How to teleport in Fortnite Season 5

Fortnite has introduced a lot of changes into Season 5, with the map being completely overhauled and new abilities being introduced.

A new feature in Season 5 of Fortnite lets players collect crystals in order to gain access to a short range dashing teleport. This added mobility option may seem like a small change, but it has huge implications for how it can and will affect Fortnite going forward.

You can teleport with the new crystals ingame!#Fortnite #FortniteNewspic📸@MidaRado pic.twitter.com/4a7Liw2Ool

— FortniteLeaksandNews (@FortniteNewsC3) December 2, 2020

Crystal-dashing in Fortnite

To use the crystal-dash in Fortnite Season 5 all players need to do is collect some of the loose crystals laying around the map. Once collected, players can simply double jump in order to teleport a short distance. This teleport doesn’t seem to go through walls and unfortunately very little is known about it at the moment.

Nonetheless, the range of usefulness is apparent. One of the worst circumstances in Fortnite is having to traverse open ground while under fire. These dashes give players a quick and evasive way to jump across open ground and avoid either having to waste resources or risk taking too much damage.

Of course, this mobility option offers more apart from simply being a good way to evade enemy fire. Offensively, these dashes allow players to slip through enemy defenses and approach from different angles.

As shown by @jasontkdkid on Twitter, this dash is so fast that it allows players to exploit even a tiny gap in someone’s defenses to dive into their boxes.

NEW crystal exploit #Fortnite pic.twitter.com/JvAemmmURS

— Jay (@jasontkdkid) December 2, 2020

This kind of mechanic is just what Fortnite needed

Fortnite has long struggled to handle the dynamic between building and shooting, and it’s fair to say that for a lot of Fortnite building was arguably much more important.

Even as building along wasn’t enough to score eliminations, a capable builder could easily control their opponent’s movements and pin them down in order to take zero risk shots from around a corner.

The last season seemed to attempt to address this dynamic by introducing superpowers which could do massive splash damage to builds, or outright demolish entire towers.

This let players destroy an aggressive builder’s approach and led to the season’s fights being taken at a slightly longer range when superpowers were involved, but definitely felt like a significant departure from traditional Fortnite.

Dashing seems to be a better way to approach the situation altogether. The added mobility and range of options given to players means that pinning players down, or being kept at bay by a defensive builder, will have less of an impact on the course of the fight.

Players can simply dash away, or dash in, during the right moment in order to exploit a gap in their opponent’s gameplay. In this way, building in Fortnite isn’t totally negated, but getting caught out of position one time doesn’t spell the end of the fight.

Additionally, because the dash consumes a resource that players have to gather during the game, it makes players want to consider where and when to use it. Overall, it should make for some interesting moments in Fortnite Season 5.