Leakers have discovered that a crashed spaceship has been added beneath Fortnite’s waves, but it will soon emerge and come with some specific new challenges.

Fortnite players were expecting something big from this week’s patch. The ability to hop inside Fortnite’s cars and drive them, perhaps. Or the addition and reveal of the lost city of Atlantis that seems to be on the horizon. Players got neither of those things. Just some updated Summer Splash LTMs and a few run of the mill bug fixes.

Thanks to Fortnite’s data mining community, this week’s update hasn’t been as uneventful as it appeared to be on the surface. Epic adds upcoming features via some of its patches, it just keeps them somewhat hidden until it is ready to reveal them. This week, that hidden addition comes in the form of a wrecked spaceship currently submerged between Fortnite’s still higher than usual water level.

Fortnite leaker FortTory has removed the water from the crash site in order to give players a proper look at what’s to come. It looks nothing like the spacecraft that have featured in Fortnite before, and apparently there is an Ancient Astronaut trapped inside. While there is no information on what the Astronaut’s challenges will specifically require of players when they drop, there is some information discovered in the game’s code that suggests what people will need to do.

The currently vague challenge descriptions can be found below.

  • Found Ancient Ship Collect Missing Part Install Missing Part Begin Launch Sequence Stop Ship Launch

Most of them appear to be pretty straightforward, but there is every chance the ship is protected by some sort of NPC henchmen once the water has subsided. Fixing the ship with henchmen and enemies raining bullets down on players won’t come easy if that is indeed what is going to happen.

It would appear as if Fortnite’s storyline is about to take an unexpected twist, but isn’t that always the way? Chances are the Ancient Astronaut and their marooned spaceship will play a key part in the progression and culmination of Season 3. As for why players will need to stop the ship from leaving the island after helping to fix it, that final challenge is the one that has really piqued our interest.

Source: FortTory, Twitter