Elevate Your Gameplay: A Guide to Editing Stairs in Fortnite

Fortnite is a popular battle royale game that requires quick thinking and strategic building skills. One crucial element of building in Fortnite is editing stairs.

We explore what stairs are in Fortnite, why editing them is important, and how to edit them effectively. From selecting the edit tool to confirming your edits, we walk you through the steps.

Discover tips for editing stairs, common mistakes to avoid, and strategic ways to use edited stairs in the game. Let’s dive in and level up your Fortnite building skills!

What Are Stairs in Fortnite?

Stairs are beginner-intermediate difficulty structures that can be rapidly constructed at an angle to allow upward access. Stairs have a total health of 330 points and come in a variety of material types – wood (210), brick (300), and metal (330). When broken, the player standing atop stairs will fall and take damage as they would if on a platform, but their hitbox will suddenly move to the ground rather than the ramp itself. Stairs are most often used in conjunction with platforms to scale terrain quickly and safely.

Why Is Editing Stairs Important in Fortnite?

Editing stairs is important in Fortnite to help you master the high ground while building, to minimize building materials exposing more important structures to enemy fire when you make a mistake, and to possibly gain an advantage when moving through your own or an opponent’s builds in order to survive the storm or to regroup with your team members.

How to Edit Stairs in Fortnite?

In Fortnite, you edit stairs by selecting the square you want to edit and pressing the edit button while aiming at it. If you don’t create a space in your stairs, you are free to make any design you want with your stairs without affecting their stability. You can even remove risers from stairs in Fortnite or create spiral staircases and maintain their stability.

Step 1: Select the Edit Tool

To start working with stairs in Fortnite, you first need to select the Edit Tool. To do this in FORTNITE CREATIVE/PLAYGROUND MODE, select your stairs by powerfully smashing them with your harvesting tool. In BATTLE ROYALE you need to have the harvesting tool weapon selected and approach the stairs to edit them. If the stairs were placed while the Combat Mode was selected, switch back to Build Mode and then use the pickaxe tool on the stairs to edit them. With FORTNITE on PC, the default edit button is the G key. On XBOX controllers, edit using the B button. On the PlayStation, edit with the O button.

After selecting the Edit Tool, toggle towards the blue squares that appear on the stair’s grid if you wish to change its shape. Drag the left mouse button upwards (default settings) to remove grid squares. The blue squares will then disappear. Then, using the pickaxe tool, reset the stairs and revert to design mode by pressing the Esc key. Place the blueprint to confirm its updated shape and design.

Step 2: Choose the Stairs to Edit

After pulling up the Edit Mode with a left-click, choose the stairs to edit by selecting a Bounding Box. There are a total of three bounding boxes on a staircase containing 1, then 3 and 9 Individual Grid Cells.

1. Start Box: Contains the very bottom of the stairs and has a total of 1 grid cell.
2. Mid Box: Contains the section of the stairs after the start box and before the top box.
3. Top Box: Contains the very top of the stairs and has a total of 9 grid cells.

The three bounding boxes of a staircase are combined to form an entire staircase. The following are the types of bounding boxes that staircases can have (all building pieces have these three bounding box shapes). The steps to choose which stairs are as follows:

1. Switch all connected build grids to the Edit Mode.
2. Select the bounding box according to the part of the staircase you want to modify.
3. Using the edit tool see each of the individual grid cells from that bounding box.

Step 3: Make Your Edits

Make your edits using the edit controls you selected. In this case, you selected the Right Mouse Button(RMB) on PC or the mobile equivalent on a touch device.

Right Mouse Button Editing (ress scroll wheel click, middle mouse button) involves holding down the edit button for the desired structure then clicking on a square on the structure to toggle its inclusion/exclusion in the edit. After you have made your edits, click the designated confirm edit button. There is initially a 10-second edit time limit for editing pieces that starts the first time you select a piece to edit and then resets every time you switch to another piece. If a dynamic build of yours involves more than one piece being on a 90-degree rotation, make sure you spend no idle time in between editing them. Refer to the Fornite Creative Building video to see how this is done.

Step 4: Confirm Your Edits

To finalize your edit, you must select either Primary Edit or Reset Edits. In the case of stairs, the Primary Edit will automatically confirm your edit – click again to reset. Alternatively, you can press your reset button to confirm the edit if you want to take your time before finalizing it.

Note that in the case you have completed an edit and have forgotten to select the Primary Edit button to confirm that specific edit in the middle of making multiple edits, all edits made while the current piece was being edited will be cancelled unless the wall, ceiling, or floor grid piece attached to the intended edited grid says ‘Reset Edits’.

An example of this in the context of adding and editing stairs is if you have finished adjusting every stair in part of your build, but forgot to go into the grid again once completed and then made a new adjustment on something else in the vicinity away from the stairs.

If you are now in a new grid instead of the stairs and are just about to reset, return to your stairs by selecting an adjacent piece to your stairs to preserve your edits. This will let you go back and retain the staircase edits.

What Are Some Tips for Editing Stairs in Fortnite?

Some tips for editing stairs in Fortnite are to assign the stair building role to the F or V keys or put build mode on toggle to prevent making mistakes while under pressure. Another tip is to start slow and gradually work on speeding up your editing from there as you become more skilled at stair editing. Practice stair editing with Building school Creative Maps to gather experience and move onto more complex scenarios from there.

Tip 1: Practice Makes Perfect

Stairs in Fortnite can be difficult to edit correctly, so practice editing repeatedly. Progressively increase your speed or add additional edits to slowly improve. While it is easy to get in practice mode to learn the basics, the only way to learn the full picture is within matchups. A good player to watch is Ayon_dan. He shows how to edit stairs in Fortnite during intense PvP.

Tip 2: Use Different Edit Techniques

Different editing techniques yield different results. For stairs, the following options cause 3 new staircases to be constructed. They may or may not align with the original staircase itself or the floor below/above.

• Removal of All Rotating squares
• Removal of All Horizontal Squares

Some of their combinations move the pieces downward while others build upon the existing staircase. Rows 2, 4, and 5 in the following example show various ways that these ramp pieces can be employed, some of which directly mirror or improve upon Fortnite proper staircase construction while others replace it entirely with newer or more advanced piece placements.

Tip 3: Be Aware of Your Surroundings

Once you reach the top of the majority of the stairs in Fortnite, you will have ramp-boosted up. Be ready to defend yourself quickly. Be aware of who is playing around you, and be prepared for them to push once your build is complete.

A player named Reliafnemal gives the advice, Gaze at the terrain around you before you spike upwards and predict where threats will come from, and be sure you have plenty of materials ahead of time.. This is especially true if groups of enemies are present in the area. You want to be at the top of stairs as long as possible, that is only in the later stages..

What Are Some Common Mistakes When Editing Stairs in Fortnite?

Some common mistakes that players make when editing stairs in Fortnite are:

1. Overcomplication of their editing patterns
2. Not knowing how to revert stairs to the default state
3. Not utilizing the side edit to create alternate stair shapes
4. Not knowing what the right height of stairs to use is
5. Editing a stair before all connected stairs are in place during building
6. Not resetting stairs back to the desired shape after editing
7. Editing stairs in the open too much
8. Being too predictable in how and when they edit stairs

Lazar⚡Beam from DreamTeam covers this in The 8 Most Common Mistakes People Make With Editing Stairs with his video How to Editing Stairs in Fortnite (Strongest Turbo Build Techniques + Wall & Floor Edits). He also suggests ramps.

Mistake 1: Not Using the Edit Tool

The most common mistake in editing stairs in Fortnite is not using the editing tool at all. Most competitive and professional players regularly edit stairs to allow for smoother movement into their box when pushing other players. Mistake 1 should be considered one of the worst because mastering the use of the Stairs Edit Tool is a simple but incredibly effective strategy in matches. In the heat of battle, skill with the stair edit tool can be the deciding factor between life and death.

Mistake 2: Editing Too Slowly

One late-night Fortnite montage has over 7 million views showing no faster stair edit demonstration with the end card stating ‘You just gonna switch it and build. So you can’t be that slow, you know what I mean?’. As you start editing the stair, make sure you head inside rather than directly on the stairs or you could be slowed. This is especially important if the stairs are not yours as quickly turning inside will avoid attacks from above (such as placing a ramp on top to block the attack).

Mistake 3: Forgetting to Confirm Edits

When you do not remember to confirm an edit after you make it, the changes you made to the stairs in Fortnite Building and Editing Mode will not be saved. So if you switch to another building piece and come back to the stairs, all the changes you made will have defaulted and you will need to make all of the changes again. Here is how you fix the issue of forgetting to confirm edits.

1. Edit Selection. Use the edit selection tool to select the stair piece you are editing. It will display the outline of the piece in white as opposed to the ownership color. This lets you know that the piece is selected.
2. Confirm Edits. After you edit the stairs to your liking, hold down your input key/controller button again until you see the PROGRESS WILL BE LOST! notification.

Not confirming edits is a mistake because you could lose precious building time if you are reediting the same stairs multiple times or are in a fight. In the example used earlier of a staircase being built on uneven ground while players are moving, time spent switching back and forth to confirm repeatedly will waste resources and could lead to a loss of precious engagements. Remember to confirm your edits even if you forget.

How to Use Edited Stairs in Fortnite Strategically?

You can use edited stairs in Fortnite to place traps and get greater control of your movement. Moving through the field of play and being a more effective marksman are the two main advantages of editing. You can use edited stairs strategically for getting in and out of tight situations in a patch of territory where your opponent has you cornered.

Take the example of a ramp connected to a building that your opponent has backed you into. You can edit the middle pieces of your ramp blocking it. Then in edit mode, remove the block and once again grant yourself access to the structure. Combining stairs and their faster speed with walls will allow you to gain the high ground even faster than using ramps. This puts you in control of battles and allows you to easily build over, around and from the sides of opponents, as you can see Ghost Gaming member Rocco show in the beginning of the videos in this post where he uses a simple edit to secure a build attack.

The following are steps to use edited stairs strategically in Fortnite:

• – Use the stairs as a way to build up and get closer to your opponent faster to be able to shoot them down from above.
• – Edit gaps in your stairs to create a makeshift trap that your opponent may accidentally fall into.
• – Adding windows allows you to peek out and shoot at your opponents especially advantageous when trying to heal.

Strategy 1: Creating Vantage Points

Stairs in Fortnite can be used to create vantage points, enabling players to take on opponents from on high and achieve a high ground advantage. The stair builds can also include them to exit, switch directions instantly, or to jump down if needed. This advantage comes from the fact that while an opponent is standing below or in the same level as you, they have much more of their body available as a target. So when you are both firing weapons at each other, it is much easier for the player with height advantage to strafe and dodge, making it far easier to avoid damage. Taking the initiative to create such vantage points using stair builds can apply almost immediate pressure to opponents because they are forced to rebuild or leave cover quicker than they otherwise would.

Strategy 2: Building Cover for Defense

Fortnite defensive stairs builds consist of three stair pieces coming out of the top back of a wall or floor which gives moderate cover protection to players camping behind them through zone shifts, shooting, etc. The builds require only that a cone or floor piece be placed on top of them to provide additional protection from above. This stair formation is moderately to highly effective depending on the situation. This entry from Rocket League Success presents Fortnite defensive stairs and other building techniques.

Strategy 3: Building Stairs for Quick Escapes

Another feature of stair editing in Fortnite surrounding quick escapes includes planning for tree-bound escapes away from hostile situations. Czrbravo explains that whether during a battle or when someone is rushing to tackle a build, developing the skill to edit stairs quickly can save you time and prevent you from being touched. Fully utilizing the building bounds on a stair rush can help you avoid taking unnecessary damage especially if another person is shooting grenades or bombs at you.

Services such as turbo-building stairs, pyramiding, or floor edits can be disabled for a moment with pause edits to re-route building temporarily when under a rain of harmful explosives such as stink bombs.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Edit Stairs in Fortnite?

What are the basic steps to edit stairs in Fortnite?

To edit stairs in Fortnite, follow these steps:
1. Place the stairs in your desired location.
2. Select the edit option by pressing the edit button.
3. Choose the stairs you want to edit.
4. Use the edit options to make changes such as adding windows or doors.
5. Confirm your changes by pressing the edit button again.

How do I rotate stairs in Fortnite?

To rotate stairs in Fortnite, select the edit option and then click on the rotation button. Use your mouse or controller to adjust the angle of the stairs as desired.

Can I edit stairs while in the middle of a battle?

Yes, you can edit stairs in the middle of a battle, but it is not recommended as it can leave you vulnerable to attacks. It is best to edit stairs before engaging in a fight or during a break in battle.

How do I reset edited stairs back to their original form?

To reset edited stairs, simply select the undo option while in edit mode. This will revert the stairs back to their original form.

What are some advanced techniques for editing stairs in Fortnite?

Some advanced techniques for editing stairs in Fortnite include creating double or triple-layered stairs, creating unique designs by combining various edit options, and using editing to quickly navigate through structures.

Is there a way to practice editing stairs in Fortnite?

Yes, you can practice editing stairs in Fortnite by playing creative mode or using third-party editing courses. These provide a safe and controlled environment to improve your editing skills.