How to Kick in PUBG: Update 43.1's New Melee Action

KRAFTON describes PUBG's unarmed combat as "monotonous" in its own developer comment on Update 43.1. The fix it shipped is a second verb for the empty-handed state, and unlike the punch it is not simply a worse gun — a kick knocks people backwards, shoves a wooden door off its frame, and rattles loot out of a vending machine faster than holding the interact key would.

KRAFTON's own framing, from the Update 43.1 patch notes, is short:

Kick has been added, bringing a new variable to unarmed combat. Kicks deal more damage and have a stronger knockback effect than punches, allowing you to push back opponents, interrupt their actions, and interact with the surrounding environment in new ways.

Here is the whole confirmed feature, and the parts the notes leave open.

How to kick in PUBG

There are two kick actions, and both sit on the same input. The patch notes tag the section "Available in all modes," so this is not an Arcade-only toy.

The one line worth acting on before your next match: "The kick can be assigned to a key of your choice in Key Bindings." If right-click is already carrying something in your scheme, set the kick somewhere deliberate rather than finding out what it collides with mid-fight.

What a kick breaks

This is the half that changes how you move through a compound, and it is the part KRAFTON actually enumerated. The patch notes list five object types a kick destroys:

Read the caveat attached to that list, because it is the difference between a plan and a guess: "Objects of the same type may not be destructible depending on their size or structure." A wooden door is not a guarantee that this wooden door goes down. Treat the list as a category of things worth trying, not a promise about a specific prop.

What that buys you is an entry route that costs no ammunition and no grenade. KRAFTON's developer comment says so directly:

We also hope Kick will be used in various ways depending on the situation and terrain, such as kicking down doors and certain objects to create new entry routes without using a weapon.

If you are used to solving a building with the door-and-angle discipline in our compound clearing guide, 43.1 adds a second opening to the same room that does not spend a magazine to make.

Doors and vending machines

Two interactions sit outside the destructible list and are easy to miss in the notes.

Indestructible doors open faster. The exact wording is "Indestructible doors can be opened quickly with a kick," immediately followed by "This does not apply to some doors." So the kick is also a fast-open, not only a demolition tool — on the doors where it works.

Vending machines pay out faster, and you pay for it. KRAFTON: "You can also kick vending machines to obtain items. You can obtain items faster than through regular interactions, but the vending machine will be damaged and unavailable for a while." That is a genuine trade, not a free upgrade: you get your heals sooner and then the machine is dead for a period the notes do not quantify, for you and for whoever walks in next.

Worth knowing where those machines are before you plan around them, and the answer is more than one map. The two-type set — boost and medical, the medical type dispensing Bandages, First Aid Kits and Med Kits — rolled out map by map: Erangel and Taego in Update 35.2, "placed in major buildings throughout the map," with one of the two types spawning at random; Deston in Update 37.1; and Miramar in Update 37.2, a map that already carried boost machines before the medical type existed.

43.1 adds a themed batch on top of that: the Jujutsu Kaisen collaboration converts some Erangel warehouse buildings into themed spaces, and KRAFTON's collaboration announcement says you "use the Jujutsu Kaisen vending machines inside the warehouse to obtain boost and healing items." The patch notes scope the collaboration's world features as "available until the next update."

Kick vs punch vs pan

Be careful what you take from the comparison, because KRAFTON published a direction and not a number.

• Versus a punch, the notes say a kick deals more damage and has a stronger knockback effect. No damage figure, no knockback distance, no stamina cost appears anywhere in the 43.1 notes.
• Versus a melee weapon, there is no published comparison at all. Our melee weapons guide carries the pan's and machete's real damage-through-armor numbers; the kick does not have an equivalent published figure to sit next to them, so anything you see quoted is a player's range test rather than a patch note.
• The knockback is the point, not the damage. KRAFTON's developer comment frames it as "brief mind games at close range, such as pushing opponents back or interrupting their actions." KRAFTON's own 43.1 Highlights card is blunter about which actions: "You can now kick to break doors, smash objects, interrupt looting and healing, and more." Interrupting a heal or a loot animation is a real effect on a real timer, and it does not need a big damage number to matter.

That last point is the one to internalise. A kick is not there to win a duel against a rifle. It is there for the two seconds where somebody is bandaging behind a rock and you arrived without a magazine.

What KRAFTON has not published

Four things the 43.1 notes do not answer, listed so you do not fill them in yourself:

• Kick damage. Stated as higher than a punch, and not quantified anywhere in the 43.1 notes.
• Whether the Jump Kick also requires empty hands. The Standing Kick entry says "while unarmed." The Jump Kick entry says only "while jumping" and does not repeat the condition. The section heading calls the whole feature an addition to unarmed combat, but the notes do not spell the Jump Kick case out.
• How long a kicked vending machine stays down. "For a while" is the published precision.
• Which specific doors and props are exempt. KRAFTON says exemptions exist for both the destructible list and the fast-open behaviour, and does not name them.

One more piece of timing that is not a gap but an easy mistake: Kick is not live on console yet. The 43.1 maintenance schedule in the patch notes reads PC: Sep 10, 2026, 00:00-08:30 UTC and Console: Sep 17, 2026, 01:00-09:00 UTC, carrying KRAFTON's standard note that the times are subject to change. So as of 12 September, a console player reading a PC clip about kicking doors down cannot do it for another five days.

The rest of Update 43.1

The kick is the headline, but it landed in a patch that changed several long-standing rules at once. Short version, all from the same notes:

Two of those deserve a flag rather than a shrug. The LMG line is KRAFTON walking back part of the first Meta Rotation it launched a month ago — our Meta Rotation write-up covers both the 42.3 numbers and the 43.1 adjustments pulling them back. And the water changes overturned the core rule our water play guide was originally written against — it has since been revised for 43.1, including the console timing.

Quick Action Checklist

• Standing Kick is right-click while unarmed; Jump Kick is right-click while jumping; console uses LT for both
• Rebind it in Key Bindings before you need it if right-click is already busy in your scheme
• Windows, wooden doors, wooden fences, jars and tires are the five object types KRAFTON lists as kickable — with size and structure exceptions inside each type
• Use a kick as a no-ammo second entry into a building, not as a duelling tool
• Kick a vending machine when you need the heal now and accept the machine going offline for a while afterwards
• The interrupt matters more than the damage — it breaks a heal or a loot animation
• On console, none of this is live until the 17 September maintenance window