Lego Fortnite is an open survival game mode, though it can be confusing where to progress. It’s easy to get lost in the wilds, but you should have a few goals in mind as you play.
If you’re playing in survival mode, you’ll notice a pretty linear path of progression, as indicated by your village center’s and work bench’s upgrade requirements. You’ll need specific items to keep going, all found in varying biomes.
Below, we list out the full progression as a walkthrough for Lego Fortnite. We don’t detail steps that are optional, like cooking up special recipes, but we do outline all the steps to fully upgrade your villages and crafting benches, all the way to Lego Fortnite’s endgame.
Phase 1: Making your first village with wood and granite
This beginning phase will have you starting your village out just by collecting wood and granite from trees and rocks from around the world.
Start your village
It may be tempting to plunk your village square (10 wood and 10 granite) down anywhere right away, but we recommend finding different biomes (desert and snowy) and putting your village in the grasslands between them. If you don’t want to end up rebuilding your village later on, you’ll want all your resources relatively close by.
Build some stuff — including a crafting bench
Build houses, shacks — whatever you want. Keep building until your village is ready for an upgrade. Get used to the idea of building new things, as you’ll need to continuously do that to rank up your village, even if we’re not explicitly saying to build more in this guide.
Make sure you also make a crafting bench (three wood and five granite).
Make some common tools
You’ll want a forest axe and pickaxe as you set out to collect more materials. These will let you cut down bigger trees and rocks, so you don’t just have to punch small trees and pick up loose stones.
Upgrade your village to rank 2
Use 15 wood and 15 granite to upgrade your village.
Get a lumber mill going
Build a lumber mill (eight wood and 15 granite) and keep it going with wood to make planks. Don’t turn all your wood into planks, but keep a decent supply on hand. You may want to build multiple eventually, but you are likely good with one for now.
Explore around and take down enemies
Run around the grasslands to find rollers and wolves. You’ll need shells from rollers right way, but store any claws you get from wolves for now.
Upgrade your crafting bench to uncommon
Use your newly supplied planks to upgrade your crafting bench so it’s uncommon (green). You’ll need eight planks and three shells (from rollers, as mentioned above).
Upgrade your village to rank 3
Now that you have planks, you can also upgrade your village to rank three, using 10 planks and 20 granite.
Build a spinning wheel to process wool and web
You’ll need eight plank, five wooden rods, five wood, and five wolf claws to build a spinning wheel, but you’ll need to do so to make some equips.
Make totems and charms at your crafting bench, as well as a new axe
Make the best totems that you can using the materials from the wheel. Make some health charms as well as temperature charms, if you can. Keep up with your totems and charms as you progress, too.
Make an uncommon forest axe (green) from three bones and three wooden rods while you’re at it.
Phase 2: Exploring caves for marble and knotroot
For this phase, you’ll need to make use of the materials found in grassland caves. You’ll need to do a lot of spelunking to get enough materials to make all the necessary upgrades.
Find a cave in the grasslands for marble and knotroot
Take your uncommon forest axe and seek out a cave in the grasslands and head inside. Make sure you’ve built yourself a sword at your crafting bench. Ignore the marble for now, as your pickaxe isn’t going to be strong enough to mine it. Grab a ton of knotroot from the inside of the caves.
Upgrade your village to rank 4
Since you have knotwood, you can upgrade your village again using 10 knotroot, 15 planks, and 25 granite.
Put knotroot into your lumber mill, too
Yep, time to process some knotroot. Again, you don’t need to process it all, but you should keep some on you.
Make new tools using knotroot
Using knotroot, you should be able to make an uncommon pickaxe at your crafting bench from three knotroot rods and three bones.
Go get that marble finally
Using your new uncommon pickaxe, head back to a cave and bring back tons of marble.
Upgrade your village to rank 5
You should now be able to upgrade your village again using 15 knotroot, 20 planks, and 15 marble.
Make a stone breaker and start processing stones
Use 20 knotroot and 35 marble to make a stone breaker. You already know the drill: keep it going but don’t process everything into slabs.
Upgrade your village to rank 6
Get some granite slabs using your stone breaker and upgrade your village to rank six using 20 knotroot and 20 granite slabs.
Head out to a beach or desert biome to hunt sand monsters
Hopefully you heeded our early advice and set up camp that isn’t too far from a desert biome. Head to one and start taking down the monsters there. Sand rollers and sand wolves will drop sand shells and sand claws, respectively. Note that sand wolves only spawn at night and they will despawn once the sun starts to rise.
Upgrade your village to rank 7
Using 20 knotroot rods and 20 marble slabs, upgrade your village square again! You can technically do this before your crafting bench, if you want.
Phase 3: Exploring the desert for amber and flexwood
This phase focuses more on material you get from desert biomes. You’ll need flexwood from desert caves and amber from the cliffs to progress. Note that you may experience mild temperature issues in the desert, but you can largely ignore it and heal by eating food.
Head to the desert to collect rough amber
The amber will be at the top of these tall cliffs, so bring wood to make stairs to help you get up there. Your uncommon pickaxe will be enough to crack the amber. Bring back as much amber as you can, as you’ll need a lot of it.
Upgrade your crafting bench to rare (blue)
Using 12 knotroot rods, 15 marble slabs, six sand claws, and three sand shells, power up your crafting bench to get access to a new plethora of recipes.
Upgrade your village to 8
For this upgrade, you’ll need 30 marble slabs and 10 rough amber.
Make a gem cutter for cut amber
Using 20 marble slabs, five rough amber, five sand claws, and three sand shells, make a gem cutter, since you’ll need to use it to process your amber.
Make a rare forest axe (the brown axe with a blue background)
Using five cut amber and three knotroot rods, make yourself a fancier axe or two.
Head back to the desert to farm flexwood
Now that you have a rare axe, you can cut down flexwood, which comes from the cacti. As usual, bring back as much as you can.
Process the flexwood in your lumber mill
Yep, now that you have a new tier of lumber, make sure to keep some of it processed, as you’ll need flexwood rods for upgrades.
Build a loom to process thread and string
Using nine flexwood, eight flexwood rods, and six sand claws, make yourself a loom and start processing your string and thread to make fabrics.
Build a glider now that you have wool
Now we’re getting somewhere! Use six silk fabric, four wool fabric, and eight flexwood rods to make yourself a glider.
Phase 4: Exploring lava caves for obsidian, copper, and rubies
You’re almost at the endgame, and this is when things can get tedious. Ultimately you should just focus on farming as much as you can from lava caves, which we detail below.
Craft a rare pickaxe
Using three flexwood rods and three sand claws, make a stronger pickaxe.
Head into desert caves to farm almost everything else
We mean everything else. There are smaller caves with some material and treasure inside, but ideally you want to find a bigger cave with lava, as this will have way more stuff to mine, including obsidian, ruby, copper, and brightcore. You can also take down enemies inside to get blast cores, which you’ll also need.
These caves will be hot, even if you have a heat resistance charm. You can stack heat-prevention charms for a better effect, if you have the materials to make a bunch of them. Bring lots of food and farm whatever you can.
Upgrade your village to rank 9 and 10
Using 15 flexwood, 15 obsidian, and 10 cut amber, upgrade your village again. If you have the material, shove your obsidian into the stone cutter and you can upgrade straight to village level 10, which is the max. You’ll need 15 flexwood rods, 30 obsidian slabs, and 20 cut amber.
Build a metal smelter
Using three blast cores, 35 obsidian slabs, and 15 brightcores, make yourself a smelter and start sticking copper in there.
Upgrade your crafting bench to epic
Using 15 copper bars, 25 obsidian slabs, and a brute scale, upgrade your crafting bench to the final stage: epic (purple). To get a brute scale, you’ll either need to get lucky with finding one inside of a lava cave chest or by taking down one of those huge dinosaur-like beasts out on the surface.
Phase 5: Getting endgame gear with frostpine, iron, malachite, and sapphire
This is the last phase and there’s no more crafting bench or village upgrades at this point, but we’ll keep going so you can make the best gear.
Craft an epic forest axe
Using three copper bars and three knotroot rods, make yourself a rare forest axe (purple).
Farm frostpine from the snow biomes
Use your new forest axe to hack down the fir trees in the snow to get frostpine.
Process the frostpine in lumber mills
This is the last thing you’ll have to process, so you should be an expert by now. Stick in some wood, don’t use it all, etc.
Make an epic pickaxe
Use eight obsidian slabs and five frostpine rods to make the best-in-the-game epic pickaxe (purple).
Farm some malachite from the top of the snowy mountain
Use your new fancy pickaxe on some of this sweet green malachite.
Head into ice caves to farm the rest
Just like the lava caves, the ice caves have extreme temperatures that you can avoid with food or stacking cold resistance equips.
Inside these ice caves, you can find sapphire, and iron, which you’ll need to make the last batch of items in the game.
Process your newly acquired materials
Stick the sapphire in a gem cutter, your iron into the smelter, and your malachite into the stone breaker.
Make an essence table
You can technically do this earlier, but we recommend enchanting only the best equips to save on resources. It takes 20 flexwood and six cut amber to make an essence table. You can use your newly found materials to strengthen your equipment’s durability or add other perks.
And that’s it! That’s all there is to fully upgrading all your stuff — for now that is. There isn’t much to use the malachite, sapphire, or iron on outside a few upgraded weapons and enchantments, but if you wanted to stockpile stuff in anticipation for a new update, this is the stuff to hoard.
Update (Dec. 18): We’ve updated this guide to include additional early-game steps and clarify which tools are needed for those steps.