Fortnite has been taking the world by storm ever since Epic released the Battle Royale mode of the game for free, and millions of players are jumping out of that bus every single day in order to get those precious wins and bragging rights. If you’re one of those players then you’ve come to the right place. Here, we’ll be detailing how you can tune your Fortnite settings in order to get the best out of your machine and yourself in order to optimize your chances of getting those Victory Royales.
Best Mouse Settings for Fortnite
After you’ve picked out a mouse to your liking (click here to see our Fortnite mouse guide, which is based on what the pros use) you need to make sure that you didn’t buy it for naught. A lot of gaming mice like to advertise that they can reach DPI settings higher than you can count, for example, but that’s really not that useful. The vast majority of our analyzed professionals use a DPI that’s lower than 3200.
Fortnite is a game that has a bunch of different sensitivity sliders, so it’s not easy to compare one pro’s true sensitivity to that of another. One player might prefer a rather low overall sensitivity with a very high scope sensitivity, for example, while another player might go for just the opposite of that. These different sensitivity parameters, combined with the fact that the mouse DPI obviously also plays a role in the overall sensitivity of a player makes it practically impossible to slap one number on it and say ‘that’s the sensitivity that that person is using’. We’ll show you the different stats and give you some pointers on what you could do though, so that you have all of the necessary information to get to your own ideal sens.
Sensitivity in Fortnite
Fortnite used to have your Y sensitivity (vertical sensitivity) be 70% of your X sensitivity (horizontal sensitivity) but an update in the summer of 2018 added the ability to choose your X and Y sensitivity yourself. A lot of pros tend to favor the consistent feeling of having their X and Y sensitivity set to the exact same value, but if you were fine with the old (pre-summer 2018) sensitivity settings you can always ‘go back’ to those by just having your Y sens be 70% of your X sens. Some pros like having their y sensitivity at a lower value to make it easier to track enemies horizontally, for example.
In general, you don’t want your sensitivity to be too high. If your sensitivity is too high it means that you won’t be able to do the necessary micro adjustments in order to successfully hit targets at a distance, for example. The reverse is of course also true: have it too low and you’ll be one pumped long before you’ve made the required five swipes over your mouse pad in order to turn around. We find that most casual gamers tend to go for a sensitivity that is too high though (thinking ‘faster = better’) so we would strongly recommend you to check out the sensitivity of a couple of pros that use the same DPI as you do and compare yourself. If you are playing on a much higher sens than them it could be a good idea to consider lowering your sensitivity.
Since you’re going to be doing a variety of things at your ‘regular sensitivity’ (building, looking around, aiming, …) it makes sense to have this set to a sort of middle ground where you’re comfortably able to quickly look wherever you need to look. Being able to respond to threats quickly is one of the greatest strengths of a good Fortnite player, but make sure that you’re also able to respond properly. If you get attacked and you respond by making a really quick 720 degree turn after which you miss all of your shots you’ve got your sensitivity way too high.
In short: make sure that you can look around quickly and smoothly, but do take care that you can also aim precisely if you have to.
Most Used Sens (X)
Targeting Sensitivity in Fortnite
Your ADS (Aim Down Sights) sensitivity is going to be your primary sensitivity for medium to long range duels, so it makes sense to have this one set to something which allows you to aim properly without any jitters. If your regular sensitivity already allows you to do this then great; keep your ADS sensitivity at roughly the same as your normal sens. If you have your regular sens set to be a bit higher than what you’re normally comfortable with for aiming then you should consider lowering your ADS sensitivity.
There is something to be said for having both settings be the same (so that it’s easier to develop the muscle memory for quick flicks etc.) but a lot of pros go for values that are somewhere around the 50% mark. This could be because of what we mentioned before: having a higher looking sensitivity is good for quickly scanning your surrounding and shooting enemies that are close to you, and once you need to really start aiming it can be a good idea to have a lower sensitivity so you can aim in a more precise manner.
Most Used Targeting Sens
Scope Sensitivity in Fortnite
Scope sens uses practically the same theory as the ADS sensitivity setting. You’ll want to make sure that you’re able to accurately hit that one pixel of your enemy that’s showing, so make sure to set it so that one little breeze against your mouse doesn’t make your scope flick towards the other side of the map.
Here it’s important (again) to prioritize consistency over speed or ultra high eDPI. When you’re looking through a scope for an extended period of time you’re more than likely not going to be in a heated close quarters match, so it doesn’t make sense to have this setting be too high. Make sure that you’re able to hit what you want to hit and minimize the odds of you missing an easy shot. You can do that by not going overboard on the sensitivity. If your default sensitivity is on the higher side you can definitely opt to go for a lower scope sensitivity to balance it out.
Most Used Scope Sens
Best Fortnite Video Settings
Fortnite, like most new PC games, can look very nice if you use maximum settings across the board but that’s not something that we recommend if you want to be competitive. We have analyzed what the pros have been doing as well as doing some ingame testing for ourselves and we came up with what we think is the optimal balance between having great performance while still having a pretty game to look at.
As with any reasonably fast paced game, it’s incredibly important to get enough FPS in order to smoothly follow all of the onscreen action. We try our best to make sure everyone can take something away from our guides, but if your machine can’t get over 60 FPS during gameplay you’ll need to think about upgrading if you want to be competitive.
The advantages of running a higher framerate can’t be denied. You’ll get a much smoother image if you couple high framerates with a high refresh rate monitor, and you’ll have less input lag (regardless of what monitor you’re using) so it’s definitely worth it to get a good PC with a decent graphics card if you want to be competitive in the game, as that will definitely give you an edge when competing.
NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency Technology
Prioritizing frame rates over visual fidelity is something that almost every professional player does because it reduces the overall system latency. To help gamers play at their best, NVIDIA introduced their Reflex Low Latency Technology. Considering the fact that Fortnite is one of the supported games and NVIDIA is by far the most used GPU in the pro scene we though it would be handy to add as small section on Reflex.
Reflex works in two ways: there’s the Low Latency Mode, which reduces the render queue by keeping the GPU in sync with the CPU, resulting in reduced (you can go under 25ms, depending on your setup) system latency, and there’s also the Reflex Latency Analyzer, which allows you to measure your system’s overall latency as long as you have compatible gear.
This is some really interesting tech because it not only allows you to measure your overall system latency (which can help you identify bottlenecks) but it also reduces it, making for a more responsive game overall. If you want to play at the/your highest levels then small differences like these can really add up, so it pays off to know about this technology. You can read more about it in our article here.
Best Resolution and Refresh Rate in Fortnite
Almost all Fortnite pros are on 1920×1080. There’s a few playing at 1440p resolution, but that is in no way necessary and you’ll need a pretty beastly rig to run the game properly at that resolution. There are some pros who are playing with custom resolutions, but those are more the exception than the norm as you can see in the statistics.
If your PC can run the game (and at least reach your monitor’s native FPS) well enough, feel free to turn the resolution up, but since frames are way more important for performance than pretty effects we do encourage everyone to stay at resolution that their PC can handle. Nowadays, there are top tier 1440p 360Hz gaming monitors, but as we said before you will need a beastly rig if you want to handle that. If your PC can handle it, though, feel free to go for a higher resolution monitor. The tech is there.
Fun Facts
~ 73 %
of Fortnite pros use a 240Hz monitor
~ 80 %
of Fortnite pros play using a 1920×1080 resolution
Best Fortnite Video Settings
What kind of settings menu you get will depend on the rendering mode that you use. If you use performance mode, you will not get as many options as when you use the other rendering modes. We would recommend trying out performance mode first, and if you find that it runs fine on your system (some users have reported issues with performance mode) we would recommend you to stick to that, as it’s designed by Epic to be the ‘competitive setting’ to play the game. If you find that you have issues running the game in performance mode or you want to have a bit more graphical fidelity then it’s a good idea to use either Directx11 or Directx12.
- Window Mode: Set this to Fullscreen. Using anything else can cause input lag.
- Display Resolution: Set this to your monitor’s native resolution.
- Frame Rate Limit: Go with unlimited, or match this to your monitor’s refresh rate. If you’re having trouble with choppiness and a big difference between your minimum and maximum framerates, you can set this to a lower value
- 3D Resolution: Set this to 100%.
- View Distance: Set this to near. This setting only affects the terrain (and not the players) so players still stand out even if you set this to the lowest setting. You can increase this if you’ve got some frames to spare since the pop-in effect of buildings and objects suddenly appearing on the horizon can get annoying and distracing.
- Shadows: Turning this off will increase your PC’s performance while leaving it on gives you no real advantages.
- Anti-Aliasing: Turn this off for maximum performance. If you have a very powerful PC and high framerates you can consider turning this up in order to make the game look prettier.
- Textures: This is an eyecandy setting, so if you need the performance boost you can set this as low as you need it to be.
- Effects: Set this to low. The more detailed the effects are, the higher the risk you run of getting unstable framerates during fights.
- Post Processing: Set this to low. This actually makes the game less blurry, since turning this up too high causes a blur when looking at long ranges, putting you at an obvious disadvantage.
- Vsync: This causes input lag so you should leave it off.
- Motion Blur: Turn this off. This effect is used to make games look more ‘cinematic’ by blurring the screen during fast movements. This hinders visibility and performance. You probably shouldn’t ever turn this on in any competitive game.
- Show FPS: Turn this on. Why wouldn’t you want to know how your PC is performing?
- Rendering Mode: If you’re really suffering for frames you can try performance mode, but that makes the game look really low quality and can be, at times, unreliable. We recommend trying DirectX 12 or DirectX 11 if you’re not too low on frames.
- Allow Multithreaded Rendering: This option can improve performance but the implementation of it is currently a bit hit or miss. Turn it on to see if it improves your performance, but otherwise it’s best to leave it off.
- NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: We recommend setting this to On + Boost as it’ll lower your overall system latency.
- DLSS: DLSS can be quite unreliable performance-wise in this game, so we prefer to leave it off.
Best Fortnite Keybinds
Building is a very important part of Fortnite, so it’s no real surprise that being able to build quickly and efficiently can give you a massive advantage over your opponents. The default keys for building in Fortnite can be quite awkward to reach, especially when you’re in the heat of battle, so most professionals use custom keybinds for building. We recommend that you do the same, unless you’re super comfortable with the default keys already.
Which keys you use is obviously personal preference, but generally you’ll want to make sure that you’re able to reach the most important ‘building elements’ comfortable each time. E, Q, and the mouse side buttons are often used for buy binds in the pro scene, and don’t forget that you can also bind your scroll wheel to ingame actions.
Best Fortnite Settings and Options – Conclusion
Fortnite isn’t the craziest game when it comes to customization options. People generally don’t spend days talking about what resolution is the perfect one or anything like that like they do in games like CS:GO. That’s partially because the game is optimized pretty nicely and partially because you can’t really customize your radar, HUD, … as you can in certain other games, so there’s just less to discuss.
A few settings are ‘mandatory’ for optimal performance (as highlighted above) so if you just follow these guidelines, make sure you’re getting enough FPS, and that your sens isn’t something outlandish you’ll be jumping out of that Battle Bus prepared like a pro. Remember that some settings (such as sensitivity) are highly personal, so what works for a certain pro might not work for you. It’s important to develop your own habits and settings in order to make sure you’re as comfortable as possible when playing.
Hopefully this guide has helped you a bit, but please do let us know if you have any questions or remarks.
