Much of your time in LEGO Fortnite is spent creating huge buildings for your villages. These look great close up - and from a distance - and will help you populate the land. In order to do a lot of the dirty work you'll need tools and refined items, however, and that's where crafting comes into play. You'll need to spend a lot of time at workbenches to make your building dreams a reality.
This guide will teach you how to craft items in LEGO Fortnite. The process changes a little bit depending on the item you want to create, though you always need to start with the same step.
Step 1: Set up a crafting station
Unlike buildings, which you can set up anywhere, you'll need a crafting station of some kind in order to craft items and tools. The most basic of these is the Crafting Bench, which is available once you set up your first Simple Shack and Campfire, and you'll unlock more (Lumber Mill, Grill, Spinning Wheel, etc.) as you build your first village.
Crafting stations are located under the Stations tab in the Build menu, and they're the first thing you see when you open that menu. Check the requirements on the right side of the screen to see if you've got everything you need, then plonk the station down. Done! Make sure you put the crafting station under some shelter, or it won't work when there's rain.
Step 2: Interact with the crafting station
Before you can craft anything you'll need to step up to the crafting station. Hit the button indicated on the screen and you'll open the crafting menu for that station. What happens next depends on the nature of the crafting station:
- If you're using a Crafting Bench you'll receive a series of options for creating simple tools, namely Forest Axes, Pickaxes, and Shovels. Highlight the item you want to craft, then hit the 'Craft' button (check the bottom-right corner of the screen for your system's button). After a quick passage of time the item will go into your inventory.
- If you're using a crafting station other than a Crafting Bench, such as a Lumber Mill, you won't get the items immediately. If you look at the top of the screen you'll see an arrow with an icon on both sides. Choose the Recipe you want to create from the menu on the left, then use the arrow keys / arrow pad to indicate how many of that resource you want to create. Work will begin immediately.
Step 3: Wait
Assuming you're not using a Crafting Bench, you can exit out of the crafting menu and go about your business. The crafting station will automatically work on the items you ordered, and once they're all done you can go pick them up. Click the 'Remove All' button (again, down in the bottom-right corner) to take the stack of completed items. You'll need space in your inventory to pick everything up. The number of completed items appears in a word bubble above the station.
And that's that! You've learned how to craft items. There are many stations to make and items to craft, but the process is pretty much the same for all of them.
Upgrading the Crafting Bench
For the most part the work stations you unlock are fully-equipped from the start. The Crafting Bench is, again, the exception. If you check the top of the crafting menu when inspecting the Crafting Bench you'll see that you can tab over to the Bench Upgrade menu. Here you can upgrade the Crafting Bench using the materials listed in the middle of the screen.
This is highly recommended, as the tools you can create with the Crafting Bench early on are... not great. Get at least an intermediate-level Crafting Bench as early as you can and you'll notice a marked improvement to your base-building operations. Happy crafting!