Fortnite Chapter 7 Season 1, Pacific Break, drops battle royale players onto an entirely new island: the Golden Coast. The map trades the Japanese influences of Chapter 6 for a west-coast United States mashup, with POIs that echo Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Area 51, wrapped in a mix of desert, forest, and coastline.
Golden Coast overview: size, layout, and biomes
The Chapter 7 island is built around a broad western shoreline with three major biome types:
- Beach along the outer coastlines, where several named bays and surf spots sit right on the waterline.
- Desert running through large stretches of the interior, especially around casino and canyon POIs.
- Forest and hills occupying portions of the north and inland high ground, with suburbs and terraces.
The map is smaller than Chapter 6’s Oninoshima, which cuts down on dead time between fights and makes rotations between POIs faster. The center of the island is not a traditional city this time; instead, it’s anchored by a secretive research complex, Innoloop Labs, which plays into the season’s Rift and Zero Point experimentation.
All named POIs on the Chapter 7 Season 1 map
Golden Coast launches with 13 named locations. Many of them are clear riffs on real-world west-coast landmarks or genres, but they still behave like classic Fortnite drop spots: clustered loot, vehicles, and unique terrain.
| POI | Role and theme |
|---|---|
| Battlewood Boulevard | Hollywood-style city in the southwest, with a hillside sign, palm-lined streets, and dense urban loot routes. Functions as the main “capital” of the island. |
| Sandy Strip | Las Vegas–inspired casino district out in the desert. Expect multi-story interiors, tight corridors, and plenty of short-range engagements. |
| Innoloop Labs | Area 51–like research facility at the island’s center. High-value loot and experimental tech are concentrated here, with layered indoor and outdoor sightlines. |
| Sus Studios | Film and TV soundstage complex just off Battlewood. A mix of big warehouse spaces, sets, and backlot cover, fitting the season’s Hollywood angle. |
| Wonkeeland | Theme park in the northeast and a standout landmark. Includes a functional roller coaster and other rides, offering high ground and fast traversal while you fight through attractions. |
| Tiptop Terrace | Elevated hillside development with strong vertical advantage. Ideal for sniping or power positions over nearby lowlands. |
| Latte Landing | Coastal settlement along the northern shoreline. Combines docks and small-town buildings, with water flanks and boats within reach. |
| Painted Palms | Visually distinct palm grove influenced by a Zero Point anomaly, marked by a noticeable purple glow. Plays as a hybrid between open terrain and clustered tree cover. |
| Humble Hills | Suburban high-ground neighborhood with scattered houses and moderate loot density. Good for safer early drops and controlled rotations. |
| Bumpy Bay | Rugged coastal inlet with mixed sand and rocky formations. Offers short-range fights around rocks and solid access to the ocean. |
| Ripped Tides | Another rough coastal region, more exposed than Bumpy Bay. Encourages early skirmishes and quick disengages along the water. |
| Fore Fields | Wide-open fields that break up the otherwise dense city and canyon zones. Vehicle routes and long-range duels are common here. |
| Classified Canyon | Secluded canyon with strong loot potential. Tight rock walls and height differences reward smart positioning and ambushes. |
Every named POI sits either on or near the coast or along the key east–west routes across the desert and hills. That layout fits directly into the new tsunami-based drop system and the season’s emphasis on fast rotations.
Storm surfing: How drops work without the Battle Bus
The Battle Bus is gone, and the way you enter the map has been rebuilt around the “storm surfing” mechanic. Instead of flying over the island and choosing a drop from above, every match now starts on the giant wave that surrounds Golden Coast.
How storm surfing works:
- You spawn on a surfboard, riding the outer tsunami that encircles the island.
- You can steer left or right along the wave to line up with a specific section of coastline.
- Timed jumps down the face of the wave build extra speed and let you cover more distance before the wave throws you toward the island.
- The wave eventually launches you into the air; from there you glide in and commit to a landing spot along the coast.
You can’t drop directly into the central POIs from the wave, but you can pick almost any coastal entry point and work inward. That keeps early fights concentrated around beach and bay locations while still allowing strategic choice over your initial route toward Battlewood, Sandy Strip, or Innoloop Labs.
Later in the season there is a chance for the traditional Battle Bus to return as a random deployment method, but at launch, surfing defines every match’s opening moments.
New traversal and verticality tools on the map
Chapter 7 leans heavily into mobility to support the smaller, denser map. Several features are baked directly into the island’s design, not just the loot pool.
- Wingsuits appear as an item and as part of key traversal flows. When activated, they launch you upward and automatically deploy, letting you glide across large distances or chain movement from high ground to new POIs.
- Hot air balloons float over parts of Golden Coast. You can ride them to reposition across large areas or use them as improvised sniper nests when you need long sightlines over places like Fore Fields or the edge of Sandy Strip.
- Wonkeeland’s roller coaster reintroduces high-speed rail-style traversal. Riding the coaster can both move you across the park quickly and set up abrupt angles onto other players below.
Combined with the more compact island, these systems make rotations between distant POIs much faster than in Chapter 6, and they keep lulls between fights to a minimum.
How the new map shapes combat flow
The structure of Golden Coast pushes combat into different patterns compared with earlier chapters:
- Edge starts, center escalation. With storm surfing locking you into coastal entries, early-game fights are most intense around bays, beaches, and small coastal settlements. Mid-game pressure then converges on Inland hubs like Innoloop Labs and Sus Studios.
- Vertical control matters more. POIs such as Tiptop Terrace, Humble Hills, and the rides in Wonkeeland sit above surrounding terrain, giving a clear advantage to squads that secure the high ground early.
- Mixed sightlines in single POIs. Locations like Sandy Strip or Battlewood Boulevard pack together open streets, tight interiors, and rooftops. That makes weapon choice and pathing more important than in purely open or purely indoor zones.
- Risk–reward in anomaly-prone areas. Zones touched by Rift or Zero Point energy, such as Painted Palms and the labs, can flip match conditions through anomalies that trigger invisibility for still players, extra care packages, or other match-wide effects. Dropping there can snowball your game if you handle the chaos.
Overall, the map plays closer to a classic Fortnite layout, but layered with modern mobility, boss mechanics, and storm-wide modifiers.
POIs that tie directly into new gameplay systems
Several Golden Coast locations aren’t just thematically important; they plug directly into Chapter 7’s mechanical changes.
- Innoloop Labs connects to Rift anomalies and Zero Point experimentation. Storm phases have a chance to spawn anomalies that change player visibility, drop extra loot, or introduce other format twists across the map, and the labs visually anchor that fiction.
- Boss arenas are embedded in specific POIs. Defeating Human Bill, Hush, or Beach Brutus lets you transform into that boss, fully refill Health and Shield, gain increased maximum survivability, and access a unique ability with infinite energy. Your location is always revealed to nearby players while transformed, so these POIs become high-risk, high-reward hotspots.
- Driveable reboot vans appear around the island, often near or inside POIs instead of only at static spawn points. Some vans can be driven away from a contested fight before you start a reboot; others remain fixed. They come with boost and sirens and can be destroyed, which makes their exact placement in and around dense POIs an important part of endgame planning.
- Self-Revive Devices drop as loot and from vending machines and supply drops, and while they aren’t tied to a single location, their presence changes how aggressively squads take fights in compact urban zones like Battlewood or inside the casino floors of Sandy Strip.
How Golden Coast compares to past islands
Golden Coast sits in a clear line of region-themed islands: Chapter 5’s Mediterranean and Chapter 6’s Japan-inspired Oninoshima. Compared with those maps:
- Scale: The Chapter 7 island is smaller than Oninoshima, so it feels closer to earlier chapters in how fast you find other players.
- Center design: The central area is no longer a major city like Tilted; it’s a research facility, shifting more of the heavy urban design toward the southwest (Battlewood) and the southeast desert strip.
- Mobility built in: Wingsuits, balloons, and roller coasters are part of the core map layout, not just isolated items or one-off events.
- Hollywood framing: Film sets, studios, and theme-park rides give large parts of the island a more self-aware, entertainment-industry feel than the more grounded biomes of past chapters.
That combination makes Chapter 7’s Golden Coast feel less like a pure geography simulation and more like a curated action playground, with each POI designed to feed specific kinds of fights and movement patterns.
For now, Golden Coast and its 13 named locations define battle royale in Chapter 7 Season 1. As the season goes on, Rift anomalies, boss events, and smaller structural tweaks are likely to reshape specific POIs, but the core layout—coastal drops, a desert interior, central labs, and a northeast theme park—sets the baseline for how Pacific Break plays.
