Fortnite's Rare Golden Mushroom Disabled After Disappointing Players

Epic Games has disabled the rarest item in Fortnite, the mythical Golden Mushroom that few people have ever (publicly) found. Unlike the other mushrooms in the game, this ultra-rare item is a shimmering gold color and very hard to find, presumably bestowing the person who finds it with full health and shields. This wasn't the case earlier this month, however, and now the mushroom has disappeared entirely.

Many players remain unaware of the Golden Mushroom's existence, while others have given up trying to find it. The mushroom allegedly has a spawn rate of only 1 in 10,000, meaning the odds are not in your favor. Renewed attention was drawn to the mushroom earlier this month when popular streamer SypherPK and his teammates found the item.

As shown in the video above, Sypher picked up the Golden Mushroom, placing it in its inventory; it reverted to an ordinary blue shield mushroom and remained that way when he dropped it. The streamer consumed the (no longer golden) mushroom after picking it back up and found that it only gave him 5 shield points.

This was quite obviously a bug given how rare and monumental the Golden Mushroom item is. Now, a couple of weeks later, Epic has quietly disabled the ultra-rare item, meaning it is currently not spawning in the game. This change isn't mentioned on the official Fortnite Trello account, but was noted by popular data-miner Twitter account HYPEX:

The Golden Mushroom has been disabled with a hotfix, maybe they are fixing the issue when you can't pick it up.

— HYPEX (@HYPEX) July 13, 2020

The data-miner speculates that Epic may have disabled the Golden Mushroom due to reports that some players weren't able to pick it up; others think the change is due to the SypherPK video, indicating that Epic may be fixing the issue that caused the mythic item to turn into an ordinary 5 shield mushroom. Only time will tell when it returns and how it changes, however.