Fortnite’s new Treasure Hunters season is such a massive success that the battle royale’s player counts are five times higher than last week, because everybody and their mothers want in on the search for Tim Sweeney’s golden ticket. It grants everything in the item shop for free, both for two weeks this year and two more weeks in 2027. That means two things: Most of the people playing Fortnite right now haven’t been playing recently, and folks aren’t necessarily playing to win.
The way the hunt works is that every time you or one of your teammates opens a treasure chest, there’s a chance that a rare prize will be granted to the whole party. It could be a golden A$AP Rocky skin, a Mercedes G-Wagon skin, or the extremely elusive Pirate Shop Access token, which makes virtually the whole shop free. The hunt for that Pirate Shop token in particular has changed the way people play BR. The primary goal for many players is now not to win, but to open as many chests as possible in pursuit of the token.
Since your whole squad gets any of these treasures regardless of who found them, four-player Squad fills have been the place to go for the hunt–understandably, most of us don’t have enough friends who want to play Fortnite 12 hours a day to keep the squad filled on our own. Playing Squad fills has always been a bit of crapshoot in terms of the quality of your teammates, but the new treasure hunt has folks acting a lot more erratic than usual.
While playing entirely too much Fortnite this week, I’ve identified a few player profiles–let’s call them recurring characters–that I’ve been encountering over and over again. While your teammates each game are randomly assigned, they typically follow one of a handful of archetypes during the hunt. I’ve played about 100 games of Squad fills since the new Treasure Hunters mini-season began on Sunday, and nearly all of my teammates ended up being one of these types of players.
The Five People You Meet In Fortnite’s Treasure Hunt
The Looter
This person is on a mission to open as many chests as they possibly can, and they will ignore everything else going on during the match. They might land near you, but they won’t help you if you get into a fight, because they have something more important to do. A lot of these folks have so little desire to engage with the actual game that they end up hanging out deep in the storm, looting by themselves for most of every match. These types sometimes come in pairs.
The Loner
This person will land as far away from the rest of the team as they can, and then they’ll proceed to play the whole match as if they were in solos because they think the key to min/maxing the squads chest-looting is to spread out as far as possible. If they don’t die immediately, you’ll forget they exist until the rest of your team wipes and you all end up spectating this guy doing whatever.
The Hunter
This person is the Looter’s natural predator. They just want to get into fights, and they know this influx of new players and folks who haven’t played in a while, most of whom are more interested in looting than fighting, is a great opportunity to pad their stats. But these folks are so aggressive that they either end up running off alone and wiping the lobby by themselves or getting killed quickly–but it’s usually the latter.
The AFKer
This type just shows up and does nothing at all. They drop from the bus at the end of the line and float in the water until the storm kills them. During any other season, we would assume this kind of behavior is an accident, but it’s happening too often for that to be the case right now. These folks are here to let other folks farm chests for them.
The Regular Player
There are still some people who play Fortnite the usual way, sticking together and looting carefully and playing strategically as a team in hopes of pulling out a win. These folks know that the chance of getting a Pirate Shop token is infinitesimally small, and so they largely just play the way they normally would and don’t worry about the prizes. With how preoccupied so many people are with the Treasure Hunt, if you manage to pull a squad with two or three of these folks, you’re probably going to win the round.
Fortunately, this state of affairs won’t last forever. The Pirate Shop token will only be around during this One Piece-themed mini-season, which only lasts until December 5. Let’s hope the Treasure Hunt doesn’t burn everyone out before Chapter 8 starts.
