Ranked Tips and Tricks for Beginner Players in Fortnite PvE

Since this question comes up time from time about solid advice and tips for new players, I have taken time revising my list of things I think are most important for any new player to consider and understand before making decisions in the game. Here is my ranked list of tips for new players to Fortnite.

Compilation of PVE Tips

Gameplay

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• You can use excess Blu-Glo in the Buff pylons found on the map. They buff the whole party, for the duration of the mission
• You can mark dangerous targets using the Middle Mouse Button for your teammates to see
• Mini husks aren’t able to use their “pounce” ability while moving over wooden floor spikes
• Recycling caps at 75 resource per minute regardless of how much you build, and can be collected by any player
• Lobber projectiles can be shot out of the air
• Propane tanks can be detonated and if one falls on your traps, you can hit it with your pick and knock it away
• Holding the reload button will craft the ammo appropriate to the weapon you’re holding. You can also use batch crafting with ammo!
• Flingers take reduced damage from ranged attacks so opting for melee will be better (currently not the case, bug?)
• You can edit the orientation of bombs dropped from Airstrike between area and line using the rotate(R) button

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Base

• Re-doing your Outpost for the last few SSDs is a lot easier when using one of the 2 Upgrade resets and not selecting Building HP afterwards
• Place your Decoy in cleared basements from above. Husks will happily walk down and despawn. Less killing necessary.
• When playing with others, building health and trap damage is scaled to the player with highest tech/ building health on the team
• Use Wall/ Floor launchers to push Husks off the map or into basements. They’ll automatically die if there’s no way out
• Patrol Wards consume charges the moment it’s placed down, even during build phase / AFK-ing
• A triangular wall makes a great ramp you can walk up, but mobs can’t
• You can take down self-built walls easily by editing it to the smallest size and hitting it while it’s remaking
• Give defenders slow-firing and low-spread weapons and level them up to increase their accuracy. Keep in mind they rarely land headshots.
• While a 1/2 floor has less health and does not allow trap placements, it is essentially a partial low wall, another layer husks need to get through

Loot

• You can make use of the hidden Twitch quest to find secret locations that might have chests etc especially if you aren’t on an Outlander
• Always break garden gnomes and teddy bears. They have a chance to drop Active Powercells
• To break things super fast, hit the very corner. The Weak Spots barely move.
• Turn on your game audio because nearby chests will make shimmering noises
• Activate In The Zone on Outlanders to see through walls into containers, which will glow according to content quality (green, blue, purple)
• Mark items you want to keep as “Favourites” so you do not accidentally recycle them. They’ll also not show up in the collection book!

Progression

• Level Survivors in one squad evenly to get the most stats for your invested XP. Keep job-matched Leads about 10 levels over Subordinates
• Focus on your main stat for the hero you play, e.g. Tech for ability based heroes. This is especially true for the Research Lab.
• If you have both Dear Diary and Daily Scouting Shelters quests, leaving Dear Diary incomplete will let you find shelters easily
• You can only get rewards for the first 3 timed missions you do daily. Additional timed missions do not award timed mission rewards
• Getting a friend to craft you a high level weapon can last you throughout the most of the game, making content easy
• Identical schematics can have different upgrade bonuses so they aren’t exactly duplicates
• When you evolve a blueprint, you change some of the material cost to craft. However, down-tier crafting still allows you to craft the old version
• If you abandon a daily quest, you get a new one back so it is more of a reroll than a forfeit. Only one can be rerolled per day
• Get friends to assist you on your Storm Shield defense missions to make them a breeze, and also give them Mini Reward Llamas
• There are additional Storm Shield defense missions which you can complete for V-bucks in your “Side Quests” after you’re done with the main
• There exist missions that may popup with V-Buck rewards and other goodies such as legendary survivors, so keep a lookout for those
• Adding a schematic to the collections book CONSUMES it and you wouldn’t be able to craft it anymore. Fortunately you can unslot them now

Frequently Asked Questions

What do I do with duplicate schematics?

1. Add them to your collection book
2. Use them in the transformation process
3. Scrap them for resources such as booklets used to upgrade other stuff
4. Scrap them for their appropriate experience

However, don’t destroy all your high quality schematics. You may require them to transform new event weapons and hero such as for Halloween.

What does the stats F.O.R.T do?

• Fortitude — Increases health and health regen rate by +1% per point
• Offense — Increases ranged and melee weapon damage by +1% per point
• Resistance — Increases shield and shield regen rate by +1% per point
• Tech — Increases trap damage, ability damage, gadget damage and healing done by +1% per point

What are the differences between Obsidian and Shadowshard weapons?

When evolving a weapon to 4 stars, there is a choice between the former ‘Ore’ path (going Obsidian) and the ‘Crystal’ path (Shadowshard).
On top of the differing material costs being Obsidian/ Brightcore vs Shadowshard/ Sunbeam, there are these following stat differences

• Crystal weapons have 20% more base damage than Ore weapons
• Crystal weapons have 10% less fire rate than Ore weapons
• Crystal weapons have 20% less durability than Ore weapons
• Crystal weapons have 20% more impact than Ore weapons

What does my Weapon Damage scale off?

1. Weapon Stats — This is consequently affected by the type, level and rarity of the weapon
2. Weapon Perks — Includes energy damage bonus as well, pretty self explanatory
3. Hero Perks — Heroes in your loadout can have perks that contribute to your weapon damage
4. Offense Stat — Essentially your Survivors Squads, Research Lab, and points from Account Level-ups. This stat increases the damage by 1% per point.
5. Party Offense — Playing with other players adds a portion of their Offense onto yours and boosts your damage in turn
6. Survivor Bonus — Survivor Set Bonuses (+5% Ranged Damage Bonus and +5% Melee Damage Bonus) contribute to weapon damage just like 5 Offense
7. Zone Modifiers — All those “Powerful Assault Rifles” modifiers that give damage boosts etc.

One more Best tips for Fortnite

1. WhiteSushi’s Fortnite Spreadsheet : This Spreadsheet has a ton of information and tips to help you get adjusted to the game. If you have a question or are wondering about something. Check this first.
2. Save your vbucks for Troll type Llamas. They are the best bang for your vbuck. Any Llamas 350 or less are really not worth purchasing. If you are desperate for a Legendary, the Llamas that cost more than 350 vbucks will usually guarantee you a Legendary of the Llama type.
3. Keep your grey and green schematics, heroes, defenders and survivors until you can transform them into a higher level item, with the goal of getting to a blue item (Tech and Skill Tree 2 have these abilities). Blue items give you manuals when you retire or recycle them (you do not get manuals when you use a blue or higher item in a transform), which are required for evolving schematics, heroes, defenders and survivors. Those manuals are important for evolutions, and are not very common from rewards. If you need to get rid of inventory space put your grey and green schematics, heroes, defenders, and survivors in the collection book (unlocked early in Skill 1 Tree) until you get to the collection book level 13 reward. The level 13 reward is a Jackpot Llama, after that there is no hurry or rush to fill up your collection book, and you will probably be better off transforming for experience and better cards, or retiring and recycling items for experience and manuals, than putting them in the collection book.
4. Evolutions : Do not evolve your schematics past your ability to obtain materials for them. A good rule of thumb is Stonewood is Star 1 (meaning if you evolve a schematic to Star 2 while still in Stonewood, you could have problems getting the required materials to craft or keep crafting this schematic), Plankerton is Star 2, Canny is Star 3, etc… As you near the end of the quest line for each zone and open up higher power level missions in each zone you will start to see the required mats as mission rewards as well as when in game when you are harvesting. Transforming, Recycling, and Retiring does not return any materials used in evolving your schematics, heroes, defenders, and survivors. So make sure the item is one you want to evolve.
5. Survivor Skills : Survivor Skill Bonuses are essentially worthless, except for Trap Durability. So don’t worry about matching these up. Survivor Skills also do not increase with the evolution of your survivors. IE 3 survivors with range damage bonus skill provide 5% bonus (IE 5 Offense) at star level 1 and star level 2. So the bonus does not change with evolutions.
6. Support and Tactical Squad Bonuses: The level/quality of the hero is in my opinion secondary to the ability they provide. For example Soldier Ramirez has Assualt Weapon Damage bonuses of +12% for the Support Squad slot. This +12% Bonus is the same regardless if it is a Mythic Ramirez or Green Ramirez. If all you care about is having that support ability, then a green hero Ramirez leveled up is much cheaper (to level and evolve with hero experience and materials) than a mythic or legendary. Plus should you get a mythic or legendary at a later date, you can always use green hero Ramirez in a transform and recoup the hero exp and invest it in to a mythic or legendary. Also most tactical squad bonuses only apply when that hero is star level 2 and provide no further bonuses being evolved further.
7. Stormshield Storage and Inventory Storage (NOT backpack storage) can exceed capacity. By default if you can’t hold mission rewards in your backpack the items will automatically transfer to your storm shield storage. Schematics, heroes, defenders, and survivors are stored in your inventory and can also exceed the cap. This may change in the future but for now I would not worry about it or feel forced to make decisions about it. Exceeding the cap for inventory may prevent you from doing some things like changing your survivor squads. But you still have the freedom to deal with it when you deem necessary.
8. Stats and Survivor Squad Priority : Tech and Offense are probably the two most important stats in the game, so when advancing in skill trees and tech trees, keep this in mind. You also want to do this when deciding which squad slots to unlock first / prioritize.
9. Building your Survivor Squads : In terms of building a survivor squad you generally want your survivor squad leader to fit/match the role of the squad first if able, then the highest quality you have. If you have multiple squad leaders for that role with different personalities, you will have to evaluate which one matches your survivors personalities best in terms of the quality and number of survivors you have. For example, If you have a Legendary Lead Survivor with Cooperative, and an Epic Lead Survivor with Adventurious for the same squad role, but only 2 Green Survivors with Cooperative personalities, and 3 Epic Survivors with Adventurious personalities, you will want to slot the Epic Lead Survivor with Adventurious and wait to get better quality survivors with the Cooperative personality. As stated above your best Leader / Survivor combinations should be focused on Offense and Tech Squads. Lastly for Star 1 Survivors (Lead and Regular) don’t be afraid to level them up to 10 as you can always retire or transform them and get back 90% of the experience you used to level them up.
10. Expeditions : Expeditions consume generic survivors (Not Lead Survivor or Survivor cards) to perform. In my opinion these are generally not worth doing until later in the game, unless you are near the cap (1000) on generic survivors and can’t really do any transforms that would consume generic survivors, or if the expedition will not cost survivors. If you have around 900 to 950 or more generic survivors you should do some Expeditions just so they don’t go to waste. You may also want to do them if the expedition you want to do will coincide with the duration you won’t be actively playing the game.
11. Research Tree : The research tree is not gated by the quest / story line like the skill tree is. So I would recommend you get the minimum research slots necessary to move to the next research tree level and keep going forward until you reach the 4th research tree. The reason for doing this is so you get more storage space for “collected” research as well as “stored” research, which prevents you from hitting your caps sooner and wasting research points. The other reason you want to do this is that Survivor Squad Slots and Backpack Space are well worth getting sooner rather than later. Once you hit the 4th research tree you can start filling out the previous research trees, if you want or need to.
12. Card Quality: Card Quality is not the absolute defining measure of the value for a card in some cases. For schematics, there are circumstances where a green, blue or purple quality card can be better than a legendary. The first and probably the most important circumstance will be the perks that the schematic has can make it more effective than a similar card of higher quality. The second circumstance would be how the card operates, things like damage per shot, magazine size, range, recoil, reload time, ammo cost, etc… might make it better than a higher quality card. The last circumstance is the resource cost to craft, level and evolve for a schematic in addition to the previous two circumstances might be a deciding factor in choosing a lower card quality.
    1. For example, floor spike traps don’t really need to be legendary, as their utility is in slowing enemies down, any damage they do is really just a bonus and not their strength, so most damage related perks for a floor spike trap are not really crucial to its purpose. So if I have a green floor spike trap with 2 rare perks of durability, and a legendary floor spike trap that has an assortment of 5 damage perks, it could be argued that I would be better off going with the green floor spike trap for now. By holding off using the Legendary, I’m saving myself materials when I craft them, I’m saving myself schematic experience by spending less per level, I’m saving evolve resources should I evolve them, and should I get a better legendary floor spike trap or the Epic Devs change floor spike trap perks or how floor spike traps work, I am not heavily invested so the change will impact me less.
    2. For Hero cards, it is much simpler. Purple cards and greater get the same number of abilities, though mythics will get new/different abilities over their legendary and epic versions. So it is not necessary to wait for the legendary or mythic heroe before spending your exp to level and evolve purple/epic heroes that you want to use. Unless Tip #6 applies, I would avoid leveling blue heroes past 20 or to the third star, green heroes past 10 or to the second star. Beyond that, the differences between card quality on heroes is that they’ll have higher base stats. Based on various experience reports, the base stat advantage while nice, is not necessary.