Fortnite Mothership Starts Abducting Players, And That's A Good Thing

The massive Mothership over the Fortnite island has started abducting players, but the activity is different than what we've seen from the smaller UFOs thus far. Players who are grabbed by the Mothership aren't simply healed and dropped somewhere else; rather, they're given access to the massive vessel where they're able to acquire some key weapons to get a fighting edge.

If you're on the Fortnite battle royale island, simply look up — that huge disc in the sky is the Mothership, and there's now a chance that it'll pull you up in its tractor beam. The new abduction phenomenon arrived with today's game update 17.10, bringing the first big change we've seen this season.

It seems the Mothership has released a trio of smaller abduction ships that will nab players during the first Storm circle. The ships' locations are identified on the map; landing at any of the three POIs where they're located can potentially result in abduction.

Assuming you're one of the lucky players picked up by one of these ships, you'll have a limited amount of time to collect gold and blue orbs. Assuming you grab enough of them, you'll be transported to a loot room where you'll get access to chests full of rare items. Only 20 seconds are offered, though, so players will need to quickly sort through the chests and grab what they want before they're ejected out of the ship.

There is a downside to this, which is that the ship will send the player off to a random part of the battle royale island. If you end up somewhere less than ideal, the rare weapons you were able to grab while onboard may not be of much use, making the potential abduction a bittersweet event — it could help or harm you and the outcome is largely up to chance.