Water Sprites Disappear from Fortnite Tournaments

Fortnite tournaments don’t always run with the exact same loot as the normal game, especially in a season as wacky as this one. Although, losing the Fortnite Water Sprites in tournaments wasn’t the most expected vaulting. There’s plenty of weird weapons that are going to be in play as part of Galactic Battle, especially since so many tournaments are moving to Reload. But why have the sprites suddenly been vaulted?

Initially added back in Chapter 6 season 1, the sprites were themed with the first season of the current Chapter. However, they didn’t quite fit with the next crime season, and they’re definitely a little weird to see in the Star Wars POIs. Despite that, players dreading booting up the next update to see no Fortnite sprites running around have been surprised to see they’ve stuck it out.

These friendly little guys even become key to the new Fortnite storm surge meta that’s taken over competitive. It’s finally hit a breaking point with a new glitch though, one that’s seen the Fortnite sprites taken out of tournaments for the foreseeable future.

Fortnite Water Sprites Removed from Tournaments

With this week’s patch, we’ve seen some adjustments made to the Fortnite competitive loot pool. It’s no longer going to feature water sprites.

These little creatures freely roam the map, mainly spawning at the POIs which are left over from the first season. Pick them up, and you get three charges where you can throw them down, to get an initial burst of healing. That’s followed by heading per second afterwards. Some of the better meds in the game right now since you get so much health out of them, they cover health and shield, plus they work with an entire team at once. Definitely better than a set of minis.

While they’re still in the base game, today they’ve been removed from tournaments. The other Fortnite sprites are still active. But the wind sprite doesn’t see anywhere near as much use as the water ones gets. They haven’t actually been removed for a balance reason though.

They are effective forms of healing, but not to such a degree they’re being removed. Instead, it’s because of a bug going around at the moment.

Duplicating Water Sprites Bug

The item duplication glitch that’s been in and out of the game for a while has returned recently, and it’s effecting sprites in a big way. Once players have a full inventory, all they need to do is locate another water sprite. You pull your pickaxe out and spam picking up the sprite. Then, switch to a gun and repeat spamming the pick up. You’ll spawn more and more sprites.

It’s a bug which is similar in some ways to one in previous seasons, where you could somehow drop your pickaxe out of your inventory. It’s also the second time we’ve been able to duplicate healing items. Although, this one is substantially easier to do. Plenty of players have had it happen entirely by mistake. A bug like this could happen in a tournament and really disrupt things. Even if a player isn’t trying to use it, the bug could cause an advantage in Fortnite Galactic Battle tournaments. At least the handful still being held in Battle Royale.

That’s why the water sprite has been vaulted from competitive. But with them no longer fitting the map’s themes, are we expecting them to return afterwards?

Will Water Sprites Come Back to Fortnite?

Epic’s announcement of the water sprites being removed from the game has made it clear that it is returning to the loot pool. It isn’t being taken out of tournaments forever. If they have any plans for the meds and storm surge situation that’s currently effecting the game’s balance, then this isn’t part of it. It’s simply been removed because of the bug.

We can expect water sprites to be back in the tournament loot pool by the time we get to proper events. Since the ucrrent mini season is just a few weeks long and missing most major tournaments, we don’t have to worry about the item being missing from anything important. The current tournaments like the Pro-Am are in Reload, where sprites aren’t involved anyway.

We’ll probably see them re-enabled by the end of the season in one of the planned weekly updates. Although, Battle Royale tournaments won’t be a big factor until next season and June. Hopefully the water sprites are back in the game fully by then.