How To Get Fortnite XP In The Fastest Way Possible

When Fortnite Chapter 6 launched in December, it brought with it a number of new and confusing changes to how XP is earned, and the net result was that leveling up the battle pass was a lot slower than it had been in the past. Naturally, the community got rather upset about that, and Epic Games spent much of December recalibrating XP gains for Fortnite's many core modes. And with the first big update of the new year, and the start of Fortnite Festival Season 7, we've gotten a few more user-friendly XP buffs that will make it a lot easier to get through the new Hatsune Miku music pass and unlock Godzilla on the battle pass.

While there was a lot of consternation about the rate of XP gains in the first couple weeks of Chapter 6, Epic has seemingly settled on a configuration that it likes and that the community can deal with. So XP is in a pretty decent place right now, but it doesn't work quite the same way that it did before all these overhauls. So we're going to break down how XP works right now, and how to maximize your gains so you don't waste too much time. Let's dig in.

Fortnite XP gains - by the numbers

Back in the day, when Fortnite only had three modes--battle royale, Save the World, and Creative--you primarily earned XP via quests and accolades like opening chests and defeating opponents. As Fortnite's metaverse has ballooned in the past year with Festival, Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, Reload, OG, and Ballistic, Epic has attempted to fundamentally shift how XP is earned to a "time spent" model--you're intended to gain XP at a relatively steady rate over time that isn't particularly fast or slow. It just took them a few tries to get the pace to a point where Epic and the players can both be happy with it.

As of the launch of Fortnite Festival Season 7 on January 14, here's what the XP situation in Fortnite looks like.

First: According to a typically reliable source for such things, all the free, Epic-created core modes, which includes battle royale, Reload, OG, Festival, Rocket Racing, Lego Fortnite Odyssey and Lego Fortnite Brick Life, now share one large passive XP soft cap of 50 levels per week. This means you will earn passive XP at a rate of about 2,000-3,000 per minute (the amount varies by mode) in battle royale, OG, Reload, Festival, Rocket Racing, and Ballistic until you've earned 4 million XP.

That 50-level cap is a soft one, however. Once you reach it, you'll still gain passive XP, but at a greatly reduced rate. This cap is only for passive XP that is awarded for time spent playing--it does not affect what you would gain from quests, accolades and other sources of XP. Each mode has its own set of additional XP sources, starting with daily and weekly quests. Completing three daily quests across any modes will be worth, on its own, about one level each day.

There's two main things Epic has been trying to do with the new emphasis on passive XP in Chapter 6: Regulate how quickly we unlock stuff in the battle pass overall, and also to make each mode have you level up at the same rates. In other words, Epic wants to make leveling in Festival go about the same speed as leveling in battle royale or Lego.

While Festival lagged far, far behind the other modes in this regard before Hatsune Miku season began, the new season has added accolade XP for earning stars, completing songs, and getting full clears on the Festival Main Stage, on top of a reported increase in passive XP. So Fortnite Festival gives much more XP now than it did before.

Rocket Racing, meanwhile, is the only core mode that doesn't give passive XP, but it does give 5,000 XP per completed race, and 10,000 XP per complete speedrun, on top of repeatable dailies and some rather lucrative and fairly easy weekly quests.

If you use Save the World to AFK your levels, meanwhile, you can keep doing that--it has its own separate soft cap of 50 levels per week as well that it doesn't share with any other modes.

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 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 are usually plugged too quickly for us to mention them here.

So we don't have most of the normal get-rich-quick schemes for leveling in Chapter 6, 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, event, 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's Wintervestigation quests were extremely rewarding, and the Godzilla x Kong event added tons of XP quests that made it quicker to unlock Godzilla on the battle pass.

Step 2: Play what you wanna play

Play Reload, OG or Lego Fortnite for passive XP once the BR XP dries up. The rate of passive XP gained while playing the various modes is not extremely fast--with passive XP and accolade XP, you can expect to gain two or more levels per hour just from playing whatever part of Fortnite you like most. But if you're really in a hurry, there's one more thing you should try.

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--with the increased weekly cap, your earning potential is pretty high here, because you may be able to earn those levels in Creative a bit faster than you would playing Reload for time-based XP. Or at least that's the hope.