Fortnite: Battle Royale Tips

Fortnite: Battle Royale, being the PvP aspect of Fortnite, presents players with a various number of ways in which they can be killed by the opposition. As if that weren't enough, the very nature of the map can do so to the inattentive rather quickly. Below is a collection of tips gathered from across the web and from personal experience that should help you reach victory royale.

These tips are for beginners and may include something even well-versed players might not know. Feel free to add your own!

Basics

• When crouching, your footsteps don't make as much noise. If you're planning on jumping someone close to you, crouch as you move towards so they cannot hear your footsteps.
• You'll die frequently with the number of people on the map and the nature of the game. Rather than focusing on "winning", focus on your match duration and perfecting techniques.
• Many of the player's actions make noise: running, sprinting, gathering, building, shooting, and using things like doors. Sprinting also leaves behind a dust trail. Be aware and have the volume up to know when players are around. This will prevent them from sneaking up on you.
• Live to fight another day. Ambushing and patience is often the better way of taking out opponents.
• Whenever possible, stay out of the open and use cover if you must move. Just remember that most cover can be destroyed.
• If you come across a shield potion, use it quickly. You don't start out with a shield; if you have one, it will deplete before your health.
• Shields protect from most weapons and traps. It does not protect you from the storm, fall damage, stink bombs nor poison dart traps.
• You can gain shield points by drinking a small shield potion, Shield Potion, Slurp Juice (gain 75 health or shield over a period of time) or a Chug Jug which restores 100 health and shield points.Mushrooms gives 5 shield points and coconuts can give up to 5 shield points if you are full health.
• On the flip side, save some of those health-restoring items for later in the game.
  • Players start with max (100) health
  • Bandages return 15 apiece, but don't heal over 75. They take 3.5 seconds to consume.
  • Med Kits and Chug Jugs can heal to max no matter what degree of damage players have taken. A Chug Jug takes 15 seconds to consume whilst a Med Kit takes 10.
  • Drink small shields before a shield potion, this will allow you to have 100 shields. They take 2 seconds to consume.
• You do take fall damage, but you can quickly build structures beneath you to halt your descent if you have something to build off.
• If you happen to come across a player fortification, such as a tower, it might be best to avoid it. The player who built it likely has most of the advantages when it comes to a confrontation, including the high ground, scoped weaponry, and cover. Approach with caution.
• Building with the same material as another fort negates the noise made by your structure. Use this to rush 1 x 1 bases with ease.
• In Squad or Duo mode, try not to get knocked down as you lose all your shield, and if revived, you will have only 30 HP.
• Other situations where caution is advised is when looting players and nearing supply drops. Enemies will typically hear or know the locations, so you can hang back and wait to either make sure no one else is approaching or use it as an opportunity to ambush others.
• Players building tall structures are at risk of the bottom being destroyed and the rest of the tower disappearing, leaving the players on it vulnerable to fall damage. Be wary of this when building, but also use this to your advantage when you see other player's buildings. You can setup a launch pad before your building is destroyed and use it to escape, or use a Glider Redeploy to avoid falling damage.
• If you have no weapons, the pickaxe will do 20 damage per hit.
• If you get stressed out about not winning, take a deep breath, and repeat after me. “I will not win every time. If I want to win I must work on my skills.” Followed by more deep breathing before starting a match. Good luck.
• If you wish that you had special skins, gliders, emotes, contrails, then buy the battle pass, it’s only 950 V-Bucks and you get LOADS OF COOL STUFF! If you manage to reach tier 100, you will end up with 6 awesome skins, too many emotes to count, and 4 contrails, and a ton of V-bucks, so you can buy the next battle pass with no real money! It’s an outstanding deal, so take a look. Plus, you will have up to 500 V-Bucks per battle pass. (Note: remember, you need to EARN the rewards by playing the game).

Landing

• The first big decision players will make is where to land once they depart from the bus.
• Try to land as far as possible, you would be less likely to get killed or shot.
• Land at popular locations or jump out at the start of the bus path if you want some action.
  • Weapons are found mainly inside buildings, so target those areas.
  • Be cautious when dropping to buildings, others players will have a similar plan, and areas with buildings typically attract more players than areas without. There are trade-offs of choosing areas with more items and players, or areas with less players but less items. Pick your position.
• Deploy the glider sooner rather than later in order to fall slowly and cover more distance. This allows you to scout out where others might be landing in order to avoid early confrontations. However, if you do decide to do this then chances are other people will have landed there and gotten a weapon. Even if you are gliding you are not invulnerable.
• When you decide on an area to land deploy the glider as late you can and slightly away from the area you are trying to reach. Then glide at an angle to the place you want to land. This will get you to the ground quicker than gliding straight down. If you use a volcano vent on your way down, it will allow you to deploy your glider closer to the ground than normally.
• Instead of going to populated areas, try to tackle less populated places as hardly any players landing means all the loot is to yourself.
• To get somewhere far away from the Battle Bus, spam the deploy glider button and you can go further.

The Map

• Take note of the direction of travel the bus makes during the drop-off phase. Players will be landing at spots along or near this line and spreading out from there.
• Pay attention to where the storm circle is on the map; players won't last long outside of it.
• Knowing where the ever-shrinking circle edges are is helpful, as players will need to move away from it.
• One late-game strategy is to keep the storm at your back. By doing this, you can be sure that players will not attack you from behind (due to the storm killing them).
• One early-game strategy is to maintain position at the edge of the storm, moving around the circle and picking off players as they attempt to make their way to safety.
• To check where the bus is going, you can check the map before the bus takes off, and you can see an arrow pointing to that direction.
• The storm will usually do one damage every second and the damage ascends the longer it is into the game. Shields are useless as the storm cannot do damage to shields but instead will chip away your health.
• Depending on the distance to the circle, the storm can be much faster or slower than the player - the further you are from the new circle's edge, the faster the storm moves.

Environment

• Close doors after using them to avoid tipping off players as to your location. To the unwary opponent, this can also serve as a useful ambush if you're waiting on the other side.
• Tires and fire hydrants can launch you into high places, but if you don't reach the position you are trying to get to, it could result in loss of health or death.
• Checking above you can be of vital importance. You could find player-built structures and can check the tops of mountains for players.
• Check a room for traps before entering. A common trap is a damage trap on a roof.
• If hiding in a bush, note that some weapons, when equipped will poke out more, giving away your position. Also, if on a slope, you can be seen hiding in it from certain angles. If using the equip-able bush, pay special attention to your surrounding when moving.

Resources

• With your trusty Pickaxe as your only option at the start, use it to gather resources quickly. Keep in mind that doing so will potentially hint at your location to those close by, as breaking some things are louder than breaking others.
• Gathering early is much easier than waiting until later in the game, as the map is tighter, the player population is more dense, and resources more scarce.
• Make sure to collect lots of wood, as it is the easiest to collect and the most common material used for building. It starts out with the most amount of HP, making it useful for fast-paced combat.
• Smashing cars can set off their alarms, alerting players of your location. This also affects police cars.
• When a tree is destroyed leaves will fall from the sky and will possibly give away your position.
• Players are the best source of resources, but be careful, of else you may end up with the enemy killing you. Killing them will result in all of their items dropping to the surrounding area.
• When harvesting, aim for the blue and red dots as they do 100 damage to buildings rather than 50. Doing this can make you harvest much easier and faster.

Building

• Learn to navigate the building interface quickly, as building can be performed during combat.
• Building creates noise and player-created structures stand out.
• Wood is the go-to resource to use in a pinch, since it takes the least amount of time to build with and is the easiest to acquire.
• You can use your walls and such to protect teammates that have fallen in battle.
• Learn how to set designs to your forts so you can have an advantage when building. The most useful things you can edit in a building are windows and doors.
• When editing things you can only edit your own and your team's structures. This is an advantage if someone is inside their building or in a building because you can break the building, add a wall then you can edit, without the enemy editing.
• Make sure to also build a roof on top of you as to prevent players from ambushing you while you are looting, sniping, or reviving a teammate.
• With wood and bricks, you can look through the holes to see if there are any players, but it’s far better sight line if you make a window.
• When building forts with no players in sight, use metal, or if you don’t have any metal, use brick.

Weapons

• Place slot weapons and items consistently in the same spots so you never have to wonder what is where. This makes swapping out very intuitive.
• It is recommended to put your Assault Rifle in slot 1, shotgun or SMG in slot 2, SMG or shotgun in slot 3, snipers or explosives in slot 4, and meds or shields in slot 5. You can enable a setting in Fornite to automatically put meds and shields on your rightmost slot.
• Know what the rarity of a weapon is and trade them for better options as you run across them.
• The more rare weapons are generally found inside chests that give off a golden glow and a hum. They're typically hidden or require some sort of construction to get to.
  • Common - Grey
  • Uncommon - Green
  • Rare - Blue
  • Epic - Purple
  • Legendary - Gold
• If you're going to go up against a player fortification, bring heavy weaponry. If you know what you're doing, you can bring the building down from beneath them.
• Supply drops always give one legendary weapon (2 weapons in Team Rumble).
• If equipped with close-range weapons, a more aggressive play style is effective. Rifles and sniper rifles lend themselves to a more measured approach. Jumping is a good idea.
• Don't pick up every weapon you see. Stick with a good set and then upgrade those as you go. Shotguns are a great staple, especially since a lot of firefights happen at close to mid-range.
• Don't stop to pick up ammo. This happens automatically as you run across it.
• Keep in mind that bullets leave tracers, so people can tell from where they are being fired.
• Crouching with a mid-to long-range weapon can help increase accuracy.
• The Boogie Bomb causes players to lose control of their inventory (shooting, meds, etc.) for five seconds, forcing them to dance. This is a great time to deal out some damage. Keep in mind that when you damage someone with the effects of a Boogie Bomb, the effects immediately wear off.
• Utilize traps to deal high amounts of damage in rooms or structures of your own making.
• Ammunition and weapons hover and glow in the air. This makes it helpful to check what they are from a distance to gauge whether the risk in approaching is worth the reward. You can also mark them (default mouse wheel click) to see what they are from a distance.
• Pickaxes are useful if you have no weapon or just a sniper in the beginning of the game if you are attacking someone nearby that only has a long range weapon, as they do 20 damage.
• Miniguns are highly useful for damaging fortifications.

Looting

• Learn the basics of finding chests in common places and unexpected areas.
  • If you are near a chest, you can hear its noise, notifying you about the chest's presence.
  • You can learn where the chests spawn using playground mode since it always has a 100% chest spawn rate.
• Learn how to tackle an incoming Supply drop from the sky.
• Vending machines give you one item of any rarity before disappearing.
• Finding the treasure using the Treasure Map is usually worth it as the chest spawns around 5 Legendary weapons and/or consumables, and some ammo.
• Remember to keep an eye out for Ammo Boxes as they provide usually 2 groups of ammo.
• Shoot the balloon that the supply box is attached to for it to pop and release the supply box faster.
  • The Loot Llama in Battle Royale spawns in various locations in Battle Royale. There are 3 in each round scattered across the map. They always give consumables, 200 of each resource, and ammunition.
  • Instead of searching Loot Llamas, hit them with your pickaxe. This is much quicker.

Sniping

• To make a good sniper, you will have to predict where your target will go, and what movements they will make.

  

• You will need to calculate how long it will take for the bullet to travel, an estimate of how far your target is from you, and how far the bullet will drop.
• It is recommended to aim in front of your target so that they run into the bullet.
• If the enemy is moving steadily in a direction, try aiming in front of them. If they are standing still and at a great distance, take into account bullet drop.
• Snipers are the loudest weapon in the game, and can be heard from a large distance, so be wary when firing, as someone may come up behind you and take you out easily. The silenced sniper helps being more sneaky.
• In Fortnite there is a bullet drop system for the snipers so you can’t just shoot. You need to shoot at the right time so the bullet travels with a drop system.