PUBG’s blue zone is now more deadly than ever, because, erm, Brendan Greene really hates us?
There aren’t many more update slots left now until PUBG is expected to leave Early Access.
We’re still waiting on vaulting, a new feature that will totally revolutionise traversal across Erangel. It’s also going to be a big update and is likely to take several rounds on the test server to get right, but it’s going to be bloody exciting when it arrives.
Until then, however, PUBG has gotten more exciting/more frustrating (delete as appropriate) thanks to an update to the blue zone.
If you’re not familiar with the concept, rounds in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds work with ever decreasing circular safe zones. This constant shrinking forces players together for a nail-biting finale, pretty much every time. The white circle is always completely safe – well, from circle damage, but not other players, artillery, or falling off a motorbike – but the blue circle, which shrinks a couple of minutes after the while circle, can be a killer.
Here’s a video that summarises how things usually go down:
Until today, you’ve been able to pop some meds and play in the blue zone as a tactical choice. Whether that’s staying behind to loot more stuff in the early stages, or making a tactical dash into the danger zone to get a positional advantage, you could get away with it in short bursts. Here are the three key rules of PUBG’s blue zone:
- The later in the game you get, the harder the blue hurts.
- The later in the game you get, the shorter the gap between the blue zone chasing the white becomes.
- If the white moves again while you’re still in the previous blue zone, the damage from blue doubles.
And now, following the latest update to PUBG, there’s a new feature and a fourth blue zone rule you can add to the pile:
- The further you are from the white zone, the harder the blue hurts.
Wow, as if the game wasn’t hard enough, the blue zone just keeps pushing. Still, it’s probably to prevent scenes like this, where Esports pro Evermore won fifteen grand at the inaugural PUBG Invitational by simply hiding on some rocks and healing through the blue zone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lskLpXHd0kw
Skip to around 22, 23 minutes for the offending ‘stratagem’.
