Call of Duty: Warzone doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, with more than 100 million players around the world having dropped into the game to duke it out COD-style. And what better way to while away the days than with a free-to-play battle royale game, tied to an already dominant franchise?
The game’s just undergone its biggest change since launch, moving at long last away from its Verdansk map and landing on Caldera, a Pacific island, to tie in with Vanguard. The game has changed, but we’ve been playing since the beginning and still have loads of advice to help you.
We’ve dropped more times than we can count into the zone, practising and squadding up to figure out some useful strategies and tips that you can take into your own sessions. Say it quietly, we’re even winning a few games. So, here are our top tips to become a better COD Warzone player.
1. Check the map before you drop
Your choice of landing zone is a key variable at the start of a match. The second you see that cutscene of the plane starting up, you can bring up the map screen for your match and see where the shrinking gas circle will start. That can help you to gain a sense of where people are more likely to land, and for where you’ll have to aim for as it approaches.
It’s important that, as your confidence grows, you can tailor your tactics on this front. If you don’t fancy yourself in chaotic gunfights, maybe go more remote in order to get some solid equipment. Alternatively, go for the “trial by fire” approach and train yourself in fighting by seeking out crowded areas like the ever-popular Capital. It’s up to you, but make sure you do pick a spot as a squad.
2. Pop and cut your chute to drop more quickly
Pretty much the minute Warzone went live, players figured out a cheeky way to get a bit of a headstart in a match. As you drop from the plane over the map, you can pop your parachute whenever you like to glide down more slowly. What people realised, though, is that you can actually cut your cord to dive again and re-pop your parachute as many times you like. Now most players use that to their advantage.
Firstly, as you fall, popping your chute then cutting the cords gives you a short speed boost, and throws you forward more aggressively, letting you cover ground more quickly to get to your chosen landing zone.
Secondly, after you cut your parachute away you get a few seconds where your starting pistol is drawn, potentially letting you get some shots away at other people falling, to get that first little advantage – if you’re okay being a bit toxic.
Finally, you can also drift sideways with your chute out to cover more ground without losing altitude – a great way to make huge long drops to get away from crowded spots.
3. Don’t hoard your cash
Warzone has a cash economy at its heart. You’ll collect money as you run around and earn more for completing contracts (more on those later). Some matches you’ll hardly find any, while in others you’ll be swimming in the stuff soon enough. Either way, be sure not to sit on your cash too long.
In the battle royale modes, there are no bonuses for keeping hold of cash, so it’s really only there for you to use at the Buy Stations marked on your map. These let you buy a selection of killstreaks like Precision Airtsrikes and Cluster Strikes, as well as more armour plating and loadout drops. Our advice would be to be proactive on buying these rewards – you can’t take the money with you, after all, and a well-timed UAV could win you a gunfight really easily.
That said, if your teammates are dying a lot, you might want to keep hold of $4,000 to buy them back in, should they fail to win their redemptive Gulag fight.
4. Loadout drops are the key
Cash is important, then, but when you hit up a Buy Station it might be worth knowing what your priority should be. As we said, killstreaks can be a huge help, but the absolute top priority in your squad should be for someone to buy a Loadout Drop as soon as possible during each match. These airdrops let your whole squad pick one of their personal loadouts to swap into, getting their customised guns and equipment.
That’s like slipping on a glove in this context, letting you get in the groove with a loadout you’re comfortable with, and all of the best players use it to dominate. Follow suit, if you can!
When Pacific launched, you could only buy a loadout of your own once the free ones drop in a few minutes into each game. That’s been revoked now, and you can buy a loadout any time you have enough cash, so it’s back to an early game cash-race at present.
In terms of your loadouts themselves, while you can obviously feel free to experiment with perks, too, we’d highly recommend running with Ghost by default, which will hide you from UAVs and heartbeat monitors. It’s pretty much a mandatory pick unless you want an Overkill class to get two of your favourite guns at once.
5. Pick up contracts whenever you can
If you’re daunted by the $10,000 price tag of a loadout drop, though, there are some good ways to earn cash and loot while you move around the map – contracts. These are marked out for you, and fall into a number of types: Bounties (and Big Game Bounties), Scavenger, Recon, Most Wanted, Supply Drop, Supply Run and [TOP SECRET].
Bounties mark out one player on the map for you, in a radius that gets smaller as you get closer to them, giving you a set amount of time to locate and kill him or her, and rewarding you if they die. Usefully, if you take out a bounty and someone else kills that player, you’ll still get a smaller reward. There’s no downside to picking one of these up – it’ll tell you where a player is and you get XP just for starting it. A Big Game Bounty can only be chosen once per game, and targets whoever in the lobby has the most kills for bigger rewards.
Scavenger contracts mark out a succession of three loot boxes for you to find and open, with solid loot in them and a cash reward when you finish the set. You’ll also get a guaranteed drop of an Armour Satchel when you finish it, too, letting one player hold up to 8 plates. Again, these are no brainers, although they’re very popular targets at the start of matches.
Recons, meanwhile, point you towards a capture point for you to lock down, and can feel a bit riskier. They require you to stay still for a little while, sometimes out in the open. They’ll tell you where the circle will next close, though, as a huge tactical benefit, and are favourites for experienced players, and you can stack that information up if you move quickly.
Most Wanted is a double-edged sword. You’re marked as a target for everyone on the map, for three minutes, but if you survive that time limit not only do you get a cash reward, any dead teammates instantly drop back into the game, whether they’re in the gulag or spectating.
Supply Drop airdrops in a valuable crate of supplies and tells your team exactly where it will land, while anyone else in the lobby can see it come in and try to intercept without that guidance.
Supply Run gives you limited time to make it to a specifically marked Buy Station. Get there in time and you’ll enjoy personal discounts on your next purchase (including a free self-revive kit or buyback) to give you an advantage moving forward.
Finally, [TOP SECRET] gives you a random contract with an enhanced reward to make up for the lottery you’re entering.
The final word, though, is that these contracts aren’t just good for loot and money – they also give you a short-term objective to aim for, and are a great way of making a match feel more structured and less like guesswork. Frankly, blazing out in a game where you ticked off a couple of contracts is more fun than hiding in one place for 20 minutes and then dying.
6. Share your resources
We keep mentioning squads, and while you can play Warzone in Solos mode, the aim is clearly still for most players to join a squad in the main battle royale mode. We’d encourage you to think tactically as a squad, therefore. If you’re sat with full armour and five spare plates, while your squadmates are down to nothing, drop some plates for them to pick up.
The same goes for cash and ammo – it’s often the case that only by pooling your cash can a loadout marker be bought, for example. This will encourage more selfless play in the long run.
7. Ping everything
Just like every other battle royale game since Apex Legends came out, Warzone has a ping system to let you communicate with your squaddies. It lets you show them what you’re looking at or where you’re aiming for. This is an easy tip, but use it all the time, whenever you can, and map it to a button you’re comfortable with to make that easier. The more information you share, the further your squad will go.
8. Get creative with equipment
There’s also a range of field equipment that you can find around the map as you go, which can help you out in a pinch. Whether it’s a deployable bit of cover to block an enemy’s sightline, the Dead Silence field upgrade to make you quiet for a spell, or more, there are a lot of ways these can help.
One fun tactic that was quickly discovered involves the field drone you can find. If you use the drone, and a teammate has C4 equipped, they can actually drop the C4 on the drone to turn it into a miniaturised, mobile bomb (although this will not work in Vanguard Royale, where the equipment isn’t available).
9. Exploit the Gulag
One of the most refreshing parts of Warzone is that death doesn’t have to be the end at all. Firstly, unless you die right near the end of the game, after your first death you’ll be sent to the Gulag, a mine shaft of a jail where you’ll await a one-on-one gunfight to earn re-entry to the battlefield. Even if you lose, your squad can still buy you back if they have the money.
If two of you go to the Gulag at once, though, you could be able to help each other out. Often our teammate has been able to give us callouts while they watched our gunfight, helping us to win then getting back into the game. Take every advantage you can get!
10. Play Plunder or Resurgence for a change of pace
Of course, Warzone isn’t just pure battle royale – there’s also Plunder, a mode that sees you buzzing around the map looking for cash and cash alone, before sending it away at designated points. It’s much more chaotic and frenetic than battle royale, especially because respawns are enabled and there’s no gas circle to worry about.
If you want a change from the nail-biting tension of battle royale rounds, it’s a great option to switch it up with, and you might even find that you prefer it. It’s particularly great for levelling up your guns – drop into Plunder with a double weapon XP token live, and concentrate on Supply Runs with vehicles and you’ll zip through the rankings.
Alternatively, Season 1 saw the addition of a second smaller map, Rebirth Island, modelled on Alcatraz. It’s a frantic game map that packs the action into a far less expansive space, and is another great option if you want to swap your pacing up. It’ll be returning to Warzone Pacific soon.
11. Vary your squad size
Since launch there have been plenty of changes to playlists in Warzone already – we’ve got a Solos mode, if you fancy taking on the map on your lonesome, and the launch of (the original) Season 3 saw the addition of Quads, raising your squad size to four. That’s perfect if you were always excluding a mate to get down to a three-man squad.
Still, though, if you don’t have four people and don’t want a random in your team, you could always change your Squad Fill settings to make sure that it’s just your friends, and take your chances with a smaller squad. It’s a disadvantage, for sure, but it can be fun to see how your tactics have to change under duress.
12. Stick to Vanguard Royale for simpler games
With the launch of Pacific, Warzone had a problem in the form of countless guns across three games to integrate. While the core Battle Royale mode lets you use any combination of these as you like, we think many players might prefer Vanguard Royale.
This mode limits the weapon and equipment pool down to just those from Vanguard, and feels like the more balanced and streamlined option at the moment, in our opinion. You can see the full differences in loadout options below.
It’s a big list, but the real difference is in the weapons, and Vanguard Royale will have you learning the weapon pool quicker and on a more level playing field – try it out if the other modes are grinding you down.
13. Watch for flares
You might not have realised it, but there are two situations in Warzone that send up a signal flare into the sky for nearby players to see. One is starting to capture a Recon contract point, which sends up a white flare, while the other is buying back a squadmate, which sends up a red flare.
Keep an eye out for these signals as you move around the map, and you could get the drop on a team camping at a capture point or waiting for an unlooted squadmate to return to the fray.
14. Vary where you drop
It’s tempting and easy to find a couple of spots on the map where you love to drop, whether because they’re generally isolated or loot-laden, but fight the urge to return to them too often. You’ll improve more quickly, and learn the map much faster, if you switch up your drop points and occasionally go for locations you know will be busier. It’ll also change the rhythm of your play session, which we think is a good thing.
15. Beware the gas mask
As you enter the endgame of a match, a popular and powerful tactic is to hug the gas ring’s outer edge as it closes, picking off fleeing targets and staying just ahead of it yourself. This basically requires you to have a gas mask, so that you’re less at risk yourself, but be aware that the mask’s on-off animations can be disruptive (although the launch of Pacific made this less of an issue).
The first time it happens to you, it’ll ruin your day, but your character pulling the mask on and off can interrupt you firing and reduce you to useless hip fire for a couple of seconds at key moments, so be sure to plan for it. It’s not necessarily something you’ll ever be able to reliably control, but if you learn to expect the disruption you’ll at least stop being quite so annoyed by it.
16. Watch out for in-match events
Season 4 (meaning the first Season 4, not Cold War equivalent) launched back in the day to groans about file sizes worldwide, and its major initial addition comes in the form of in-match events. These are now more commond than ever, and can happen randomly during any match. There are multiple types:
- Jailbreak: Everyone who’s eliminated respawns by airdrop – whether they’ve lost in the Gulag or are waiting for a fight.
- Fire Sale: Buy stations suddenly get heavy discounts on many items, and buying back fallen squadmates becomes free for the 60-second duration.
- Supply Chopper: Armoured helicopters will patrol the map. Destroying them will drop rare loot, including three UAVS, two armour boxes and munitions boxes, a gas mask, a grenade launcher, plus some money, as a minimum.
- Restock: All supply boxes will revert to being unopened, letting you loot up again.
- Resurgence: For a short time players will respawn after a countdown so long as a teammate is alive.
- Cash Drop: Cash airdrops will land around the map.
- Heavy Weapons Crate: Weapons crates with rare armaments will drop into the map.
- Juggernaut: A couple of juggernaut suits will drop into the map for players to claim
These events can be game-changing, so if they occur in a match, be sure to adjust your tactics accordingly, and watch the skies! However, not all of them occur in all modes, with Vanguard Royale seeing more frequent events from a limited pool of options.
17. Don’t lose hope
It might sound a bit trite, but we really mean it. Whether you’ve never won a game or haven’t for weeks, keep playing sensibly and making tactical decisions and the wins will come at some point. They won’t always happen how you think, either – we always remember one game back in Verdansk, coming off a hot streak of losses. We died early, got through the Gulag without any opponent after an anxious two-minute wait, dropped near the final circle with no gun and hid for five minutes before sneaking in, picking up a single SMG and firing three shots to finish off the last player standing, who never even saw us.
One kill, a lot of tension, and a huge slice of fortune, and we’re back in win-town. Warzone is a game of skill laced with a lot of luck and situational awareness, so don’t be disheartened if you’re on a bad run, basically.