Fortnite Game Items Guide: Materials, Bars, Shield Potions, Explosives, More

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Fortnite has been an ongoing live service battle royale game since 2017 when it launched into early access. Since then, there have been three chapters that we have gone through and about 20 different seasons. Our Fortnite game items guide is understandably extensive because of this.

In this Fortnite game items guide, we are going to go over the various items and categories that you will encounter in the game. Some items are meant for attacking other players while others are for recovery and still more are used for progression in the battle royale game. Here’s everything that you need to know about all of them.

Bottom Line Up Front

ammo

There are so many different Fortnite game items and they cover a wide variety of scenarios. Some items, like the shield potion, are based around recovery while others, like the weapons, are meant for combat. There are so many different items and names that it can be overwhelming to keep up with. That said, here are the item categories that you need to know about:

Fortnite Game Items Explained

The gist of the battle royale experience is to survive until you or your team are the last players remaining in the match. To do this, you need to focus on having the best gear and items that are going to allow you to survive until the very end. With up to 100 players in any given match, that means a lot of possible engagements.

Fortunately, developer Epic Games offers plenty of items in the game to give you the edge that you need in battle. The issue is that you are not given these items at the start of the match and you have to find them yourself. To make matters worse, your inventory space is limited so you cannot just pick up everything that you come across.

That is where we come in, though, as we are going to break down every type of game item that you should know about across the title and all of the seasons that it has had. This will make it easier to prioritize the items that you prefer and not waste your time with the ones that are not helpful for your playstyle or situation.

Item Categories

There are many different game item categories that you need to know about. Here are the categories that you should know about with some more specific details about each of them.

Weapons

weapon

For starters, there are weapons that you can use in battle in Fortnite battle royale. Weapons are the absolute bare minimum requirements that you should be using in the game to win. Without a gun in your inventory, you will have a very, very hard time winning a fight with a pickaxe alone.

There are many different types of weapons that are in the game, ranging from the typical rifles to the more explosive ones. Some guns are better used for close-range fights while others are best suited for aiming down the sights for attacking someone very far away.

Weapons are found in the game by looting them through various methods. Some guns can be found on the floor in towns while you are just running around while others are found in treasure chests. Still more powerful guns are only in the supply drops that fall from the sky and others can be claimed by NPCs.

There are many different ways of getting guns but the harder the method or the more it costs, the better it is. If you go the easy way by just picking up what you find on the ground, you are unlikely to get the best weapons in the game. Here is the full list of the different weapon types that you can find in Fortnite at this time:

  • Assault rifles
  • SMGs
  • Rocket launchers and explosives
  • Sniper rifles
  • Pistols
  • Shotguns
  • Bows
  • Pickaxe/Melee

These are the main weapon types that you need to worry about. A quick breakdown of each of them is that the assault rifles are your general all-around guns that are excel at mid-range but can be solid at close and even long-range fights but not the best.

SMGs, however, are built for close-range and will devastate enemies up close and personal. They may also be useful in some mid-range fights. Rocket launchers and explosives are the more damaging weapons that will blow buildings and players up while sniper rifles are the powerful one-shot weapons for long-range engagements.

Pistols are the go-to default weapons that you can use at the beginning of a match but are not that useful later on. Shotguns are also close combat masters but much slower than SMGs while trading that speed for damage. Bows are mid to long-range weapons that are slow to fire but strong.

And last but not least, there are the melee and pickaxe weapons that are usually not too great in battle. For a more detailed breakdown of the weapons that are in Fortnite, we have created a guide that is dedicated to just that so be sure to check it out for more info.

Ammo

Ammo Fortnite

Another important item that is in Fortnite is ammo. A gun will do you no good in battle if you have it in your inventory but no bullets to fire with. This is where ammo comes into play as it is necessary for making sure that every weapon in the game is capable of actually being used.

Like the weapons themselves, there are several different types of ammo that you can use in Fortnite and each weapon type uses a different one. It is worth getting to know these different ammo types so that you can find them and keep them geared up for fights.

Here is the full list of the different ammo types in Fortnite that you need to know about:

  • Light bullets
  • Medium bullets
  • Heavy bullets
  • Arrows
  • Rockets
  • Shotgun shells
  • Energy cells
  • Grappler ammo

When it comes to locating ammo in the middle of a match, there are a few different places that you can look and it comes down to the season that you are in. In some seasons, some vending machines and NPCs will offer you either new guns with ammo or ammo on their own.

Otherwise, your main method of finding new bullets in the game will be to either locate guns on the ground that have the same ammo type that you are currently looking for or open up ammo boxes. Ammo boxes are like chests in that they can be interacted with to give ammo but they are a little bit more common.

We suggest looking for the ammo boxes underneath stairs and in various buildings around the named locations on the map. If you are looking for a more detailed looked at the different ammo types and how they each work, be sure to take a look at our Fortnite ammo guide.

Recovery Items

A major part of any Fortnite match is recovery. Getting into fights will eventually cause damage to your character, taking away health and possibly shields in the process. The same is the case for the storm as it will constantly reduce your health the longer that you stay in it.

You will inevitably lose health and shields in the game, and that is where the recovery items come into play. With these items, you will be able to recover what you have already lost in battle and even top up your current shields to ensure that you are ready for the next fight. Recovery items are divided up into two main groups: health items and shields items.

Health Items

Health

When it comes to items that help you to recover your health in battle, you will want the various health ones. The most basic of these are the bandages, which will grant you 25 health for each one that you use. However, the problem with bandages is that they cap once you have 75 health.

At most, you can use three bandages at once and will be stuck at 75 health, which is 25 away from the max. That is where the medkit comes into play as using one of these will instantly get you back to 100 health no matter if you had 1 health point before using it or 99, and everything in between.

Those are the most basic health items but there are others beyond those. There are food items that you can gather on the map, like fish and produce, that will get your health back. There is the campsite where you can light a fire and replenish your health and then there is the med spray.

The med spray item is a mist that you can spray on yourself to regenerate your health. However, it can also be used on your teammates to get them back into shape. The same goes for the bandage bazooka which is another healing item that is used for other players.

Shield Potions

The other side of recovery items is the shield side. Shields are optional in the game and you start each match with none. But they are highly recommended for fights to give you the most protection and the most amount of time to survive and win the fight.

The most basic form of shield potions is the small shield potion that will give you 25 shields. The catch is that you can only get up to 50 shields this way. From there, you would need a large shield potion, which gives 50 shields each.

There are other shield recovery items like slurp juice and guzzle. There is also the chug jug, which is the ultimate shield item, which will not only give you 100 shields instantly but also 100 health points if you need that, too.

Explosives

Explosives

Given that Fortnite is so focused on building and survival, explosives are a valuable asset that can help to make battles a lot easier. When someone is building a ton of forts, the 90s, and the like, this can be a bit frustrating, especially if you are lacking materials of your own (more on those in a bit).

This is where the explosives come into play as some weapons and items are capable of decimating your opponents’ structures in seconds. This includes rocket launchers, grenades, and more that are fantastic pieces of an arsenal for destroying buildings.

The explosive weaponry ranges from the RPGs to handheld grenades, both of which have plenty of variations to them. For rocket launchers, there are the standard ones, guided ones where you can move the missiles yourself, quad launchers with four rockets at once, and more.

On the side of the grenade, this is one item type that Epic has truly dived into its creative side. There are numerous grenade types that players can use in combat, starting with the damaging types. Some grenades will do the usual task of blowing up a player or structure while others might set something on fire.

Then there are the grenades that are not necessarily damaging but can affect players in other ways. The boogie bomb is one of the most famous items in Fortnite, causing anyone caught in its blast to start dancing for a few seconds and becoming unable to defend themselves.

Other non-damaging grenades might blow someone high up in the air, freeze their legs so that they slide across the ground, or even create an entire fort out of nothing.

Materials

Materials or mats as they are lovingly called by many players in the community are items that are crucial for builders out there. There are three material types that you can find on the map that include wood, stone, and metal versions.

Wood is the easiest to find and the weakest of the three, while the stone is a bit more common and sturdy than wood, and metal can sometimes be the hardest to acquire in large quantities but is the strongest. It does not matter which material you prefer as all of them are necessary for building structures.

The first of these is the wood material that is harvested by using your pickaxe (or gun if you are a crazy player) on it or any other object made of wood. For stone, you will want to take down objects that are made out of brick-like buildings. And then for metal, any metal object like a metal staircase, door, or car.

Crafting Materials

Crafting Materials

Other materials are in Fortnite other than just the three big ones. There are crafting materials, too, that have been released in the game in the past that have to do with the crafting system. Crafting is still relatively new to the game, being introduced in Chapter 2.

What crafting has to do with is upgrading your existing weapons into a new version that is more powerful or creating an entirely new item out of mats. What is interesting here is that crafting materials use a different set of items compared to the three core ones for building.

There have been items that were grenades that you would otherwise want to use in battle or fireflies that you can collect in the field as you run around the map. Others are centered around completing various actions like taking out animals on the island for their crafting materials to collect.

These days, though, the crafting has been mostly condensed into a single material that you need to worry about: nuts and bolts. Nuts and bolts are the general crafting material that Epic has last used for the feature. Nuts and bolts are found by destroying any mechanical objects that you find on the map.

This could include something like a car that you find but it could also be a tractor, machine, or anything else that has mechanical parts to it.

Traps

A key component for building in Fortnite is using a trap to complement the structures that you have created. Traps are exactly what they sound like: a mechanism that you can set up that will let you either deal damage to the enemy or reduce their movement or anything to alert you to their presence.

These can be placed in the structures that you build but also houses at the same time. These days in Fortnite, traps are not nearly as important to the gameplay but there are items categorized as traps that are worth using. Stuff like the launch pad is great as it can be a great way of traversing around the map with ease.

Bars

Bars

V-Bucks is the virtual currency that many Fortnite players already know about in the game but there is another one that is only related to matches. In matches, there are gold bars that you can collect and they are only used for items in the matches.

Bars can be used for purchasing new weapons, items, and more from the various NPCs that are scattered around the island. As for how you gather them in battle, you need to get them by completing tasks. This includes completing bounties, eliminating other players, opening treasure chests, and more.

Keep in mind that bars do accumulate throughout the matches that you do but they are usually reset at the end of a season.

Powers

Superpowers and powers, in general, are items that you can sometimes pick up in Fortnite but they usually are limited to specific seasons or events. In the case of the Marvel Season 4 in Chapter 2, several different powers were available for players to discover.

Players could jump high, use lasers, fly around, and more using the Marvel-themed superpowers that were available in that season. However, it was not the only one that has been in the past. There is the Spider-Man web shooter item that appeared during Chapter 3, Season 1.

That one was the only one of its kind in that particular season. Some of the superpowers are even more limited in the fact that they only have so many uses and then they are done. In the case of the web-shooters, they only have 80 swing uses before they are done.

Map Items

Map Items

Some of the most unique and odd items that you can find in Fortnite are the strange map items. These are items that are found around the island and usually will affect the movement of your character. They only last for a while and then they are done.

One main example of the map items is the shadow stones that you can find and consume in certain seasons that will let you teleport around like a ghost. Other items on the map include ones like the zipline that lets you glide around parts of the island, the steam vents for lifting into the air, and more.

A recent map item is a tent. This unique one in Chapter 3 allows the player to store a few items that they wish to keep for future matches in it and then access them in a later match. It is a great way of accessing a solid selection of gear right at the start of a match.

Vehicles

In the same vein of movement, one of the largest items in Fortnite is the vehicles. While no items in the traditional sense that you walk around with them in your inventory, they are possessions that you can have in matches that are valuable for getting around the island with ease.

Land Vehicles

Land Vehicles

Starting with the land vehicles that are in Fortnite, these are dedicated to getting around on land quickly. It began with the jetpack and shopping cart but has since expanded to the cars that are now in the game. There are plenty of different car types that you can find in Fortnite right now.

There are the basic sedan cars plus trucks, semi-trucks, sports cars, and more. And those are just the basic land vehicles. There are others like the quadcrasher, Brute mech, golf cart, and more.

Water Vehicles

Players are not able to just enjoy riding in land-based vehicles but other ones are great for piloting on the water. This began with Chapter 2 and the first water vehicle was the motorboat that is still available in the game.

In addition to the high-power motorboat, there is the shark that you can tame with a fishing rod and glide around on the water. This is a bizarre but rather cool addition that lets players feel pretty bad in a match.

Aerial Vehicles

Aerial Vehicles

For the air vehicles, Epic has been great about offering some rather unique items over the years. It started with the jetpack that let you soar into the sky with limited fuel and only in certain events but it eventually spread to more. There was the controversial Stormwing plane in Chapter 1, Season 7 with its fast speed and great guns.

Chapter 2 had its aerial vehicles including the much more loved Choppa helicopter that was not too fast or powerful but balanced well overall. It would last through several seasons but is no longer available at this point.

And then there was the flying saucer that came near the end of Chapter 2 and was somewhat controversial in its way but was much more balanced compared to the Stormwing and other vehicles. It was capable of flying around pretty slowly but it had some great offensive capabilities that made up for that in the alien-themed season.

FAQs

Question: What is the best weapon in Fortnite?

Answer: The best weapon in Fortnite is going to be somewhat subjective but there are a couple of possible options. I would select the makeshift bow from Season 6 of Chapter 2 as the best weapon that I have ever used. With that bow, I was almost unstoppable that season.
I’m not a great Fortnite player, admittedly, just pretty average but my best performance was during Season 6 because of the makeshift bow. I would craft it on the fly to make different bow versions and then use those in battles like the flame bow and boom bow.
I usually only average around six, maybe seven eliminations a match that I do in a battle royale, even with a team, but in that season, I was typically averaging around 10 or so kills. I also received my most wins and so that is the very best weapon for me.
For everyone, though, I think a more general best weapon in the game would likely be either the MK Seven assault rifle that was introduced in Fortnite Chapter 3, Season 1, or the drum gun. Both are very powerful automatic mid-range weapons that are perfect for most engagements.

Question: What is the best item in Fortnite?

Answer: For the best item in Fortnite, this is going to be a similar situation where it is somewhat subjective to each player. In my opinion, the best item in the game is the chug jug. There is nothing like being able to max out your health and shields at the same time with a single item.
The chug jug is not the most common or easy-to-find weapon in the game but it is the most powerful recovery item around. When it comes to recovery items, none surpass it and it is iconic in its name and design as well.
A close runner-up would be the jetpack. The jetpack is rarely ever in Fortnite but, when it is, you best believe that I will be in the game playing a whole lot. The jetpack is, without a doubt, the best vehicle in the game and a terrific item that is unbelievably fun to use.

Question: What is the most popular Fortnite item?

Answer: The most popular Fortnite item is a tough one to pin down. It depends on whether or not you are including weapons or just items that you can use. If we are talking weapons as well, I think that it would likely go to the standard assault rifle as that is a weapon that most every player uses in battle, making it pretty popular.
If we are talking just items and no weapons, though, I think that the most popular Fortnite item would have to be the large shield potion. This is the item that gives 50 shields to you and it takes two of them to get full shields. When in a match, you should always want to have shields.
As such, the large shield potion is a necessary item in every single match, whereas you could technically go an entire round without using something like a medkit, for instance. This makes it exceedingly popular and likely the most popular item that is in the game right now.

Conclusion

From the various weapons that you can use in combat to the items that will recover your health and set traps for your enemies to run into, there are so many game items that are available in Fortnite. With each new season and chapter that is arriving in the game regularly, this only means that more and more items are released.

With so much happening in this game, it can be quite overwhelming at times, which is why this is not the only guide that we recommend to Fortnite newcomers. We also recommend checking out our guide to Fortnite ammo for an idea of all of the different ammo types that you can use in the game. This is there to help make sure that you do not waste time picking up ammo that is not for your weapons.

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