Fortnite and Rocket League have kicked off a small new crossover event, called Rivals & Rockets, and it's got unusually good rewards. With a fairly minimal amount of grinding, you can earn a free Fortnite skin and a free car body that works in both games. But you'll have to play Rocket League to get the skin. The Rockets & Rivals event runs until April 30.

To unlock the free skin--Dueling Dragons Jackie, which is a new version, with a much cooler jacket, of the free skin Jackie that was awarded for playing Rocket Racing two years ago--you'll need to complete five quests while playing online matches in Rocket League:

• Hit the ball 50 times
• Get 15 centers or clears
• Get 5 goals
• Play 5 matches
• Win 5 matches

While these quests may seem a little daunting for folks who don't play Rocket League, they're not very time consuming--I got through them in about 45 minutes by playing normally. If you're worried about scoring goals, try the Heatseeker modes in ranked or casual. In Heatseeker, the ball naturally drifts toward the goal at all times, making it much easier to get a shot on target.

When Epic Games raised prices in Fortnite by reducing the amounts of V-Bucks players receive for purchases and on the battle pass, it represented a pretty dramatic reduction in value for Fortnite Crew. The $12 monthly subscription grants a skin and V-Bucks each month, along with access to the battle pass, OG pass, music pass, and Lego pass in Fortnite as long as you stay subscribed, and the Rocket Pass in Rocket League. But it may be that Epic is also using another, more subtle method to make Crew less cost-effective for consumers: by making those passes last longer.

Because so much of the value of Fortnite Crew these days is tied to the passes unlocked by the subscription, the value is higher if the passes cycle quickly. If you get through six Lego passes in a year, for example, that would obviously be better than only getting through three of them, because if you stay subscribed to Fortnite Crew, you're paying the same price each month no matter how many Lego passes Fortnite ends up having this year.

We've got bad news: These Fortnite passes are definitely trending toward being longer these days. Let's look at some numbers.

The version of Fortnite that started it all is in the spotlight for the first time in many years, as Epic Games has made the original Save the World mode free for all Fortnite players for the first time. For those who aren't familiar with it, Save the World is a co-op survival game in which players must complete objectives on various open-world maps while using builds and traps to defend from a variety of monsters. Now that Save the World is free, it will appear as one of Fortnite's main modes in the Discovery section of the lobby for all players.

Epic is celebrating making Save the World free by offering crossover quests with Battle Royale that will award XP and cosmetics, including a free skin based that is usable in all of Fortnite. Completing three quests for the Jess NPC on the Battle Royale island will unlock the ability to buy the Super Shredder weapon from her once per match, completing 12 quests unlocks the Super Shredder schematic for Save the World, and earning 350,000 XP in Save the World will award the Jess skin.

Before the removal of the price tag, Fortnite: Save the World was a mode largely forgotten by most players, though it's had a consistent set of players who have used it to level through each battle pass. Back in the day, though, Save the World was Fortnite, because it was the game's only mode when it originally launched with a $40 price tag. Ironically, though, Fortnite only became a juggernaut because Save the World was a huge bomb. After Fortnite launched to disappointing sales numbers in July 2017, Epic quickly whipped up a building-based battle royale mode in Fortnite as a quick pivot, and that in turn blew up quickly and spawned the aspiring metaverse that we know so well today.

Starting April 9, Fortnite is getting a new core mode developed by Epic Games called Arenas, which will allow players to take part in round-robin boxfight tournaments. Arenas, which was made with Unreal Editor for Fortnite, is essentially Epic's attempt to make its own version of a very popular genre of user-made Creative maps. Boxfights may be, in fact, Fortnite Creative's most common type of map.

Technically, Arenas is not Fortnite's first attempt at an official boxfight map. The Legends Landing island, which is likely better known among normal folks as a venue for watching pro Fortnite tournaments, has two small boxfight arenas in its lobby. But Arenas will be the first time that boxfights will be the actual main purpose of an Epic-made map.

Let's dive into the details so we can see how exactly it works.

Fortnite OG Season 8 begins on Wednesday, April 1, ushering in a pirate invasion on the throwback island, and bringing back the fan-favorite Avengers: Endgame limited-time mode that hasn't been available in seven years--this is not an April. Fools' joke. And, of course, we've also got a new OG pass that includes three new remix skins based on old exclusive skins from the Season 8 battle pass.

The Season 8 OG pass includes remixes of the lizard ninja Hybrid, the cursed pirate Blackheart, and the regular human being Luxe. Unlocking the pass for 1,000 V-Bucks or through Fortnite Crew instantly unlocks Synthesis, the new version of Hybrid--we haven't yet seen if this one has a lizard style as well, but it's a safe bet that it does. If this pass works like the previous OG passes, it should include two main styles for each of the skins, as well as a full suite of matching cosmetics.

Avengers: Endgame returns to Fortnite

In the Endgame limited-time mode, which starts up on April 3, players are sorted into two teams of 16 players each, with one team representing the Avengers, and the other being Thanos' Chitauri. The Chitauri must scour the island for all six Infinity Stones, each of which powers up whichever player is Thanos, and the Avengers have to stop them. The Chitauri, as a team, are able to respawn 150 times, and the Avengers have unlimited respawns until the Chitauri get all the stones. It's essentially a themed version of the defunct core Fortnite mode Team Rumble.