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Fortnite is streamlining its many battle passes

Promotional art for Fortnite’s “Absolute Doom” season.
Image: Epic Games

Fortnite is bigger than a battle royale now, and to help make progressing through the various available battle passes a little bit more streamlined, Epic Games is going to allow XP from any experience apply to any of those passes.

Currently, XP you earn across various modes in Fortnite doesn’t help you progress through the special passes for Lego Fortnite and the music-themed Fortnite Festival. Instead, you progress by earning “studs” and “festival points,” respectively, by playing those modes.

Starting November 2nd, however, Epic will begin the migration to let you progress using XP. As Epic details in a blog post, the change will first apply the upcoming Music Pass (renamed from Festival Pass), meaning festival points will go away. On December 1st, the change to XP will go into effect for the “Brick or Treat” Lego Pass and studs will be retired. That same day, the “battle stars” that you earn with XP in Fortnite’s main battle pass will also be removed.

Epic is continuing to make Fortnite more of a platform with lots of Epic- and creator-made experiences rather than just one main mode. Letting players use XP to all of its various players helps address some growing pains with that transition — especially now that Epic has had about a year since the launch of Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Festival to figure out what players want.

There are a few more changes coming, too. Music and LEGO Passes that release after December 1st will offer one track that has both free rewards and premium rewards exclusive to people who buy them, like how the main Fortnite battle pass works. Epic will let users directly buy a reward on a pass that they might want, meaning they won’t have to grind levels just to get it (or buy the necessary levels to reach that point). And while the battle pass, Lego Pass, and Music Pass are currently all separate purchases, Epic is promising that it will “soon” offer a way to buy all of them at once.

The battle pass changes are being announced just days before the conclusion of the current Marvel-themed season, which is set to end on Saturday at 2AM ET. Epic is already teasing a new live event and that the next season, “Remix,” will return to the Chapter 2 island, meaning we’ll probably get another “OG”-like trip through the game’s history.