Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is quite a phenomenon of a game. While it is not the first arena style shooter, it has quickly become one of the most popular. With hundreds of thousands of players playing at any given moment, PUBG and its mobile counterpart, PUBG Mobile, will certainly hand you a challenge any time of day.
If you are tired of seeing the death screen, watching your assassinator loot your dead body as it lays there, then you need these tips. You may just go from loser to being a “Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner” kind of gamer.
Vehicles
First, you may have read in other guides to avoid vehicles. Forget that trash. The key to using vehicles is getting the right one. If you are a long way outside of the safe zone and only have 30 seconds or so to make a super human trek across the land, then grab the motorcycle.
What if you are in an open field and there are a lot of other players shooting it out? Well, I suggest getting a Jeep and thinning that herd before you set foot in the fray.
Is using vehicles cheating?
I don’t feel using vehicles to get some kills is cheating. I view them the same way I do certain high-powered guns in PUBG. They can give you a leg up against the enemy, they can also be dangerous to your health.
Using vehicles creates noise and other players can see on their mini map a general direction the noise is coming from.
Now, if you are playing squad, you can get a Jeep and carry your whole team in one vehicle. This mobile Armageddon can be interesting for teams that are not prepared for such activities.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Just because you can load your whole crew into one vehicle doesn’t mean it is a clever idea. This makes your whole squad an easy target for the enemy.
Still, vehicles have a viable reason to be in the game. Besides transporting yourself, and your team in certain modes, you can use them to entice the enemy to expose themselves.
Simply driving across a map will often elicit a few gun shots from enemies that think they are above the death dealing boom stick you are carrying. That is if you don’t choose to simply run them over.
I like to use vehicles to draw enemies out of large building areas. Driving around groups of buildings will usually get an enemy to expose themselves to you without you having to stumble into their trap on foot.
When in doubt, run them over.
Random shots
This is a controversial topic among team play. Not as controversial as the vehicles but still, teams are generally going to get mad at you for random shots.
What do you mean “random shots”?
These are often accidental shots made when you are fumbling on your cell phone screen for something else. On PC and consoles PUBG players are not all that afflicted with random shots.
Random shots are simply that. Random. I like to control them a bit. If I am in an area that affords me some nice cover, such as an urban area with a three-story building I can get into easily, and there are enemies in the area, I will fire off a random shot.
Once I fire off that random shot, I high tail it up to the third floor, or roof, and wait. Often you will see enemies come into your trap and attempt to find you.
This is where you spring the trap. I like to use grenades tossed out into the area with the enemy. They don’t expect this. It also lets you stay outside of their range, maybe even jumping off the building on the other side and assuming a new location to attack from.
Don’t bother with smoke grenades using this tactic. They take too long to go off and produce anything of use.
If you can get off the building without being seen, then a smoke grenade through a window can be a nice red herring for your enemy. They may be fooled into thinking you are on that floor and trying to hide/sneak out around them in the smoke.
In general, though, the smoke grenades don’t hold much value for me.
Grenades
Continuing from #2 there, PUBG players are often all about the guns. Not many are educated in the art of the grenade.
In PUBG there are frag grenades, flash, smoke, etc. Which ones you get are not all up to you, but you can certainly drop the ones that don’t make much sense.
The smoke grenade.
This is one of the most useless items I have come across in PUBG other than the crowbar (the frying pan is much more damaging).
If you come across smoke grenades, then you can do a few things with them, but they are not good for offense.
When in areas full of buildings, you may be at a loss as to which you just searched. Throw a smoke grenade in a window and move on. Odds are you will be done with the next building before the smoke dissipates.
This tactic can draw unwanted attention.
Other players that happen to be driving by may notice the smoke. If this were to happen to you then modify the tips in #2 and take down those other PUBG players with some skill.
Grenades are not great weapons, by and large. I love them myself. They can be used in many ways. One way was discussed in #2.
I have found myself in situations where all I had was a grenade or two to my name and I was facing down an enemy that just grabbed the gun I was running for.
My only option was to arm the grenades and start lobbing. Only one time so far, out of the seven or so times I faced this situation, has the enemy been prepared and ran like hell out of there (still receiving some damage as less than 20 seconds later I took him out with a single 9 mm bullet).
Don’t overlook the fact that grenades can be lobbed around corners and bounced into hard to reach areas.
This makes grenades a rather interesting weapon. One that your enemy has no idea how to combat.
How many times have you lost a match to an enemy that used tactic #2? Someone hiding in a building and simply moving back and forth, or window to window, pecking away at your health. You are left hopeless in your attempt to stop them as they have the building blocking most of your shots.
Grenades negate that building and turn it into a hindrance.
Lob a frag grenade or two into the room with them and watch as you gain a kill.
Grenades. They won’t know what hit them.
Landing zone
From my experience with PUBG Mobile I have learned that where you land is a key point in how well you can expect to do in PUBG. Everyone wants to hit the prison, the gun range or the military base.
Why?
Because there are tons of weapons in those locations.
My tactic is to not even go near those locations. Instead, I look for small clusters of buildings out by themselves. Not population centers such as those near the bridges or along the coastline.
Instead look for the cluster of five to six houses. Aim for that area.
Odds are the other players are going to battle it out in one of the three locations I mentioned already. This culling of the herd just means fewer chances for you to see the death screen.
Let others fight while you collect supplies.
Focusing on the smaller groups of houses or using tactic #1 to entice a camping enemy out, can lead to you being quite well armed later in the game.
Having the right supplies is key. The small green med kit only heals a small portion of your health. The larger white med kit, or the one that is often found in the drop crate, heals all your health.
Now which would you rather have in your arsenal at the end of the game? A bunch of green med kits or a handful of the white ones?
I will take the white ones any day of the week. Even to the point of dumping the green ones if I need room for other supplies.
Stealth
Stealth is something that most PUBG players ignore. They run around and loot everything, they leave doors open, they park vehicles right up on buildings, etc.
These tactics do nothing but give away your location or path you have taken.
One thing you can do to improve your stealth is to simply shut doors.
Nothing screams “someone has been here” than to see a door open on the rooftop of a building.
But I don’t like taking the time to shut the doors.
I have one word for you then.
Windows.
Yep. Crawl through windows and avoid doors altogether. Simply walk up to a window and press the jump button and your character will crawl through.
No traces you are there.
Okay, another thing to do to help your stealthiness is to NOT TAKE EVERYTHING.
Leave some stuff behind.
Another dead giveaway that someone has already been here or is potentially laying in wait is there being nothing laying around.
You may be thinking this is counterproductive to surviving later.
It isn’t.
You cannot get to the winning position if you get killed early on.
Leaving items that you cannot immediately use not only opens room in your inventory but also gives the impression that no one has been there. This impression can be what slows down the enemy, ties them up looting crap they cannot use right now, and can buy you a few seconds in a potentially hairy situation.
You don’t need a bump stock if you are packing two 9mm pistols so don’t bother picking it up.
In PUBG Mobile your character will automatically pick up items they can use right now. Keep that in mind when looting buildings.
Keeping these tactics in mind while playing PUBG and PUBG Mobile can improve your game and help you see the winner screen.
I will be back with five more tactics that you can use to improve your PUBG game soon.