Settings To Use

If you don’t setup right, you’re going to be at a disadvantage.

Below are some recommended settings that I use, along with the rationale of why. Most of this is pretty solid, universal advice. If your opinion differs, that’s ok. You should at least be making these setup changes purposefully, and not just using what the game comes with out-the-box1.

Visual Audio

This is so important that I can’t believe there are people that play without it. Visual Audio lets you *see* footsteps, gunshots, vehicle noises, even chickens, on the screen. Instead of guessing where footsteps sound is coming from, you will see the footsteps on the screen.

This is super helpful, especially if you can’t wear headphones because you have to hear if your partner is yelling for you to come help one kid in the bath while she is getting the other dressed.

Auto-Sort Weapons

This is so important I wrote a whole article on it. Learn it. Know it. Live it.

Wired Connection

I know it’s modern times, but using a wired connection will increase your chance of winning. Lag is critical in these games, and your wireless network has an order of magnitude, if not more, lag when compared with your wired network. Plugging your gaming device into a wired network will make a big difference.

You can display your “ping time” and other wireless data on-screen while you play. I do this; it’s unobtrusive but also lets you know how fast things are running. A critical measure of latency between your system and the game server is called “ping”. Ping rates below 10 are great. Between 10-20 is good. 20-50 is fine. Anything over 50 is not great, and anything over 100 is going to cause problems in most battles.

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Refresh Rate

A bit esoteric, but if you have an Xbox or PC capable of fast refresh rates, they can help minimize lag and give you a better chance of winning those very close battles. I recommend using a refresh rate of 120 fps or faster if you can. I personally play on an XBox Series X, which gives me a refresh rate of 120. 60 isn’t bad. Anything below is challenging. For example, Nintendo Switch players have a refresh rate of 30 fps, which isn’t competitive with other Fortnite players, but may be perfectly fine for other games.