Fortnite Battle Royale Basic and Advanced Tips Guide

Fortnite Battle Royale Basic and Advanced Tips Guide by thesomeot

I’ve been playing Battle Royale for a while, and I’m surprised with the lack of beginners guides. There are some decent YouTube videos out there, but I haven’t seen much written. The few I have seen have been pretty lacking and say pretty obvious things, and there are a lot of things I wish I’d known in the beginning. So without further ado, my tips and tricks guide for Fortnite Battle Royale:

Beginners Tips

• Use and stick close to cover. Move from tree to tree to get a closer shot, hide behind rocks, etc. You’re a sitting duck out in the open, and if the nearest cover is a 15 second run away, that’s 15 seconds they have to potentially down you. In that situation, you’ll need to start building cover, but the chances of it being destroyed are high. You can also abuse third person camera and stay unseen behind cover while still keeping an eye on your enemy.
• Play some practice rounds. “But thesomeot, there is no practice mode!” Correct, but in a roundabout way you can kind of create your own. They’re not true practice games, but they certainly will help you get better. Just drop into the first city the bus flies over, try to find a gun quickly and fight anyone you see. You’ll probably die pretty quick the first few times, but this will help you get used to Fortnite’s gunplay. I used to land in “safe” areas, but then I’d spend 5 minutes playing hiking simulator and get killed by the first person I encountered because I was no good at combat. This method gets you in and out quick, and helps you gain valuable experience.
• Learn when to engage. Remember, this game is about surviving, not getting kills. If you see someone far away and you don’t have a sniper, don’t start shooting. You probably aren’t going to kill them, and you’re alerting anyone else nearby where you are. Wait, see if you can sneak up closer and get the jump on them with a shotgun. I don’t know how many games my friends and I lost early on because we still had the “kill everyone” mentality other games instilled in us. (this can be put you at a huge disadvantage if you are running from the storm or will need to be soon. Pick your fights carefully)
• Be smart about your building. It’s very easy to spot someone building a structure in the distance, and if I see a giant fort I know someone’s probably there, and so does everyone else. Save your resources for clutch cover building or end game bases.
• Share ammo with your squadmates. Snipers and rocket launchers are rare, so I would recommend giving your heavy bullets or rockets to the person on your squad who has the respective gun. You can also give someone your ammo, have them fill their magazine, and give it back.
• Stack items with your squad. No need for each of you to be carrying one medpack, have one person carry all three and free up inventory space. As long as you stick close you should be able to share.
• Hit the blue circle while you’re destroying things. It’s actually embarrassing how long it took for me to figure that out. Instead of doing 50 damage you’ll do 100 and destroy the structure quicker. It also gives you extra resources.
• Look for ammo crates. I actually didn’t realise they existed until I’d been playing for a while. They’re small, green crates that are often on shelves.
• Drink your shield potions right away. No use carrying them around, get those shields up immediately. Don’t hog them either, try to spread your potions evenly throughout your squad.
• Fire your automatic weapons in short bursts. We don’t need to get in a fight over weapon bloom here, but I think everyone can agree that continued spraying is renders your gun effectively useless after a few shots. Try to shoot in controlled bursts to retain what little accuracy the weapon has.
• Rebind your walls/stairs so you can easily access them. You need those in MANY situations where you don’t have any cover and need to build something FAST to outplay your opponent.
• If you get caught in storm start a ramp before you exit. It’s really nice if there is trees just inside circle as well as giving cover right at the height your ramp pokes out. I’d be careful with this one, however, if someone sees you building they may be able to keep you pinned down at the outskirts of the storm.
• Make sure your structures have connection to the ground. If any structures don’t have a connection to the earth, they will collapse. Meaning if you build a stairway to heaven, someone can shoot the base and send you to hell. This also means you can knock down the pre-built towers, a good method to kill/damage/disorient if someone doesn’t notice you sneak up to the base.
• Pay attention to enemy death animations. If you’re playing duo or squads, watch how people die/go down. If they instantly warp out when killed, you’re good. If they just go down, watch out. That means they still have teammates alive.
• Grab all the guns in the beginning. Early on if you see multiple weapons of the same type, grab them. Don’t leave just cause you already have one. That’s 30 shots you’re leaving behind, especially when ammo is at a premium. Your squadmates may also not have had a chance to get anything good, so you can share like the kindhearted player you are.
• You can split your ammo. Press X (PC) to bring up a slider from 0 rounds to all your rounds, and is in the middle by default. Holding shift and dragging and dropping also drops half ammo.
• Crouching increases your aim. It decreases your bloom (spread) making the shot more accurate. The way to decrease it the fullest is to crouch, stay still and zoom in. It’s good for ARs but it’s not worth doing when close range with a shotgun. Also, crouching doesn’t affect scoped Sniper Rifles.

Advanced Tips

• Use the compass to call out locations to your squadmates. “He’s over there!” could mean anything, but we have a handy built in compass to help, and it even has specific degrees for accuracy. This one is a real game changer and I noticed my squad doing much better after we figured it out.
• SMGs and pistols have their uses. Some may disagree with me, but generally the SMGs and pistols (to a lesser degree) aren’t great and are easily outclassed by the other guns, but I have found they can be useful for a few things. Light bullets are pretty common, but other ammunition is not always so I prefer to conserve it if possible. I’ll use my pistol/SMG to kill downed enemies, destroy cover, or suppress enemies.
• Try to time your glider deployment properly and reach the ground first. When I first started I would try to skydive horizontally as far as I could to get to my target, but that ended in me being slower to reach the ground and missing the good loot (and usually getting killed because of it). It may be in your best interest to go as far down vertically as you can and use the glider to cover the horizontal distance. You’ll make it to the ground quicker this way and be able to have first pick of the loot. Additionally, try to land on top of structures. You can either break the house roofs down and get the golden chests in the attics faster or just drop to the ground that much quicker.
• Learn some building patterns. There are a few good patterns to build a quick fort, which can be useful in the late game. Try looking on YouTube or watching a good stream. I’m partial to a 2×2 with spiral stairs leading up and a set of stairs on top to snipe off of.
• Order your weapons logically. If you have time. You can enter your item menu and re-order your items. This allows you to put a close range weapon after your sniper to decrease the time to switch to a proper weapon if someone gets close.
• Cover ground faster. If you’re going a long ways away from the bus, the fastest way to cover ground is to spam the button to go back and forth between glider and skydive. Once you get about a grid block away diving straight down and gliding over is best.
• Get used to spamming buildings for cover. Condition yourself to spam build your preferred quick structure whether that’s something fancy or just a wall. It takes time to turn that into muscle memory but I spam build a wall and ramp every time I get into an unexpected fight. It can literally block any fire from a enemy in front of you because you can build walls when standing on stairs nonstop by spamclicking. They will just waste their ammo but be aware this strategy can use up quite a bit of resources. Sometimes it is better to run behind other cover while building walls in the direction you are getting shot at from. Building walls around the stairs is recommended if you are staying in the spot.

This guide is still very much a work in progress and is by no means perfect. It’s solely based off my experience playing thus far. Please let me know if you have anything else you think I should add, you disagree with something I’ve written or my organization, or maybe there’s a more comprehensive guide out there that I don’t know about. Whatever it is, please let me know!