It may seem like players in the Fortnite community are always collectively up in arms about something–and that’s because they pretty much always are. The object of this week’s ire is the way that Epic Games has adjusted XP gains in this newly launched Chapter 6, making progression through the Season 1 battle pass feel much slower than any Fortnite season has in years. Unsurprisingly, this has become the main topic of conversation in places like the Fortnite subreddit this week.
Epic has made two fundamental changes in how players will primarily earn XP, and these changes will prevent most players from being able to progress quickly through the new battle pass or OG Pass. With the way things are right now, getting through the battle pass is going to take longer than it did in the past. It’s just a new fact of reality, though Epic has already softened the new changes a bit to make them somewhat more palatable.
It already felt a little bit worse than it probably really was, because the XP changes were geared toward keeping you playing regularly but not necessarily all the time. Slow and steady is the name of the game, and if you play several times a week you aren’t likely to have any issues finishing any of your passes before they expire. You’ll just probably have to wait longer to unlock all your goodies.
So what are the actual, specific reported changes to XP? Let’s break it down, as reported by Fortnite dataminers.
Fortnite XP gains – by the numbers
In battle royale, XP is now earned only from quests and from accolades (such as defeating an opponent or looting a chest), and there is no XP granted for time played anymore. Season-long milestones have also been removed. Lego Fortnite, Reload, and the new OG mode, by contrast, give out XP primarily for time played (1-2 levels per hour, depending on the mode), and those modes share one big weekly pool of XP. That pool was initially capped at around 20 levels per week when the season began, but that’s already been increased to 50. The rates that you gain XP from these modes have stayed the same, however.
XP from Save the World capped at about 10 levels per week initially, though that’s been dramatically adjusted upward, as well, though the rate of gain has stayed the same, as it did with the other modes. Lastly, Creative modes have a cap of about 10 levels per week.
Meanwhile, neither Rocket Racing nor Fortnite Festival provide any significant amount of XP in any form, so you only need to play those modes for their weekly challenges–or if you simply enjoy them on their own merits, of course.
Collectively, this represents a major nerf for Festival players, as they will no longer be able to complete the battle pass without primarily playing other modes. On top of that, Festival is now by far the slowest available method for completing the Music Pass.
How to level up as quickly as possible in Fortnite Chapter 6
With the shift toward progression that’s based on time spent, Epic is able to more firmly control how quickly we progress through the battle pass, the rumored OG Pass, the Lego Pass, and the Music Pass. This means that there’s no longer a consistent method for cheesing XP. XP glitches will still happen from time to time, but all the big, existing holes have been plugged.
So there’s no get-rich-quick scheme for leveling this season, but it’s still possible to optimize your gains so you don’t get behind, and it’s pretty simple to do so if you follow our steps below.
Step 1: Clear major battle royale quests
Do your battle royale quests. The weekly, kickstart, and story quests are all good sources of XP. Most of these you’ll complete without thinking about them, but some will require a bit more conscious effort, particularly if it’s suggesting you use an item that doesn’t fit your normal playstyle or perform some type of story-specific interaction, like collecting items that only drop while the quest is present in your quest log.
In addition to those quests, there will be various events that occur during the season that will dump more quests on us–Winterfest will certainly have a big pile of quests to complete over the holidays, and it seems very possible that we’ll get a Godzilla versus King Kong mini pass event when the Godzilla skin drops in January, which would also come with a new pile of XP quests.
Step 2: Jump into the alternate XP stream
Play Reload, OG or Lego Fortnite for passive XP once the BR XP dries up. The rate of passive XP gained while playing Reload and Lego Fortnite is not extremely fast–to reach the 50-level weekly XP cap in Reload, you’d have to play that mode for 37 hours. So that’s not very fast, but it is consistent and steady, and you can cram if you really, really need to. Gains in Lego Fortnite are a bit faster–it’ll “only” take 35 hours to hit the weekly cap there, and Lego has its own weekly quests that also provide decent XP. But the goal here for a regular player is not necessarily to hit that cap, but to simply take advantage of the available pool of steady XP while you play normally.
Step 3: Find a fun, XP-friendly Creative map
A serious min-maxing player should also find a Creative island that gives decent XP to supplement the gains from other modes–10 levels isn’t a lot for one week, but you should be able to earn those levels in Creative a lot faster than you would playing Reload for time-based XP.
None of these methods will get you to the tier 100 skin in the battle pass in a week, but playing this way will certainly get you to the end of the battle pass with plenty of time to spare.
