Fortnite Chapter 2: How to Drive Boats and Swim

Fortnite players have two new ways to get around the new map now that Chapter 2 has begun, and both of them involve being in the water. The highly anticipated return of Fortnite after being taken offline has brought with it a swimming mechanic and a new vehicle now that there are boats in the rivers for players to pile into. You can still shoot while you’re in the water and the boats are armed with their own weapons, so you’ll want to familiarize yourself with both of those new mechanics by learning how to swim and pilot these boats.

Swimming is as easy as it sounds in Fortnite – pretty much all you have to do us just hop into the water. The new map has plenty of locations to swim, so just find part of the river and jump in. You don’t have to worry about taking fall damage when diving into the water, so it can be used to get out of tricky situations if you’ve built yourself high up into the air.

There are of course some controls you’ll want to know about when swimming. Players will sometimes find themselves just floating in the water when they hop in, and it’s been found that using the sprint button while moving forward will make sure that you’re in the swimming animation. To move even faster, you can hit the jump button while you’re already in the water and you’ll perform a sort of dolphin dive to get moving even quicker. While you’re swimming, you can still aim your weapon and fire in case there’s someone else in the water with your or you’re racing against someone else for a boat.

The boats, like other Fortnite vehicles, provide a quicker way to get around the map while also giving players some protection and other means of going on the offensive. The boasts have multiple seats to fit several players from a squad into one vehicle and are capable of quick turns to navigate the winding rivers. They also come outfitted with a boost function to move even quicker along with missiles to take out anyone who’s in the way of your boating trip. Once you hop into a boat, you’ll see all the controls show up like you would in other vehicles to teach you how to pilot them.

Fortnite’s second chapter launched earlier today with a new trailer and another battle pass. Epic Games is letting players find out what’s new in the game before giving a full set of patch notes, so expect to see many more mechanics discovered this week.