Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 1 enters its second week with a mid-cycle content drop that expands the ongoing Loki Multiverse event, brings back the classic Heavy Shotgun to the competitive loot pool, and kicks off the first Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS) qualifier tournament of the chapter with a massive $5 million prize pool. Epic Games deployed the v31.10 update early this morning, introducing a suite of map changes, balance adjustments, and fresh quests that reshape the Neon City meta.
The Loki Multiverse event, which launched in Chapter 7's opening week, enters Phase 2 with a significant narrative escalation. New "Temporal Rift" points of interest have appeared across Neon City, marked by shimmering green energy anomalies that transport players to pocket-dimension arenas for high-risk, high-reward loot encounters. The TemPad Mythic item has been upgraded with an additional charge, allowing more strategic repositioning. Phase 2 also introduces five new Loki-themed challenges, rewarding players with exclusive cosmetics including the "God of Stories" back bling, a Time-Keeping Scythe harvesting tool, and a new loading screen featuring Loki facing off against Kang variants.
In a move that will please veteran players, Epic has unvaulted the Heavy Shotgun and added it to the core loot pool for the remainder of Chapter 7. The classic weapon, known for its tight pellet spread and extended effective range compared to other shotguns, returns with updated stats balanced for the UE6-powered game engine. The Heavy Shotgun deals 73 base damage (headshot multiplier 1.5x) with a magazine size of 5 and a fire rate of 0.8 seconds per shot. Early testing suggests it fills a unique niche between the Pump Shotgun's raw power and the Auto Shotgun's rapid fire, giving competitive players a new strategic option for box-fighting scenarios.
The Fortnite Champion Series for Chapter 7 officially begins this week with the first open qualifier round running from July 25-27. Epic Games confirmed a $5 million total prize pool for the season, with $2 million reserved for the grand finals winner. The competitive format returns to the tried-and-tested Duos bracket, with weekly qualifiers feeding into the Season Finals in late August. The Neon City map introduces several new competitive considerations — the wall-running mechanic adds verticality that separates top-tier players from the pack, while the district-specific loot tables create interesting early-game strategy decisions. Several prominent competitive players have already begun streaming their wall-running practice routines, and early scrim footage suggests that mastery of vertical movement will be the defining skill gap of Chapter 7 competitive play.
The v31.10 patch also includes quality-of-life improvements including a ping system update that adds contextual location callouts, stabilization fixes for the Switch 2 version particularly during the Digital Duel LTM, and adjustments to the Pulse Rifle's recoil pattern to make it more controllable at medium range. Epic also confirmed that mid-season Marvel collaboration details will be revealed in early August, with dataminers already uncovering references to a "Secret Wars" themed content drop that could include multiple Marvel character skins and a map-changing event.