As the mysterious cube reached Loot Lake and painted it purple, Epic Megagames announced the return of Close Encounters LTM and the launch of Fortnite's sub-region matchmaking for Southeast Asia, which is a region soft-lock of sorts.

Let's get the boring stuff out of the way - Epic has started testing Fortnite's sub-region matchmaking for the Southeast Asian region, with the first data-center supporting it already active in Singapore. The end goal is for players to be queued in the location that gives them the best connection available.

Note that this is not a hard lock, because if a quality-ping queue cannot provide reasonable queue times, Fortnite players will "defaulted back to the 'primary' data-center for the region for that match". There are likely plenty of adjustments to be made to the system but Epic hopes to eventually launch it around the globe, which would, in theory, improve just about every aspect of Fortnite's matchmaking.

Jetpack lovers rejoice - Epic took to Twitter to announce that Fortnite's Close Encounters limited time mode is back as of 4:00 pm GMT so strap up, it's flying time. You may recall the mode launching in May 2018, although its runtime was cut short over server issues, which seem to have been fixed in the meantime.

As for Fortnite's mysterious cube, it has finally reached its destination, which we now know with certainty is Loot Lake. As it sank to the bottom though, it painted the entire lake purple, suggesting that the cube ain't done yet.

The cube's tendency to bounce players off, with the intensity of the bounce directly related to whether you are bouncing or trying to attack it, seems to have been inherited by Loot Lake too. Yeah, it's pretty bouncy for a lake. One thing is certain, Season 6 will have something to do with Loot Lake, whatever it may be.

                                                    Epic GamesFortnite character flying towards Loot Lake, which turned purple                                                    Fortnite, Loot Lake. It's not very purple in replays, is it?


 Interestingly enough, my replay didn't show Loot Lake as being purple but it displayed a purple haze over several in-game locations. I'm not sure whether this is a bug since I've probably had the glitchiest Fortnite session in a while, but I'll be giving it a go a few more times to check. Until then, happy jetpacking!

You can find Epic's announcement of sub-region matchmaking here, while the Close Encounters LTM tweet is here.
