PUBG unveils new map as Vikendi goes "on vacation"
Looks Karakin.
PUBG's season 6 is upon us (don't worry, I've lost track too), and with it PUBG Corp is introducing a significant amount of new content. This includes a new map and weapons - at the cost of saying goodbye to Vikendi for a while, as the map has been temporarily removed from public matchmaking.
According to the patch notes, new map Karakin is a small 2x2km island providing "the tension of Miramar combined with the pace of Sanhok" for 64 players at a time. There's a mixture of long-range sniping in the mountains, tense urban combat, and claustrophobic underground scuffles to keep players on their toes.
A couple of features make this map stand out from the crowd: the first being sticky bombs - a throwable which can be used on breach points to root out campers. Equally, campers can use them to create windows, while explorers may find them useful in discovering the map's secret areas. A little something for everyone.
Karakin's main twist, however, is something called the Black Zone, in which the landscape changes as you play. By this, PUBG means the buildings will be randomly bombed when the siren goes off inside the purple circle. "The hazard is random: towns and compounds can be undamaged, totally flattened, and everything in between." I think the "in between" means me.
To make space for Karakin, snow map Vikendi is being temporarily removed as part of a new rotating map slot to manage queue times. But it's not all bad news for Vikendi fans: it will still be available in custom matches, and the map is also getting a much-needed facelift.
"Since we launched the snowy slaughterhouse back in December of 2018, we've received a lot of feedback," says the dev note. "Performance, spawn balance, and even buildings were all places with room for improvement, some of which we already attempted but we feel we can still do better. That said, while Vikendi is on vacation we'll be going in and doing a bigger revamp of the map than we've previously done."
While there's no set date for when Karakin will arrive on live servers, it's already on test servers as part of update 6.1. According to PUBG Corp on Reddit, live servers will only be seeing the new motor glider vehicles this week - but it shouldn't be too long before everyone can get stuck in. Or stickied in, rather.