Battle Royale Tips, Tricks, and Strategies - Fortnite Guide - IGN (2024)

Fortnite Battle Royale is a Free-to-Play PVP mode will a lot of moving parts. Not only does it pit up to a hundred players against one another – to battle it out using randomized weapons and such – it also features unique element’s like Fortnite’s building mechanics. In an effort to help new/returning players quickly get up to speed, we decided to create this Battle Royale Tips, Tricks, and Strategies guide.

Feel free to click one of the main category links below to jump to specific sections within this guide.

Fortnite Battle Royale Beginner Tips

• Learn the Basics
• Sprint By Default
• Customize Your Controls
• Improve Your Aim
• Keep Moving
• Practice Building

Fortnite Battle Royale Advance Tips

• Fix Your Inventory
• Balance Risks
• Learn the Island
• Keep Learning

Fortnite Battle Royale Beginner Tips

This beginner section of the guide will help ease your way into Fortnite Battle Royale. Even if you aren’t new to the battle royale genre, considering Fortnite’s more unique elements, it’s worth looking taking a look at our tips below.

Learn the Basics

One of the first things new players will want to do is familiarize themselves with Fortnite’s basics. There’s more to the game than finding weapons and hunting rival players; just learning how to collect materials in order to build structures can throw some for a loop.

Unfortunately, the best way to learn the basics is to jump right in. While IGN's Battle Royale Basics and Features guide will certainly help speed up this process by introducing/explaining key concepts, most of this information will be gleaned from in-game experience. Mess around with the pickaxe, try building a wall, shoot a few guns – it shouldn’t take long to understand how the most important aspects of Fortnite works.

Sprint By Default

You’re going to run a lot in Fortnite Battle Royale. Whether to evade gunfire, avoid the Storm, or to beat your teammates to that Legendary weapon – the “race” is always on. That’s why it would be in your benefit to make sure that you set change your default movement speed to sprint. This can be done by going to Settings and then to Movement. Once there, just make sure that Sprint By Default is set to on.

To be fair, there will be moments when you won’t want to run. You might be having a hard time platforming between made structures. Or, you’re trying to be sneaky while searching through a house; rival players can more readily hear you when you’re running. In these instances, you can either toggle your sprint or hold down the run button (if you’ve made running the default) to make your character walk.

Customize Your Controls

Once you’ve gotten the hang of the basics, you may want look into changing your control scheme. That’s not to say that Fortnite Battle Royale’s default controls are bad. Just that, depending on your playstyle, they might need some tweaking. This is especially true when it comes to Fortnite’s building mechanics.

The more you play Fortnite, the better you’ll become at building different structures. At least, in terms of their placement; you won’t struggle with placing a wall to ramp to floor and so on. That said, your speed might plateau after a while. This is where changing your controls (or in some cases, your hand placement) comes in.

Toggling the build mode on consoles, for instance, is done by pressing O/B/A on an Xbox/Sony/Switch controller. The problem is that your camera is usually controlled by the Right Thumbstick. Trying to quickly move your thumb from the stick to toggle build mode and back again to start placing structures can be a pain.

To combat this, you can adjust your hand position – keep your finger hovering above the build button instead of the right thumb when you aren’t actually looking around/aiming at someone – or you could change your Crouch/Slide button (clicking the right stick) to your Toggle Build button and vice versa. This will make it easier to aim/look around before quickly switching to build mode as it won’t require you to remove your thumb from the Right Thumbstick to do both.

To remap your controls, go to Settings and then to the Controller tab (not to be confused with the separate controller settings tab). Once there, click Custom on the right-hand side of the screen and adjust your buttons as you see fit.

While you’re in settings, take a trip over to the Controller Settings tab. Here you’ll be able to tweak your things like your look and aim sensitivity, stick deadzones, and more. Continue to play while adjusting Fortnite’s various settings to your liking in order to improve your game.

Note: On PC, things are a little different. Switching to build mode is done with Q while aiming is typically controlled by your mouse for example. That said, you can still change create a custom control scheme, adjust sensitivity levels and basically anything else you’d like to tweak.

Improve Your Aim

Fortnite Battle Royale isn’t a realistic shooter. Still, there are factors to consider when trying to improve your aim. One has to deal with just knowing Fortnite’s weapons. Shotguns are better at close quarter fights while sniper rifles should be utilized from a distance. There are times when swapping to one or the other can prove useful even with the circ*mstances aren’t ideal – no scooping a rushing opponent – but for the most part, you’ll want to choose the right weapon(s) for the job. You’ll also have to consider physics-based elements like bullet drop when targeting players that are far away; make sure to lead your shots when trying to hit moving players.

One thing you can do to better land your shots, regardless of what weapon you’re holding, is to crouch. Crouching narrows your aiming radical, essentially making your character focus, reducing bullet spread. You won’t always be able to crouch of course; doing so when facing multiple opponents or when out in the open could spell doom. But doing so from a raise position or in brief moments while moving between covered positions can greatly improve your gunplay.

Fortnite Battle Royale has a revolving list of weapons. To see what’s currently being offered in-game, head over to IGN’s Fortnite Weapons List guide.

Keep Moving

I know what I just said about crouching. Understand that some of these tips are situational based. There are times when crouching is preferred. Other times…not so much. For those times, you’re going to want to learn how to maneuver in and out of danger.

In Fortnite, it’s possible to strafe opponents – in which you run from left to right or in circular motions while keeping your crosshair aim at an enemy – but doing so will often result in trading damage. Try placing a barrier up between you and them first. Follow it up with a ramp to get to higher ground. Move into a house, before turning and blasting whoever is chasing you. Remember that headshots do more damage than body shots; try jumping with a shotgun to land a critical headshot when in close range.

You’ll want to keep moving when out of combat as well. It’s possible to be sniped while trying to chop down a tree for instance. If you have to heal yourself, build some walls first or go inside a building. Whatever you do, don’t stay stationary for too long.

This tip is also applicable to out running the Storm. It can be hard to get beyond it’s reach once caught inside if there are no vehicles around. Thankfully, Fortnite Chapter 3, Season 1 implemented a new Slide mechanic. By holding down the crouch button while running, you’ll start to slide (think Apex Legends). If you do this while going downhill, you’ll vastly increase your movement speed. Use this when trying to escape rivals and the pesky Storm.

Practice Building

Learning how to build during a gunfight is tough. It’s easy to make mistakes in wall placement and such when you’re trying to dodge bullets. That’s not the case when you’re just running around though. Why not stop and try to build a few structures while you aren’t stressed?

A lot of new players forget that they can build things (and that they should practice) until it’s too late. Don’t worry about accidently blocking a teammate or placing a ramp on the wrong side of something. Just mess around. The more comfortable you are with the act of placing structures in real time, the better.

Heck, you can go to Fortnite Creative and build till your hearts content. There are no enemies and you have unlimited materials. Those custom maps are the best place to better your building techniques.

For more Fortnite building tips, head over to IGN’s Best Battle Royale Building Tips guide.

Fortnite Battle Royale Advance Tips

Here are a few advance tips to further improve your Fortnite skills.

Fix Your Inventory

Adjusting your inventory to better suit your needs goes hand and hand with the Customize Your Controls tip. Fortnite has a new feature that auto places important (read: more powerful) weapons in the front and healing based items in the back or end of your inventory bar. But that might not be the best option.

The idea is to make sure that you can easily swap to what you want, when you want it. If you’re a natural born sniper, you may want those types of weapons towards the front. If you’d rather have your close ranged weapons there, swapped them around. To this, along with changing your controls/remap keys, to make sure you’re not only swapping item quickly but also efficiently.

Balance Risks

It makes sense not to drop into a heavily populated portion of the map. Then again, these places are popular for a reason. The Sanctuary, home of The Seven, offers killable NPCs. Some of them hold rare to legendary weapons to loot.

Knowing when to engage should also be a part of your risk assessment. Are you getting ready to face a rival squad alone? Should you wait and try to 3rd party them – basically attack a team right after they’ve defeated another – or wait and see where they go. If you can’t guarantee you’ll get a head shot, should you pull the trigger? There’s no right or wrong answer here considering some of the wildest of ideas have worked to achieve victory in the past. The point is to get you thinking about your moves and how rival players might respond before you make them. It’s easy to get blind sided by an opposing team if you rush into combat without at least surveying your surroundings.

Learn the Island

Since Fortnite’s island changes from chapter to chapter (and in some cases, season to season) it important to learn where everything is. Try and fill in all portions of the map. That way, you’ll know where the hot spots are, where certain NPCs spawn, and where you can occasionally find some of the best weapons in the game.

Keep Learning

Because Fortnite changes all the time, there will always be things to familiarize yourself with. Chapter 3, Season 2, for instance, added Camps. These items – basically tents that you hold in your inventory – can not only heal you but also store items between games. By paying 100 Gold Bricks, you can store a legendary for a later day. To retrieve your items, all you have to do is find another Camp item, throw it down, and then interact with it.

New items come and go. Weapons get buffed or nerfed. Game changing mechanics are introduced (like being able to slide or web-swing). Make sure to keep these things in mind when trying to improve.

That's it for our Beginner and Advance tips. Be sure to check this space as we'll continue to add more helpful strategies. Also, feel free to out IGN's Tips and Tricks to playing Fortnite's campaign mode.