Fortnite Rocket Racing arrived along with Festival and Lego, but it hasn’t quite gotten the same focus as the other two modes. As more time has passed though, Rocket Racing’s appeal seems to be growing. As a racing game with a ranking system, it’s a lot better for long-term play. However, on the surface Rocket Racing isn’t as simple as it seems. If you want to make Unreal, there are a few Rocket Racing tips you’ll need to master first.

Fortnite Rocket Racing Tips

The Startline Boost

The first thing you do in any round of Rocket Racing is the startline boost. This is the percentage of a boost that you get to fly off ahead. It depends on how well you time your engine starting on the green light. Ideally, you want 100%. Getting a high percentage reliably is much better though.

How can you do this? It really just comes down to timing, which will get easier with practice. One of the most important Rocket Racing tips for this is to have sound on. It’s considerably easier to time with all of the associated sounds than in silence. On-screen sound effects are part of the best Fortnite settings, but here, proper sound might be needed too.

Try to hit each of the four lights, by the last one with green you should have the timing down quite a bit better.

Maximizing Boost

The main mechanic for Rocket League Racing is boosting. You have a boost bar that will fill as you drift or draft. You can hold three boosts at once. Any more and you’ll stop charging them. Using your first boost whenever you get it isn’t effective. However, once you hit three you need to boost quickly to stop you from wasting the potential to build more boosts.

Timing Your Boosts – Fortnite Rocket Racing Tips

Timing your boosts is one of the trickier strategies, and players have differing opinions. A lot of it will come down to which course you’re on, but there are a few rules of thumb that can help you.

The first is saving a boost until last. Another is that boosts are best utilized on straight sections of road. These are spots where you’re not drifting and won’t lose any of the benefits of the boost.

Outside of that, it’s important to remember you perform better out of first place. Not in a motivational way, but in a literal way. There’s slight rubber banding in Rocket Racing where you’ll gain boosts and travel quicker through drafting, by not being in first place. It doesn’t make sense to race ahead in the first lap, using all your boosts, and miss out on that extra build-up.

Instead, it’s better to wait for your boosts until your final lap. Saving all but your third boost for that last lap. Unless there’s a map with a skip that depends on a boost, then you’ll have to use one per lap to keep up. More maps are added all the time in Fortnite updates too.

Recovering from Demolishing

Sometimes you’ll demolish. Good Rocket racing tips might be to not crash, but it still happens. No one does it on purpose. How do you recover though?

Some people would suggest burning a boost, but if it’s your only one and the pack isn’t that far ahead, it might not be worthwhile. As long as you’re close enough to other players to use drafting to catch up, you don’t need to get desperate. Otherwise, a boost might be necessary to get there.

Drift as Much as Possible

Drifting builds boosts. If you’re using the optimal route already, its drifting that’s going to let you get ahead of your opponent. Drifting as much as possible is key.

Part of this can even be drifting down straights that are wide enough. Similar to old-fashioned snaking in Mario Kart. Although, Fortnite’s full cars don’t have the maneuverability to make it viable everywhere like in the kart racer. Drifting as much as possible means more opportunities to go faster than opponents.

Boost Over the Finish Line

The final lap is the most important. If you’re remotely out of the basic Fortnite ranks, you’ve likely noticed what everyone does at the end of the race. You always save your last boost for getting over that finish line. If you can cross it even a second ahead, you’ve beaten the person behind you.

Boosting over the finish is the easiest time to use one of your bursts of energy. If you don’t, you can slip a lot of places in the rankings in a few seconds.

Watch out for Crowds – Rocket Racing Tips

These are a problem. Rocket Racing allows barging. In tight spaces where loads of cars are hitting the same boost pads, you’ll get knocked off course. It’s best to avoid the pack where possible. Even if that means dropping back slightly. It can allow you the space to draft behind them, and then overtake the pack rather than getting knocked around.

The Optimal Route

Every Rocket Racing Map has an optimal route. Sometimes it’s obvious differences like flying through waterfalls to find big shortcuts. Over time, it’s craftier, like holding a sideways drift in the air to cut slight seconds off taking the straight route.

Once a track is solved, it’s pretty simple to find the optimal route for it. That means the shortest out of the different lanes you can take when to take a wall or ceiling track, and to hit every possible boost pad.

This will get you farther than you think. Players in Rocket Racing ranked below, or around elite frequently take sub-optimal routes. However, once you’re threatening to make Unreal it becomes not enough to know the route. This is one of the Rocket Racing tips that’s great at first but is just the bare minimum in higher ranks.

Drift Boosts

Your max speed goes up while boosting, and drifting. Coming out of a drift gives you a mini turbo, which you should use as much as possible. A lot of the best racing simulator games work like this. Try to master the short drift, the slight lean into a drift that doesn’t turn you fully. It gives you the boost without having to commit to a full turn.

Bugs and Ranked Rocket Racing Tips

Rocket Racing has a lot of bugs and a harsh ranking system. Sometimes you load in and can’t move at all even when the race starts. Other times your car does 360s. If you’ve played enough, you’ve probably run into a problem.

Where it gets frustrating is when a bug knocks you down 4 races of progress in your ranks. What are Rocket Racing tips for dealing with this? It’s just part of the game at this point.

We’ve had lengths of time where the title performed a lot better, and times where there were more bugs. If you get one of these (especially the no movement right from the start one) it can be very annoying, especially when you then get warned you’re being penalized for quitting. There’s nothing you can do though. These affect every player, so it isn’t like your competition is having things any easier.

Does this make Rocket Racing dead game? No, Rocket Racing is still getting frequent updates, and bugs should get fixed eventually.