So Chapter 6 dropped and honestly the map feels like a completely different game compared to Chapter 5 where you load in for the first time and just kind of stand there for a second looking around because nothing is where it used to be and the entire flow of every single match has fundamentally shifted in ways that the patch notes do not prepare you for.

The Japanese biome in the northeast eats up about a third of the island now and the new movement mechanics change how you rotate through literally every fight you take which means everything you learned in Chapter 5 about positioning and rotations is basically worthless at this point.

I've been grinding this since day one and tbh I'm still figuring out some of the edge cases on the eastern side of the map where the terrain gets weird around the temple ruins and the zipline angles dont work the way you'd expect them to.

Not like bad weird.

Just stuff you need to learn the hard way.

If you're jumping in fresh or coming back after a break here's what actually matters and I'm not talking about the patch notes here I'm talking about the stuff that determines whether you survive your drop or get sent back to the lobby in thirty seconds flat without ever firing your weapon.

Where you land is everything.

I cannot stress that enough because it decides whether you actually get to play the game or spend two minutes looting just to get one-pumped by some guy who landed on a purple shotgun while you're still picking up bandages off the floor and wondering what just happened to your match.

Sakura Sanctuary has a rooftop loot pool that's kind of absurd and I don't say that lightly because I've dropped at a lot of POIs over the years and this one ranks up there with the best launch-week landing spots I can remember.

Three guaranteed chest spawns on the main temple roof and the zip lines let you rotate out fast if zone pulls south.

But it's risky because this place averages like 8 to 12 players per drop and the chaos gets out of hand fast.

Neon Underground is lowkey the most slept-on spot on the entire map right now and I say that having landed there probably fifty times this season alone and walked away with full loot almost every single time.

Two vending machines.

A slurp truck.

Enough floor loot to kit a duo.

And I've only gotten contested by more than two other players twice which is insane when you think about how good this spot actually is.

I actully counted because I was curious if my luck was just temporary but no this place is genuinely underrated.

Hazy Hillside hotel specifically, not the whole POI. Land on the west balcony door, grab the chest inside room 304, then rotate down through the kitchen. Consistent blue plus loot without the lobby chaos that makes you want to uninstall the game entirely.

Shogun's Solitude if you want to play placement games and just survive to top ten without getting into early fights that drain your mats and heals before the real action even starts.

Land at the fishing hut north of the main building and crack the three barrels and grab the guaranteed fishing rod and you'll pull two or three rare weapons before first circle even starts closing on your position.

Retail Row is back and yeah everyone lands there because nostalgia is a powerful drug apparently but the back storage room has a hidden floor chest that most players literally sprint right past on their way to the main counter which gives you a free angle on whoever's looting out front and not paying attention to their surroundings.

The weapon meta in Chapter 6 has some clear winners and some guns that feel like you're throwing actual marshmallows at people who then turn around and one-tap you with a real weapon while you're standing there wondering why you even picked up that gray pistol in the first place.

Kinetic AR at blue or higher is the best all-around rifle and the recoil pattern is basically vertical for the first twelve shots before it kicks hard right which means you should burst fire at range.

Pretty straightforward gun honestly.

Havoc Shotgun purple or gold consistently hits a hundred and ten plus headshot and you feel like an actual threat in close quarters instead of a liability.

The green and blue versions hit for like sixty which is just embarrassing and you should never pick one up unless you literally have no other option and even then you might be better off with your pickaxe.

Ranger Pistol is genuinely slept on and I will die on this hill because nobody believes me when I say it but I've been running AR plus Ranger Pistol instead of AR plus SMG this entire season and my close-range fight outcomes have gone way up.

Not sure if this is actully optimal or I'm just getting lucky with lobby matchmaking at my current MMR but hey it's working for me right now and I'm not about to change what's working.

Thermal DMR at blue or higher is the only DMR worth carrying because the thermal scope cuts through the new fog effects that roll through the Japanese biome and without it you're basically blind in half your mid-range fights and you'll lose trades you should win.

Shockwave Hammer is still in the game and still broken for rotation and if you find one you should carry it without overthinking.

My loadout most games is Kinetic AR for mid to long range, Havoc Shotgun purple or higher for close, Shockwave Hammer or Shockwaves for rotation, minis and bigs for heals.

Fifth slot I flex depending on lobby vibes and how the zone is pulling.

If you can't find a purple Havoc just run a Ranger Pistol as your close-range option because the TTK is actually faster than a green Havoc anyway and you'll win more trades against players who are still running low-tier shotguns thinking they're good.

Chapter 6 has five bosses spread across the map and each drops a vault keycard for their specific POI with vaults that contain mod benches and guaranteed gold weapons and usually two to three slurp juices which makes them worth the effort if you can survive the fight and the inevitable third party.

Ronin at Sakura Sanctuary top floor of the temple is the easiest boss fight in the game right now.

Stays in one room and drops a Mythic Kinetic AR and vault keycard and you should absolutely do this fight every single game if you can.

Shadow Ops down in Neon Underground control room drops a Mythic Thermal DMR and the fight itself is fine but that POI becomes an absolute death trap the second a third party shows up because there are exactly three exits and all of them funnel into open sightlines where you have zero cover.

Kitsune wanders the courtyard at Shogun's Solitude and drops the Mythic Shockwave Hammer but she teleports after taking damage and up close it's annoying as hell.

Magnus at Brutal Bastion throne room drops a Mythic Havoc Shotgun and you should only fight him with a duo because his shotgun will literally two-shot you at full shield and full health and there's basically nothing you can do about it solo.

The Warden down in the underground prison at Grim Gate drops a Mythic Ranger Pistol and is actually the best solo boss fight on the map because the prison layout gives you infinite right-hand peek angles and easy vault access if you know the layout.

Weekly quests still give the most XP per time spent and that part of the game hasn't changed at all since previous chapters.

But the structure in Chapter 6 is different now because they split weekly quests into Story and Milestone tracks and the Story ones give almost double the XP which means you should absolutely prioritize those first before touching anything else on the quest tab.

Fastest XP route I've found goes like this: knock out all Story weekly quests first which is about 25K XP each and takes roughly 45 minutes for the full set if you're efficient about it and not getting distracted by fights. Milestone quests complete passively while doing Story quests so you don't even need to think about them. Match Quests dailies reset every 24 hours and you should always grab the Survive Storm Circles one because it's free XP for literally just existing in the match and not dying immediately.

Creative mode XP cap maps still work and the code 4826-1973-2847 has been the most consistent for me and nets about 80K XP in fifteen minutes before hitting the daily creative cap.

And yeah there's an XP glitch working right now as of the current patch.

Load into the Forest Guardian boss fight and drop him to half health and then let him kill you and spectate for exactly 30 seconds then ready up from spectate and you'll get 12K XP per cycle and it takes about two minutes per cycle and it's boring but it works because I got six battle pass levels in an hour doing this while watching YouTube on my second monitor.

Not sure how long it'll last though...

The Chapter 6 Season 1 battle pass has eight skins and here's what I actually think is worth grinding for after spending way too many hours in this game this season.

Ronin at tier 100 is the one you actually want because the masked variant has this animated storm effect on the cloak that looks really clean in game and I'm not normally a battle pass skin guy but this one hits different for reasons I can't really explain.

Kitsune at tier 80 has that nine-tail fox aesthetic with a reactive glow that intensifies with kills and the pickaxe in her set has the best swing animation since Chapter 4 honestly and I don't say that lightly because I'm picky about pickaxe animations.

Shadow Stalker at tier 50 is kind of edgy but the back bling changes color based on your health bar which is a genuinely useful visual cue in the middle of chaotic fights when you can't look at the corner of your screen.

Neon Drifter is the tier 1 starter skin and it's pretty mid but the helmet off style at tier 60 is better than the default at least.

Aura at tier 30 is the sweat skin for this season so if you see someone wearing Aura they have 500 plus crown wins and you should just mentally prepare yourself for a rough fight and probably an early exit from the match.

The rest are fine and the glider at tier 70 has a unique deploy animation but you see it for three seconds a match so I wouldn't grind specifically for it unless you really care about glider animations which most people don't.

The biggest map change nobody talks about is that river that used to cut through the center of the map is partially frozen over in the northwest section now and you can walk across it without any issues which completely invalidates the old hold the bridge rotation gate at Frosty Falls and changes how the entire northwest portion of the map plays out in every single match.

Doesn't work anymore at all and three different paths cross the ice now so the old choke point strategy is completely dead.

So if you're rotating north to south in later circles hug the east side of the ice sheet because the west side has zero cover and the reflection off the ice makes it impossible to see players on the opposite bank.

Literally impossible to see them and I've died to this exact thing three times before I learned my lesson and started avoiding the west side entirely.

The new zipline network connecting Sakura Sanctuary to Steamy Springs to Neon Underground means you can rotate diagonally across about a quarter of the map in under twenty seconds and that's not an exaggeration at all because I've timed it multiple times and it's consistently fast.

Third parties happen way faster now than they ever did before in any previous chapter because people can cross the map in seconds instead of minutes.

If you finish a fight and the nearest zipline station is within render distance you need to heal before you loot because someone is already on the way and they're probably not friendly and they probably heard your gunshots from two POIs away.

And the train is gone entirely which still makes me kind of sad because I liked the train even though it was objectively not that useful for actual gameplay.

Replaced by drift cars that spawn randomly along the roads and they're faster than sprinting but they're loud and the handling is awful on snow terrain so I mostly ignore them unless zone is on the complete opposite side of the map and I have literally no other movement options and the storm is already closing in behind me.

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