Fortnite is a fun coop shooter with a complex building and crafting mode. To help you keep track and have fun as a newcomer right from the start, we have gathered 20 tips and tricks to make it easier for you.
Fortnite may seem like a casual game due to its comic book look and silly humor. But that’s misleading! Fortnite is complex and demanding. There are countless functions and mechanics that only become apparent later and can leave you scratching your head.
But luckily, we have our tips and tricks for the coop shooter!
Fortnite – With these tips and guides you’ll have the perfect start!
To ensure you have fun in Fortnite right from the beginning, we have collected 20 tips for you. Have fun trying them out!
Fortnite Tip 1 – Don’t waste your traps!
I wish I had known this tip at the start. I generously used all my traps in the first mission and then realized that I couldn’t collect them back or recycle them!
Don’t make the same mistake I did and save your good traps for your storm shield or really tough missions and place them in sensible locations.
Fortnite Tip 2 – Exploit the stupidity of zombies!
When laying traps, you should always keep one thing in mind: You are dealing with zombies. And brainless undead are really dumb. Therefore, the shambling beings will usually take the easiest path to your base. Take advantage of this and build them nice winding paths full of traps around your fortress perimeter.
This way, you ensure they have a true death march to undertake. Zombies can’t climb either, a mini wall will keep them at bay, so don’t waste resources on huge walls that you can’t even shoot over in the outer defense.
Fortnite Tip 3 – Don’t waste resources on pointless buildings!
You don’t need to build elaborate defenses in missions to win, especially at the beginning of the game. Often just a wooden shack around the mission objective and maybe a few elevated positions for a good shooting angle will suffice.
Ideally, you should camp at the spawn point and take out the zombies right there. So save your resources for the storm shield and ideally only build with wood in missions, not with valuable stone or metal scraps.
Unless of course, you have plenty of stone and metal, then you can go ahead and use them.
Fortnite Tip 4 – Invest in resource gathering expeditions
Make sure to equip an expedition soon and send it out to gather new resources continuously. This way, you save time in missions and won’t have to farm resources tirelessly. Use the time instead to explore and gather valuable stuff. Standard items like wood, metal, and stone can sometimes also be collected by your minions.
The expeditions work like a mini-game in a browser game (or like in WoW): You pick an expedition, send it out, and the NPCs will be gone for a while and have a certain chance of success to bring back rewards.
Fortnite Tip 5 – Go to the mines!
If you find a mine, you should definitely go down and collect the resources. There’s metal and stone in abundance, and you often find special ores. The mining equipment is also great for recycling to collect metal parts and other valuable crafting materials. You can often find mines on the edges of forest areas.
Fortnite Tip 6 – Look for secret rooms!
Not only in dank mines are there hidden treasures. Many of the former inhabitants of Fortnite’s cities created secret basements that can only be reached by force. So, if you’re in a house, feel free to break the floors. You often find secret hobby basements full of loot!
Fortnite Tip 7 – Ensure clear shooting field!
If you want to defend a mission objective, make sure that no filthy zombie finds cover there. So chop everything down and smash any cars and rocks around the mission objective. This way, you’ll get resources and as a team, you have a clear shooting field. Every shot counts!
Fortnite Tip 8 – Forget defenders, get friends!
You can call in computer-controlled followers from your support team to the storm shield or mission using the “Defender Pad”. They will stand around and shoot at anything that moves. Sounds good at first, but the guys and gals come totally unarmed.
Additionally, the AI buddies will demand valuable weapons and even more valuable ammunition from you. And since your companions are all trigger-happy idiots, they will waste your precious ammo in large quantities. So, it’s better to save yourself the AI support and bring in human players. They bring their own ammo!
Fortnite Tip 9 – Spend XP generously!
Don’t be stingy with experience points. Feel free to level up your favorite heroes, blueprints, and teams as you please. If you get a better version later, you can – provided you have the necessary perks from the skill tree – recycle the old version of the hero, blueprint, or team member and you’ll get a nice chunk of XP back. So you can afford to be generous.
Fortnite Tip 10 – Recycle weapons before they break
Very important: While you can repair everything in the game, oddly enough, you cannot repair your weapons. However, if you have the blueprint, you can rebuild the weapon as many times as you want, as long as you have the resources available. To avoid losing precious resources, you should disassemble a nearly broken weapon in time and rebuild it. This way you save valuable resources!
Repairing weapons is not possible in Fortnite – Here are the alternatives
Fortnite Tip 11 – Grant your friends building permissions – But only to them!
When you expand your storm shield, you must fend off a few waves of enemies. This works best with friends, who also gain progress in their “Hold-the-Door-Quest” from this. The annoying thing is that the friends apparently cannot build anything on your map.
This is because, for protection against trolls, a build and gathering ban is enabled by default. Otherwise, randomly invited players could tear down your buildings and then mockingly leave while laughing “Trollololol”.
However, if you trust your teammates, you can allow your teammates to build and gather resources by accessing the storm shield terminal under the “Notifications” tab. This is especially great when, for example, a teammate can upgrade your walls or has particularly cool traps.
Fortnite Tip 12 – Use the weak spot upgrade when harvesting!
Harvesting resources can often take a while. However, you will receive a perk early on that allows you to detect weak spots. These look like small blue dots that constantly change in size and randomly appear on the resource.
Make sure to always hit these spots; it makes the harvesting go much faster. This is also important when you need to tear down your own walls to build new ones. Metal walls especially can otherwise hold up for ages.
Fortnite Tip 13 – Harvest specifically!
Don’t chop down everything like a lumberjack, but use your time wisely. The best resources to harvest are cars and machines; these often give you metal and additional goodies like metal parts or screws and nuts.
Also useful are mechanical objects like air conditioners, power converters, or pumping stations. You can also find particularly valuable ores and stones in mines and less in the wild.
Fortnite Tip 14 – Always explore the entire map
Instead of just harvesting all resources blindly, you should take the time before the actual mission starts to scout the map. This not only grants you an achievement, but you will also find survivors, hidden treasures, and anomalies. This gives you additional loot, and exploring is definitely more exciting than just whacking trees and stones!
If you want to know how to disable cover storage, here is the quest guide!
Fortnite Tip 15 – Feel free to craft for your friends, there are no soul links!
If you can build a fully upgraded weapon while your friends are still messing around with lame junk, feel free to give them a gift and craft a super weapon or trap for them. Just drop the item in the inventory menu, and your buddy can pick it up and use it. There’s no minimum level or soul binding. Cooperation is king in Fortnite!
Fortnite Tip 16 – Expand your support team!
Once you have unlocked certain perks in the skill menu, you can add additional heroes as supporters. These characters do not appear in missions themselves but provide significant passive bonuses. You receive 20 percent of their stats as a bonus to the main hero’s values, so it is worth leveling up the other heroes.
However, even cooler is that if the necessary perk is available, you get the passive bonuses of the hero. These effects are listed under “Bonuses” for each hero and can significantly expand your playstyle. Don’t forget about your support teams of survivors. They provide you with extremely high bonuses to your stats when equipped well!
Make sure they all have the same personality and ideally provide the same bonus, then you get even more improvements. But in a pinch, random characters will do; some bonuses will stick regardless.
Fortnite – An overview of the four classes – which hero can do what?
Fortnite Tip 17 – Claim your daily rewards and research points
Log in to Fortnite at least once a day. Even if you don’t have time to play, you can still grab your daily login bonuses. Additionally, the game regularly generates research points that you can invest in useful perks.
So you’ll get an expanded inventory and bonuses to your stats. Be sure to collect your research points regularly and invest them, as there’s a limit to the points you can store, so you won’t waste anything.
Fortnite Tip 18 – Loot first, then smash!
Remember that you can loot certain objects in the game world. Trash cans, crates, or cabinets are such objects. If you simply destroy them, the contents will break, and you’ll only get standard items. So, it’s better to loot these objects first and then smash them!
Fortnite Tip 19 – Read the skill list carefully!
Your skills spread across four expansive ability trees. Since you sometimes need to grind for a long time to acquire enough skill points, you should know exactly what you want and avoid unnecessary detours. Take the time to look carefully at what you are getting and when.
Then aim diligently for it and don’t mess around in the tree. This way, you can optimize your hero for your play style. You can still acquire the other skills later when you have spare points. There is no upper limit on skill points.
Fortnite Tip 20 – Plan your storm shield carefully in advance!
Your home base in the respective region is your storm shield. Unlike in the missions, everything you build here remains permanent. So don’t build mindlessly; plan strategically for the future. Be sure to use metal walls for the storm shield at the beginning and create complex structures.
Also, keep in mind that you’ll need to set up and defend additional storm shield outposts on the map later on. These will be the first to receive the wave of attacks from that region and will also need defenses.
In such cases, remember to build quick pathways to the outposts, ideally via bridges leading from the center to the outposts. This way, all defenders can change positions quickly and undetected.
If you have questions or want to exchange ideas with others: Join our Fortnite Facebook group for tips and discussions.
