Electronic Arts and DICE have revealed the third and final game mode of Battlefield 2042, Hazard Zone. Unlike Battlefield V‘s Firestorm Mode which plays like a run-of-the-mill battle royale game, Battlefield 2042 Hazard Zone provides additional twists and turns to make matches feel more intense. In this 32-player mode consisting of eight squads of four players (24-player in six squads of four for Xbox One and PS4), you’re inserted into a battlefield to retrieve critical Data Drives and choose when to extract while evading both enemy squads and the AI-controlled Occupying Forces.
How Battlefield 2042 Hazard Zone Works
Speaking to EGMNow, design director Daniel Berlin details that each match consists of five key phases: Strategize & Equip, Insert, Retrieval, and First and Final Extraction phase.
Starting with the Strategize & Equip phase, a mission briefing will tell you the map and your squad’s insertion point as well as what kind of Occupying Forces are there. Then you can pick which Specialist, loadout, and Hazard Zone-specific tactical upgrades you want to use. However, only one of each Specialist can only be used in a squad. All seven All-Out Warfare maps — Orbital, Kaleidoscope, Manifest, Discarded, Renewal, Hourglass, and Breakaway — can host Hazard Zone matches.
Insert phase, as you can expect, is the moment you and seven other squads are dropped in at the predetermined insertion point. Once your boots are on the ground, you’re entering the Retrieval phase. At the beginning of the match, several Data Drives are already scattered on the map. But later, more satellites containing the Drives will fall from the sky as well. Either by using a unique Intel Scanner gadget or going in blind, you will have to look for and collect as many Data Drives as you can.
Depending on how many Data Drives you managed to retrieve, the more XP and Dark Market Credits, a Hazard Zone-specific currency, you can earn. These Credits then can be used to spice up your loadout for your next match. New weapons, upgrades, you name it. Nevertheless, only two squads (or a member of those two squads) that manage to extract from the map will be given payroll.
About halfway through a match, a Condor air carrier will show up at a random location — this is when The First Extraction occurs and one squad can finish their job. Although the seven other squads (or what’s left of them) will have to wait until the Final Extraction phase at the very end of the match, you will have more time to loot more Data Drives as well as killing the other players and Occupying Forces for extra XP and Credits.
