Want to know how to craft items in Fortnite? The big new mechanic for Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 6 was crafting, and we’ll be honest, we didn’t think it would remain a part of the game in Season 7. How to craft items may not be immediately obvious for a lot of people, probably because it isn’t really explained all that well.
How it works is simple: find crafting materials, then navigate the menus to hammer them onto your weapon to create a more powerful gun. It’s easy in theory, but you will also need to know where to find these materials on the map. The interface for making items is also tricky to use while panicking because someone else is shooting you, so make sure you’re somewhere out of the way
Crafting is a lot simpler in Chapter 2 Season 7, mostly because there’s fewer item types you need in order to craft the Fortnite guns. We’ll list every item you can craft using the nuts and bolts or the brand new alien nanites you can find lying around the map, and where the best places to find them are.
HOW TO CRAFT ITEMS IN FORTNITE
This is thankfully the one part that hasn’t changed as Fortnite transitions to the new season. Once you’ve gathered an weapon and the crafting material you need, press the Tab key, then cycle to the crafting menu by pressing E.
This will put you on the crafting page. Select an item using the mouse or controller, then press the craft button. Your character will stand in place for three seconds to make the item, so make sure you’re behind cover.
FORTNITE NUTS ‘N’ BOLTS LOCATIONS
The only crafting material in Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 7 is nuts ‘n’ bolts. These are found by either opening red toolboxes scattered throughout the map or, if you’re lucky, breaking just about anything mechanical with your pickaxe, from cars and electrical appliances, to fire hydrants, TVs, vending machines, and so much more. If it looks man-made, then it can be broken to find nuts ‘n’ bolts. You only need one nuts ‘n’ bolts to upgrade one of the compatible guns, so it shouldn’t be too tricky to get powerful equipment.
FORTNITE ALIEN NANITES LOCATIONS
The most recent introduction to the Fortnite crafting system is a new type of component: alien nanites. These pulsating cubes are used to turn those regular old guns into powerful Fortnite alien weapons. Nanites can be found in chests, and wherever items spawn regularly on the map. We have the most luck finding them around IO bases – the one pictured was found on a helipad. You can also use alien nanites as consumable items to get a few seconds worth of reduced gravity.
Only certain weapons can be transformed into alien versions, and the weapon you want to upgrade must be of rare (blue) rarity and above. The process only requires one alien nanite, and the upgrade can be done from the crafting menu, just like crafting with nuts and bolts. If you’ve upgraded a weapon with nuts and bolts beforehand, you can still upgrade it further into its alien counterpart.
Here are all of the Fortnite weapon types that can be upgraded with alien nanites:
Submachine gun → Kymera gun
Assault rifle (including heavy assault rifles) → Pulse rifle
Sniper rifle → Rail gun
FORTNITE UPGRADE TABLE LOCATIONS
You can also upgrade weapons via upgrade tables by spending gold bars, or tracking down the NPCs and talking to them.
In case you need a reminder, gold bars are obtained by completing quests via phone booths, completing bounties via the boards scattered throughout the map, finding them in chests, or picking them up from eliminated players.
For each improved rarity, the cost to upgrade a weapon will go up, so while upgrading a common weapon to an uncommon rarity weapon is 200 gold bars, upgrading that same weapon again to the other rarities will cost much more each time.
You can find these upgrade benches in the following locations:
- Believer Beach
- Craggy Cliffs
- Steamy Stacks
- Dirty Docks
- Catty Corner
- East of the centre of the map
- The drive-in cinema north of the centre of the map
- The Durrr Burger between Holly Hedges and Weeping Woods
- The factory between Slurpy Swamp and Misty Meadows
- The island to the far southeast of the map
And that’s everything you need to know about Fortnite crafting in the new season. We’re still in the process of finding all of the weapons that can be upgraded in the new season, but there are plenty of other relevant guides out there for you while you wait. Animals have also seen minor changes this season, and you may wish to look up information about the new Fortnite alien artifact locations to unlock Kymera styles. As for challenges, you may be interested in learning where the Fortnite rubber ducks are.
