Battlefield 5’s Lightning Strikes Update Adds Squad Conquest

With game releases slowing down until later this winter, now is the perfect time to jump back into Battlefield V. Electronic Arts and DICE have been releasing new content for free, and in the latest drop, they will release a new Squad Conquest mode, as well as a handful of weapons.

Part of the Tides of War ongoing update system in Battlefield V, the second chapter is Lightning Strikes. Its biggest addition is Squad Conquest, which condenses the game’s flagship mode into an eight-versus-eight battle to control three flags on the Arras, Rotterdam, and Hamada maps. The mode will only make use of a small portion of the maps in order to keep the battles tight and engaging, and Rotterdam is the smallest of the three. It only features a single armored vehicle, and that will only be rewarded to a team that already controls all the flags.

Squad Conquest will only be available from January 17-30, but you’ll also be able to earn several new weapons through January and February. These include the ZK-383 submachine gun, the Modele 1944 sidearm, and the M1922 machine gun.

Changes have also been made to the “death experience” in an attempt to give players more information on how they bit the dust. The name of the player who killed you will now be displayed where you died, and a new camera will follow the killer afterward. The directional damage indicator has also been tweaked to better point you in the direction of incoming fire.

The previous Tides of War update concluded the Battlefield V campaign with the German-focused Last Tiger mission, which happened to be one of the best in the whole game. It also included access to the Panzerstorm map and largely starred armored vehicles instead of infantry.

Battlefield V‘s largest addition, however, is yet to come. The free mode “Firestorm” will be the game’s take on battle royale later this year, making use of vehicles and environmental destruction to create a different experience than competitor Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is offering. Whether or not that will be enough to draw players back to DICE’s shooter, however, remains to be seen.