Despite no longer stealing headlines, the pioneering battle royale shooter PUBG continues to tick away. Today, PUBG Season 8 launched on PC worldwide, ushering in some seismic changes to the fan-favorite map, Sanhok, alongside a new ranked season and Survivor Pass.
PUBG Corp has cooked up a teaser trailer showcasing what’s in store in Season 8. Unsurprisingly, the remastered Sanhok takes center stage as hooded figures descend on its ancient temples and copper-red canyons. As a press release penned to mark the occasion details, mysterious happenings have befallen Sanhok, and we’d wager this cloaked bunch, known as the Sanhok 4, may have something to do with it.
“Rumor has it there was an incident on Sanhok of unprecedented nature. What exactly occurred is not entirely known but the new Sanhok might reveal some clues.”
PUBG Corp reworked Sanhok from the ground up, bringing in a bevy of new locations, reworked favorites, and a more general visual facelift. The idea is for the map to look and perform better as a Heart of Darkness-style overgrown paradise.
“We put heavy focus on bringing Sanhok to the upper tiers of our map visuals but also addressed some of your longstanding concerns about the island’s locations, topography, and pain points. We’re proud of what we’ve come up with here and are looking forward to hearing what you think as well!”
Other notable changes include the introduction of tanky, automated, self-driving loot trucks circling the map. As players attack, these ‘heavy-armed pinatas’ will drop various loot containers, while obliterating the trucks from the face of the map grants a cache of fully customized weapons. Four loot lorries spawn at the start of each match, respawning once if destroyed, for a possible total of eight trucks.
With the new Survivor Pass: Payback, players can look forward to unlocking just shy of 100 skins. PUBG Corp has upped the XP players can earn through play and survival time in each match, which should ease blazing through the pass’ levels.
The Ranked Mode refresh doesn’t just reset ranks and leaderboards but also rejigs some of the game modes and map pool. Chiefly, Vikendi is now part of the Ranked map pool. Ranked points account for team placement instead of individual placement. There’s now bonus RP for downing enemy players ranked higher than five divisions. Players now require a level 40 Survival Mastery to be eligible for Ranked Mode.
Season 8 introduces some minor tweaks to the mode’s ruleset and weapon/vehicle spawns:
- “Vikendi is now playable in Ranked mode.
– Vikendi’s Blue Zone has been adjusted to more closely align with Ranked Mode circles.
– Red Zone is disabled in Ranked. - Item Spawns
– M249 and DBS are now world spawns in small numbers.
– Mosin-Nagant is now spawned on Erangel and Vikendi.
– A small amount of Crossbows now spawn in the world. - Vehicles
– Vehicles can now spawn in the Esports hard spawn locations.
– However, in Ranked Mode, there is not a 100% chance they spawn in those locations.
– Motor Gliders now spawn in Ranked.
– Motor Glider is only spawned on Erangel and Miramar.
– Motor Glider will have small amount of fuel ready in the tank upon spawning. - Flare Gun
– You can no-longer call in the BRDM-2 with a Flare Gun.
– It was proving a bit more powerful than we expected.”
For a breakdown of all the additions and changes, you can dive into the full patch notes here.
Although PUBG Season 8 is live for PC, console players will have to hold tight until July 30th.