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Are you having trouble understanding how Survivor Squads work? Are you not sure which Survivors will work best in your Squads? If so, fear not, our guide is here to help!
As players of Fortnite Save the World will know, when it comes to gameplay, the premise is fairly straightforward. Players are tasked with navigating and protecting a post-apocalyptic world torn to pieces by a huge storm from the husks and monsters who are attacking it.
As players progress through the game, their power level will increase, meaning that they will be able to take on more challenging quests, access different areas of the map, deal more damage to enemies, and so on. However, a variety of factors and level systems can contribute to a player’s overall power level.
One of the major factors influencing a player’s power level is Survivor Squads; as they are sufficiently important to affect how you play the game as a whole, they are certainly worth exploring in detail. In this Fortnite STW guide, we will explore the basic concept of Survivor Squads, looking at the levels of hierarchy involved, showing you how best to set them up and organise your teams, and offering practical tips on how you can leverage this part of STW to maximise your effectiveness across the game as a whole.
Also, as Survivor Squads are inextricably linked to your overall PL, if you want to know how to increase your Fortnite Save the World power level, you’ve come to the right place!
We know that Survivor Squads are able to boost your overall power level, but before we get into what Survivor Squads actually are, we need to think about how they are actually capable of having this effect in the first place.
As you will know, your power level (or Home Base Power) has a direct effect on what you can do in the game - what quests you can engage in, how much damage you can deal, and more. But where does the game get this figure from, and why does it change so often?
Your power level is determined exclusively by your F.O.R.T. stats, which are a series of statistics that allow players to improve as they progress through the game. If you were thinking that with a name like that, the letters have to stand for something, then you would be right! The acronym stands for Fortitude, Offense, Resistance and Tech. Let’s go through these one by one…
Firstly, F.O.R.T. stats relating to Fortitude have positive effects on a player’s Health, Health Regen Speed, and Health Regen Delay.
Secondly, F.O.R.T. stats relating to Offense have positive effects on the Weapon Damage that a player can deal.
Thirdly, F.O.R.T. stats relating to Resistance have positive effects on a player’s Shield, Shield Regen Speed, and Shield Regen Delay.
Lastly, F.O.R.T. stats relating to Tech have positive effects on a player’s Trap Damage, Healing Done, Ability Damage, and Gadget Damage.
F.O.R.T stats can be upgraded in three ways: by upgrading your Skill Trees, by spending Research Points, and of course, by optimising your Survivor Squads. Seeing as Survivors are the most important factor to increasing your F.O.R.T stats, and ultimately, your overall power level, it’s only right that we explain them in more detail!
Simply put, Survivor Squads are collections of Survivors. A player will carefully and precisely select and slot Survivors into different types of squads, of which there are eight. When selected correctly, these eight Survivor Squads will issue points to your F.O.R.T. stats, in turn, upping that ever-important power level. As certain squads correspond to each different component of your F.O.R.T. stats, stat bonuses that are issued from a particular squad will be delivered to their matching statistic. For each F.O.R.T. stat, there are two corresponding squads.
Firstly, a player’s Fortitude F.O.R.T. stat will be boosted by the E.M.T. Squad and Training Team Survivor Squads.
Secondly, a player’s Offense F.O.R.T. stat will be boosted by the Fire Team Alpha and Close Assault Squad Survivor Squads.
Thirdly, a player’s Resistance F.O.R.T. stat will be boosted by the Scouting Party and Gadgeteers Survivor Squads.
Lastly, a player’s Tech F.O.R.T. stat will be boosted by the Corps of Engineering and The Think Tank Survivor Squads.
If a player is hoping to receive the most additional points from their Survivor Squads to be used towards their overall power level, there are many factors to bear in mind, but they all relate to the same thing - similarity!
In simple terms, a player will be rewarded by using Survivors in each Squad that have characteristics that match up to one another - something we will cover later in this guide.
So if a player needs to slot Survivors into different Survivor Squads to boost their overall power level, it is certainly worth knowing what they are!
Survivors are characters that are used to build Survivor Squads. As the story goes, Survivors are the humans who survived the storm that brought the world of Fortnite STW to its post-apocalyptic state. As you progress through the game, you will collect these Survivors, who will be saved as cards.
Survivor Squads have a hierarchical system in place in which three different types of Survivors exist. In some ways, they are very similar, as they both have their place in the Squad for the same purpose - to increase your F.O.R.T. stats, and in turn, your power level. For example, as we will cover in further detail, they all have a Personality Type you can match, which will lead to additional points. However, there are many key differences between each type of Survivor.
As is the case with Heroes and Weapons, Survivors come in six levels of rarity - Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, and Mythic, which coupled with their card level, makes up the survivor’s power level. The more rare a Survivor is, the more your power level will increase when using them in your Survivor Squad. They each have a randomly assigned Personality Type and Set Bonus. There are 7 slots in your Survivor Squad for Subordinate Survivors. When you first begin playing around with your Survivor Squads, many of these slots will be locked, so to unlock these additional slots to fill them with Squad Members, you will need to complete Storm Shield Defenses for each map location.
Unlike Subordinate Survivors, Leaders come in five levels of rarity - Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary and Mythic. Like Subordinate Survivors, they equally have a Personality Type, but do not have a Set Bonus. Instead Lead Survivors have Jobs. As they take on the role of the Leader, you can only have one Lead Survivor in your Squad. You can tell which of your survivors are Lead Survivors by the crown on the left-hand side of their card.
Different from both regular Subordinate Survivors and Lead Survivors, the Personalities and Jobs of Mythic Lead Survivors have not been randomised, they have been selected intentionally. They even have individual names and portraits! In this way, a particular type of Mythic Survivor will have the same personality, regardless of who finds it in the game. As you would expect, these cards are extremely rare, which is why they are so sought after by players. Only a certain number of them exist!
Ultimately, the goal of optimising your Survivor Squads is to collect all Mythic Lead Survivors and Mythic or Legendary Subordinate Survivors. By having Survivors with the level of rarity coupled with high power levels, you will guarantee the highest boost to your overall power level.
Every Survivor carries specific characteristics that makes them unique and allows them to offer different levels of bonuses to your F.O.R.T. stats. However, as you saw above, Subordinate Survivors have certain characteristics that Lead Survivors do not, and vice versa. Let’s learn about these:
Every Survivor in your squad will have a pre-assigned Personality attribute. The personality types that a Survivor can take on will be either Adventurous, Analytical, Competitive, Cooperative, Curious, Dependable, Dreamer, or Pragmatic.
As these personality types are pre-assigned, they offer no benefit over one another, regardless of the squad you place your Survivor in. What is important, however, is that the Personalities of your Subordinate Survivors match that of your Lead Survivor. In effect, all of the Survivors in a Squad, both Lead and Subordinate, should have the same Personality Type if you are hoping to reap maximum rewards.
As well as a Personality, each Subordinate Survivor will have a Set Bonus, which has equally been randomly assigned. As is the case with Personalities, you will be offered the highest bonuses by having all Subordinate Survivors in your squad maintain the same Set Bonus.
When properly aligned, Set Bonuses offer bonuses to your character’s F.O.R.T. stats, as well as a few other modifiers. The Set Bonuses your Survivors could have are as follows:
The Health Set Bonus requires you to have 2 Survivors in your Squad for the bonuses to apply. These bonuses are a 5% increase to your Base Health and +5 to your Fortitude stat.
The Shield Set Bonus requires you to have 2 Survivors in your Squad for the bonuses to apply. These bonuses are a 5% increase to your Base Shield and +5 to your Resistance stat.
The Shield Regeneration Set Bonus requires you to have 2 Survivors in your Squad for the bonuses to apply. These bonuses are a 5% increase to your Shield Regeneration and +5 to your Resistance stat.
The Ranged Damage Set Bonus requires you to have 3 Survivors in your Squad for the bonuses to apply. These bonuses are a 5% increase to your Ranged Damage and +5 to your Offense stat.
The Melee Damage Set Bonus requires you to have 3 Survivors in your Squad for the bonuses to apply. These bonuses are a 5% increase to your Melee Damage and +5 to your Offense stat.
The Ability Damage Set Bonus requires you to have 3 Survivors in your Squad for the bonuses to apply. These bonuses are a 5% increase to your Ability Damage and +5 to your Tech stat.
The Trap Damage Set Bonus requires you to have 3 Survivors in your Squad for the bonuses to apply. These bonuses are a 5% increase to your Ability Damage and +5 to your Tech stat.
The Trap Durability Set Bonus requires you to have 2 Survivors in your Squad for the bonuses to apply. These bonuses are an 8% increase to your Trap Durability, but no additional points are granted towards any of your F.O.R.T. stats.
As you can see, any bonus that deals damage will require you to have three Survivors in your Squad with the same set bonus to unlock the benefits, unlike the bonuses that preserve your own health, which require two.
When aligned, these Set Bonuses also have an effect on your Heroes. They can modify your Heroes’ existing statistics, boosting their Base Health, Base Shields, Base Damage and more.
Lead Survivors do not have Set Bonuses, as these are exclusive to Subordinate Heroes. Instead, Lead Survivors have Jobs.
Each of your Lead Survivors will be assigned a Job - after all, as the Leader, they really do have a job to do! As each of the eight Survivor Squads that your Survivors can be placed in has a particular job-related function, Lead Survivors with certain Jobs will be more effective in some Squads than others. With this in mind, they should be placed accordingly. A Lead Survivor’s Job is pre-assigned to them randomly, and they can be anything from the list below:
Lead Survivors with the Doctor Job work best in E.M.T. Squad.
Lead Survivors with the Marksman Job work best in the Fire Team Alpha Survivor Squad.
Engineers work best in the Corps of Engineering.
Explorers work best in the Scouting Party.
Gadgeteers work best in the Gadgeteers.
Personal Trainers work best in the Training Team Survivor Squad.
Martial Artists work best in the Close Assault Squad.
Inventors work best in The Think Tank.
As we have seen, the different characteristics of Survivors means that they can perform more effectively depending on who they share a Squad with, and the type of Squad that they have been placed in, so be sure to choose carefully!
We’ve learned a lot about how Survivors work, how they work together as part of your Survivor Squad, and the ways in which they can push up your power level, but where can you get your hands on them?
A player can obtain Survivors as part of mission rewards, from expeditions, and by purchasing them on the event store. They can also be acquired by purchasing Upgrade Llamas, Smorgasbord Llamas, and Superpeople Llamas.
So we have learned about the different types of Survivor Squads you can use in the game, what Survivors are, the different types of individuals and their characteristics, and finally how to acquire Survivors to use in your Survivor Squads. Now it’s time to get out there and begin collecting Survivors!
You may choose to select Autofill, which will automatically place Survivors in separate Squads on your behalf. However, we would recommend choosing your Survivors yourself, as this will allow you full customisation and will enable you to put everything you will have learned from this guide into practice, leading to a Squad that is guaranteed to be more effective.
We hope this guide has helped you to grasp the core mechanics of Survivor Squads and that by now, you are ready to try your hand at slotting your Survivors. Considering that Survivor Squads are not even the main part of Fortnite Save the World, it is remarkable to see the level of customisation and attention to detail that can be put into every decision you make with your Squad.
Thank you for reading, and happy playing!
