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The Inner Game of Fortnite – Water, Water, Everywhere
There are a few different kinds of endgames: flat ground, hill climbs, hill descends, endgames in POIs, and now, endgames over water. Endgames over water can be challenging because if you get knocked into the water, your character behaves differently, building is a little different, you’re kind of a sitting duck – basically your world kinda gets thrown into disarray until you can build yourself a new foundation. If your opponent has height on you, it can make for an easy elim on their side of things.
We have to worry about deep water-based endgames if the final zones are in the center of the map, the top left corner, or the bottom middle. That’s probably 10-15% of the map, so let’s have a strategy.
The strategy is: water walls, rockets, and height.
First, water walls. When you build in water, the fastest way to get a floor below you is to build at least one wall as you sit in the water, facing the same level as the water. Don’t look up and build yet, build straight ahead. Once you get that first wall or two down, you can place a floor, jump, and start building up normally as if you were on dry land or in any other build fight.
Remember, the Fortnite build system places a second wall in the ground below the one you’re trying to place if the area where you’re trying to build the wall would have you build only a 1/2 or 1/3 wall because of the specific terrain. It doesn’t do this with stairs. If you try to place a ramp in the water, it will build a ramp below the surface of the water first and then you’ll have to place a second stair connecting to it in order to build your first floor. This can be disorienting and confusing, especially when people are shooting at us in a confined area. It’s faster and more intuitive to build a wall or two in the water, since the build system will help you out, then place your floor.
Second, rockets. You want to be able to knock anyone into the water at any point because we should always assume that they’ll be able to do the same to us. Whether that’s shooting your builds out or sending a rocket into your ramp/wall combo, you may end up in the drink. Be able to return the favor. If you don’t have rockets, try to push someone who does, get the elim, and take theirs.
Finally, height. Since you can fall into water without taking any fall damage, you don’t have to be as afraid of getting knocked down. Just know how to get back up to height quickly. Place those walls, then your floor, then do a 90 or two to get height so your enemies aren’t looking down at you like fish in a barrel.
I hope that helps! Remember: water walls, rockets, and height.
Sub-Skill Drills – Panic Water Building
Endgames can get intense, so let’s practice what we talked about above.
Load into a Creative, a Playground, or Team Rumble and land at any of the deep water areas.
Farm some mats so you can practice your builds, depending on your game mode.
Swim out into the water and practice placing at least two walls, then a floor, then hop the floor and do 3 consecutive 90s so you have height again.
Do that 10-15 times before you start playing so you start to build that muscle memory of what to do when things are crazy and you have to get out of the water.
Remember, good investment is boring. Practicing things when the stakes are low makes it easier to nail them when the stakes are considerably higher.
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That’s it for today. What do you want to see from future editions of this newsletter? What are you struggling with? What should we cover? What’s your favorite thing that we’ve covered so far? Email me – zack@fortnitefundamentals.co.
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See you Friday.