The latest update to PUBG is now live on the Xbox One and PS4. The update is a substantial one with a new map Karakin that brings new dynamics to PUBG, new weapons, a new survivor pass, and more. Here are the full patch notes courtesy of PUBG Corp.
Season 6 is upon us and it brings with it a brand new island to the Battlegrounds. Karakin has risen like its namesake from the sea to bring intense action and quick gameplay to PUBG. New dangers, new weapons and a whole new island await, so let’s drop into the action of Update 6.1.
NEW MAP: KARAKIN
“Higher tension, faster pace: Welcome to Karakin.“
Karakin is a 2×2 km island off the coast of Northern Africa. It’s an arid, rocky environment that provides wide-open terrain and challenging engagements. It’s small, fast, and dangerous: Expect the tension of Miramar combined with the pace of Sanhok. Maximum of 64 players can play on Karakin per match. Players should expect long distance rifle engagements in the mountains, tactical urban conflict, and claustrophobic underground combat. And with the introduction of the Black Zone, Karakin reveals its twist: a map that’s layout changes every match.
Black Zone (Karakin Only)
Our new hazard, the Black Zone only available in Karakin, levels buildings into smoking ruins.
- The Black Zone is designed to push players out of the safety of a building.
- The hazard is random: towns and compounds can be undamaged, totally flattened, and everything in between.
- The mix of buildings and ruins evolves in real time throughout the match: Meaning don’t always expect that building you run to for cover to be there late in the match.
- Remember, if you hear the siren, and you are inside that purple circle on the minimap- evacuate!
- Buildings destroyed by the Black Zone will be marked with X on the minimap.
New Throwable: Sticky Bomb (Karakin Only)
To change up siege play, we’re introducing Breach Points which can be destoyed with Sticky Bombs in Karakin.
- Certain walls and floors can be destroyed with sticky bombs making new breach points
- This feature presents more tools for our players: For campers, it allows more sight lines/windows to be created.
- For squads going on the offensive however, there are new options for storming buildings- “Do we blast in through the back of the building, or through the roof- maybe both?” the choice is yours!
- And for explorers, we’ve hidden many secret areas for those players with a spare Sticky Bomb or two, and a keen nose for loot.
Finally, to make interior gun fights a little more interesting, we’ve added bullet penetration to our weakest walls in Karakin. Getting brief glimpses of your enemies through damaged drywall, and deciding to take the fight or regroup- gives players more options.
At PUBG we are dedicated to providing new experiences for you, the player, and pushing what’s possible in our genre. We can’t wait for you to experience it for yourself!
Karakin Loot Increase
We heard your feedback during the testing phase of Karakin and have now increased and rebalanced loot on our newest Battleground.
To ensure you can drop in and loot up quickly above around, we’ve rebalanced loot spawns to improve your overall experience. There’ll now be much more loot to go around for you and your squad.
We understand and agree that feeling a need to rush and breach a tunnel each match to get that sweet, sweet loot just didn’t feel great. So, we’ve increased above-ground spawn rate of healing and boost items, as well as scopes to get you battle ready quicker. We hope this will allow you to explore Karakin more freely without feeling required to breach a tunnel just to find enough of that sweet, sweet loot to survive.
Please keep the feedback coming, it’s appreciated as always and we look forward to continually improving Karakin alongside our passionate community.
Detailed changes
- Increased 2x, 3x, 4x scopes
- Increased healing/boost items above ground
- Modified ratio of total SR/DMR muzzle attachments due to increased spawn rate of those weapons
- Decreased number of melee weapons, canted sights and magazine attachments
- Removed Sawed-off from Karakin
New Vehicle: Motor Glider
“Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
Added a new vehicle: Motor Glider
- Motor Glider will be available on Erangel and Miramar
- Motor Glider has two seats; one for pilot and one for passenger who can shoot and use any weapon from the backseat
- Motor Glider will be spawned around the map
- To takeoff, you must gain the necessary speed of 65 km/h then pitch up by pushing down (Xbox One: L-Stick / PS4: L3).
- You’ll start to take off automatically once you hit 70 km/h.
- Motor Glider’s fuel consumption rate is tied to the engine speed – the more throttle you apply, the faster you will run out of gas.
- Motor Glider will be spawned with empty gas. Fuel up before starting the engine.
- There’s no maximum altitude you can reach, the sky is the limit! But engine will start losing power the higher the altitude you are at.
- Controls:
- Use (Xbox One: L-Stick / PS4: L3) to control the pitch and the roll of the aircraft
- Adjust the throttle by holding (Xbox One: LT & RT / PS4: L2 & R2) buttons
- Hold (Xbox One: Y / PS4: Triangle) buttons when on the ground to engage handbrake
Survivor Pass: Shakedown
Community Mission
- Whether you have purchased Premium Pass or not, all players can join together to fill the Community Accomplishment Gauge, then claim in-game skin rewards and unravel the hidden story of Karakin.
- The mission gauge can be filled by finding collectibles on the Battlegrounds.
- Players who find and open special Cardboard Boxes will be able to loot one of the 3 different objects.
- When collected, they are reflected on the Community mission accomplishment gauge as follows:
- Disc piece: Counts as 1 point toward Community Missions Goal
- Broken disc: Counts as 2 points toward Community Missions Goal
- Old DVD: Counts as 3 points toward Community Missions Goal
- On the Community Mission tab, you can see your achievement score and earn XP in proportion to the individual contribution score.
Season Mission
- There are three tracks of Season Missions
- Each track will be released monthly on January, February, and March.
- Tracks that are locked will show the time left before it is unlocked.
- You can check the updated season mission list by clicking R-Stick(Xbox)/R3(PS4) on the main menu.
- Season mission list UI appears only once, and you can use R-Stick(Xbox)/R3(PS4) hold to redirect to News & Events banner web-link afterwards.
Progression Mission
- Players can earn large amount of XPs when completing Progression Missions.
- Tracks 1, 2 contains a set of 8 missions each with each mission difficulty increasing gradually allowed for all players.
- Track 3 contains a set of 10 missions with each mission gradually increasing difficulty allowed for players with the Premium Pass.
- Milestones are completed when a set goal has been achieved related to daily, weekly, and challenge missions.
- Example: Complete 70 total daily missions
Challenge Mission
- These are challenging missions which require using designated weapons.
- Weapon lists:
- Skorpion (Handgun)
- Win94 (SR)
- QBZ (AR)
- AKM (AR)
- QBU (DMR)
Earn Level-up items for the Next Season
- You can claim level-up items for the next season as a premium pass mission reward.
- These items are non-marketable, and they will be activated when the next season (Season 7) starts.
- Level-up Items in the Survivor Pass List:
- 5 Levels item x 2
- 1 Level item x 5
Survival Title System
- Rewards for Survivor Title System Season 5 will be granted at the beginning of Season 6.
- SP will be soft-reset, with your performance in Season 5 counting towards your starting SP in Season 6.
GAMEPLAY
Firing mode change improvement
- Added an option to set second firing mode for AR, and SMG weapons, which have 3 firing modes (Single, Burst, Auto).
- If you pick up the weapon that doesn’t have auto mode after setting auto as first and single as second preferences, it will automatically set as single.
Loot Balance
Erangel
- Increased AR spawn amount by 20%
- Slightly decreased Gas Can and Handgun spawns
Miramar
- 22% increase to overall loot spawned
- Additional 22% increase to total number of ARs spawned
- This means the total number of ARs spawned on Miramar is now 44% higher than before.
Matchmaking
Map Selection
Featured + Others (3 Random maps)
- Replaced Vikendi with the new map, Karakin. (Vikendi will still be playable on Custom Match)
- Featured map: Karakin
- Others: Erangel, Miramar, Sanhok
- The featured map could be disabled if it causes long matchmaking time, and it will turn into all random map selection.
Dev note: We’ve been thinking a lot about how we could add our new map without negatively impacting queue times, as Karakin would become the 5th map in our rotation and add additional queues to the list. Our solution is the introduction of rotating map slots. A rotating map slot is a non-permanent map slot that will change from time to time. The goal is to provide stable matchmaking times while keeping map choice fresh. For our first rotation,
Vikendi will rotate out to make room for Karakin. Maps that are rotated out will still be available for play in custom games.
Speaking of Vikendi, since we launched the snowy slaughterhouse back in December of 2018, we’ve received a lot of feedback. Performance, spawn balance, and even buildings were all places with room for improvement, some of which we already attempted but we feel we can still do better. That said, while Vikendi is on vacation we’ll be going in and doing a bigger revamp of the map than we’ve previously done. When it’s time for it to come back, there will be plenty of new stuff for you to explore and enjoy. Until then, trade in your snowballs for sticky bombs and hot drop into the new hotness!
We also know that MP5k and G36C are beloved weapons and we want them to be used continuously. We are looking to make these weapons available on other maps in the future after analyzing which map it would fit the most.
Mastery System
- You can see your PUBG ID on the end of game screen
- Known Issue: Character model is not shown on PUBG ID.
- You can see a player’s PUBG ID while spectating them
UI/UX
- Added ‘PASS’ menu in the main lobby
- Vehicle Adv. tab has been added on the controller guide page to provide specific key details on certain vehicles.
- Players can now preview DLCs that are on Add-Ons Tab in the STORE.
- “Cheating” category has been added as an option when reporting a player.
Sound
Gun Handling Sounds Renewal
- Improved reload and weapon changing sound effects.
- Proceeded the detailed expressions of the collar of the clothes and the attachment of the weapon were reinforced during the reload operation.
Sound segmentation according to the mechanical properties of the weapon during aiming/scoping
- In Aiming/Scoping, the degree of trembling sound in weapon’s attachments details varies depending on the type of weapon.
- Sounds are divided into two, Handgun and non-handgun, and handgun has less trembling or none attachment detailed sounds compared to non-handguns.
Vaulting Sounds Improvement
- Improved detailed expressions on objects such as hand-to-body contact, collar-to-shoulder squeaks, etc. during vaulting
- When Vaulting, sound outputs that fits the material (Concrete, Metal, Wood)
Vikendi Sound Effect Balance Change
- Lowered the volume of wind sound effect in the moonlight.
Other Changes:
- Reduced duration, volume and sound radius of Black Zone sirens
- Reduced explosion volume and frequency of Black Zones
- Reduced volume and sound radius of Care Package planes
Known issue: Sound in and above bunkers isn’t working as intended in certain situations. Currently, it can be difficult to distinguish the distance of players from your position while underground, or whether they’re above or below ground while in the vicinity of a bunker.
We’re working to resolve this issue and improve logic related to sound in and around bunkers. As this is a complex issue, it will take some time to be resolved and we expect to push the updated sound logic to live servers in the April update.
Performance
Added below features to all console devices.
- Dynamic resolution
- Adjusts the screen resolution depending on the performance to maintain a stable framerate.
- Toggle option to have the feature turned on/off will be added in a future patch.
- Sharpen Post Processing
- Provides clearer visuals.
- Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion (GTAO)
- Produces more realistic shadows.
World Origin Shift
- Optimized the world location calculating process to reduce occurrence of hitching.
SKINS & ITEMS
The following items will be added to the Store after Update #6.1 hits live servers:
- Added 5 Golden Dragon skins
- Added 4 Golden Phoenix skins
- Added 9 Seollal skins
DLC
- Added PUBG -Supply Pack: Season 6 ($9.99)
- 1,600 G-Coin
- Hipster Jean Jacket
- Hipster Skinny Jeans
- Hipster Canvas Shoes
- Added PUBG – Shakedown Pack ($14.99)
- Survivor Pass: Shakedown
- 5 Levels
- Karakin Head Wrap
- Jamila Diamondback Top
- Jamila Diamond Leg Pants
- Jamila Kontra Shoes
Bug Fixes
Gameplay
- Fixed an issue where camera view is located incorrectly when changing seat to driver’s seat during ADS.
- Fixed an issue where M249 ironsight was displayed incorrectly.
- Fixed an issue where hold option for prone isn’t working correctly.
- Fixed an issue where character’s upper body would be displayed incorrectly after using a throwable while sitting on the backseat of a motorbike on FPP.
UI/UX
- Fixed an issue where the character’s overhead UI isn’t aligned with the character model.
- Fixed an issue where the helmet equipped on Customize is visible on the character’s head on PUBG ID.
- Fixed an issue where handgun size is displayed incorrectly on Last Match screen.
- Fixed an issue where inventory was not correctly ordered.
- Fixed an issue where inventory text was not displayed when inventory was turned on.
Sound
- Fixed an issue where the ambient noise is louder than intended in certain weather types on Vikendi.
Skins & Items
- Fixed an issue where Tommy Gun skin texture is displayed incorrectly.
- Fixed an issue where the lower body would be displayed incorrectly when putting on certain PGI skins on a male character.
Our Take
Early reports from the PUBG PC brethren have been highly positive of the new map and features. We continue to appreciate what PUBG brings to the table and will be jumping into 6.1 this week. Stay tuned for our thoughts on the next Bitcast!