How to Upgrade Your LEGO® Fortnite® Tools

Who’s your most important, most trustworthy, most loyal companion in LEGO® Fortnite®? Your tools! Your Axe, Pickaxe and Shovel are handy pieces of equipment, vital to harvesting the materials you’ll need to advance your abilities and explore further into your world.

Along the way, you’ll need to upgrade them, making them sturdier and stronger in the process. Upgrading your tools takes a lot of materials, and to gather those materials you’ll need to – you guessed it! – use your tools. It’s a beautiful circle of life, it is.

Let’s look at LEGO Fortnite’s tool upgrades, find out what you need for each one and explain what they can do!

Common Forest Axe

Your Forest Axe is used to chop down trees and bushes and gather Wood. You’ll start off with the Common Forest Axe version, which can only cut down the basic trees in the overworld and caves.

Uncommon Forest Axe

To unlock this improved Uncommon Forest Axe, you’ll need to have upgraded your Crafting Bench once, and you’ll also need 3 Bones and 3 Wooden Rods for the recipe. Bones come from defeating the Skeletons that come out at night, and you’ll need to put Wood in a Lumber Mill to craft Wooden Rods.

The Uncommon Forest Axe can chop down Knotroot, which you can find in caves.

Rare Forest Axe

The Rare Forest Axe requires another Crafting Bench upgrade, 5 Cut Amber and 3 Knotroot Rods. Like before, the Knotroot Rods can be made with the Lumber Mill, but Cut Amber requires the Gem Cutter. You can find Rough Amber in the Dry Valley biomes, where it grows in big lumps on the side of cliffs.

The Rare Forest Axe can chop Flexwood, which is inside the cacti in the desert.

Epic Forest Axe

Your final upgrade, the Epic Forest Axe, needs the final Crafting Bench upgrade, 3 Copper Bars and 3 Knotroot Rods. Copper Bars need the Smelter, and you’ll need to head into the lava caves to find the materials to make that. That’s pretty lucky, because you’ll also find the Copper in there.

The Epic Forest Axe can cut down Frostpine trees in the cold areas of the map – the Frostlands biomes.

Common Pickaxe

The Pickaxe turns rocks into Granite, which is used for pretty much all of your early-game builds and crafts, from tools to houses and everything in-between, but it never stops being useful – even late-game builds use Granite! This Common version can only destroy gray rocks for now.

Uncommon Pickaxe

You’ll need to upgrade to the Uncommon Pickaxe when you start exploring caves, which are full of rocks that need a harder Pickaxe to mine. The Uncommon Pickaxe requires an upgraded Crafting Bench, 3 Knotroot Rods and 3 Bones, just like the Uncommon Forest Axe. Collect Bones from defeated Skeletons, get Knotroot inside caves, and use a Lumber Mill to turn them into Knotroot Rods. Because Knotroot requires an upgraded Axe – the Uncommon Forest Axe – to chop down, you’ll need to make that before you can craft this Pickaxe.

The Uncommon Pickaxe can mine Marble and Rough Amber.

Rare Pickaxe

The Rare Pickaxe requires another upgrade for your Crafting Bench, 3 Flexwood Rods and 3 Sand Claws. You can get Flexwood using the Rare Forest Axe on the cacti of the desert-like Dry Valley biomes. Gather Sand Claws from defeating Wolves in the desert biomes. They’re quite hard to defeat, so upgrade your weapons!

This Rare Pickaxe can mine Copper, Obsidian and Rough Ruby.

Epic Pickaxe

Your final upgrade, the Epic Pickaxe, requires the fully upgraded Crafting Bench, 8 Obsidian Slabs and 5 Frostpine Rods. You’ll need to upgrade your way all the way to an Epic Forest Axe to chop down the Frostpine trees in the icy areas of the map – the Frostlands biomes – and then head into the lava caves in the desert-like Dry Valley biomes to mine Obsidian before turning it into Obsidian Slabs with the Stone Breaker.

The Epic Pickaxe can mine Iron, Malachite and Rough Sapphire.

Shovel Upgrades

The Shovel is the least vital of your tools, but it has its uses. Each subsequent upgrade makes the shovel dig faster, improves the durability, gets you more soil per scoop and can even dig up rarer items like seeds.

The Shovel is used to find Soil, which is primarily used to build plots for farming. That’s a very important part of the LEGO Fortnite ecosystem, because without food, you won’t last very long.

Crafting Shovel upgrades is much simpler, even though they require a lot of materials:

• Uncommon Shovel – 3 Knotroot Rods, 1 Plank
• Rare Shovel – 8 Copper Bars
• Epic Shovel – 8 Iron Bars

What About Durability?

Every one of your tools has a durability meter, which is worth keeping an eye on. If it reaches zero, the item will break. You can’t repair your tools, so it’s best to either reserve your upgraded tools for when you really need them or to make a few before you go out adventuring.

What Tool Should I Upgrade First?

That’s easy – the Forest Axe. This upgrade is necessary to get the materials for all the other tool upgrades.

What About Weapons?

There are currently four types of weapon: the Sword, the Recurve Crossbow, the Hunting Dagger and Dynamite.

The Sword is what you’ll be using the most, because it lets you get up close to enemies and deals the most damage. Each upgrade will increase the amount of damage it does.

The Recurve Crossbow is for attacking enemies from a distance, keeping you safe from their attacks, but it requires Arrows that you’ll either have to make yourself or pick up from fallen enemies. Its upgrades also increase damage.

The Hunting Dagger is for attacking enemies in close combat, and it’s more efficient when enemies are distracted! Each upgrade will increase the amount of damage it does. Finally, there’s Dynamite, which does massive damage but is obviously extremely dangerous to be around. It’s also expensive to make. You can also use it to mine resources really quickly, saving your tools from getting damaged.

Now that you know how to upgrade your tools, you’re ready to adventure into the great wild yonder!