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Fortnite has one of the steepest learning curves in the battle royale genre. Unlike most shooters, winning requires you to master several skills at once, including building, editing, aiming, positioning, rotations, and decision-making under pressure.
It can all feel overwhelming, but you aren’t alone. There are several skills you can develop to improve at Fortnite if you’re willing to put in the time and effort.
How to Improve Your Builds and Edits
Sure, it is important to know how to whip out 90s, edit your pieces, and all that (more on those in a bit), but a large part of improving your building in Fortnite is the age-old adage: practice makes perfect. You want building in this game to feel as natural as it is to automatically start aiming in with the left trigger (assuming you use a controller) and firing away with the right trigger.
The main reason behind this is that you need building to be an automatic muscle response when playing Fortnite. If you get shot from behind, you aren’t going to magically turn around and win that fight (at least not 99% of the time). That is where builds come in.
It should be a natural response for you to start cranking out some builds when suddenly getting shot at. To do this, you need practice and a routine. Sure, you could just mash buttons for walls, ramps, and so on, but that will only get you so far. When in doubt, build up and then around. Make a routine, be it something like three double ramps, four walls, a roof.
Whatever your perfect routine is, have it down by practicing it over and over so it comes naturally to you in the most stressful scenarios.
As part of that routine, you also want to incorporate and master editing your builds. This is where you modify the structures you’ve placed, changing walls, floors, ramps, and cones to create new angles or defensive options. This could be creating a window in a wall to shoot at enemies from or a hole in the floor to trick foes.
Edits are arguably just as important to your builds as the basic, foundational pieces you set down themselves, but it can be an extra layer. This is why I recommend making it part of your typical routine to place windows, and the like, so you can easily fire away at other players from on high.
You don’t have to edit all the time, but make sure to make it a key part of your builds, such as windows every few floors of your builds, at the very top, or whatever works best for your playstyle and squad.
Know When to Position Yourself
So much of Fortnite comes down to positioning in every single little situation. It starts from the very beginning of the match when you are deciding where to drop out of the battle bus.
For those players who are quite confident in their skills, dropping at the hottest spots with the best loot is always a solid option. Even then, though, there is a bit of RNG at play since you don’t know exactly what weapons you will find before you start getting shot at by the 10 other squads that landed at the same point of interest.
On the other hand, you can try to avoid people and land elsewhere. When in doubt, it is best to take this approach; just don’t go too far out of the way. Land at a point of interest that is one of the last ones on the bus path so you don’t have to fight for loot, but also not have to fight to get to the next circle.
After all, positioning plays into the circles as well. It is never a good idea to be the last team into the new circle. There are plenty of experienced players who will wait on the edges of the circle to take out desperate, unsuspecting teams. Get there as early as possible, so long as you are careful.
This is the core point of positioning in Fortnite. If you don’t know what to do, just be sure to be ahead of someone else, and do it cautiously. For example: you never want to be last into a major building or area, as that is how you will quickly be back to the lobby screen. Get there early, find a good vantage point to watch for others, and don’t hesitate to take out the late teams.
Master Your Aim and Editing Mechanics
As you might expect, aiming and accuracy are crucial parts of getting better at Fortnite. You’ll need to be able to aim well to land the shots with the various weapons, so you can actually eliminate other players and win the match. This is a given, and something you should certainly practice if you struggle with mid-to-long-range gunfights.
That said, there is another part to aiming that you need to know about. Just as you need to be quick to respond to attacks and fire back, you also need to be quick and accurate with your builds. This is more of an advanced technique that truly requires a great building foundation beforehand.
As you might already know, while you are in build mode, you are not only able to put down new pieces like ramps and walls, but you can edit the existing ones you’ve built as well. This is a challenging area to master, but this is one seemingly tiny point that separates the semi-decent players from the genuine pros.
You want to be able to aim at the built item and edit it just as fast as you were at initially placing it there. This takes even more practice to learn than building in general, but it will make the difference. This allows you to create windows in walls to fire at your opponents before they even realize where you are or place doors to distract foes running through your builds.
These little details add complexity to your builds, which is necessary if you want to be one of the best.
Ensure You Are Ready for the Endgame
You’ve done all the right things; you mastered your builds, and now you are in the final zone of the match. It is just a few squads left, and maybe you even have a teammate or two eliminated. This is the endgame, and the most important part of every single Fortnite battle royale match you do.
There is a meta strategy to the endgame that is quite unique. With only a handful of players and teams left, it is more imperative than ever to know when to attack, when to revive teams, and where to be positioned. As mentioned earlier, it is great to get to the final circle early so you can set up your squad.
You can’t choose where the circle will end up, but you can make the best of it. There might be a small building available or it is in a POI with several buildings, so you can pick the tallest one. Make the best of the situation, get to the highest vantage point whenever possible, and ready up with shield potions and the like.
Then whenever it comes down to the final fights, you have to decide what type of player you are. Are you the aggressive player that makes the first move? If so, be decisive and swift. Watch the other team(s) and catch them off-guard so you can finish them off quickly.
Or are you more like me, and like to hang back and see what happens? This is a viable strategy, as you can be the infamous third-party. The idea here is to wait for the other teams to engage and be busy with one another, then swoop in during the chaos, and decimate both teams while they’re weak and distracted.
No matter what you do, communication with your team is key, especially if you’re strangers. Have a plan ahead of time and execute it without hesitation.
Best Tools to Improve Your Fortnite Skills
Anyone can make it to the end of a match; even someone in their very first match can do that. Winning it, though? That’s a totally different story. The above tips will help to get you to the point of winning, but it does take practice as mentioned. There are a couple of ways for you to practice, and it comes down to what you’re looking for.
Creative Maps
For someone just starting out, it is worth taking a look at some of the brilliant Creative maps others in the community have made. Some of the best examples I’ve used in the past include Raider464 and Skaavok. These are built to have areas for you to learn how to build better and the like.
They are fully integrated into Fortnite as well, so you don’t have to leave the game to check them out. You can practice in these maps and then almost instantly queue up for the next match to see how your progress goes. They are also great, even if you are a phenomenal player already, for warm-ups.
Aim Trainers
Creative maps are a solid starting point for getting better at Fortnite, but they will only get you so far. If you are truly keen to be the best and enter competitive tournaments, you’ll need some external help like aim trainers. There are many out there, but the one that I come back to and recommend to other Fortnite players is Aimlabs.
First and foremost, it has a substantial and great free version that anyone can use, even console players. There are different routines you can do that are specific just to Fortnite to help you perfect your building, editing, aiming, and more. This free version alone will do wonders for your training.
You can track your progress and really hone in on the weakest parts of your playstyle. There is a subscription that is even more helpful, but the benefit is you can try out Aimlabs to your heart’s content so you know if that’s right for you. I highly suggest leaning into an aim trainer like Aimlabs if you want to not just learn how to get better at Fortnite, but compete with the very best.
Final Thoughts
You don’t have to navigate the murky waters of getting better at Fortnite alone. If you narrow down on your weaknesses, you can soon find yourself rising through the ranks online. To do that, though, be sure to consider aim trainers like Aimlabs or even just the in-game maps.
Whatever you do, be sure to focus on the core ideas of Fortnite: builds, positioning, aiming, and the endgame. If you do this and genuinely put the time into improving, you’ll see the results and actually improve at battle royale.