The universe of Fortnite continues to surprise the many who battle royale in its bright, vivid world, and players have discovered something about its vending machines. Apparently, the vending machines will help players stay alive, even when downed. The machines in question are the ones that look like something that would dispense Coke and chips, except in Fortnite they're filled with medkits and shield potions.

On the official Fortnite subreddit, a popular post documented the discovery (via Gamesradar). In the post, a video shows that crawling to a vending machine after being knocked down can actually keep you alive. The player is in Quads mode when they're downed by enemy fire, but they crawl to a vending machine where they buy health back, reversing their deteriorating health. While medkits and potions bought from the machine would be useless, if you have enough gold bars you can also use it to get a patch up which still seems to work, even when downed.

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For the player this was a new discovery, but other Fortnite fans seemed to have already worked this trick out. The comments underneath the post are full of people who say they knew the vending machine feature already.. Many others were happy to admit they had no idea this was possible and will undoubtedly be using the trick when playing Duos and Quads in the near future.

For those unfamiliar with being downed in Fortnite, the phenomenon occurs when a player is completely depleted of health and shield, but only in modes where you have a teammate who can revive you. Your fellow teammates have the time it takes for your regenerated health bar to deplete to get you back on your feet and aiding them in their fight.

While in a downed state, a player is unable to use weapons or items. All they can do is slowly crawl for cover and hope their teammates save them in time. Well, that or find a vending machine and pay for a patch up to keep them going a little longer as we have now discovered. Maybe try to keep a vending machine nearby whenever you can from now on. They show up on the map so it actually shouldn't be too difficult to make sure there is always one relatively close by.

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