Fortnite Survivors Squad Guide – Survivors Explained
Fortnite: Save the World can be a sea of confusion for beginners. One of the strangest things about Save the World is how important Survivors are to your Hero’s overall strength and Power Level.
In most video games, your Heroes get stronger by leveling them up – and maybe by unlocking some skills in their skill trees. Those are both true in Fortnite: Save the World, but they only account for a small portion of your Hero’s statistics. A huge portion of your Hero’s statistics and Power Level comes from your Survivors! You use your Survivors to Level Up!
Survivors put the FORT into Fortnite
You need to start thinking of your Survivors as an important part of your Hero Team – They are the people behind the scenes that are really helping you out: Like Lucius Fox to Batman; Like Felicity to Arrow; Like Cisco to The Flash; Like J.A.R.V.I.S. to Iron Man. You are a lot stronger with their assistance.
There are 4 basic stats in Fortnite:
- Fortitude – Increases Health and Health Regeneration Rate
- Offense – Increases Ranged and Melee Weapon Damage
- Resistance – Increases Shield and Shield Regeneration Rate
- Tech – Increases Damage from Traps, Abilities and Gadgets. Also increases Healing
About 65 – 80% of your FORT comes from your Survivor Squads.
So your FORT is extremely important!
When you Scroll to the Squads > Survivor Squads page, you will find a total of 8 Survivor Squads that help FORT-ify your Hero. The 8 Squads are:
- Fortitude: EMT Squad, Training Team
- Offense: Fire Team Alpha, Close Assault Squad
- Resistance: Scouting Party, Gadgeteers
- Tech: Corps of Engineering, The Think Tank
Each squad has room for 8 team members – 1 Leader and 7 Squad Members. These slots need to be unlocked individually. And eventually, you will be able to slot 64 total Survivors to make your Heroes a lot stronger.
Beginner Tip – Focus on unlocking Survivors Slots!
When you first start playing Save the World, you are going to be thinking about your Heroes and your Guns. I know … that’s where the fun is. But if you want to get stronger, you should start focusing on unlocking the Survivor Slots to FORTify your Hero!
How do you Unlock Survivor Slots?
The further you get in the game, the more slots you will open. Just play through the campaign.
How to get More Survivors
You will get Survivors from doing Missions, Dungeons, Ventures and by Opening Llamas. Some Reward Missions will award your Lead Survivors as well. If you are going to spend gold or Vbucks on llamas for Survivors, wait for: Super People Llamas, Legendary Troll Stash Llamas, and the Legendary Troll Loot Truck Llamas.
How to Slot Survivors Properly
As we mentioned above, each squad has room for 8 team members – 1 Leader and 7 Squad Members. When you first start playing you might have to toss your survivors into slots willy-nilly as you won’t have many survivors to pick from. But as you obtain more and more survivors, you need to start placing them properly
Lead Survivors
“Lead Survivors” are a different entity than regular survivors. Only Lead Survivors can be slotted into the Lead Survivors Slot. Each Lead Survivor will have one of 8 important Jobs, and you should try to assign them into their slots:
List of Lead Jobs – Job Squad
- Lead Doctor – EMT Squad
- Lead Marksman – Fire Team Alpha
- Lead Engineer – Corps of Engineering
- Lead Explorer – Scouting Party
- Lead Gadgeteer – Gadgeteers
- Lead Personal Trainer – Training Team
- Lead Martial Artist – Close Assault Squad
- Lead Inventor – The Think Tank
You want to put your Rarest Lead Survivor into each matching slot and then level them up as you can. So you want to put: your best Lead Doctor in the EMT Squad; your best Lead Inventor into the Think Tank; etc. When you first start playing, you might not have a match for every lead survivor job, so just put an unmatched lead survivor there until you get a match. I remember I had the hardest time find a Lead Martial Artist for my Close Assault Squad – I am still using a Green/Uncommon because I haven’t found anyone better.
Regular Survivors / Squad Members
Personality Match
Now that you have a Lead Survivor in place, it’s time to fill out the rest of your Squad. But don’t use just anyone. Survivors will get a 25% Bonus Power Boost if they having matching personalities with their Lead Survivor.
Each Lead Survivor has one of Eight Different Personalities, and your squad team is stronger if they share the Lead Survivor’s Personality. The 8 Personalities are:
- Adventurous
- Analytical
- Competitive
- Cooperative
- Curious
- Dependable
- Dreamer
- Pragmatic
So, if your best Lead Doctor is Pragmatic, you want to flush out the rest of your EMT Squad with Pragmatic Survivors, if possible. The game makes it relatively easy to find the matching survivors if you look at the symbols on their cards. The number of each personality is Green if the Personality matches, and Red if it doesn’t. In the example below A Level 8 Epic with a Matching Personality is more Powerful than a Level 10 Legendary.
If you don’t have enough survivors of the matching personality, just put your strongest survivor available until you find a match later on while playing the game. Any survivor will still make your Hero stronger. As a beginner, you will run into cases where it is more beneficial to Slot an unmatched rarer Survivor to make your Hero Stronger. But eventually, as you unlock more survivors, you will want to switch them out with matched Survivors.
Set Bonuses
Then lastly, you can focus on Set Bonuses. There are 8 Different Set Bonuses you can obtain amongst your Regular Survivors in each squad:
- Health +5% – Fortitude
- Shield +5% – Resistance
- Shield Regen +5% – Resistance
- Ranged Damage +5% – Offense
- Melee Damage +5% – Offense
- Ability Damage +5% – Tech
- Trap Damage +5% – Tech
- Trap Durability +8% – N/A
It can difficult to obtain these bonuses, even near the end-game. It’s almost blind-luck if you get these bonuses.
Level Up Your Survivors!
Every time you level up a Survivor, your Hero gets stronger. So keep leveling up those survivors. Survivors need Survivor XP to level up. Do the main storyline and focus on side missions that award Survivor XP. You can also get Survivor XP by transforming people and items in the Armory>Transform section.
Summary
Here’s a quick guide to using your Survivors to make your heroes stronger.
- Prioritize campaigns to unlock survivor slots
- Do campaign missions, dungeons and ventures to get survivors
- Match Your Strongest Lead Survivor to the matching Job Squad
- Match Your Strongest Regular Survivors to the Lead Survivor’s Personality
- Match Set Bonuses amongst Squad Members to create Set Bonuses
- Level Up the Survivors you are using, especially when you get Epics and Legendaries early in the game.
