Fortnite has, time and time again, shown itself to be one of the most mechanically challenging battle royale shooters, Both professional and casual players have to adopt and practice to perfection a set of characteristic, yet abstract ideas. Although these key concepts are near universal, they are deeply rooted in Fortnite’s core gameplay and mechanics. Any time of in-game progress is heavily tied to these skills, making it impossible to grow as a player until they are polished.
Image Credit: Epic Games
The essential skills that every player needs to master are combat, building and editing, awareness, movement, and game sense. Even though Fortnite involves a series of other minor skills like resource gathering and spotting enemies, they’re either related more to game finesse or simply belong to a previously mentioned area of expertise. Since Fortnite demands constant determination and willingness to grow, perfecting these skills will skyrocket you across divisions.
Combat
Combat in Fortnite is a fundamental and game-defining feature that can’t be separated from battle royale shooters as a whole. Although Fortnite involves both long-range and short-range combat, two drastically distinctive types, it also includes other important skills such as aiming, dodging, escaping, weapon swapping, and well-established meta combat strategies.
Expert aiming skills are generally one of the most valuable skills a single player can master in Fortnite, since it gives an enormous edge over less practiced opponents. On top of that, being a master of aiming improves your chances of survival and Victory Royale.
Mastering dodging in Fortnite is a predominately time-consuming process, including hands-on practice and limit testing. However, once players fully understand the art of dodging, eliminating them becomes daunting since they become slippery monsters that effortlessly survive till the very end.
Even though escaping is closely tied to movement, it’s a necessary combat skill that does not only include running away from certain death but also identifying life-threatening situations and correctly timing your escape.
Changing your weapon is the simple act of swapping between guns. However, each highly-skilled player rapidly shifts through their inventory mid-combat to maximize the damage output and use utility items.
The cherry on top when it comes to combat is adopting and implementing meta combat strategies to take advantage of the current lay of the land in-game and guarantee an almost certain Victory Royale.
Building
Building has been Fornite’s central feature since its inception as a PvE game, and is arguably its greatest differentiator from other battle royale titles. However, Epic Games, which experimented with Zero Build as a limited game mode back at the beginning of Chapter 3, Season 2, eventually implemented it as a permanent game mode, dividing the community into the die-hard building fanatics and Zero Build enjoyers. While Zero Build drastically disturbed the ecosystem of Fortnite, building and editing remain the two most impactful skills in Fortnite as a whole. Aside from pure and simple building skills, these skills include gathering materials and knowledge of prime building locations in any situation.
Building and editing are two inseparable skills that reward architectural wizards with a one-way ticket to victory. Although building and editing seem terrifyingly demanding, when broken down into secondary categories such as reinforcing walls and turtling, they become easily understandable concepts.
Since there’s no building and editing without gathering resources, it’s imperative to distinguish different materials, their optimal management, and of course, the risk-free time windows to collect them within.
Finally, an in-depth understanding of ideal building locations at each given moment significantly lowers the chances of getting caught out and considerably increases damage output, resulting in a higher number of kills.
Image Credit: Epic Games
Awareness
Almost every Fortnite guide for beginners vocally emphasizes the value of headphones and strongly recommends playing with them. The main reason why headphones play such a massive role in Fortnite is because of the numerous auditory cues that can mean life or death, such as approaching footsteps and shooting in the distance. Awareness as an essential Fortnite skill also includes awareness of time and environment.
Having a continuous awareness of other players and the environment sharpens the players’ senses, giving them time to prepare themselves for the incoming danger they’d otherwise ignore.
Since Fortnite’s loot chests have a distinctive sound, a large majority of the community typically searches for chests on a sound basis. Besides, constant awareness of loot helps to collect the finest loot, which can make or break a skirmish.
With Fortnite being such an adrenaline-packed and immersive game, players often hyperfocus on combat and building, losing track of time. However, time awareness can be a deciding factor for rotations and positioning, not to mention staying one step ahead of the storm.
Movements
Movement is generally one of the most complex and challenging skills to perfect in Fortnite. The reason behind movement being so confusing and taxing to practice to perfection lies in its high number of unique outcomes. Since the most challenging skills often prove to be the most valuable assets, it goes without saying that learning movement in Fortnite will definitely pay off in the long run. Movement in Fortnite is a wide-ranging term that can be systematically broken down into character movements, rotations, positioning, and landing.
Character movements refer to universal character movements such as jumping, sprinting, and crouching, which each Fortnite player can do. However, when used to its full potential, well-trained players can effortlessly gain the upper hand in combat.
Rotation is a fundamental skill, involving the cross-map movement as the storm shrinks and forces players to search for their next refuge. With timely rotations, players can take control of the area and eliminate those who are rotating slowly.
Similar to other battle royale shooters, exceptional positioning is yet another difference between struggling and outstanding Fortnite players. With superior positioning, especially on high ground, players can dominate the map and secure their spot in the final rounds.
Perfect landings in Fortnite are never the case since the game is full of surprising factors. Still, landings largely dictate players’ success not only because of positioning, but also because of loot, as well as the first and most influential skirmishes.
Game Sense
Unlike the previously mentioned actively-trainable skills, game sense falls into the category of a unique and intuitive second nature gradually developing over the course of playing Fortnite. Although this mystifying idea leaves many wondering about its ins and outs, there are, in fact, basic principles that relieve the incredibly steep learning curve. Since these principles are not clear-cut, they may serve as loose guidelines revealing the next steps in the learning process. So, the skills that fall under the game sense category are basic game understanding and the ability to improvise on the spot.
Basic game understanding goes hand in hand with game sense, as it is composed of Fortnite’s fundamentals, physical laws, and elementary game mechanics. Once basic game understanding evolves from intentional analysis into an effortless habit, players can confidently step onto Fortnite’s map and run the show.
However, the ability to improvise on the spot pushes the player out of their comfort zone, testing them and pressuring them to imaginatively solve a problem by using hard-earned game knowledge. In the end, skills such as experimentation and improvisation, more often than not, leave enemies in a state of shock.
