Fortnite is in Chapter 7 Season 4, Override, which replaced Runners on 20 August 2026, and this season made the usual weapon tier list a shakier object than it has ever been: Loot Hacks let each player spend Sprite Dust to change what their own chests drop. Two people in one match are not looting the same game. So this list ranks archetypes and rarity, which stay true for everyone, and names weapons only where Epic itself names them.
If you want the fastest usable version: a mid-rarity shotgun and a purple assault rifle win more matches than any exotic you are saving a slot for.
Short answer
- The season is Override (Chapter 7 Season 4), started 20-21 August 2026, themed around Sonic, Tetris and Pac-Man crossovers.
- Loot Hacks change your personal chest drops, so a single fixed tier list of every gun no longer describes the game.
- Rank shotgun first, mid-range rifle second, mobility third; the fourth gun is the slot most people waste.
- Rarity beats model inside the same archetype — a purple ordinary rifle outguns a grey good one.
- Sprites are in Ranked with their abilities disabled, so your casual loadout and your ranked loadout are not the same loadout.
- Build your own board in the tier list maker: paste the guns you actually see and rank those.
Why does a weapon tier list work differently in Override?
Two things changed at once, and both of them undermine the format.
The first is Loot Hacks. Epic's in-game notes describe them plainly: spend Sprite Dust on a Loot Hack and you customise what drops from chests, adding bonus items that cannot be found anywhere else. A tier list assumes everyone is choosing from the same shelf. This season that assumption is gone.
The second is Sprites. They are collectible, they level up, they carry Sprite Powers — and Epic added them to Ranked with abilities disabled, to keep competition even. That is a clean, official statement that the casual pool and the ranked pool behave differently.
So the honest object to rank is not a list of guns. It is the question every drop actually asks: what should occupy each of your five slots.
The rows that survive the season
Ranked for solo Ranked play, Chapter 7 Season 4, our assessment and not Epic's.
| Slot | Row | What goes there and why |
|---|---|---|
| Pump-style shotgun | S | Fortnite is still decided at build-fight range. One shot that removes half a health bar beats any amount of sustained damage. |
| Assault rifle, purple or better | S | The only weapon that answers a player 40 metres away without you rotating; rarity here is worth more than model. |
| Mobility item | A | The third slot most winners carry. It turns a lost fight into a reset and a bad rotation into a good one. |
| Shields and heals | A | Two stacks minimum. A player with full shields and a grey shotgun beats a player with gold guns and 60 health more often than anyone admits. |
| SMG | B | Fills the gap when your shotgun misses, and no more than that. In a slot fight it loses to a mobility item. |
| Auto shotgun | B | Forgiving to aim, punishing to rely on: the damage arrives too slowly against anyone who can build. |
| Marksman or sniper | B | One useful role — opening a fight you choose. In a moving endgame it is dead weight. |
| Pistols | C | With one exception per season, a pistol is what you carry until you find something else. |
The one category that does not fit a row is the season Mythic. Epic's own text for Override names Midas' Masterpiece among this season's items, alongside the crossover gear — the 8-Bit Shotgun and its Enhanced version, the Mega Buster, the Tetris Rift and the Sonic Power Sneakers. A Mythic is not an upgraded floor weapon, it is a separate gun with its own numbers, and it usually deserves whichever slot it can take. Whether it is worth walking across the map for is a different question, and the answer is usually no.
Rarity does more work than the model
Inside one archetype, rarity is the bigger lever. A higher-rarity version of the same weapon hits harder and handles better, which is why an upgraded common rifle regularly beats a rarer-looking gun of a worse type.
Two practical consequences, and both are slot decisions rather than gun decisions.
Upgrade before you swap. Trading a purple rifle for a blue one of a "better" model is a downgrade dressed as a find.
Enhanced versions are their own tier. This season's item names include both an ordinary and an Enhanced 8-Bit Shotgun. When a season ships both, treat the Enhanced version as a rarity step, not as a skin.
If your aim is the reason your shotgun rows keep changing rather than the guns, twenty minutes on the aim trainer before you queue does more for your placements than any list, and our Fortnite settings guide covers the input settings that make first-shot accuracy consistent.
What we could not verify
Epic no longer publishes public patch notes that list the loot pool for each update. We looked: the news page and the blog API both refuse anonymous requests, and the third-party trackers that keep a live pool are not sources we can put a date and a patch number against.
So this page does not print a complete gun list. The weapon names above come from Epic's own season text, and everything else we describe as an archetype, because that is the part we can stand behind.
Where a page you are reading does print a full pool with damage numbers per rarity, ask where those numbers came from and when. Datamined tables are usually right and occasionally a season out of date, and there is no way to tell which from the outside.
What belongs in the last slot instead of a fourth gun?
Mobility, then a second heal, then nothing.
The habit worth breaking is carrying a fourth weapon for a range you have already covered. A sniper next to a marksman rifle, or an SMG next to an auto shotgun, is one slot doing half a job twice. Meanwhile the players in the last circle are the ones who could reposition.
The exception is the crossover mobility items: this season's own list includes the Tetris Rift and the Sonic Power Sneakers, and items like those blur the line between a weapon slot and a movement slot. When one of them is in your pool, it is competing with your fourth gun and it usually wins.
Ranked play changes this calculation, because Sprite Powers are switched off there. Anything you had been treating as free movement in casual has to come out of your five slots instead.
What usually goes wrong
A tier list from last season is used this season. Symptom: half the guns on the page are not in the game. Cause: Fortnite rotates the pool at every season break, and Override started on 20-21 August 2026. What to do: check the season name on any list before you read it, and write yours on your own.
Loot Hacks are ignored. Symptom: an argument about a weapon nobody else is finding. Cause: a Loot Hack changed one player's chest drops and not the other's. What to do: say which Loot Hacks you were running when you built the list. It is a new line for tier lists and this season it matters more than the rank band.
Rarity is left out of the comparison. Symptom: two players insist on opposite orderings of the same two guns. Cause: one is comparing a gold to a blue. What to do: rank archetypes, then note the rarity you assumed, exactly as the table above does.
Ranked and casual are ranked together. Symptom: a loadout that works all afternoon and falls apart in Ranked. Cause: Sprites appear in Ranked with abilities disabled, so a build leaning on a Sprite Power does not exist there. What to do: build two lists, or label the one you post.
Damage numbers are quoted with no source. Symptom: exact per-rarity DPS in a comment with nothing behind it. Cause: Epic publishes none publicly, so the figure came from a datamine of unknown vintage. What to do: treat unsourced numbers as opinions. The same failure, with real threads behind it, is dissected in our guide to tier lists people argue with.
Rank the pool you actually see
The useful version of this list is the one built from your last ten matches, not from a page. Drop the guns you keep finding into the tier list maker, write the season and your Loot Hacks into a row label, and post the link so someone can move one item and show you why you are wrong.
If you would rather rank characters, the same treatment is applied to Valorant agents and Apex legends, and the version where the economy does the ranking for you is the CS2 weapon tier list. And if you are only here to find out which kind of player you are, the Fortnite quiz takes two minutes.
FAQ
What season is Fortnite in right now?
Chapter 7 Season 4, called Override. Epic's own content service names it Season 4: Override, and the previous season, Runners, ended on 20 August 2026, which puts the start of Override on 20-21 August. The season theme is built around gaming crossovers, with areas inspired by Sonic, Tetris and Pac-Man.
What are Loot Hacks and why do they break tier lists?
A Loot Hack is bought with Sprite Dust and changes what drops from chests for you, including bonus items that cannot be found any other way. That means two players in the same match can be pulling from different pools. A single ranked list of every gun stops describing the game; what you can rank is archetypes and rarity.
Do Sprites work in Ranked?
They appear, but with their abilities switched off. Epic's in-game notes say Sprites were added to Ranked with abilities disabled to keep competition even, so a build that leans on a Sprite Power in casual modes simply does not exist in Ranked. Rank your loadout twice if you play both.
Does rarity matter more than the weapon model?
Usually, yes. Within the same archetype a higher rarity means more damage per shot and better handling, so a purple version of an ordinary assault rifle beats a grey version of a better one. The exception is a Mythic, which is its own weapon rather than an upgraded copy of a floor gun.
Where can I see the full current loot pool?
Nowhere official. Epic no longer publishes public patch notes listing the loot pool for each update, and the third-party trackers that keep one are not something we can date and verify. This page names only the weapons that appear in Epic's own season text and ranks archetypes instead of pretending to a complete list.