There’s more than one way to play Fortnite. Sure, you can drop directly into Titled Towers and hope that, as the chalice of battle boils away, you’ll be part of the residue left behind.
But don’t you get tired of that? Don’t you ever wonder what it’s like on the periphery where you can hear every footstep land? More pertinently: don’t you want to know if there’s another way to win?
In the busier spots of Fortnite’s map, your focal point is always the nearest bunny-hopping figure on the horizon, your attention snapping naturally from one opponent to the next. But in the quiet places, where enemies are an irregularity, you can hunker down in a sports centre or shipping container, plant the traps you’ve been ignoring, and just listen. Listen to the shimmer of the chests that nobody but you will find. Listen for a rare player who happens upon your hiding place and track their location in stereo.
In the quiet places of Fortnite, you can feel a tension like no other in the game, and reach the top ten without firing a shot. But you’ve got to find them first.
Work the map
If there’s one thing a quiet spot isn’t, it’s a named location. Named spots on the map draw the eye of players looking for a place to land. Tomato Town, Dusty Divot, Paradise Palms – Epic has made a habit of giving them inviting, alliterative titles that only add to their allure. Worse still, named locations make easy topics of discussion and even develop fandoms. Other players are specifically aiming for them – and where other players go, we do not.
Watch the news
Keeping up to date with in-game events will narrow down your choices significantly. Most weeks, for instance, Epic makes a single area the location of a treasure map – and other weekly challenges make temporary focal points of less-travelled parts of the island. It goes without saying that those will not be quiet places.
From there, you want to shoot for the extremities – either waiting until the very end of the bus ride, where the vast majority of your fellow passengers have long since lost patience and bailed, or jumping out at the very beginning. If you deploy your glider immediately, more or less the entire length and breadth of the map is available to you – including its remote coasts, where buildings tend to go unvisited. And, more importantly – at least for your chance of reaching the endgame – unlooted.
Learn to love the storm
There’s a reason most players don’t spend much time on Fortnite’s coasts – there’s more than the steady march of erosion to worry about. Finding a quiet corner compromises your ability to hotfoot it to the next circle once its location is revealed. For that, you’re better off right in the centre. That’s just maths. Or geography. One of those.
Anyway, stop worrying: the storm can be your best friend. Rather than running to find a comfortable spot within the new radius before the storm encroaches – the time at which you’re most at risk of tripping over other players – you can wait right until the lethal wall makes a move and march along with it.
As the storm’s vanguard, you’re almost guaranteed not to be interrupted by players from behind. If they were there, they’re either already dead or rapidly losing health. In front of you, meanwhile, most have long since headed further in. Which leaves you to have a quiet walk with your purply, fizzing mate. Once the circle solidifies, repeat the process, finding an unnamed spot along the perimeter and listening all the while.
Stop shooting at people
It’s time to get out of the habit of killing. It might seem obvious to say it but there’s no XP gained in Fortnite. There are 99 others capable and willing to do the hard work for you, so why not let them? Once you’ve opened fire on someone, kill or not, one thing’s for certain: you’ve made a big bang, alerting everyone to your general location. Our aim here is to keep you out of the action, right until the very end. It only takes one shot to win a game of Fortnite – provided it’s the right one.
Until then, you can prolong your survival by living the quiet life. Find the map’s opposite of Tilted Towers, and take in the ambient world of Fortnite that you may not otherwise have been able to appreciate.
This article is part of a sponsored series brought to you in association with Turtle Beach. Learn more about Turtle Beach’s range of headsets built to win.
