PUBG Season 9 update patch notes: New Map, ranked mode, more

The latest installment of PUBG action kicks-off on October 21 with the popular battle royale game launching Season 9 on PC. Along with it comes a slew of PUBG Season 9 patch notes and updates that we will cover all of below.

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The player base for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds seems to be unwavering and unrelenting as they continue to enjoy one of the originators of battle royale. Now into its 9th season, PUBG is still continuing to expand, grow, and more importantly – listen to its fan base.

PUBG’s newest update sees the addition of a new map, environmental changes, a new ranked mode amongst many other things.

Patch Notes Video

If you want to see a visual version of some of the key changes then check out the official PUBG video on the update.

See below for a full break down of absolutely everything included.

PUBG 9.1 Patch Notes

The following PUBG Season 9 patch notes and information has been provided by the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds blog.

• Read More: PUBG Mobile banned in India alongside 100+ China-linked apps

New Map: Paramo

Cradled hidden among the clouds in the highlands of South America lies Paramo, an ancient land with ancient secrets. Paramo’s dangers are plentiful, but none so dangerous as the active volcano nearby whose molten lava streams flow across the land. Survivors dropping onto the Paramo Battlegrounds will only be able to reach the highlands via helicopter, which also have the task of distributing Care Packages around the field.

Paramo is a 3×3 map with a dynamic world new to PUBG. This dynamic world system alters locations between matches, making every trip to Paramo a unique experience.

Read on for the full details!

Seasonal Match

Due to our new Dynamic Map Locations system, Paramo will be provided as a Seasonal Match separate from current matchmaking pool.

• Paramo is provided as a Seasonal Match exclusive for Season 9 only.
• Seasonal Match will have bots disabled.
• Seasonal Match will not count for your Career > Stats.
• Seasonal Match will have the Battlestat feature disabled.
• Seasonal Match will allow you to complete missions.

Paramo Map Rules

• 3×3 km playable area with dynamic map locations.
• 64 Players
• TPP & FPP Squads Only
• No Red Zones
• The Blue Zone shrinks slowly, but deals more damage compared to other maps, even in the early phases of the match.
• Motorcycles are the only vehicle available on Paramo and can usually be found near small villages.

Paramo: New Features

Dynamic Map Locations

• Major landmarks and parts of terrain are relocated in every new session.
• Players must adapt and use suitable strategies and tactics according to the changes.
• Several streams of lava flow from active volcanoes throughout Paramo, presenting a unique environment hazard as you traverse across the map.
  • Stepping foot in lava can lead to a quick death, dealing 10 damage per second to players, ticking every half second.
  • Riding a Motorcycle into lava will destroy your tires and quickly begin to destroy the vehicle, whilst also dealing damage to the player.

• Unlike other maps, players can wander outside the bounds of the playable area and a warning will display on screen. Failure to quickly return to the playable area will result in you being killed.
• New item boxes can now spawn in certain houses.
• Destroy the boxes to find multiple pieces of loot, such as ammo, throwables, and healing items.
• Players will drop into the Battleground of Paramo from helicopters.
• During the match, these helicopters carry precious cargo across the map, with the plan of dropping it just outside the play area. Pay close attention and if you shoot enough rounds into a helicopter, you’ll force it to release the cargo early.
• Paramo has a handful of Care Packages exclusive, highland themed items not found on other maps, including new full-body camo suits, ghillie suit and backpack.
• With a critical response kit in your inventory, you will be able to revive a downed squad member in just one second.
• In Paramo, you might find a ‘Secret Room Key’ while looting.. it’s gotta unlock something, right?

Ranked Mode

Ranked Mode just got a little more solo friendly with the introduction of Ranked Solo queue. You’ll now be able to take on the Ranked Battlegrounds against other solo players as you climb the competitive ranks.

Season 9 Begins

A new ranked season has begun. Ranked rewards earned from Season 8 will be granted to your account upon login.

• Player ranks have been reset
  • Players will be given their initial rank after 5 placement matches.
  • RP has been soft-reset, so your initial Season 9 placement will be influenced by your Season 8 rank.
• Leaderboards have been reset
  • Final player ranks and the regional Top 500 leaderboards will be finalized once live server maintenance is complete, to ensure all matches are accounted for.
  • View your Season 8 stats and the Top 500 leaderboards of each region under Career > Stats

Ranked Game Mode Updates

Ranked Solo

• Solo matches have been introduced to Ranked Mode.
• These matches will have the same competitive qualities as Ranked Squad matches.
  • 64 players
  • No Red Zones
  • More loot
  • Erangel, Miramar, Vikendi and Sanhok only

Ranked Leaderboard Changes

For the following regional modes, we’re lowering the minimum rank required to display on the leaderboards from Diamond 2 to Gold 5:

• Europe
  • TPP Solo and Squads
• Russia
  • TPP Solo and Squads
  • FPP Solo and Squads
• North America
  • FPP Solo and Squads
• South America
  • FPP Solo and Squad
  • TPP Squads

This change has been made to ensure each region has a sufficient percentage of their player base displayed on the leaderboards

Ranked Mode Ruleset Updates

• Algorithm Update
  • Points earned per kill and assist have been increased by 50%.
• Sanhok Blue Zone Adjustment
  • Compared to other maps, the number of players who die in Phase 2 is very high. We’ve made some Blue Zone changes which we believe will improve the overall pacing of
• Sanhok matches.
  • Increased the size and waiting time of Phase 2
  • Removed the dynamic Blue Zone mechanic which scaled circle speeds based on the number of players alive.
  • Please note, these changes are only to Ranked Sanhok matches.
• Item Spawns
  • Increased AR/DMR Magazines spawns
    • Increased 4x, 6x and 8x spawns
  • Increased Canted Sight spawns
    • Slightly decreased the spawn rates of 2x and 3x scopes
  • Decreased Handgun/SMG Magazines spawns
  • Decreased Handgun spawns, along with 9mm and .45ACP ammo
• Vehicle spawns
  • Esports vehicle spawn locations will now always spawn a vehicle.
• Care Packages
  • MG3 has been added Care Packages on all Ranked maps

Regional Matchmaking Changes

This update to regional queues adds a Solo option to Ranked. In addition, we will now begin adjusting the available queues on a per region basis in an effort to deliver the best experience possible to each region.

When players go to select a game mode in either normal or ranked sections, they will see that the options that are available will be different. At a minimum, the changes will include the addition of a solo ranked option, but depending on region they may see different combinations of options available in terms of team size, perspective, and ranked/normal matches.

For the game modes available for each region, please see below.

NA
Random Map Selection
TPP: Solo, Squad
FPP: Solo, Duo, Squad, Solo Rank, Squad Rank

EU
Random Map Selection
TPP: Solo, Squad, Squad Rank
FPP: Solo, Duo, Squad, Solo Rank, Squad Rank

–

OC
Random Map Selection
TPP: Solo, Squad, Squad Rank
FPP: Squad

SEA
TPP: Solo, Duo, Squad, Solo Rank, Squad Rank
FPP: Squad, Solo Rank, Squad Rank

Weapon Balance Update

After the weapon balance adjustment from patch 7.2, we have been receiving lots of feedback from players on how Beryl and SLR are too strong compared to other weapons, and our data has showed that Beryl and SLR were indeed dominant picks among our players. The PUBG team are working on plans to allow players feel more free to choose their weapons based on their surroundings or strategic goals.

With this 9.1 update, we will be making some adjustments to Beryl and SLR. Please note that this won’t be the last update and we will continue to have in-depth monitoring and analysis to provide best gameplay experience.

Beryl M762

• Base damage reduction: 46 → 44
• Increased vertical recoil of early spray by 5%
• Increased horizontal recoil of early spray by 5%
• Slightly increased the minimum horizontal recoil
• Reverted PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BERYLGROUNDS

SLR

• Based damage reduction: 58 → 56
• Increased recoil during ADS by 5%
• Increased loss of bullet velocity by distance by 15%

G-COIN

G-Coin has been introduced to PUBG. G-Coin will function as the new currency for PUBG purchases. To read more about G-Coin, please read our G-Coin launch announcement.

Survivor Pass: Highlands

Survivor Pass: Highlands loads you up with the looks you need to explore Paramo’s mysteries. Unlike previous passes, Highlands will run for a reduced duration of 2 months but is also easier to complete with only level 50 needed to receive all its rewards. Drop in early to hit the ground running and claim your great Paramo-themed rewards.

• Survivor Pass: Highlands will be available for 990 G-Coin or $9.99 with Steam Wallet funds.
• You can earn 1,000 G-Coin through collection of rewards in the Survivor Pass. Yes, that’s correct, collecting all the G-Coin rewards mean earning the pass for free!
• Unlike previous passes, Survivor Pass 9 has a reduced duration of 2 months with a total of 50 levels.

QoL improvements

Missions

• Missions XP is now automatically claimed upon completion.
• Once a mission is complete, you’ll see a MISSION COMPLETED animation the first time you return to the pass.

Pass Reward and XP Visibility

• Upon returning to the lobby after a match, you’ll immediately see an animation of XP earned filling the Survivor Pass bar.
• Claimable rewards are animated and highlighted to better display which rewards are ready to collect.
• Daily, Weekly and Challenge missions can now be viewed in the lobby without having to dive into the pass page.

Preview Improvements

• You can now preview multiple items on your character at once, while on the Survivor Pass page.
• You can now preview emotes while also wearing skins you wish to preview at the same time.

Weekly Missions

• Now all players will be able to claim weekly missions.
• There are total number of 7 weekly missions.
• Weekly missions are now grouped by difficulty, giving XP based on how challenging they are.

Performance

• Character animation preloading has been added to improve performance
  • This will result in shorter loading when entering matches and slightly reduced instances of hitching.
  • Although, as the game now loads character animations when first launching PUBG, there will be a slight increase in loading time upon launch.
• Selectable resolution in Fullscreen Borderless Mode
  • You can now select your resolution while using Fullscreen Borderless mode and your render scale will adjust automatically to correlate with the selected resolution.
  • Changing the display mode to ‘Borderless’ mode from ‘Fullscreen’ or ‘Windowed’ will have the Render Scale automatically set to 70.
    • You can readjust the render scale above 70 if desired.

UX/UI

New Feature: News Page

• We’ve added a new News page to the client, which will include helpful info on game contents, promotions, maintenance as well as community messages. All the PUBG info you need in one convenient spot!
  • The News page replaces rolling banners previously located in the top left corner of the lobby.
  • The Patch Note icon at the top right corner of the lobby now opens the News page, which also contains the patch notes.

Lobby Menu Improvements

• Enhanced the visuals and navigation of the menu.
• Added ESC shortcuts to the navigation menu.
• ESC will return you to the most recent PLAY menu.
• From the PLAY menu, ESC will open the System Menu

In-game Store Improvement

Along with general navigation bar upgrades, we have also revamped the in-game store for a better experience. Rather than simple crate images, now item sets are displayed with unique key art.

Customize Menu Improvement

The structure and layout of the customize menu has been revamped. Categories have been combined to provide quicker and easier navigation.

• Overall menu structure and layout improvement
  • Category home menu has been deleted for quicker access
  • Streamlined the excess amount of categories (e.g. vehicles)
  • Number of items displayed on the screen has been increased
• Enhanced searching tools
  • Items earned most recently will be now filtered to top
  • Search filters has been applied to more categories
  • Added on-off toggle to show or hide face accessories when accessing appearance category.

Player Status in Party

It has been difficult to distinguish whether a party member had disconnected, or was still in a match and we’ve now improved the information displayed right above the characters to share more clear information on their status.

• New UI and text has been added to clearly state the player’s current status.

Other UI Updates

• New emote volume control slider has been added under Settings > Audio > Sound > Gameplay section.
• Now you are able to control the volume of emotes separately from gameplay volume.
• Karakin map image used in Match history section has been updated.
• Optimized the UI in Observing Mode to provide more clear visibility.

Skins & Items

• Baseball themed items – 9 set items, 16 individual items. (Release on October 21st)
• Doggy themed items – 7 set items, 21 individual items. (Release on November 4th)
• Streamer (Thomas) set – 1 set item, 3 individual items. (Release on October 21st)

Replay System
The replay system has been updated. Replay files from previous updates are now unable to be used.

Bug Fixes

Gameplay
Fixed the issue where players could cancel the reload animation of M249 to reduce the reload time.

UI/UX
Fixed the issue where player’s damage in match history and match report page was shown differently.
Fixed the issue where unrelated system messages displayed when players spent a certain amount of time at the out game screen such as lobby, customize screen.
Fixed a typo in the loading screen of the Training Map.
Fixed the issue where changing the volume of Gameplay / UI / Music in Settings – Audio tab does not apply in real-time.

Skins & Items
Fixed the issue where characters appearance could distort when equipping the Madsy Utility Belt with some other clothing items.
Fixed the issue where the wrong item was being displayed when previewing Jockey Boots with a male character.

Spectating
Fixed the issue where a player’s number could be mismatched with the one displayed on the observer player list.
Fixed the issue where M16’s iron sight could block players ADS view when attaching scopes.
Fixed the issue where an observer’s right mouse button could be disabled when using hide UI function.
Fixed the issue where players could receive the incorrect penalty pop-ups when trying to leave the match after spectating the killer.