Knowing your main Drop Spots and Loot Routes are a key aspect to succeeding in Fortnite but it can be difficult to figure out which destinations you want to claim as your own, so we’re here to help you with making that decision.

What are Drop Spots and Loot Routes?

A Drop Spot is a Point of Interest (POI) or unnamed location on the Fortnite map where you will land at almost every game you play to give yourself a better chance at staying alive early on and setting yourself up the way you need for late game.

As for the Loot Route, it is a pathway you will create and follow from the moment you land at your Drop Spot to allow you to Loot your location as efficiently as possible, hopefully leading you to be set up quicker than your surrounding enemies.

Implementing a Drop Spot with Loot Routes into your gameplay will make you perform more consistently by giving you a strategic advantage over the other players on the map. We're going to start off our guide by giving our opinion on the POI vs Unnamed location debacle.

POIs vs Unnamed Locations

There’s an age-old debate in the Fortnite community which is whether or not it is better to land at a POI or an Unnamed location and in our opinion, we say do both! Land in an area that has POIs and Unnamed locations close by.

The reason we say this is because it comes down to having the luxury of engaging and disengaging in fights whenever you want to, making your playstyle a bit more versatile than normal and allowing you to have more control over your surrounding area.

So when choosing your Drop Spot, we recommend you pick somewhere close or along to the edge of whatever location you decide on. This will make Rotations much easier and will allow you to disengage from fights if things get a bit risky or engage when you’ve run your Loot Routes and feel comfortable enough to fight.

Using Fortnite.gg

The first point to make is that any POI, Unnamed Location, or Area of the Fortnite map can be used as a Drop Spot competitively as long as you know how to use the location effectively.

Almost everything in Battle Royale is random including the Loot Drops. No matter where you land the Chests and Loot Pools all work the same, so all you should be looking for is to find an area you are comfortable with so you can create a Loot Route that will leave you with enough chances to create a consistent Inventory to maximise your early game potential.

The hard way of doing this would be by loading up a game, inspecting every last inch of the map and trying to decide which area you think looks best, but thankfully there is a website called Fortnite.gg that shows you every Floor Loot Spawn, Chest Location, Car Spawns, and everything else you need to help you make your decision much easier.

Our advice to you when you’re using Fortnite.gg to pick a Drop Spot is to pick a spot as quickly as possible. If you dissect the map too much, you’re never going to find where you want to go. Briefly look at some of the statistics of the spawn rates and quickly choose a spot on the map that you think could work or maybe even somewhere you might just think looks cool and try it out. Don’t overthink it too much!

Choosing where you want to land is just the first step in the process of figuring out where your main Drop Spot is going to be, and in all honestly the first place you pick is almost never the place your main Drop Spot ends up becoming. We will talk more about that next.

Finding your Drop Spot: Trial and Error

There’s a chance you may want to completely destroy your setup at some point during this step, but don’t worry! It’ll all work out in the end.

Now’s the time to begin loading into some games, and by some games we mean a lot of games. You need to practice. We recommend spending at least 40 - 50 games in each new location before deciding if you like it or not. Try and learn everything you possibly can about the location and its surrounding areas so you can give it a proper review.

When landing at a new location, you should not so much be focusing on getting eliminations or getting the win. You should be trying to scope out your area to see what it’s like. Get a feel for it.

Look out for things such as where is the best place to Farm Materials, specifically metal, where you can disengage, extra Chests and Floor Spawns you can rotate to, different vantage points to catch people off Rotation or before they get the chance to Loot, checking out if the spot you have chosen is popular, and, if so, where people usually land.

Another thing to practice would be perfecting your landing. If other players happen to land at your location, you want to be the one who lands first, so you can grab a weapon and take them out before they do. You can practice this in a custom game by figuring out when is the right time to pull your glider.

Even if you have to keep trying new locations every couple of days, don't feel like you’re wasting your time. You will find the spot for you eventually. It just takes some trial and error and getting to know different locations around the map is only going to benefit you by increasing your knowledge of the game.

When you eventually figure out which location is going to be your main Drop Spot, the next step is to create some Loot Routes to become more efficient than your opponent’s when first landing, which will hopefully lead to some easy early game Eliminations.

Creating Loot Routes

Here is an example of a Loot Route in a building just on the edge of the map outside Synapse Station.

The idea of a Loot Route is to create a pathway for yourself to Loot your Drop Spot as efficiently as possible and allow yourself to get a consistent loadout every game.

Your Loot Route should be structured around Chest Frequency and Floor Loot Spawn Rates to help you obtain the maximum amount of Loot in your area. Keep in mind that the higher the Chest Frequency and Floor Spawns, the higher the number of players landing there will probably be, so take that into consideration when creating them.

It’s also helpful if you direct the end of your Loot Route to be somewhere near a mode of transport or some easy cover so you can disengage easily. We also recommend coming up with a few different Loot Routes around your Main Drop Spot in case it becomes contested while you’re flying in, so you can ensure you are going to obtain at least some Loot when landing.