A few new game mechanics have been activated in the standalone free to play battle royale due to the final proliferation of the zombie outbreak. Areas that have been infested for longer, such as the surroundings of the Vodianoy cargo ship’s wreck, will have an ambient gas cloud that damages players nearby regardless of the current circle’s location - even if you are technically in the safe zone, these areas are hazardous. While new, specialized gas masks can be found within, it’s a gamble whether you’ll be able to loot one before you succumb - and if you fall inside one of these contaminated areas, death won’t be the end of it. With this new minor mid-season update, players dying in infection zones will return as zombies. Zombie players won’t have access to guns, but charging against panicked operators as part of the undead horde sounds like plenty fun on its own, too, and offers a nice change of pace. Right now the most heavily contaminated areas are the shipwreck, which was the original ground-zero for the outbreak, and the nearby prison complex. All of this is leading up to the end of Season 2 on the 21st of April, by when we expect the infection zones to spread out across the Verdansk map, when those ‘critical safety measures’ we have been hearing about would be enacted - namely, the launching of nuclear warheads, as accidentally leaked by the game itself. After the nuking of Verdansk at the conclusion of the season, we will see the introduction of the new 80’s inspired Verdansk map in the upcoming Season 3.
