How do preferred item slots work in Fortnite, explained

To not compromise your Victory Royale by spending valuable time organizing inventory slots, Fortnite has a convenient option to configure your preferred item slots in the game’s settings. If you don’t want to deal with the hassle of inventory management during a match, read on to find out how to use preferred item slots next time you drop down to the island.

Why use preferred item slots in Fortnite?

Imagine this scenario. You’re in a tight 1v1, giving it your all without breaking a sweat. The enemy player advances towards you, so you flick the mouse wheel to use your shotgun. But then unexpectedly, your player character kneels down in the middle of the mania to bathe themselves in a Medkit while you look on in horror as the enemy rains down bullets on you. The Medkit you picked up earlier took the spot of your shotgun. To avoid this happening, you need simply configure the preferred item slots for each class of item so they don’t take each other’s spot, as explained below.

How to set up preferred item slots

To configure preferred item slots, first open up Fortnite Settings. When you go into the settings menu, select the second tab at the top which is called Game. In the Game tab, there is a section called Combat: Preferred item slots is the fifth option in that section. Clicking configure sends you to a menu where you can turn preferred item slots on or off and customize your inventory slots configuration.

Customizing item slots in Fortnite

Setting preferred item slots allows you to assign a certain inventory slot in your loadout to a specific weapon class or item type. The different classes you can assign each of the five inventory slots to are Assault Rifle, Shotgun, SMG, Pistol, Sniper or Bow, Projectile Launcher, Utility, or Consumable Item. This way, whenever you pick up a certain class of weapon e.g., a shotgun, and set it to the first slot i.e. loadout slot 1, it will automatically move to that first slot even if there are empty spaces elsewhere in your inventory. This way, you’ll always know where your weapons are without looking at the inventory quick bar itself.

The best options I’ve found to work well are:

Loadout Slot 1: Shotgun

Loadout Slot 2: SMG/Pistol

Loadout Slot 3: Assault Rifle

Loadout Slot 4: Sniper

Loadout Slot 5: Consumable Item

Feel free to use the above loadout as a starting point and make changes that suit your playstyle later on. For example, you can add either SMG or Pistol to your 2^nd loadout slot depending on which weapon you use more frequently. The same can be applied to loadout slot 4, where you can replace Sniper with Launcher if you’re more of a rocket missile person.

For more guides, check out our other Fortnite articles.