PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ next big update has hit the battle royale game’s test servers – and that PUBG Vikendi update is on the way. Featuring “quite a few changes since you saw it last”, the frosty map set in the shadow of Mount Kreznic has now got moving trains, new and updated locations, and various other overhauls.
That’s according to developer PUBG Corp., which has outlined the hefty batch of changes on the way to the game in update 7.1. Tying into the changes to Vikendi this coming patch, the game is also getting a new survivor pass called’ Cold Front’, which “is your ticket to all the cool new outfits in Season 7”. Featuring “costumes ranging from Dinoland employee apparel and mascot costumes to other themed looks, there’s something for everyone,” the studio announces – and there will be unlockable community rewards again this patch, too.
In addition to a brand-new weapon – the Mosin-Nagant – there’s also a set of new skins and items, quality of life improvements, bug fixes, and other updates on the way with Season 7’s first patch.
Check out the PUBG update 7.1 patch notes below (via PUBG Corp.) for the latest changes to arrive on the game’s live servers now maintenance is complete, and Season 7 is here:
[PC] Update 7.1 is now available on live servers!
Season 7 with Survivor Pass: Cold Front, the newly updated Vikendi, quality of life improvements bug fixes and more now ready to play.
Patch notes: https://t.co/T5MwFJ0Iqb
— PUBG Support (@PUBG_Support) April 22, 2020
Vikendi Changes
“Better than ever, with updated landmarks, trains and a slight change in season.”
- Trains have been added and can be found moving along multiple tracks across Vikendi
- There is a major train line that extends along the perimeter of Vikendi, with 6 connected tracks towards the inland areas of the island
- Trains stop temporarily at train stations across the map
- Reduced snow cover
- Snow cover is reduced more on the Southern areas of the island
- Snowbikes and Snowmobiles have been removed
- Motorcycle and Motorcycle with sidecar will spawn instead, being more versatile vehicles for the updated terrain
- Weather will be either Clear or Snowy.
- Moonlight has been removed for now, but will return with visual improvements at a later date.
- General map optimisations have been made
- You can play the updated Vikendi in custom matches
- A new Cargo Depot has been added
- Dino Park has been replaced by the bigger, more spectacular Dinoland
- Abbey has been relocated to Mount Kreznik
- Volnova now has much more cover
- Tovar and Movatra have been removed
Survivor Pass: Cold Front
Community Missions
- All players can contribute to the community gauge to unlock videos and receive community skin rewards
- 1 video, 4 skins can be unlocked by accomplishing the community missions
- To complete, Loot event items in public (normal) matches
- As before, the community mission gauge is filled as such:
- Disc piece: 1 point
- Broken disc: 2 points
- Old DVD: 3 points
- On the Community Mission tab, you can see your personal contribution score and will earn XP towards your Survivor Pass
- 2000 XP per 50 points contributed
Season Missions
- There are three tracks of Season Missions
- Each track will be released monthly in April, May and June
Tracks that are locked will show the time left before they are unlocked
Progression Missions
- Players can earn large amounts of XPs when completing Progression Missions
- Tracks 1 and 2 are available to all players and contain a set of 8 missions each that increase in difficulty
- Track 3 is open for Premium Pass holders and contains a set of 10 missions that increase in difficulty
- Milestones are completed when a set goal is achieved related to daily, weekly, and challenge missions.
- Example: Complete total number of 50 missions
Challenge Missions
- These are ‘Survival’ Themed challenge missions
- Challenge Missions are composed of 16 total missions. Every 4 missions completed will grant a Utility belt and Backpack skin as a reward
Survival Title System
The Survival Title System is being shelved this update, in preparation for a new system making its way in-game in a future update alongside our new Competitive Mode.
Fear not, you can still view all your accrued statistics in the Season tab and if you’re eligible for rewards from Season 6 of the Survival Title System, you’ll receive them once this update hits live servers.
- Overview and Leaderboard tabs of the Season menu have been removed
- A new Leaderboard will arrive with the introduction of Competitive Mode in a future update
New Weapon: Mosin-Nagant
“We know weapon choice is important to you, but there is also the problem of there eventually being just too much choice, especially when a certain few weapons remain the most popular picks over everything else. We want to keep adding new weapons to the game but at some point finding the exact gun you want would suffer and as the overall list grows, maintaining balance between everything would also become more difficult. Because of this eventuality, we’ve decided to test out the idea of shared stat weapons.
For all intents and purposes, the Mosin-Nagant is a Kar98k. The stats, attachments, ammunition, etc. are all directly copied from the Kar98k, but the Mosin will feature its own look and sound. The Mosin-Nagant Sniper Rifle has been added to Vikendi and Erangel, but not in the same way as we have other weapons.
The hope here is to be able to give more weapon diversity without diminishing the availability of the weapons you love to use, but we know a choice like this might be met with mixed feelings. Are more weapons in the game a good thing, even if some of them share stats, or should we be more selective with what we put in and make sure all weapons are unique? The Mosin is coded as its own weapon, so we could always adjust its stats in the future to make it unique, but we’d like to at least test out this idea first.
We’d love your take on this, so please let us know your thoughts.”
Performance and Stability
“These changes below were implemented to live servers on April 9 during maintenance.”
- Greatly reduced instances of hitching during gameplay. We will continue to make further optimisations where possible
- Optimised the drop mesh of weapons and attachments in the world to reduce memory usage
- Reverted new blood effects to version used prior to Update 5.3 due to unresolved crashing issues
- Reverted blood effects include:
- Overall visual changes
- Environmental blood splatter
- More distinct blood splatters for head and neck shots
“The original intention of the blood effect improvements were to provide similar visual effects across all colour modes and enable players to get quick information during combat situations from their shots and surrounding environments.
However, we have confirmed an issue with game stability from the updated blood effect features. While we’re happy with the blood effect changes, providing smooth and stable gameplay is our number one priority. Therefore, we’ve made the hard decision to roll back the blood effects to the old effects from before Patch 5.3.
We will update you once we are ready to deploy the improved blood effects again. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this decision.”
Quality of Life Improvements
- Matchmaking can now be cancelled while browsing other menus
- Slight changes have been made to button placement and visuals
- Network Debug UI has been cleaned up to be less intrusive while playing
- The debug information is now enabled by default and can be disabled in the Gameplay tab of the Settings
- Network indicator icons have been removed
- TDM match results will now show players who’ve recently left the match
- Quantity button now works correctly when converting Blue Coupons to BP
Other Changes:
- Slight visual changes to Arcade matchmaking UI to be more consistent with public matches
- TDM UI has been improved
- Eliminated decimal points from the scores for better readability
- Panzerfaust and Mosin-Nagant have been added to Training Mode
- Tommy Gun’s icon has been updated to reflect the recently added rails
Skins and Items
New skins have been added.
- Dinoland T-shirts (Available April 22 until July 22)
- Labour Day skins (Available April 29 until May 27)
- Flying Chicken Neck Pillow
- ‘Baby Bear’ Sleep Mask
- Sleep Mask
Bug Fixes
Gameplay
- Crouching/standing repeatedly while ADS could cause the animation transition to stutter
- No ADS transition animation while using the Canted Sight
Players could clip through walls/ceilings of buildings by vaulting or using ledge-grab - This issue was fixed with weekly maintenance April 9
- Player’s view would momentarily be obstructed by any large backpack while ADS in a Motor Glider
- Players could ADS briefly after entering the BRDM
- When reviving in FPP the camera would sometimes be in the incorrect position
- Healing/boosting prevented the passenger of a buggy from turning correctly
- While prone in TPP players could ADS to unintended angles without their lower body rotating
- Players could unintentionally use AR/DMR/SR in the Motorcycle’s rear seat
- Characters would lean to the left while driving a Motorcycle after breaking destructable fences
- Player’s camera would detach from the character after reloading a weapon while ADS in a Motor Glider
- While holding throwables, in certain situations they could fall to the ground and emit effects for that player, without the grenade actually being used
- Flare Gun could float mid-air while looking at the sky and pressing the ‘Inspect’ key
- When a Molotov was shot mid-air flames wouldn’t propagate on the ground beneath the point of explosion
- Throwable trajectory line wouldn’t line up with the direction the character was facing while in a vehicle
- Player’s body could contort while aiming with a melee weapons while in a vehicles passenger seat
- Tommy Gun’s rear sight would disappear in certain situations
Sound
- Footsteps would be muffled after exiting a Motor Glider
- UMP45 gunshots could be heard further away than intended
- Bullet ricochet sounds weren’t being played
UI/UX
- Blank items could sometimes be displayed in the inventory UI
- Current Season menu in the Career tab wouldn’t display this season’s data
- Some BP items would appear to be purchasable when you have insufficient BP to make the purchase
- Red Dot & Holo Sight didn’t mention Tommy Gun under “Attachable Weapons”
- Team UI didn’t display properly in observer mode while observing a player after they’d crashed
- When using a Flare Gun the Special Care Package UI wouldn’t light up green in certain situations
Weapon Mastery
- DBS stats weren’t being recorded
- Win94 kills were being recorded under the DBS
Skin and Item
- Sunswiped Sports Jacket was clipping with other items
Note: Replays from previous updates are no-longer playable, as the replay system has been updated.