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One of the biggest games in the world, Fortnite is a unique third-person shooter with an emphasis on building, community, and crazy fun. In addition to the incredibly popular battle royale mode, you can fight evil zombies in the cooperative save the world mode or enjoy the building system in creative mode.
Released in 2017, Fortnite combined the building gameplay of popular games like Minecraft and Terraria with a third-person shooter, resulting in an extraordinary experience that's taken the world by storm. Fortnite is split off into three separate games: Fortnite: Battle Royale, where you battle to be the last person (or team) standing, Fortnite: Save the World, where you build towers to fight off hordes of zombies, and Fortnite: Creative, which gives you free access to the building options in the other two game modes, allowing you to create custom maps for your friends, incredible structures to show off, or just relax and chat.
Fortnite's building options are key, important features in all three game modes. After the battle royale genre exploded, Fortnite has remained very unique because of its building options. Need a barrier between you and a foe who's shooting from afar? The building system lets you do that with ease, as long as you have resources. In high-level games of Fortnite, the best players can erect walls, ramps, and platforms in an instant, allowing them to gain big advantages by bending the map to their will.
While the building system in Fortnite is easy to use, it's hard to use quickly. Part of what differentiates good Fortnite players is their ability to quickly build the things they want in high-pressure situations. It's a long-term skill that you'll develop over time as you gain familiarity with the game's menus and mechanics. Not only does the building system add depth and strategy to the game as it plays out, but it also adds a new skill that you can master alongside first-person shooter classics like aim, map knowledge, and awareness. The plethora of skills helps make Fortnite an especially good game to play with friends, as one of you can leverage your building skills to protect your team while another one utilizes expert aim to take out enemy players.
Fortnite wasn't the first free-to-play game supported with skins and a battle pass, but it helped spearhead the modern monetization model. This means that you get access to a colossal amount of content for free. If you play the game a lot, you'll have plenty of opportunities to spend money to get incredible skins, cosmetics, and more. As you play, you'll unlock rewards on the current Battle Pass, which you can purchase any time during the season to gain access to all unlocked rewards. It's a monetization scheme that makes the game incredibly cheap to pick up while allowing you to support the developer and flex on your friends by picking up a cool skin or two.
More than any other game on the market, Fortnite has a massive player base. Short-term, it's not the biggest game in the world, and it might even be surpassed by the flavor-of-the-month battle royale on a weekly or monthly basis. Long-term, however, it's clear that Fortnite is here to stay. This means you'll get super-fast queues, populated games, and a huge community of friends that you can enjoy Fortnite with.
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After you've installed Fortnite and played a few games, the first thing you should do to increase your win rate is adjust your sensitivity. Most shooter games will send the camera flying around in a full circle with a very slow control movement, which usually isn't what you want. Instead, try to leverage your mousepad or screen space so that you can accurately track an enemy who's moving farther away. Most of the time, this involves turning your sensitivity way, way down. In some ways, this makes it a bit more difficult to "flick" to targets that are outside of your current field of view, since you'll have to lift up your mouse, but you'll get pretty fast at this with some practice. The lower sensitivity will give you plenty of accuracy while it matters, lowering your time-to-kill and helping you win duels.
The newer "mantle" movement option involves jumping over the top of a wall. It's a great way to gain the upper hand on opponents, whether it's by mixing up your approach and popping over a wall or by allowing you to traverse the map without building as many ramps. Currently, you can also drop two walls below you and then mantle on top of them to avoid fall damage from any height. To do this, jump off the wall, then build walls as you fall and take the mantle action. If done correctly, you'll take no damage (assuming this hasn't been patched). You can also mantle on top of cones on top of your build structures, allowing you to gain more height and get the drop on your opponent during a build duel. You can also edit a cone and floor above you, enabling you to mantle on the floor and clip through the cone for a few free shots while your body is still in cover.
The updated visual sound effects feature is invaluable, adding icons for faraway sounds that you might otherwise have missed. It's a great way to spot vehicles, boats, and faraway players, even if you've got a killer sound system. Our ears aren't amazing at hearing low-volume noises, especially when those noises have to compete with nearby gunfights, music, and other distractions. The icons, on the other hand, will always be visible and will tell you exactly where these sound cues are coming from.
No matter how experienced you are at Fortnite, it's always a good idea to spend some time practicing. Launch Creative mode and practice common build patterns, edit strategies, and more in a pressure-free environment. The pros didn't become experts overnight. Instead, they've spent hundreds or thousands of hours practicing. They've done most of the work in terms of developing strategies and innovating, but if you want to catch up, you'll want to spend time refining your builds, edits, and movement so you can keep up with the best. Try to get to the point where you can complete your favorite moves in high-pressure situations without screwing up. In addition to practicing building, don't forget to spend some time in community aim training maps to perfect your sensitivity and practice your aim.
Have you been playing Fortnite? What do you think of the new season? Let us know about your favorite skins, your best games, and the best strategies in the comments below. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the current meta and how you've been adapting to the latest changes.
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