PUBG Update Rebalances Vehicles

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds just released a new update to the live servers to overhaul the way vehicles take and respond to damage. These new changes are meant to alleviate some of the frustrations players felt when operating a vehicle and finding themselves immediately in danger of dying the second a vehicle blows up. There are still some instances where a vehicle can blow up right away though, so players won’t be 100 percent safe from everything. The update in question is live now on the PC platform after spending time on the test servers and is planned for a console release later in the month.

The vehicle changes have been on the test servers for a while now to give PC players a chance to try them out, but for those who haven’t bothered, you can now see the changes in-game now that Update 7.3 has been released. For those who are on consoles and won’t get to try the update themselves yet, you can expect to get it on June 23rd.

Patch notes for the update were made available on release and remain largely unchanged from the test server version. Those notes related to vehicles can be found below.

Explosion Mechanic Changes

• Vehicles no longer explode instantly upon reaching 0 HP. Instead, engines are now disabled and set on fire, causing the vehicle to explode after 5 seconds
• Vehicles can still explode instantly if taking large radial damage, like from Red Zones, C4 etc.
• Exploding vehicles now receive both linear and angular velocity, instead of only linear (vehicle movement after exploding should look a bit less static now)
• Additionally, vehicles will no longer receive increased collision damage when they’re rolled over

Vehicle Damage Changes

• Most vehicles now have multiple damage zones which apply different damage multipliers
  • Applies to the following vehicles: Buggy, Dacia, UAZ, Mirado, Pickup, Rony and Zima
    • All other vehicles receive damage as before, equally regardless of area hit
  • Damage zones:
    • Engine – 100% Damage
      • Engine area, usually located at the front
    • Body – 75% Damage
      • Front and rear doors, rear and bottom sides of body
    • Roof – 50% Damage
      • Roof panel, roof pillars, seats, mirrors
    • Boat Armor Upgrade
      • Boats are now granted 5 static damage reduction

That C4 referenced in the first few notes about explosive changes deals with the new C4 throwable added in the same update, so don’t be surprised if you have someone lobbing a new explosive at your vehicles.

PUBG’s Update 7.3 is now available on PC and will come to consoles on June 23rd.