With everyone from Drake to Roseanne Barr investing their spare time in the hunt for a Victory Royale, the skill bar in Fortnite is escalating with each passing day. One of the best ways to dramatically up your game is to start picking up Fortnite building tips and, like a Lego master builder, outbuilding your opponents to gain a crucial advantage.
For more general gameplay advice, check out our Fortnite tips and tactics for Battle Royale.
Fortnite building is what sets the average player apart from pros like Ninja and Myth. As you will see when watching good players assemble a massive tower around themselves in the blink of an eye, knowing how to construct is key to racking up Victory Royales with any consistency.
Fortnite building is not as daunting as some players make it look. With a few basic structures under your belt you will start to improve your construction skills in no time. These Fortnite building tips will cover everything from harvesting, the best materials to use, basic structures, and how to turn your rapid building into a Victory Royale. So here are our best tips for how to build in Fortnite.
Harvest whenever possible
You cannot build without materials, and in order to make the most out of Fortnite’s powerful building mechanics you will need a lot of resources. To accrue enough materials to see you through a whole game you will need to harvest whenever possible. That means pickaxing walls, floors, ceilings, furniture in any houses you loot, felling trees as you run towards the circle, looting corpses, and searching chests. Harvesting will give up your location to nearby players pretty swiftly, though. You will want to make matters easier for yourself by dropping as far away from the Battle Bus as possible.
Wood is the most useful material
Your absolute priority should be wood, which is the most useful Fortnite building material thanks to its quick build time and high starting health. Stone and metal are both useful for building bases when not under fire, as their high health when completed makes the task of breaking through tough for enemies, forcing them to build to up to your level, which leaves them highly vulnerable.
How to edit Fortnite buildings
The basic suite of Fortnite building tools lets you place full panels like ramps, floors, and walls, what some players do not know is that you can edit these panels by hitting the G key. This opens up a grid view of the panel where you can click to remove sections of the wall to create doors, windows, and archways. This is an incredibly handy tactic to use in tense fights where an enemy is attacking your structure – simply edit a door and escape, or pop a window into the panel the enemy is attacking and hit them with a surprise shotgun blast.
Panic walls
If you have come under fire and have to run to cover then you can always hit the Q key, select a wall, and place it for an immediate barrier to protect you from the incoming fire – it takes less than a second with a little bit of practice. These are easy to break through so you will want to keep building walls as you move for longer lasting cover. As Fortnite building tips go, this one is pretty simple, but will save you countless times.
Panic ramps
If you have a decent weapon and want to turn the tables on a pursuing attacker then you can quickly place a ramp behind a wall to create an ideal shooting platform. Thanks to Fortnite’s third-person view, you can easily spot your attacker from the ramp without having to expose your squishy and vulnerable head. Then it is simply a case of lining up a shot and quickly peeking from the top of your head to secure the kill or at least ward off your foe.
Panic ramps are easy to build, giving you a simple but effective means of turning defence into attack. It is also worth noting that while you can just place a ramp on its own, having the wall gives your ramp some extra HP. You can develop this further by building additional walls around the side and back, and even by placing a roof on the structure to protect yourself from incoming grenades. So long as you are confident that your rear is safe, it is also a good idea to edit a door into the back panel so that you can easily and quietly escape if you need to.
V-shape ramp
This is similar to the panic ramp, but constructed when not under fire, and done so with stronger materials like stone and metal. This Fortnite building is effectively two panic ramps stuck together so that you can easily peek between two directions. Place it on the border of the zone so that you can easily battle players fleeing the storm while still having a strong position should anyone be shifting from the centre of the zone to the border. This structure is even better in duos and squads where you can widen the structure for more space, or even build multiple v-shapes to ensure the enemy’s attention is divided.
Raised platform
One problem with building skywards in Fortnite is that players can shoot out the foundations of your structure. You can counter this by investing heavily in the roots of your build and creating raised platforms. Simply build a pair of ramps followed by a floor, then go around adding legs to the other sides of the floor, preferably out of metal. This means that other players will have to destroy many more panels in order to bring your building tumbling down than they would if you had only built one or two ramps. You can then build a v-shape ramp or similar structure so that you have a peeking, height, and durability advantage over the competition.
Sniper tower
This Fortnite building is very easy to construct, offers great coverage and protection, and can be easily escaped too. Start with walls: one on each side, creating a small room. Then switch to stairs and jump just before placing underneath you, allowing you to climb vertically as you repeat this process until you reach the desired height. You will still be using the same peeking tactics employed with the panic ramp, but the height advantage of the sniper tower significantly improves your chances.
If you find yourself under heavy fire you can either build a descending staircase around the back of the tower or dig down into the structure and create windows to catch your opponent off guard.
Roof ramps
Ramps or stairs are great for scaling mountains when you need to escape a firefight, find resources, or flee the storm, but they leave you very exposed to enemies chasing you or attacking from above. A counter to this is to build two ramps, one to ascend and another just over your head to serve as a barrier to grenades and bullets. All you have to do is seesaw your aim up and down as you sprint up the ramp-in-progress. This does soak up a lot of resources though, so only employ this Fortnite build if your life depends on it.
Pyramid ramps
This is a handy tip for players who use a lot vertical play and are tired of having to rotate their stairs back and forth. If you edit the pyramid panel by clicking on the two distant squares you can create a slightly steeper ramp – rotate this so that it is facing backwards and you have a way to quickly build downwards, safely escaping buildings or avoiding steep drops.
Healing rooms
You do not need to run behind a tree or rock to heal in Fortnite, instead you can quickly build a room with a roof around yourself to provide some cover while you drink a potion, place a Cozy Campfire, or use a Medkit. If you are in a group or pair and you both have a Cozy Campfire than placing them side-by-side will heal you both faster. These rooms might seem like death traps, but a quick edit provides you with a door to flee through or a window to attack through.
Trapping enemies
Fortnite allows you to build around your enemy and trap them in a matter of seconds. This is helpful if the storm is closing in on you and you need to break away from the clash – all you need to do is get the height advantage and start placing floors over the enemy’s stairs. If your foe is extremely close you can even build a room around the pair of you, placing the final wall and roof just before running out of the room – extra flair points if you can place a spike trap in the room while you are at it.
Practice
Building quickly in Fortnite is hard and requires a great deal of practice and muscle memory. All of these tips will be even more helpful when you have mastered them, so if you find yourself flustered, stick with it – you will be a better player for it next time around. Practice makes perfect, after all.
Those are out Fortnite building tips, if you have any great building strategies of your own that you would like to share then drop us a line in the comments below.