The skill and research trees in Fortnite can be a difficult area to traverse. So many branches with lots of points that seem to make no sense. The hardest part is trying to figure out what is valuable and what isn’t. You don’t want to waste valuable points unlocking pointless skills. This guide will go over the various types of skills that can be unlocked from the research trees in Fortnite and give you an idea of what they do.
Fortitude, Defense, Offense and Tech
These are the 4 main skills you can purchase from the skill trees and Fortnite that will directly influence the in game stats of your character or the other players in your party. Each time you purchase one of these, you will increase the strength of your selected hero and you will also increase your power level. The skill points are not directly tied to a single hero which means you can purchase any of the 4 types and it will increase for any hero that you have now or in the future. Here is a breakdown of what each of the 4 stats do.
Fortitude – This will increase the health of your hero. Since your shield absorbs damage and quickly recharges, most people avoid spending too many points on this stat.
Defense – This will boost your heroes ability to take damage. Enemy attacks will inflict less damage.
Offense – This makes your hero do more overall damage.
Tech – This will increase the effectiveness of traps and any hero specific skills such as the grenade or the much loved TEDDY.
There is also a variation of all of these skills in the form of party upgrades. These are the same as the individual bonuses, but they apply to the party instead. Quite often when you join a party you will see your power level double at times. This is the result of the party bonuses being applied.
Hero Evolution
This may not be something you care about for a while, but once you get a hero to level 10, you will no longer be able to level them up until you evolve them. In terms of resources, an evolution is quite expensive. One thing you will need in order to perform an evolve is to have the ability to update the specific hero class to the next evolution. This ability is obtained from the skill tree. There is a skill for each of the 4 hero classes, so you will need to progress your way to this skill before you can evolve a single hero class. Purchasing one skill will only allow for evolution to the next level. For example, In the first tier, you will be able to evolve to level 2 only. Level 3 is another skill that must be purchased separately. You must purchase a skill for each class, they do not cross over. For example, if you purchase the evolution skill for the constructor, you wont in turn be able to evolve your outlander.
Feature Unlocks
This applies more to the first tier of the skill tree more than anything else as this is where you will unlock most of the games features. When you first play, almost everything will be locked to you. You can play games and that is about it. The games tutorial will guide you down the path to a degree and after that you are left on your own. At this stage you will have unlocked around half of the features in the game. The rest you will need to purchase skills for. These include, character and weapon recycling and most valuable the ability to transform characters. You should unlock these when you can to give you all the possible features you can get.
Storage Capacity
The bane of every Fortnite player is the limited inventory capacity. Thankfully the developers weren’t complete jerks and have given us the ability to expand both backpack and Storm Shield vault storage capacity by purchasing the relevant skills. There are a few instances on multiple skill trees that give you the option to unlock 5 additional inventory slots on your backpack of storm shield. Purchase them as you need them. Once you get the hang of the game, you might have a better handle of managing your inventory better. Follow this inventory management guide if you are finding it difficult.
Hero Abilities
During the tutorial you might remember having the chance to use a missile strike ability. This will no longer be available after this mission, until you purchase the skill for it. There are various abilities like this that you can assign to your character and activate them while in games. You can assign 2 of them to a hero at first, but you will need to unlock them from the tree first. These abilities should not be confused with the ones that come with a specific hero. You can use the abilities unlocked from the skill tree with any hero of your choosing. Most of these abilities are very powerful and are worth having. You should aim to have at least 2 unlocked as soon as possible to make the most use out of them.
Squad Upgrades
The usefulness of the squad is definitely questionable. I for one, find them completely pointless, but for those interested in building up a squad, the skill tree is the only way to do it. At the start you will have very limited options and most slots will be locked. Purchasing skills will allow you to open up those slots and assign characters to them. There will also be various options to increase some of the things you can do with your squads.