How will gold bars affect competitive Fortnite?

Gold bars are a new resource in Fortnite that can be earned through playing, and they can be used at in-game venders.

However, this in-game currency carries over from game to game, allowing some players to start playing Fortnite with a stockpile of gold. For competitive Fortnite, this can be a problem as the game is meant to be played with a level playing field.

I want @FortniteGame to work their gold bars mechanic into their competitive scene. I think combining that with NPCs opens up a bunch of weird offerings for an otherwise (IMO) stale and boring to watch play style. Every competitive game is people turtling.

— Richard (@jagddoga) December 3, 2020

Competitive Fortnite rules on how gold bars get applied

Gold bars can be acquired in the current season of Fortnite through a number of ways, including completing bounties, finding gold in chests, or scoring eliminations. Depending on how fast players can acquire gold, this mechanic has the ability to significantly alter how the game is played at a competitive level.

Currently, the competitive Fortnite Twitter ruling has already stated that, for competitive matches, gold bars will be enabled. However, it has been said that players will start each match with zero gold bars and will not be able to carry them over to other competitive matches.

The inclusion of this currency though, will still likely have some impact on the game’s competitive environment. Because the vendors in Fortnite offer unique weapons for players to use, competitive players may attempt to make use of the vendors in order to gain access to additional firepower.

For example, if players manage to find enough gold then they can even hire some of these NPCs as a bodyguard.

Competitive playlists have Bars enabled; however, players will start with 0 Bars, and these Bars cannot be carried over between competitive matches.

— Fortnite Competitive (@FNCompetitive) December 2, 2020

The vendors offer more than money

But these vendors offer other tangible benefits which don’t necessarily rely on having collected a sizable pool of gold. For example, some of these NPCs offer quests which reward players with gold, but also give players a significant benefit just for accepting them.

The bounty quest offers players a prize of 70 gold for eliminating a specific player, but crucially also gives the player who accepts the quest a general region where their target is.

For competitive Fortnite, it’s likely that players will accept these quests just for the added information.

While that added information might not be too important in some games, when played at a competitive level, the ability to highlight where a specific player is can be game changing. Especially so if the revealed player is someone like Bugha or another well known pro.

It will be interesting to see just how these random bounties and other assets will affect the upcoming Fortnite tournaments, and it’s easy to see how they have the potential to lead to some pretty exciting moments.