Getting your feet on the ground before your rival players is of the utmost importance in PUBG, especially if you’re headed to a location with limited loot. Here’s a simple method to ensure you have the best possible chance of landing first.
How to land fast
When diving out of the plane steer yourself towards the area you want to land and fly parallel to the ground (for instance by aiming at the horizon if you’re looking to land at a distant target). Once your target is around 50m in front of you on the horizontal plane, aim yourself directly towards the ground until you hit a speed of around 232 km/h.
The grey elevation bar in the lower-left corner of the screen shows your relative position to the ground, while the lower white bar shows the point at which your parachute will automatically deploy. Ensure that when the grey bar on the left hits the white bar at the bottom, you’re either holding the forward key, or release it around 1 second beforehand. You'll know you've done it right if you maintain a high-speed for a few seconds after the parachute opens before slowing to around 60-64 km/h.
The safest way to execute this is simply to hold W while looking at the ground for nearly the entire duration of the fall. This is why it’s best to do your maneuvering at the moment you first leave the plane, before aiming directly below you.
Some players have also been suggesting that spiralling after opening your parachute also increases speed, but it appears to plateau at 64 km/h, which is the normal maximum speed during the parachute phase. However, this technique can be useful for ensuring you land on a rooftop.
A couple of other quick things you should note:
Battlegrounds auto-deploys your chute based on the height of the land you're flying over. If you’re travelling over high terrain like a hill or mountain, then the white bar on the left-hand side tracks the terrain, moving further up into the grey area. This means you will be forced to open your parachute earlier. If you’re landing on the hill this isn’t a problem, but if you’re simply travelling over it to reach another location, it can slow you down significantly, so try to be aware of the terrain you’ll be passing over as you skydive.
Want to fly as far as possible? If you open your parachute earlier by pressing F, you can travel longer distances, with a maximum reachable distance of almost exactly 200m if you open your parachute at the first opportunity.
Crucially, this only works if you use a small trick. After opening your parachute you need to alternate between holding the forward button and letting go, allowing you to travel an extra 70 meters than if you were simply to glide towards the ground with your parachute. Skydiving horizontally until your parachute auto-deploys then using the rocking trick can see you travelling around the same distance as simply gliding to ground with your parachute (120-130m).
This is an especially important technique if you’re trying to reach one island from the other and can mean the difference between landing next to a loot filled warehouse or in the middle of the sea.
That’s it for landing tips and tricks, happy hunting (or hiding)!
