Fortnite Battle Royale: How to Survive the Storm

If you’ve played any Fortnite Battle Royale, there’s one thing you’ll fear more than a sharpshooter creeping up behind you: it’s the storm.

Fortnite Battle Royale uses a system to bring players together and make the game more challenging, similar to PUBG. There’s a storm in every game and you’ll want to stay out of them. You don’t necessarily need to panic if you get caught in a storm but, as a rule, you’ll want to avoid the dark clouds.

Now, in 2020, Fortnite players can have a little more fun in the water. Well, fun as in trying to survive flooding, sharks, other players, and marauders. Not just a life-draining storm, Chapter 2 Season 3 of Fortnite is offering a tidal wave of new enemies and threats. Only the most experienced and prepared can survive until the end.

Here, we’ll reveal how the storm circle works and the tactics you need to take advantage of it.

Fortnite Battle Royale: Tackling in-game storms

How to tackle the start of a storm

At the very start of the game, you won’t see the storm circle. All you’ll see on the map is a big blue line showing the route the Battle Bus plans to take and that’s it. In other words, you can’t pick a landing spot based on where the eye of the storm will be, as you simply don’t know.

Once the Battle Bus is moving, there are around 20 to 40 seconds until the bus drops off all its passengers, followed by a one-minute countdown while the stragglers drop to the floor. Only then is the storm’s first destination shown on the map, marked by a big white circle.

If you’ve dropped miles away from the storm circle there’s no need to panic. You’ve now got three minutes and 20 seconds to get your act together, collect weapons, and stock up on ammo and traps before the storm circle starts shrinking. It then takes a further three minutes for the storm to reach the edge of the circle. In other words, from the moment the storm’s destination is revealed, you’ve got six minutes and 20 seconds to get to at least the edge of the circle.

Stockpile Your Materials

If you’re further away from the storm with time to spare, it’s time to start stockpiling and get ready for a fight. As players are pushed together to avoid taking damage, collecting building materials and weapons is key.

You’ll want to be ready for the impending fight. A simple wooden wall can provide you some cover, but it also leaves you susceptible to those sharp-shooters we mentioned earlier. Staying out of the storm is ideal, but you will also need to gather all of your materials early on to give you a better chance of survival later in the game.

Stock up on aid, which really won’t help as the game progresses, but early on this is going to be vital to your longevity if you are caught in the storm.

No Camping

Anyone who’s ever played BattleField or COD may understand the idea of camping. Whether a player is winning as a sniper or too new to really understand that hiding isn’t fun, it’s just simply not an option in Fortnite.

If you’re planning on camping until it’s time to move, you’re missing out on valuable XP and materials you’re going to need later on. Not to mention, campers are often a target for more experienced players, meaning you likely won’t have to worry about the storm because they’ll end you quickly.

Up Your Skills

Practice really does make perfect. Keeping your health as high as possible while defending yourself from other players while you’re on the move is another key to surviving the storm. Along with building and collecting weapons and aid, the better you are with your melee weapon or gun is going to get you further as you move around the map.

How to handle the storm mid-game

There’s no need to panic if you fall outside of the storm circle (or the eye of the storm) in the early phases of the game. As you can see from the table below, the amount of health damage you’ll incur for being caught in the storm in the early stages is slight – one health point per second. Certainly, if it’s safer to take a 20-second run around a gunfight instead of walking straight into a battle, and you’ve got enough health to survive, then don’t think you always have to head straight for the safe zone.

A few things to note: weapons still work when you’re caught in the storm. Healing objects such as bandages and medical kits also continue to work. Shields are useless, however. The storm damage will be deducted from your health score, not the shield.

However, being close to the edge of the storm can also work to your advantage. Players tend to panic if they’re in the storm and rush to the nearest safe point. If you can see them coming through the haze, they’re often easy to kill.

How much damage you take in the storm

Stage	Delay (minutes)	Shrink time (minutes)	Damage while shrinking	Damage after shrinking
1	3:00	3:20	1	1
2	2:30	1:30	1	2
3	2:00	1:30	2	5
4	2:00	1:00	5	7.5
5	1:30	0:40	7.5	10
6	1:30	0:30	10	10
7	1:00	0:30	10	10
8	1:00	0:30	10	10
9	0:45	0:25	10	10

How to Handle the Storm at the End of a Match

The storm circle will keep shrinking and shrinking until it’s just a dot on the map. There’s no way of predicting where the circle will shrink, by the way. It shrinks at random at any place within the current circle.

By the end, you definitely don’t want to be caught in the storm, as your character will suffer damage at the rate of 10 points per second. That gives you a maximum of 10 seconds to survive in the storm.

At the very end of a game, you’re likely to see the entire storm circle from where you’re standing, giving you little chance to run and hide. Now it’s time to fight to the death…