with it.
The Mode Will Have 1v1 And 2v2 Matches With Alternating Weapons
According to the announcement from the official ‘Fortnite’ account on X, the Arenas Boxfights mode will put 16 players into a lobby and have them fight through 1v1 and 2v2 rounds, and whoever reaches 15 rounds wins first is the winner.
The weapons and items will alternate each round so players are not running the same loadout every time and that alone makes it more interesting than most of the community boxfight maps where everybody just uses the same gun. Epic is also launching the mode with its own set of maps that were built for Arenas Boxfights specifically, and a ranked mode for people who want to grind it competitively.
Epic is also throwing in two free cosmetics to get people playing it. The Builder’s Crest back bling and the Cracked Blueprint spray are both up for grabs through the Arenas Boxfights Quests, and you need to actually win rounds to unlock them, so it is not just a login reward.
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Boxfights in Creative were already popular because they let players work on their mechanics in tight spaces, and now there is an official version with ranked play and actual rewards, which gives people a reason to play this over the community maps.
The New Mode Is Launching Right Before Epic Removes Ballistic And Fortnite Festival Battle Stage On April 16
The timing of the Arenas Boxfights launch is not random. Epic Games already announced that Rocket Racing and ‘Fortnite’ Ballistic and Fortnite Festival Battle Stage are all being pulled from the game, and the next ‘Fortnite’ update on April 16 is when Ballistic and Festival Battle Stage will officially be removed. Arenas Boxfights, going live on April 9, gives players a week to get into the new mode before the other ones disappear, and that is probably the whole reason Epic timed it this way.
There is no confirmed time for when the mode goes live on April 9, but ‘Fortnite’ usually pushes new stuff out around 9 AM ET, and most people are expecting the same here. The mode has different difficulty settings too, with Easy running 7.5-second respawns, Medium at 5 seconds, and Hard at 2.5 seconds, and there is also a Permadeath option at 2.5 seconds for players who do not want respawns at all.
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Epic has been pulling back on some of the extra modes it added to ‘Fortnite’ over the past couple of years and vaulting the ones that did not pull enough players, and Arenas Boxfights is what they are putting out in their place.
