In this section we will be giving some general tips that will help you survive in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, as well as some in–depth guides to give you advanced tactics in the arena.

General tips and controls that are important to know

While you can figure out most of the controls for this game from the in–game menu, there are some keys that are not so obvious.

• Free Look

  Holding the Left Alt key will allow you to move your camera around without turning the body of your character. This allows you to look in other directions if you’re running straight for example.

• Shoulder Camera

  While holding right click, Q and E will change the shoulder your camera is currently looking over. By default, your camera peeks over your right shoulder so you’ll need to use this when you want to peek over your left shoulder. This lets you look around corners without showing yourself.

• Quick swapping Grenades

  Pressing 5 will, by default, select your grenades, but if you press it again it will cycle through your currently available grenades.

• Tab

  Pressing the tab key will open up your inventory UI. Items displayed on the far left are the ones currently sitting on the ground (roughly 2 metres of your character), right of that are the items you’re currently carrying. As of when this guide was written, you can avoid the picking up animation if you drag and drop items from the ground to your inventory, a handy tactic if you want to loot fast!

• Running (slightly) faster

  While you’re not holding a gun, you run faster. You can holster your gun by pressing X. Keep in mind however that it will also take longer to get your gun out and aim if you’re fired upon.

• Bike tricks

  With the introduction of the bike you can now do cool bike tricks! To do them you need to press Ctrl+Space while airborne and use your AWSD movement keys to tilt the bike.

• Healing keybinds

  7, 8, 9, 0 are the default keys for healing items. In our opinion, you should probably rebind these somewhere more appropriate as these keys are quite far from your hands.

• Emergency–Brake

  Holding the spacebar while driving allows you to perform a hard brake and can cause your vehicle to drift. Useful if trying to avoid shots if you’re under fire.

• Shoulder Fire & Aiming down sights

  Holding down right-click will aim over your shoulder and make shots more accurate (third person view). Tapping right click will aim down the sights of your gun and also make your shots more accurate.

• Steadying your aim

  Holding shift while aiming down your sights will steady your aim, and magnify your vision slightly. However, this runs out eventually as the lung meter on the bottom right will begin to drain. Once the meter depletes, you will no longer be able to steady your aim.

• Seat hopping in the car

  You can change seats in the vehicle by pressing Ctrl + 1 through 6. A handy little command that can have you hop into a passenger seat and shoot someone quickly.

• Sniping without reloading

  Holding down the button after firing from a sniper rifle will keep you scoped until you let go. This is a good way to gauge where your bullet landed and how to aim your next shot.

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The Healing system and the boost bar

Healing in PUBG is important after a firefight and choosing the right tools to use even more so. Currently you can only heal up to 75% of your health using first–aid kits and bandages. The last 25% of your health bar can only be restored by using booster items. The Med–kit is a rare healing item that will fully heal 100% you so don’t waste them!

• Medkits

  They take 10 seconds to use and will fully heal you. We recommend using these after taking a few hits during a firefight (Behind cover of course!). That extra 25% might be the difference between life and death.

• First–Aid kits

  These take 7.5 seconds to use and will heal 75% of your health.

• Bandages

  A 3 second use item. They heal 10% of your health over time, roughly 3 seconds. Multiple uses do not stack the healing over time so you will want to wait 3 seconds for each use. If you have the time, try to use these over your first–aid kits.

You may of noticed a thin bar with some symbols above the health bar. This is the boost system which tracks your current boost level and the duration left on them. The boost bar is split into four segments each one granting an additional buff.

1. The first segment applies a small heal over time buff.
2. The second segment applies a stronger heal over time buff.
3. The third segment will apply a speed buff, this gives you a noticeable speed increase when running.
4. The fourth segment boosts your sprinting speed even more.

Currently there are three boost items in the game

• Energy Drinks (Shameless Red Bull advertising)

  A 4 second use item that will fill 1 and ½ bars on your boost bar. By itself it will heal roughly 23% of your health bar.

• Painkillers

  A 7.5 second use item that will fill the 2 bars and a bit, two uses will fully fill your boost bar and will heal roughly 40% of your health bar.

• Adrenaline syringe

  A 10 second use item that is only found in air–drops. Will fill the boost bar entirely and heal almost your entire health bar.