Fortnite Battle Royale Guide

• About
• Latest Posts

Alizabeth Swain

To sweat or not to sweat - that’s the question Alizabeth’s always asking herself while playing Fortnite. She first started her Fortnite journey out on Switch Lite but has since migrated to playing on the PS4 (Fortnite was actually why she bought a new gaming system). There’s nothing more that she enjoys than getting into a long firefight with someone. Sometimes, she gets a little cocky and throws a chug splash (or two) to a player she knocked just to gloat. When she isn’t writing about Fortnite, you can find her with her son in her lap, as she teaches him how to game. Now, let’s grab your minis, and let’s go!

Latest posts by Alizabeth Swain (see all)

• LazarBeam Fortnite Skin Guide: The Skin Every Fortnite Player Should Have - April 11, 2022
• Best Naruto Fortnite Skins You Can’t Miss - February 16, 2022
• Fortnite Battle Royale Guide - February 15, 2022

So, you want to learn how to play Fortnite? 

Are you sure?

You should really think about it for a second. I say that because when I tell you that you’re literally going to want to spend every waking second playing this game. I’m not joking around.

Okay, so you decided you do?

Good, I knew I’d like you. 

Part of the beauty of playing Fortnite is that the game constantly changes. Every couple of weeks, there’ll be a new update on the map, new weapons released, and new pages to unlock on your battle pass (if you decide to sign up for one). 

 So, you’re never really playing the same game. If you’ve never heard of Fortnite before, it’s a pretty simple game. Basically, you’re competing against a hundred other players to try to win the victory. As you’re fighting against 99 other people in the game, you’re also always conscious of the storm. The storm gradually moves into a smaller and smaller circle throughout the game. If you get caught in the storm, you’ll take damage. If you stay too long in the storm, without healing yourself, you’ll die.

You can improve your chances of beating your opponent if you get caught in a shoot-out by building. You can use different materials that you can collect throughout the game to build structures to keep yourself safe.

There’s still a whole lot to uncover when it comes to Battle Royale. But this is just a basic just of the game. So, without any further hesitation, I’m going to dive deep into all of the important details you should know about Battle Royale.

Bottom line up front: winning the Battle Royale takes a lot of concentration, patience, and skill. You may not win your first Battle Royale right away. However, with the right weapons, mindset, and building, you can score your first W.

What is Fortnite? 

Fortnite is a type of free cross-platform game. That means if you’re playing on your PS4, you can play along with your PC friends, your Xbox friends, and your Switch friends, all in the same match. It’s a type of survival game where you’re combating against your opponents to be the last player standing. It’s super action-packed, and it takes a lot of strategies to figure out how you’re going to survive to be the last one standing.

 And if you’re literally hopping into your first match of Fortnite right now, don’t be alarmed if your map looks a lot different than the famous YouTubers you watch Play. That’s because we’ve recently entered into Chapter 3 Season 1 in Fortnite. There’s been a lot updated in this new release. You’ll find that there are new weapons, a new map, new game mechanics, new creatures, and more added to the game. For example, you can now slide in Fortnite. Plus, not only do you have to be aware of the storm always creeping up on you. But, you also have to be aware of any random tornadoes or lightning storms forming while you’re in a match.

How to play Fortnite

 So, let’s assume you downloaded the game for free on whatever gaming device you use. Personally, I play Fortnite on PS4 and Nintendo switch Lite. However, I find that it’s a lot easier to play on PS4, just because I have small hands and struggle holding my Nintendo switch light.

 You’ll first need to decide what type of match you’re interested in playing. Do you want to play by yourself? If so, you’ll choose solos. If you want to play with one other friend, duos. You can play with up to three other people, which would make a squad. 

 After you all go in and get ready for a match, you’ll be put into a lobby. You’ll wait a few seconds before you hop onto the bus to jump off onto the island. 

Before you drop- don’t forget to thank your bus driver. You don’t get anything from thanking your bus driver, but your username does pop up on the side of the screen. It’s really just a common courtesy thing, but it’s still a fun little Fortnight tradition to participate in.

 After you jump off of the bus, you’ll begin to land. You can choose wherever you want to land on the map.

If you want to slow down how quickly you’re falling, you can launch our glider.

 But, if you don’t make a decision on where you’re going to land by the time the bus is across the entire map, you will automatically be dropped. 

There are a few hot spots on the map that a lot of people like to land on, such as Tilted Towers. This is one of the hotspots for a lot of sweats. If possible, I always try to let the sweats kill off the other sweats, because it makes winning a lot easier for me since I don’t have to kill them all off.

 As soon as your feet touch the ground, your glider will disappear, and you’ll want to start running around to find a weapon. If you take too long to find a weapon, you may run into someone that does have a weapon and is hungry for a victory. If you do, they may not take any mercy on you if you don’t have a weapon and will start shooting at you. So grab weapon. Be prepared to defend yourself.

Pick up any weapons that you can find right off the bat. If you just find a random grey gun on the ground, grab it. As soon as you make sure that the area that you’re in is safe, you can begin to search around for a gold chest. If you’re lucky, you may even run into a blue chest.

Blue chests vs Gold chests

A gold chest will contain an assortment of items. You will receive random items, but almost all chests contain some healing item, shield, ammo, materials to build with, and a weapon. You can get green, blue, purple, and orange weapons from gold chests. We’ll talk more about the rarity of weapons a little bit later.

 If you’re lucky enough to find a blue chest, know that you found a rare chest. There aren’t many of these in the game. Blue chest always contains rare weapons. So, you’ll always find at least a purple weapon inside of your blue chest.

Once you’re ready and have enough weapons to keep yourself protected, you can start working on breaking down the area around you. If you hit any walls, floors, or even small boxes, you’ll get materials. In Fortnite, the materials you can get are wood, stone, and steel. 

As an example: if you were to go inside a home and break down the kitchen, you’d get an assortment of steel and brick. But, if you were to go and knock down a tree with your harvesting tool, you’ll get wood.

I personally always like to build with steel whenever possible. That’s because steel is a lot stronger than wood. So ,if somebody were to begin shooting at me, I would at least be protected a little bit better than if I were to have built with wood. Plus, steel doesn’t catch on fire the same way that wood does. But, if I haven’t harvested enough steel, I’ll use brick instead. 

Throughout the game, you’ll want to continue always looking for better weapons. Sometimes, you may find across a chest as you’re running across the map, avoiding the storm. Other times, you may knock an enemy that has a lot better weapons than you do. After you’ve knocked them, you can loot their stash and choose any weapons that they have. Don’t forget to pick up their ammo and any materials that they have to. Anything that your opponent drops, you can pick up to help yourself win.

There is a max amount of items that you’re allowed to carry. You can only carry five items. You have to share these five slots with your any shields you carry, any health items you carry, any explosives that you carry, and any weapons. If you happen to pick up a launchpad, that gets stored in a separate spot in your inventory.

If you’re lucky enough to avoid the storm and secure the victory, you’ll receive a gold crown. You’ll carry this gold crown with you into your next match. Be careful, though. If you happen to lose the next round that you play, you’ll drop your crown. If you do happen to drop your crown, your XP won’t be as high as it was when you were wearing your victory crown.

Harvesting and building

 One of the most important parts of playing Fortnite is building. There are so many different benefits to building inside of the game. You can build structures to protect yourself from damage from opponents firing at you. But, for you to ensure that you can build your way out of any situation, you mean to have enough materials.

 A lot of people don’t like spending a lot of time harvesting materials in the game because it takes so long. Plus, you’re just hitting at random objects, so it’s kind of boring. 

However, you can speed up your harvesting process. When you’re hitting at items in the game to harvest materials from them, a little circle will appear. If you can aim at the circle, you’ll be hitting a weak point in whatever material you’re harvesting. This will allow you to break the item down a lot faster and gather the materials you need.

I would also recommend that you go into as many buildings as you can to harvest. You can break up any cash registers, and it’ll drop gold for you. You can collect the gold and game to help you buy items from vending machines, higher NPCs, or upgrade your weapons.

 I think it’s always a good idea the harvest materials from whatever items you have available. For example, if you open up an ammo box or a chest, don’t just walk away from it. Instead, break it down so you can get materials from the box too. You never know, sometimes just having a few extra mats to outbuild your opponent can really make a break the chance within a game.

Hunting

 Inside of Fortnite, you can hunt different animals. Currently, in the game, there are wolves, sharks, chickens, frogs, boars, and birds. Which animal offers something different, so you may want to consider hunting them for a different reason.

Birds

 inside a fortnight, there will be random Birds that apply across your screen. Some of these birds aren’t going to be very useful to you. If you happen to see a bird land near you it doesn’t have a glowing Aura around it, you can shoot at it and it’ll give you some meat. you can use his meat to help heal you if you’re low on health. 

But, if you find a bird that has landed near you that has a purple or an orange glow to it, shoot it down as fast as you can. For example, If you kind of bird this land is near you that has a purple Aura to it, it’ll drop a purple weapon if you shoot it down. The same thing goes for orange birds.

Wolves

 Sometimes, especially if you’re traveling through heavily wooded areas, you’ll have a pack of wolves chases after you. I always recommend that people kill one wolf. If you have a pack of three wolves chasing after you. I would recommend you kill two. But, I would not recommend killing all of the wolves. 

 After you kill a wolf, leave the meat for the other wolf to eat. Then, as the wolf is eating the meat, you can walk up to it and tame it. To tame a wolf, you just have to press the button that comes up on your screen. After you’ve tamed the wolf, it’ll follow you around in the game and protect you. It’ll save you from other players, and it’ll help to break down any walls you are breaking down two.

Frogs

 Frogs are found near water. You’ll probably see the frogs jumping around if you’re going fishing. They’re good for meat. But, there’s not a whole lot else to them.

Boars

Boars are a great animal to use if you’re looking to get XP for hunting or if you’re looking for mushrooms. Mushrooms are an item in the game that’ll help you to fix your shield. Be careful as you’re walking through the woods, though. Boars will attack you if you get too close to them.

Sharks

Sharks are one of the coolest animals in the game, in my opinion. They are super dangerous and will attack you whether you are in the water for if you’re on land near water. If you aren’t careful, you can quickly die because of the damage a shark will do to you.

 But, sharks are also great to use if you’re looking for a rare weapon. The more loot that a shark eats, the more likely it is to turn colors. Most sharks start off with a purple glow coming from their mouth. But, if you drop some loot for them to eat or if they take out one of your opponents, you may find that the Sharks glow Will turn orange.

 So, if you kill the shark, it’ll drop new weapons. If you kill a shark while it’s purple, it’ll drop at least one purple weapon. If you’d kill it while it’s orange, it’ll drop at least one orange weapon.

 But, that’s not all that sharks are good for either. You can use a fishing pole and fish for sharks. If you successfully get a shark to grab your fishing poles, you can surf on the lake with the shark. You can control where the shark is going, so if you want to attack one of your enemies in the game with your shark, you can do that too. 

Chickens

Chickens are great because they’re harmless. If you’re looking to quickly get out of the storm and pass by a chicken, grab one. You can use the chicken to help you fly across the map, which will help you travel a lot faster than if you were just to run by yourself. But, if you’re just looking to do some healing repair your shield, feel free to shoot a chicken. When you shoot a chicken, it’ll drop meat and mushrooms for you to consume. The meat will help you repair your help, and the mushrooms will help you repair your shield.

Vending machines

 Throughout the map, there are different vending machines that you can run into. Most of the time, there are vending machines located near gas stations and in heavily populated areas. Some of these vending machines will provide you with healing items. So, if you need a patch up or if you’re just looking to buy some items for your shield, you can do so at these vending machines. 

But, that’s not all you can buy from vending machines either. Some vending machines throughout the map will sell weapons and ammunition. So, if you were to walk up to the vending machine that has a pistol shadow on the outlet in the machine, you can expect to purchase a pistol from this machine. Sometimes, you confined legendary weapons inside of the vending machines. Other times, you can just find rare and epic guns.

 In some games, you may even find a vending machine that has an “!” on the outside of it. This vending machine is broken. So, you don’t know what you’ll be buying from the minute vending machine when you make a purchase from it. Sometimes, this can be a good thing. There have been many times where I’ve spent a bunch of gold on a vending machine to get mythic weapons and big jugs. Other times, I’ll just get a piece of corn or a little bit of ammo. 

Fortnite skins

 Many people know about Fortnite because of all of the crazy cosmetics in the game. Fortnite is free to play. However, if you do decide that you just want to play for free, you will just get a default skin. 

If you want to dress up as your favorite character, like Naruto, Venom, Spider-Man, or even just some random Fortnite skin that you saw in the shop, you will have to buy the skin. Along with your Fortnite skin, you can also upgrade other customizations, like your glider, your backpack, the wraps on your weapons and vehicles, your harvesting tool, and your contrail.

 On top of that, you can also purchase emotes. Different emotes have different rarities. So, the more rare and emote is, the more expensive it is in the shop. The same thing goes with skins. You can emote in the game to flex on any opponent that you knocked, celebrate your victory, or just as a fun way to communicate throughout the game. One of the first emotes I ever purchased monster truck remote. Basically, my character rides on a monster truck. It’s pretty cool.

What do the different color weapons mean?

 So, the different colors of your weapons represent the rarity of your weapon. The more rare your weapon is, the more damage it does. So, as you’re walking around the map, you may have noticed that there are a lot of grey weapons. 

When you pick up the weapon, the weapon’s background will be grey in your item slot. This basically means that there’s a lot of this weapon available on the map, that is common. This weapon doesn’t do a whole lot of damage. However, the exact amount of damage that it provides depends on the weapon.

Next, there is the green weapon. A green weapon is uncommon. Next in the chain is a blue weapon. This is considered rare. Purple weapons are Epic, and orange weapons are legendary. If you happen to come across a gold weapon, this is legendary. 

Making sure that you stay on top of swapping out your weapons with anything of a higher tier will ensure that you have an easier time getting your w. It’s especially important if you aren’t as good as some of the people that you’re playing with within your lobby. 

If you don’t like the color of the weapon you have in your inventory but want to keep the type of weapon you have, look around to upgrade the bench. A lot of gas stations have upgraded benches. Here, you’ll pay gold to upgrade your weapon to the next level. For example, if you have a grey weapon, you can pay the upgrade bench to upgrade the weapon to green. You could turn your gray weapon into an orange weapon, as long as you have the gold the pay for this. And if there isn’t any limit on how many times you can upgrade your weapon. 

How to win in Fortnite: my top tips

 Honestly, there are so many tips that I have to share for this section. But, just spare you a lot of reading; I’m going to do my best to share as much information as I can in as few words. So, let’s get going.

• Pick a good spot
• Turn on visual sound effects
• Prioritize your Shield
• Figure out Small Tricks
• Harvest early game so you have enough mats
• Get semi-comfortable with building
• Don’t be afraid to hire help
• Get a target
• Always grab a harpoon gun

Pick a good spot

 Honestly, one of the best ways to make it into the top 20 in the game is by picking a good spot. You don’t want to go to a spot where a lot of people are going. In the most recent updates, Tilted Towers and Covert Cavern have been his place where a lot of people are going. 

If there’s been a recent update to the game and a new spot has been added to the map, avoid the area if you’re serious about winning. There’s going to be a lot of people who attend to flocked that area because they want to see what’s new.

 Figuring out the good spots to land on a map will take a little bit. But, stay patient. 

Once you find a spot or two that you love Landing because you trust what the spot has to offer you in both weapons and safety, continue landing there. Personally, I like to and around the small houses that nobody ever thinks about landing or on the outskirts of town. By landing far away from other people, also gives me plenty of time to increase my collection of materials.

Turn on visual sound effects

 This trick is going to be a lot of people mad at me. But, I’m going, to be honest with you – I’m tired of people pretending like they don’t use visual sound effects. Visual sound effects were added to the game to help hearing-impaired people be aware of their surroundings. 

Visual sound effects will show you when; an enemy is nearby when there’s a firefight going on when there’s a storm nearby, went there are chests nearby, and when animals are nearby. It’s a super useful tool to have. I like doing it because it helps me find chests easier. But, if you look at my pictures in this guide, you’ll see the small images coming up on my screen. Those are visual sound effects.

Prioritize your Shield

 Honestly, I think that carrying items to repair your shield is a lot more useful than carrying items to repair your health. What’s really cool about Fortnite is that as you’re running around the map, you’ll be able to find items that will help you repair your health and shield. For example, if you’re low on health, you can shoot a wild animal and eat it’s me. The meat that you eat will help to repair your health. If you are low on your health and you have a fishing rod or Harpoon Gun, you can go fishing and eat the fish. The fish will help you to repair your health. Some fish will even help you repair your shield.

 But, I find that a lot of fights really come down to who has a full shield and who doesn’t. Sometimes, a fight will be so intense, and you’re fighting so many different people that having a full shield compared to somebody else having 90 Shield will make or break your fight. So, whenever you can, make sure that you have a full shield.

Figure out small tricks

 Whenever you can, figure out small tricks to help make your gameplay easier. This may be going into your settings and adjusting how your medkits get saved to your inventory slot. For me, one of my favorite tricks I’ve learned recently is how to quickly harvest the slurp juice inside of a barrel. Instead of breaking the barrel with my harvesting too cool, I simply build over the barrels. I’ll put up a quick ramp and it’ll break a whole collection of barrels and I’ll get the healing effects from the slurp juice. This really helps me out a few times because instead of taking at least a minute or two to break all of the barrels, I’m able to quickly restore my health and not leave myself vulnerable to an attack.

 Another thing that I really love to do to save myself time is to carry around Firefly jars or a flare gun. I always try to carry Firefly jars around with me, because they’re so useful and nobody ever thinks about using them in a fight. And will I don’t always use them in a fight, I do use them on houses and trees.

 If it’s getting close to the end of the game, I’ll throw 3 or 4 Firefly jars at a house. It makes it super easy to loot the house once it’s burned down because everything that was hiding inside of the house is now on the ground. Or, I’ll burn down the trees in the surrounding area, that way nobody can hide up top in the tree and snip me. Also, Firefly jars are great for people who build with wood. It’s a super-easy way to knock someone or eliminate someone because they can’t escape the spreading fire, and so they die.

 If you’re playing with a lot of sweaty players, and you just had a lot of people building around you, don’t get overwhelmed. It can be really challenging to try to win when you’re playing with people who are really good with building and you aren’t. Instead of focusing on trying to shoot them, try to hurt them by giving them full damage. All you have to do is break the first wall they built their structure on and it’ll knock down their entire structure. 

 It’s figuring out small tricks like this will help you learn your own unique style of playing and help you to score back-to-back wins without breaking a sweat.

Harvest early game

Don’t be the person that waits until you’re in the top 20 players left to start harvesting. Whenever you can, work on harvesting. You’ll be surprised how valuable materials can be, even in the middle of the game. Harvesting as many materials as you can as quickly as you can is a great way to ensure that can you can at least protect yourself while you’re playing.

Get semi-comfortable with building

 I am not at all saying that you have to be a building expert to get yourself winning. Suppose you can just familiarize yourself with what the different buttons on your controller do when it comes to building. In that case, you’ll be in better shape. Sometimes something as simple as throwing up a quick wall so you can quickly give yourself a health boost or fix your shield will be better than nothing. At times, you may want to build a ramp so it makes it easier for you to open up a chest that’s on a roof.

When I first started playing Fortnite, the first thing and then I started playing around with was building. When I was working on running away from the storm or just walking around the map looking for weapons, I would just start building. I would press random buttons, learn what each button dead, and experiment with different structures. This helped me do a lot more comfortable with building, and since then, I’ve used the building to help keep myself safe.

Don’t be afraid to hire help

 That’s right, you can hire an NPC in the game to help you. Basically, the NPC will act as a teammate and shoot at the people you’re playing against. Sometimes, the NPCs will actually kill people. But, I find that there are more useful to alert me when danger is near. For example, someone may be camping in a bush, and I completely missed them. But my NPC will start shooting at them, which makes me aware that the person is camping. 

Get a Target

 Another useful tool to use is the boards in the game that allow you to target a player. Basically, it takes a bounty out on a player in the game. 

If the player gets eliminated, you get gold as a reward. But, I like taking these out because it makes me aware of a certain area that a player is in. If I’m low on health and don’t have any items immediately available to fix myself, I’ll avoid that area. But, if I’m looking to increase my XP or complete a milestone in the game, I’ll go in the area highlight it on my map to try to find the player and eliminate them. 

Always grab a harpoon gun

Honestly, harpoon guns are so useful. There are a lot of different ways that you can use this weapon, but many people don’t think about it. First and foremost, you can use a harpoon gun to go fishing. But, there’s a lot more than you can pull up when you go fishing with a harpoon gun than just fish to help you fix your health or your shield. If you use all 10 frowns in your harpoon gun, there’s a chance that you could pull up a rare weapon. 

Sometimes, I’ll just grab a harpoon gun out of a chest and make a dash to my nearest lake or river. A lot of times, I’ll pull out a blue sniper. But, when my husband plays, he always seems to find a purple shotgun. It’s totally worth it to grab a harpoon gun just because of the rarity of the weapons that you can pull up when you go fishing.

But that’s not the only reason why I would highly recommend you consider grabbing a harpoon gun. Harpoon guns also make great weapons to take out your opponent’s while you’re in around too. If you happen to be low on ammo and are trying to preserve your stash, you can use a harpoon gun and shoot it at your opponent. 

When you shoot your harpoon gun at an opponent, it’ll take some of your opponent’s health. Plus, every time you shoot your harpoon gun at your opponent, it’ll draw them closer to you, making it easy for you to quickly finish them off. If you don’t have any ammo at all, you can use a harpoon gun to knock an opponent.

FAQs

Conclusion

 So, congrats. You’ve made it through this guide and hopefully, you’ve been able to snag a victory crown or 5. There’s nothing more thrilling than winning a round after you got into a heated battle. You should be proud of yourself; you beat out 99 other people fighting for the same spot. But what’s amazing about Fortnite is that the Battle Royale game mode isn’t the only option available. There’s also the creative mode and Save The World, which are two other amazing game modes to look into if you want to take a break from playing Battle Royale.

Keep in mind, there’s always so much to learn when it comes to Fortnite. Since the game is always evolving, but always new things out there for you to learn. So, don’t just stop here. Make sure you check out more information to understand all the ins and outs of Fortnite to ensure that you can grab as many Victory crowns as you can. 

 Don’t forget to check out our website if you want to learn more about those two other game modes! What’s your biggest tip that you want to share with other players to help them score a victory crown?

Fore more interesting readings check out: 

• Fortnite Shotguns Guide
• Fortnite Weapons Guide: ARs, Snipers, SMGs, Shotguns, Rocket Launchers, More
• Fortnite Gameplay Guide
• Fortnite Materials Deep Dive