Getting Started: LEGO® Fortnite® Sandbox Mode

LEGO® Fortnite® worlds are like a dream come true: Set free in a gigantic playground with a bottomless box of LEGO bricks and elements, you can basically build whatever you can imagine.

In this LEGO Fortnite Sandbox guide, we’ll show you how to navigate that dream come true, explaining what makes these worlds unique, how you can access everything through your menus, how to build with blueprints and how to build whatever you want almost wherever you want.

Your Sandbox, Your World

LEGO Fortnite players have a choice of two modes to discover.

In a LEGO Fortnite Survival world, you have to build, gather, craft, fight enemies and explore. If you want to build a log cabin, you’ll have to find the wood first. In a Sandbox world, none of that is necessary, resource gathering isn’t required. These safe worlds are yours to shape, poke, prod and experiment with. You can build massive cities, level them to the ground and start again. It’s your decision.

People who’ve played Fortnite before will recognize their surroundings immediately. That’s because LEGO Fortnite is set in the natural world of Fortnite, with LEGO bricks and elements just beneath the surface. Actually, they’re sometimes on the surface, too, as the adorable cows and sheep prove.

Also, LEGO Fortnite’s inhabitants, including familiar Fortnite faces like Cuddle Team Leader and Brite Bomber – are all transformed into their LEGO counterparts. Even Fortnite Outfits – the cosmetics that players wear in-game – magically transform from Fortnite Style into LEGO Style, just as each player’s character does.

The default options for creating a Sandbox world hint at the kind of experience it was designed for. Toggles for enemies, hunger and temperature are turned off by default. The focus here is on exploring and building, not survival. That said, you’re free to turn those things on if you want a bit of a challenge – or you could turn the stamina requirements off and never have to pause and catch your breath while running.

The Basic Building Blocks of Menus

Start a Sandbox world, and what’s next is up to you, but building is a pretty great place to start. And building begins inside of the Build menu, which is only a button-press away on your controller or keyboard.

Inside the Build menu, you’ll find a few different tabs.

• Utility holds Stations, which are basically machines that process parts like wood into tools like shovels. It also has village-focused items like a Village Square, which effectively declares the area surrounding it a place for people to hang out, visit and live.

• Toys are for interactive elements like wheels, balloons and thrusters, which you can attach to your creations and make them move.

• Builds is where premade structures like shacks and log cabins and NINJAGO®-inspired shogun palaces live.

• Building Parts is the place to find the individual bricks that make up the builds and anything you want to create.

• Furniture is, believe it or not, where you’ll find furniture like beds, tables and chairs.

• Decorations hold things that make your creations a little nicer, like mailboxes, baking utensils and plants.

Those simple menus are the gateways to your endless creativity. All that’s left is figuring out how to put it all together.

How to Build With Blueprints

Picking a structure from the Build menu is the easiest way to get started because it guides you though the process of putting together complex structures. Select the Simple Shack from the Build menu, and pick a place to put it. Where isn’t super important right now, so feel free to get creative or just place it right where you’re standing, and you’ll see that LEGO Fortnite cleared some space and created your building’s foundation.

Walk close enough to the foundation you just laid, and the game will prompt you to Start Build. Hit the associated button, and it’s time to make your house.

Pick a piece from the menu that loads. You have three options, but it doesn’t matter which one you choose. Just pick one, and point your reticle (that little white dot in the middle of your screen) at the blue-tinted areas you see. When it’s pointed at the correct position for your piece, it will snap into place. Hit the build button again, and the part will snap into place with all of the clicky joy of building a real-world LEGO set.

If you’re having trouble finding where to put your piece, just double-tap your jump button, and you can take to the air and fly around to discover the best place to hover and aim while building.

Simple as that! No matter what you’re building in LEGO Fortnite, it’s as simple as picking the part you want, picking the location of the part and placing the part.

And if you don’t like what you built for whatever reason, it’s even easier to make it go away. Just walk up to it and attack, and within a few hits, it’ll be gone.

Your Build menu doesn’t have everything you can use, though. If you want what we’d generally call tools, which includes everything from axes to shovels and raw materials like wood, you can grab those from your All Items menu. Just select what you want and hit the Add button.

The Sky’s the Limit

Prefabricated builds are a lot of fun – and they all look great, too – but building your own creations is where it gets really wild.

In the Toys tab within the Build menu, you’ll find one of the most amazing and versatile pieces in the game: the Dynamic Foundation. This is how the wildest creations get started. Place one of those and you can attach other toys to it, like wheels to make your own vehicle or rockets to propel your creation over land and across the water. Or imagine attaching balloons to it, and taking to the skies above your world, and then attaching a Small Thruster and an Activation Switch to control it, and now you can explore your world from the comfort of your own flying machine!

Dynamic Foundations are loads of fun. And they’re what you might call advanced buildings, so you have to experiment to find out what works and what doesn’t. Use the nudge placement tool to place your pieces just right. And don’t hesitate to fly and build from the air. The perspective it offers is one of the best things about Sandbox Mode!

Anything you attach to or build on top of the Dynamic Foundation can be affected by the Toys you place on it and the game’s physics. There is one exception though: Blueprint builds can’t be placed on Dynamic Foundations. These creations are essentially stuck to where they’ve been built.

Sandbox Mode gives you a chance to load your world with hundreds of thousands of LEGO bricks and elements, building anything your imagination can conceive. Add into that the game’s physics and Toys, and you find yourself in a world of imagination powered by Fortnite play and LEGO creativity.