Get Good With Fortnite’s Kinetic Boomerang

Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 3 has introduced a ton of cool new gimmicks to Battle Royale, and the one we’re all probably going to be using the most is the Kinetic Boomerang. If you were hoping this new weapon would somehow double as a mobility device like the Kinetic Blade and Shockwave Hammer did, sorry–no such luck. This thing is only for attacking your enemies.

The Kinetic Boomerang is, thankfully, fairly easy to find. They drop from chests, spawn as floor loot, and, like the Kinetic Blade, there are dedicated boomerang stands in the new jungle area–look for those old temple ruins that are scattered all throughout that area–where they’re guaranteed to spawn every game.

The Kinetic Boomerang is pretty simple in concept: You throw it, it does damage to the first player or object that it hits–60 damage to players–and then it comes back to you. And it will cause damage to anything it hits along the way back to you. There’s no cooldown–as soon as it returns to your hand, you’re free to throw it again. But the further you throw it, of course, the longer it’s going to take to get back to you.

This is why the Kinetic Boomerang has a second function: You can manually recall it with the secondary fire button, which immediately sets off a small explosion before sending the boomerang back to you–though the area-of-effect is fairly small. The explosion is a nice bonus, but trying to use the boomerang for precision area damage probably won’t be very effective for most players.

But there also won’t be much need to try, because the boomerang itself has some pretty dramatic magnetism to it. You kinda just have to look in the general area of the person you’re fighting to hit them with the boomerang–it’s built so you can “throw from the hip,” so to speak. It’s a good panic weapon in that way, because it’s fairly easy to be effective with while you’re on the run.

In mechanical terms, using the Kinetic Boomerang is pretty similar to using a throwable lightsaber, though Darth Vader’s lightsaber was harder to aim with. In terms of that auto-aim sort of quality it has, it actually reminds me most of the Naruto Paper Bomb Kunai mythic from Chapter 2 Season 8.

The Kinetic Boomerang won’t work as your primary weapon in most situations. It just doesn’t do enough damage fast enough for most fights. But it’s specifically very good for one extremely common scenario: When you’ve really lit somebody up but they’re scrambling hard and are at risk of getting away. When you just can’t get that last bullet to hit, the boomerang comes through in the clutch.

It’s also pretty effective in conjunction with a Havoc Pump Shotgun, especially if you can hit your headshots with the Havoc. Though the switch-and-ready speed between those two weapons is obnoxiously slow, it can still be a very potent combo if you get the rhythm down.

The Boomerang will also be key this season because of the ridiculously dense foliage in the new jungle areas of the map. If you’re worried about folks camping in bushes or hiding in the leaves or the mud, the Boomerang is a great tool for checking out potential hiding spots. And since you can use the Boomerang as much as you want without any risk of losing it, it’ll be good practice to use it that way during those times when everything seems too quiet. We’re still in the first hours of this season, though, and we’ll be spending all season figuring out new ways to use this awesome thing. It’ll be fun.