PUBG is a relatively new competitive game with a lot of depth. When it comes to victory, you’ll need to understand a lot about playing through the early game, and choosing the right gear. Understanding the complexities of the game and taking the correct approach can be challenging, so we’ve reached out to our PUBG team leader, Peter “Suntouch” Logan! This guide has been constructed with Suntouch’s expertise, detailing everything you need to know about improving at PUBG and more!

Landing Strategies

The thought process in terms of deciding where to land depends on what you’re trying to train as a player. There’s 3 kinds of drops - full aggressive, semi-aggressive or full passive. Normally, I choose to land based on what I want to accomplish.

Full-aggressive is best for honing your aim and learning different guns, and is a pretty exciting way to play. Semi-aggressive results in a mix of early fights, and a greater chance of making it to the late-game and winning. Full passive is consistent for winning, and is the most common drop used by professional players.

Full-aggressive drops depend on the plane’s path, but you’ll normally want to drop somewhere that the plane travels over directly - School, Military, South Georgopol and Prison tend to be the most active areas for players. Expect to die, but try and get as many kills as you can - eventually, you’ll learn to clear the area and become more consistent at it. Sometimes you won’t be able to find a gun and you’ll die quickly - but don’t be demoralized!

Semi-aggressive landing spots tend to be towns which aren’t directly on the plane path, but don’t need to be driven to. Often, locations like Mylta, Lipovka and Severny are semi-aggressive spots, but it all depends on the plane really. Just look for a town that occupies around 1.5 large squares (1.5km) on the map away from the plane.

Full-passive drops require some knowledge of car/vehicle spawns, which can be found on a few websites (LINK). You’ll want to look at the plane path, and pick a vehicle spawn around 1.5 large squares (1.5km) away - fly to find a vehicle, then drive far away from the plane path as possible. This means, for example, if the plane was directly down the centre of the map, you’ll end up looking to the far eastern and western areas.

For example, take the following picture:

With the red line representing the plane’s path, the yellow zones have a high likelihood of 10+ people dropping, and the green areas around 4-6 people, with the blue areas being safer drops where there should be 0-2 people since they require driving.

Falling Technique

For achieving max-speed to the ground, aim directly towards the ground and hold forward. If you’re at this speed, your parachute will end up pushing you downwards, making you land quicker. However, once your parachute opens, you’ll still need to consider time taken to reach the ground - so when you’re looking to drop as fast as possible, you’ll want to navigate through the sky first, until you’re around 1km away from your target location. Then you’ll want to look straight down until you reach maximum 234km/h velocity.

When you’re looking to land at a specific location while parachuting, you’ll maximize your speed by pressing and releasing W accordingly to build up speed. The more you hold W, the slower you’ll go - most experienced players hover around 40KM/H when falling by pressing W a lot.

You can employ this if you want to “long chute” - which means travelling around across the map (3-3.5 KM recommended). To do this, jump out of the plane and deploy your parachute as early as possible. While keeping in the direction you want to travel, begin to press W repeatedly, adjusting your speed between 35-40 KM/H. This will take you far and fast. While I recommend looking for vehicles rather than using this technique to avoid getting run over when you land, this technique is sometimes faster than vehicles, especially when long-chuting to the military base (since you can fly across the river).

Looting

If you’re looting solo, try to swiftly shut doors behind you to keep yourself harder to track. Furthermore, try to plan your route ahead of time to clear buildings efficiently - I personally loot in lines, so I can keep track of the buildings that I’ve looted. If you’re picking up multiple items at a time, it’s also fastest to ‘swipe’ items around you into your inventory with quick click and dragging. If you’re just looting a single item, it’s quicker to pick it up with F.

If you’re playing with a duo partner or squad, you should try to quickly plan with your partners once you’re entering an area for yourselves to loot, so that you don’t overlap areas together. This will help you loot quickly and efficiently.

When landing in a town and you see others landing with you, try and loot away from them to avoid direct conflict, checking between houses towards where you saw them initially land, to check if they are rushing you. You should pay attention to which doors they may have left open. Additionally, as a general rule of thumb, if I’m far away from the plane’s path, I’ll often leave doors open as to not waste time, as normally the circle won’t favour you if landing on the outskirts of the map.

Picking your Poison

The range of weapons in PUBG fulfill a range of niches, and different weapons are effective at training different skills. Suntouch has provided his analysis on each weapon’s effectiveness and style.

Assault Rifles

M416

My favourite full-auto AR. Only issue is that it demands attachments to tap into its potential. Once you’ve got them though, it’s a beast - great with single-fire and full-auto firing.

AKM

With great single-fire damage, it’s the highest damage, regular-spawn AR. The trick is to single tap and try not to full-auto unless your target is close. While gun is very bad for shooting moving targets beyond 200m, it’s able to one-shot level 1 helmets - so always try and focus on tapping away at those heads!

Scar-L

Decent at all ranges and the easiest to control for fully-automatic firing. If you want to learn how to full-auto with rifles, this is a great start. An all-round great and easy rifle.

M16A4

The best long-range AR. While it lacks a full-auto option, the burst fire is effective for close-range skirmishes. The most common AR to find which is good to practice and grow confident with. You can single-tap this gun very fast, and very accurately.

Groza

Found in air drops, and the strongest AR in the game. While it has similar damage to the AK, its recoil is a lot easier to control, and shots have a higher velocity - meaning you can single-tap at targets further away with greater ease. You can only equip a suppressor on the nozzle!

M249

Another air-drop weapon, which is great for destroying vehicles but hard to control. It only has a full-auto option, so when shooting it, try to be crouched or proned for maximum control. If standing up, try to fire in 1-3 bullet bursts at a time.

Shotguns

S1897 (Pump-Action)

This is the best shotgun in my opinion. It one-shots level 3 armour, so it’s very powerful when sieging or taking houses. It’s looked down on by newer players, but once you get the hang of it, it’s extremely powerful. With a choke attached, this weapon is simply beautiful.

S12K (Auto)

Still a very good option for sieging houses and a bit more noob-friendly than the S8197. It lacks a bit of consistency due to the high recoil pattern, but can prove to be just as deadly as the S1897

S686 (Double-Barrel)

The worst of the shotguns, but still potent at close range. The reason this is the worst is because the reload time is simply too much, especially when dealing with multiple enemies. It’s kind of a ‘one-and-done’ gun if you’re being pushed by multiple targets.

SMGs

Micro Uzi

The best SMG at close-range, but a bad short/mid-range option. Effectiveness is largely determined by attachments, too. A strong secondary for sieging buildings.

UMP9

A good option to run alongside an M16, and very strong with full attachments as a full-auto option. Very accurate while not aiming down-sights, too. A great short-range weapon up to around 40 metres, but avoid using the burst-fire mode.

Tommy Gun

I tend to avoid this SMG unless I find it early-on, and there’s no better options. The iron sights on this are very hard to see down, and the damage of the gun just simply isn’t worth it.

Vector

Stronger than a full-attachment UMP at short range. The main issue is finding all of the attachments alongside finding enough ammo for this to be viable. It burns through ammo very quickly, and ACP ammo is slightly rarer than 9mm. But if you’re able to gather a decent supply of ammo and attachments, this gun is very deadly - you have to aim down sights to land shots with it, though.

Pistols

P18C (Glock)

Excellent close range option. Essentially a micro-uzi with a smaller mag - it’s a very strong option to melt a single target down. Difficult to control, though.

P1911

Best pistol for consistent, reliable, high damage but has a low mag size. Only use it if you find no other weapons early game.

R1895 (Magnum)

Deals insane damage, but hindered by a huge reload time. Pistols are only really used early-game to hold off people if you can’t find better weapons, but the reload time just makes it a mediocre option. Can be fun for one-top headshots, though!

P92

The worst pistol in the game. With low damage and poor accuracy, avoid using it unless you really have to.

Improvement

The most important thing to learn is how to shoot, as this will give you the best chance of survival. Once you've become accustomed to the mechanics of the game, start dropping aggressive areas. You want to engage as many people you can as quickly as possible in the game. While you won’t win too often, you will improve your aim, reactions and weapon mechanics a lot faster. You should focus on dropping into an area like Military/South Georgopol and clearing it, then winning from there.

When it comes to training gun mechanics, set yourself personal goals with your practice. For example, professional-level players can fire full-auto with full control with a 4x Scope, or even an 8x Scope. Set yourself a few goals, which you can then train on when you have the proper loot to work towards them.

Once you have dropped hot and feel comfortable with basic weapons and shooting (normally 5-6 kills a game), you can shift your mentality to winning. This means you should loot passively and try to get into late-game fights. This will take some time to learn, as this is where positioning becomes VERY important. Making sure you have cover, while checking and clearing flanks so you can have a higher chance to win.

Considering and reviewing your tactical approaches is pivotal to learning to win. Pick your fights thoughtfully; if you’re dying a lot, ask yourself - was that fight really necessary? If you’re playing casually for fun, then it's fine, but if you’re playing towards raising your win percentage, then you need to reflect and analyse your performances - how much noise you’re making, the angles you’re holding, etc.

We thank Suntouch for his comprehensive input he’s provided in this guide. For more from Suntouch, you can follow him on Twitter and Twitch, and for more great content, stay tuned with Team Dignitas!