Fortnite Chapter 4: The Best Creative Maps For Easy XP

While the Fortnite experience, including its seasonal battle pass, is without question centered on the game's battle royale mode, Epic Games gave its user-created Creative modes a big boost a few seasons back when they allowed players to earn battle pass XP from them. Since then, you've been able to unlock all those battle pass cosmetics playing a Creative team deathmatch mode, or a puzzle/platformer, or a rock mining simulator (yes, really) among others.

But Fortnite Creative is not the easiest thing to navigate, with thousands of user-made islands vying for our attention and a Discovery algorithm that often doesn't show the breadth of options. And there's not much way to know if a Creative map is any good until you go into it, since there's no user rating system in the game yet.

Fortunately for you, we ventured into a bunch of popular Creative game modes to find out which ones are actually worth playing if you're hoping for decent XP gains while you're having your fun. And we've come up with a list that has served us very well so far in Chapter 4 Season 1.

But first, a brief PSA. The rate of XP you get from a Creative mode will decrease the longer you play, and will return to normal after you stop playing Fortnite for a while. So it's best not to try to power grind through the whole pass too quickly. You'll save time by taking breaks.

OK, let's get to the list.

There are metric tons of these so-called "deathruns," which are basically Fortnite's version of the platforming genre. So you jump over pits and avoid spikes and poison darts and navigate obstacles and all that fun stuff, and along the way you collect coins that, at peak, give about 400 XP each. Since you'll be collecting a bunch of these each minute, plus also collecting XP for playtime and completing objectives and finding secrets, it adds up pretty quickly.

Island code: 1132-3482-8021

This is a Battlefield-style team deathmatch mode in which each team sets up at opposite ends of a big field with cliffs on each side that players can set up on, and vehicles of all types for players to play around with--planes, UFOs, tanks, you name it, they've got it. This map is enormous and usually full of people--meaning plenty of targets to practice on.

Island code: 2415-0054-2848

There's not much to this one, just a lot of shooting zombies for gold and then buying better guns and then shooting more zombies, and so on. A half-hour or so netted me a whole battle pass level, which is better than you'd probably get from two battle royale wins in a row.

Island Code: 3875-2194-3050

This has long been my personal favorite Creative map for warming up before a night of battle royale, and it's also a great source of steady XP if you're holding your own. This map, and its new XL version, have each been updated with the new Chapter 4 weapons, so even if you don't need warmups it's a good place to practice.

In addition to XP from fighting, both Black vs White maps contain a bunch of secret buttons (they currently look like Christmas present stickers stuck to the walls in various places) that each grant thousands of XP. And after an instance has been going for an hour, a vault opens that is full of XP tokens. And, like most Creative maps, you'll get periodic XP just for playing.

Island code: 8523-9292-0747

XL version: 5691-3101-3050

The creator of Black vs White recently put out this Christmas-themed team deathmatch map that shakes up the Black vs White design in some very cool ways while still maintaining the core concepts that make that map so effective. Plus, it's got giant gingerbread houses in it, and all the same cool XP bonuses that the Black vs White maps do, including the vaults.

And, yes, it does have the Chapter 4 guns.

Island code: 6168-4996-8938

In this mode, you will break rocks with your pickaxe, and you will sell those rocks that you broke so you can upgrade your pickaxe to break rocks more efficiently, and you'll go to new places to break new kinds of rocks, and so on. Yes, it is monotonous.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. I find it pretty relaxing, at least in moderation. And the XP gains I've gotten from breaking rocks in this mode while I zone out to an episode of The Sopranos at the end of a long day are better than what I've gotten in any other mode. It's not really an everyday mode, but it's always there when you're too tired to actually be good at anything.

Island code: 2452-3861-8509