Best PUBG Throwables: Grenades, Smokes & Utility Guide

Throwables are free power in PUBG: Battlegrounds that is easy to leave in the bag. A grenade you cook and land behind a rock kills a guy that bullets physically cannot reach. A smoke wall lets you cross a road four other squads are watching. A Molotov flushes a camper out of the one corner you can't push. These aren't gimmicks — they're the tools for compound fights and open rotations.

This is a practical guide to every throwable that matters: how the frag cook timer actually works, how to run smoke rotations, when to burn a room with a Molotov, how to blind a building with a stun, and the situational and map-specific throwables worth knowing. PUBG tunes exact damage and timing values over time and locks some throwables to specific maps, so treat the numbers here as ballpark and the how to use it as the durable part.

Throwables are not pocket filler

The reframe: a throwable is a tool for a problem your gun can't solve. Your rifle is great at "enemy I can see in the open." It's useless against an enemy behind hard cover, a teammate you need to revive in the open, a corner you have to push blind, or a road you have to cross under watch. That's the entire job of throwables, and each one solves a different version of it.

So the question isn't "should I carry grenades?" It's "which problem am I likely to face, and what do I throw at it?" A balanced loadout for most fights is roughly two smokes, one or two frags, and a Molotov or stun depending on whether you're attacking buildings. Smokes first — they come first, and we'll get to why. Carry them like ammo, not like souvenirs.

The frag grenade: cooking and arcs

The frag grenade is the heavy hitter. Since Update 6.2 a vest cuts frag damage by the same percentage it cuts bullet damage, but the blast still reaches people hiding behind cover that's beating your rifle.

The two skills that make a frag lethal instead of decorative:

• Cooking. A frag has roughly a five-second fuse from the moment you pull the pin. If you throw it raw, the enemy hears it land and simply walks away before it goes off — a thrown grenade is a suggestion. Cooking means holding the grenade for a couple of seconds after you pull the pin so it detonates shortly after it lands, giving the enemy no time to escape. Hold it too long and it cooks off in your hand and kills you, so the discipline is "pull, count a beat or two, throw" — practice the timing in the range until it's muscle memory, because there's no undo.
• Arcs and aim modes. PUBG gives you an overhand throw (long, high arc — for distance and lobbing over walls), an underhand throw (a short, soft toss — for dropping a grenade just over a nearby wall or into a window a few meters away), and a roll (sends it along the ground — for bowling it under a vehicle or into the bottom of a stairwell). Use overhand to reach a far compound, underhand to drop it right behind the wall you're stacked on, and the roll to skip the bounce-back that gets you killed throwing into tight rooms.

Where frags win games: digging an enemy out of hard cover (a frag behind their rock does what your bullets can't), denying a doorway or the top of a staircase, and finishing a knocked enemy whose teammates are trying to revive. The cardinal frag sin is throwing one into a small room you're standing next to — it bounces off the doorframe and lands at your feet. Roll it or underhand it, and never throw blind into a wall a few feet away.

Smoke grenades: blocking vision

If you take one thing from this guide: carry smokes and actually use them. The smoke grenade does no damage, but it wins fights by making them not happen. It pops a dense cloud that blocks vision for several seconds, and that simple effect solves an enormous number of problems.

What smoke is actually for:

• Crossing open ground. Pop a smoke across the road or field you need to traverse and walk through the cloud instead of sprinting through an open kill lane. The single best use of a smoke is making a dangerous rotation a non-event.
• Reviving safely. Drop a smoke between you and the threat before you pick up a knocked teammate. The revive animation leaves you exposed and unable to shoot; smoke turns a suicidal pickup into a routine one.
• Resetting a fight you're losing. When a gunfight goes bad, a smoke wall breaks line of sight so you can disengage, heal, or reposition instead of trading your way to death in the open.
• Smoke chaining for long crossings. For a genuinely long open stretch, throw a second smoke before the first fully fades and walk the moving wall across — a smoke rotation that keeps you covered the whole way. This is why you carry two or three, not one.

One honest caveat: smoke blinds you too, and good players will pre-fire or push through a smoke they know you're hiding behind. Smoke buys time and breaks line of sight — it is not an invincibility bubble. Use it to move and reset, not to stand still inside and feel safe.

Molotov cocktails: area denial and room clearing

The Molotov is your area-denial throwable. It doesn't bounce like other throwables: it bursts where it lands and spreads a pool of fire, dealing damage over time to anyone standing in it or passing through. Its whole value is controlling space you can't shoot into.

Where the Molotov earns its slot:

• Flushing campers out of corners. An enemy holding the one corner of a room you can't safely peek? Molotov the corner. The fire forces them to move or burn, and now they're peeking on your terms instead of theirs.
• Denying a revive. Throw it on a knocked enemy. Their teammates can't crawl into a fire to pick them up, and the burn finishes the down for you.
• Blocking a doorway or stairwell. A wall of fire across the only entrance to your position buys you the time to heal or reposition — nobody's sprinting through flames to push you.
• Denying ground in the final circle. On a tiny endgame play area, a Molotov on the patch of cover an enemy needs forces them out of it and into the open.

The catch: the fire spreads outward from the impact point, and it'll burn you just as happily as the enemy. Don't Molotov the room you're about to push into, and don't drop one at your own feet to "block" a doorway you're standing in. It's for space you want to deny, not space you want to occupy.

Stun grenades: blind the room before you enter

The stun grenade (sometimes labeled a flashbang) does no damage. It detonates with a blinding flash and a disorienting ring that whites out the screen and muffles audio for anyone looking near it — for several seconds, which is an eternity in a gunfight. It has a short fuse like a frag, so you can cook it to detonate the instant it lands.

The classic use is breaching a building. Cook a stun, toss it through the door or window of the room you're about to enter, and push in the moment it pops while the defenders are blind and deaf. A stunned enemy can't aim at you and can't hear your footsteps, so you turn a coin-flip room entry into a free one. It's the room-clearing partner to the frag: frag to kill what's behind hard cover, stun to blind what's around the corner you're pushing.

Two warnings. First, it blinds your own team too if they're looking at it, so call "stun out" before you throw and have your squad look away. Second, the stun only works if the enemy is actually facing it — a defender staring at the back wall barely notices. Aim it where they're looking, which is usually the entrance you're about to come through.

The situational and map-specific throwables

Beyond the four staples, PUBG has throwables that are either niche or locked to certain maps. Knowing they exist matters; building a strategy around them usually doesn't.

• BZ grenade. A Blue Zone Grenade: it creates a small blue-zone circle (up to about ten meters in radius, per the Update 13.2 notes) that damages anyone inside it for roughly ten seconds, about 10 damage per second. Useful for forcing enemies out of a room or from behind cover. Availability can vary by map and mode.
• Sticky bomb. A breaching tool found on Karakin, where the map's destructible walls are a core mechanic. It sticks to a surface and blows a hole in it, letting you breach into compounds from unexpected angles. You can throw it at players in a pinch, but it's a tool for the wall, not the man.
• C4. A heavy demolition charge with a long automatic fuse (around sixteen seconds) and a big blast radius that can penetrate cover. It auto-detonates and can't be triggered early, so it's a deliberate area-denial and breaching tool — cut off a building entrance or force a camped squad out of a position — rather than something you frag with mid-fight. Availability can vary by map and mode.

One throwable you won't find any more: the Decoy Grenade. Update 35.1 removed it from every spawn spot, and Update 42.3 deleted its Equip key binding as removed content. It is not on KRAFTON's official throwables page, which lists seven: the stun, frag, Molotov, sticky bomb, smoke, C4 and BZ grenade. If an older guide tells you to hunt for a decoy, it is describing a deleted item.

The honest takeaway: master the four staples (frag, smoke, Molotov, stun) because they're on most maps and cover the core jobs. Treat the BZ, sticky bomb, and C4 as bonus tools you use well when the map hands them to you, not as the core of your kit.

Utility items: blue chips and comeback tools

PUBG's "utility" extends past throwables into the systems that bring a player back — the stuff that quietly decides squad games. These aren't grenades, but they belong in any honest utility discussion — and several of the items older guides describe here have since been deleted.

• Recall and the Blue Chip. When a teammate is fully eliminated, their Blue Chip is in their deathbox. Grab it and register it at a Blue Chip Tower to bring them back on a recall flight. Since Update 32.1, recall flights run every 2 minutes 30 seconds from the start of the match instead of once per phase, and the towers deactivate once the final flight appears, so don't sit on a dead teammate's chip. Update 35.1 extended Recall to every map, Karakin and Paramo included. Full mechanics are in the Recall guide.
• The Blue Chip Transmitter is gone. The lootable transmitter that let you register a teammate's Blue Chip away from a tower was removed from every spawn spot in the same Update 35.1, so the tower is where you register a chip now.
• The Blue Chip Detector is gone too. The enemy-scanning Tactical Gear that arrived with Deston was removed in Update 24.2 in July 2023. KRAFTON's notes said it gave a significant advantage in early fights by making enemies easier to locate, and that the stress this caused players was why it was cut.
• Self-AED. A self-revive: it picks you up from the knocked state with no teammate needed. It does not bring you back after you've been eliminated. Since Update 35.1 it world-spawns on every map, but only in Solo mode — it was removed from Duo and Squad.
• Comeback BR no longer exists. The arena where eliminated players fought their way back into the match was removed from Taego in Update 31.2 and from Vikendi in Update 32.1. Recall is what's left.

The throughline: utility is second chances. Throwables solve the problem in front of you; Recall decides whether a lost teammate stays lost. Both matter more than the third gun you were going to carry.

Throwables ranked by value

If you're prioritizing what to pick up and carry, here's a sensible order:

1. Smoke grenade — the most useful; carry two or three.
2. Frag grenade — your main damage tool; it beats hard cover.
3. Stun grenade — turns a coin-flip room entry into a free one; essential if you push buildings.
4. Molotov cocktail — area denial that flushes campers and blocks revives and doorways.
5. C4 — heavy breaching and area denial where the map offers it.
6. BZ grenade — blue-zone-style area denial that damages everyone inside; situational.
7. Sticky bomb — Karakin wall-breaching specialist.

Quick Action Checklist

• Carry two to three smokes and treat them like ammo — they win fights by preventing them
• Cook your frags (pull, count a beat or two, throw) so the enemy can't walk away from them
• Use the roll or underhand throw into tight rooms so the frag doesn't bounce back at you
• Smoke the revive and smoke open rotations; chain a second smoke for long crossings
• Molotov the corner or doorway you can't push to flush campers and deny revives
• Stun and breach — cook a stun into a room and push the instant it pops, after calling "stun out"
• Don't plan around map-specific throwables (BZ, sticky bomb, C4) — use them well when you find them
• Grab a dead teammate's Blue Chip and register it at a Blue Chip Tower to recall them — Recall runs on every map since Update 35.1
• Ignore any guide that sends you looking for a decoy grenade, Blue Chip Transmitter, or Blue Chip Detector — all three have been removed