Call of Duty Weapon Leveling and Camo Grind Guide

Weapon levels are the tax you pay before a gun gets good. Until you've ground out the attachment unlocks, that shiny new AR is just a worse version of the one you already maxed. And on top of that sits the camo grind, which asks you to repeat the whole process with challenge conditions attached, across damn near every weapon in the game. The good news is that the current system is pretty generous once you know the routes. Pick the right mode, spend your boosters at the right time, and order the grind sensibly, and you'll cut the whole project down by a huge margin. Here's what actually works.

Fastest Modes for XP and Weapon Progression

Weapon XP in the current game flows from every mode, but the rates are wildly different. Kills with the weapon in your hands are the main source, and damage dealt feeds it too, so modes that hand you a wall of things to shoot will always beat modes where you spend half the match walking around.

Endgame horde farming (the big one)

If you've finished the campaign and unlocked Endgame, this is where the real weapon XP lives. Head to Avalon and push your Combat Rating up until you can survive in the Tier 3 zone, then go to the hills above the Resorts POI. That area is packed with Fear hordes, the zombie-type enemies, and they respawn fast. Farm the hordes back and forth, grappling between spots, and the kills pile up stupidly quick. Players running this loop report roughly 20+ weapon levels in a single match, which is silly compared to anything else in the game.

A couple of things make it work. You want the weapon you're leveling actually in your hands when the damage lands, since XP goes to the gun you're shooting. Bring something to keep you alive between hordes, and don't be shy about popping a Double Weapon XP token before you start, since a run like this is exactly what those tokens are for.

The catch is the Campaign requirement. You need to finish the campaign to unlock Endgame yourself, or join a friend who already has it and have them host. If neither of those is an option, fall back to the methods below. They're slower, but they still work fine.

Multiplayer: small maps and objective playlists

For pure Multiplayer grinding, the rule is simple: engagements per minute beats everything else. Small maps mean constant fights, and constant fights mean constant weapon XP. Face Off moshpit playlists on Strike-sized maps are the classic pick, and Nuketown rotations have been the grinder's home since forever for the same reason. A match where you get 40 kills on a shoebox map is worth several matches on a big one where you get 12.

Objective modes deserve a mention too. Hardpoint, Domination, and Kill Confirmed all keep bodies clustered around predictable spots, which is great both for raw kills and for the camo challenges we'll get to later. On top of that, score earned from scorestreaks credits weapon XP to the gun you're holding when the streak ticks, so cheap non-lethal streaks like UAVs quietly feed your weapon level while you play. It's not a lot, but it's free.

The honest downside of Multiplayer grinding: your income depends on performing. A lobby full of sweats can turn an hour into a pile of 10-kill matches and not much progression. If you're having one of those nights, switch modes rather than bashing your head into it.

Zombies: the chill option

Zombies is the low-stress grind. The enemies are predictable, there's no lobby skill floor, and a decent train of zombies gives you a wall of heads to shoot, which happens to be exactly what early camo challenges want. Around round 30 you can usually bank two or three weapon levels per round just by dumping into a horde, especially if you're landing critical kills (that's headshots, basically).

There's a ceiling, though. Somewhere past round 40, regular weapons stop killing zombies efficiently because their health scales too high. Unless you've got a Wonder Weapon handy, that's your cue to end the run and restart rather than waste ten minutes chipping at a single zombie. Directed Mode helps here since it lets you control the pacing instead of getting dragged into rounds you didn't ask for.

Warzone: Plunder for the free players

If you're playing free-to-play, Plunder is your weapon XP farm, and it's honestly not bad. XP is shared across your squad, respawns are quick with no Gulag timer, and you keep your loadout after dying. Loot containers, run Supply contracts early (they're safer than the PvP-focused ones), and deposit cash once you're sitting on around $60,000 to $100,000 so you're not a fat target on the map. A decently efficient squad can knock out a weapon level every few minutes this way. It's also the only place to level weapons carried forward from older titles if you never bought the games.

Here's the short version in table form:

| Mode | XP rate | Skill needed | Best for | |---|---|---|---| | Endgame Tier 3 hordes | Very high | Medium | Big weapon level pushes | | MP small maps (Face Off, Nuketown) | High | Medium-high | Kills plus camo challenges | | Zombies trains | Medium | Low | Headshots, relaxed grinding | | Warzone Plunder | Medium | Low | Free-to-play players |

Double XP Tokens and When to Use Them

Tokens are simple in concept and easy to waste. There are a few different kinds: Double XP (player level), Double Weapon XP (the one you care about for this grind), and Double Battle Pass XP. Each one runs on a real-time clock from the moment you activate it, and that clock keeps ticking in menus, lobbies, and map votes.

Where tokens come from

Sources are the same batch every season, more or less:

• Prestiging. Every prestige reset pays out a one-hour Double XP token, and you can collect up to ten of them across the ten prestiges.
• Battle Pass tiers. A handful of sectors carry token rewards each season.
• Promotions. The Monster Energy and Little Caesars style promos hand out tokens (the Monster cans carry a 15-minute token code under the ring pull, up to six redemptions per event).
• Store bundles. A few bundles, like the year-round CODE Endeavour tracer pack, include both player and weapon tokens.
• Social giveaways. The official CoD X account does token drops for replying to promo posts every so often.

They're a limited resource, basically gold dust if you don't spend money, so treat them that way.

The right time to pop one

The whole game of tokens is fitting maximum match time inside the window. A one-hour Double Weapon XP token that spends 20 minutes on lobbies and map votes just bought you 40 minutes of boost, which stings.

A few rules of thumb:

• Pop it after the map vote finishes and you're locked into a match, not in the lobby beforehand.
• Never stack it on top of an active Double XP weekend. The free event is already doubling you, so save the token for a normal weekend.
• Save tokens for high-yield sessions. The Endgame horde loop or a long Nuketown session is worth doubling. A casual few matches before dinner isn't.
• Make sure you've got an uninterrupted block of time. If you might get pulled away in 15 minutes, don't start the clock.
• One token at a time. Overlapping a player XP token with a weapon token on the same match only makes sense when you're progressing both at once, which honestly isn't often. Weapon tokens while leveling guns is the play.

The combo worth planning around: seasonal Double XP event live, small-map playlist in rotation, and a dedicated hour free. That's when you burn your token stash, and a window like that can move a weapon 30-plus levels or knock out most of a prestige run in one sitting.

Mastery Camo Requirements and Common Roadblocks

Here's the ladder. Every weapon climbs the same tiers inside each mode (Multiplayer, Zombies, Campaign, and Warzone each run their own separate tracks), and the structure is identical everywhere: nine Military camos from volume challenges, three Special camos with weapon-specific requirements, then the Mastery tiers on top.

For Multiplayer, the mastery line looks like this:

| Camo | Unlock gate | Per-weapon challenge | |---|---|---| | Shattered Gold | All 9 Military + 3 Special on that weapon | 3 kills without dying, 10 times | | Arclight | Shattered Gold on the class's base weapons | 10 double kills or better | | Tempest | Arclight on 30 weapons | 5 kills without dying, 3 times | | Singularity | Tempest on 30 weapons | None, unlocks automatically |

Zombies runs its own version (Golden Dragon, Bloodstone, Doomsteel, Infestation) with horde-flavored challenges like 20 consecutive kills without taking damage. Progress does not carry between modes, so grinding MP does nothing for the Zombies line and vice versa. And on top of the mastery ladder, each weapon has three long-service Weapon Prestige camos earned by prestiging the gun itself, which is a whole other layer for your mains.

The roadblocks, and how to get past them

The width is the wall. Tier 3 requires 30 weapons. You can't main two favorite guns to the finish line; the final camos demand the whole arsenal. This is why ordering matters. Finish classes, not favorites. Tier 2 is organized by weapon class, so knocking out all the ARs, then all the SMGs, then the LMGs beats bouncing between half-leveled guns. Players who wander end up 200 hours deep with nothing animated to show for it.

Off-meta weapons stall the run. Launchers, pistols, and the jankier LMGs are where grinds go to die. Special challenges on those guns, sniper one-shots, launcher streak kills, that kind of thing, get brutal against good lobbies. Save the worst weapons for when you've got an easier environment: Zombies trains for the headshot-heavy stuff, low-sweat playlists, or just accept they'll take a few extra sessions.

Streak challenges punish your habits. Both Shattered Gold and Tempest want kills-without-dying, which rewards playing a notch safer than usual. Hold strong angles instead of pushing every fight. Run defensive scorestreaks that protect your run (UAV into counter-UAV style setups) rather than greed picks that leave you exposed. And cash the streak in when you're already hot instead of forcing it at 2 kills with your health low. Hardpoint and Domination are your friends here because the bodies come to a fixed spot on the map.

Headshot volume. The Military tier asks for a lot of headshots on most weapon classes. The fixes are mundane but real, and we'll cover the attachment side in the next section.

One last thing worth knowing: seasonal weapons that get added through the year arrive with their own full camo tracks and count toward the roster-wide gates. Finishing the base 30 is the milestone; keeping it "finished" as new guns drop is an ongoing tax. Your call whether you care.

Best Attachments for Grinding Headshots and Kills

Attachments matter more than perks for this stuff, since attachments change your recoil, ADS speed, and range directly. A gun that's easier to point at heads will finish headshot challenges faster than any amount of raw damage would.

The core pieces

For ARs and anything mid-range, the meta backbone is a recoil-and-range setup. On the M15 Mod 0, the go-to build is the VT-7 Spiritfire suppressor, a long barrel (the MCW Long-TAC type), a heavy underbarrel like the Bruen Heavy Support Grip, and a stabilizing stock. That's the control-king shape: less visual recoil means your reticle actually stays where the head is. Suppressors are worth a slot almost always, since staying off the minimap keeps fights on your terms while you hold angles.

For SMGs, you're building for snap and hipfire. The Ryden 45K style build runs a Quick Fire laser, a handstop or grip, a big magazine, and a mobility rear grip. Bigger mags matter more than people think for kill-volume challenges, because reloading mid-fight is how streaks die.

For marksman and sniper work, it's all ADS control and stability. Fast-ADS sniper builds (VS Recon shape, with a heavy barrel and a recoil-taming stock) keep your one-shot range while letting you actually win the quickscope fights that sniper challenges feed on.

Headshot-specific tricks

A few things compound nicely when you're chasing the headshot count:

• Run an optic you actually like. Iron sights look cool and cost you headshots. A clean red dot for close-to-mid work, a 2x-3x magnified optic for ARs reaching out. Customize the reticle too, a dot you can see against the map's sky matters more than it sounds.
• Headshot-damage barrels. In the previous game the CHF Barrel was the big one for bumping the headshot multiplier; in the current game the equivalent is any long barrel that extends your damage range, because shots landing inside effective range need fewer hits to finish. Check your specific gun's barrel list for an explicit headshot damage bump and take it if it's there.
• Pre-aim head height on known lanes. Learn the two or three choke points per map and hold your crosshair at head level before anyone shows up. Minor horizontal correction beats tracking-and-adjusting every single time.
• Hardcore mode for the rough patches. In Hardcore, a headshot is a kill, full stop, no finishing shots needed. You're squishy too, so it cuts both ways, but for pure headshot-to-kill conversion it's the best playlist in the game.
• Rotate positions instead of hard camping. Hold an angle for a few kills, then move before someone comes hunting. Two or three strong spots per map keeps the flow of targets without making you a free revenge kill.
• Practice in the Firing Range between matches. Mobile dummies exist for exactly this. Two minutes re-learning a new gun's recoil climb saves you a match's worth of whiffed headshots.

Stacking challenges while you level

Here's the efficient part. Headshot kills feed weapon XP, feed Military camo progress, and count toward kill-volume challenges all at once. So build for accuracy, play objective modes where targets cluster, and let one match tick four boxes at the same time. That's the whole secret, honestly: don't grind XP and camos as separate projects when the same kills can pay both.

Prestige System and What Carries Over

The classic prestige loop is back. Your military rank caps at Level 55 (Private I up to Commander), and at 55 you can prestige: your level resets to 1, all the level unlocks relock, and you start climbing again. There are ten prestiges, so that's 550 levels of standard climbing, and clearing Prestige 10 opens Prestige Master, a long ladder that runs to Level 1,000.

The good news is that Prestige Master stops relocking things. Once you're on that track you keep your whole arsenal and just chase levels, with rewards dropping at milestones every 25 levels, classic prestige icons from older Black Ops games every 100 levels, and level colors that change your name's look in the lobby.

What you keep versus what relocks

| Kept forever | Relocked on prestige | |---|---| | Weapon levels and attachments | Weapons behind level requirements | | Weapon builds and Gunsmith setups | Perks and Wildcards behind level requirements | | All camos and mastery progress | Field Upgrades behind level requirements | | Challenge progress and unlocks | Scorestreaks behind level requirements | | Operators, emotes, cosmetics | Your level, obviously | | Battle Pass, store, and event items | Combat stats (lifetime record stays) |

The big one for this guide: your camo grind is completely safe. All those Gold and mastery camos, the weapon levels, every attachment you unlocked, all of it carries across prestige resets untouched. You'll need to re-unlock the weapon itself by leveling back to its gate, but the moment you do, the gun comes back fully leveled with every camo you earned.

Permanent Unlocks: don't waste them

Every prestige hands you one Permanent Unlock, which locks any single level unlock item to your account forever. Ten prestiges, ten tokens. The mistake almost everyone makes is burning them on weapons.

Guns come back through the Battle Pass and store anyway. Perks, Wildcards, and Field Upgrades don't. So the pro move is to spend your tokens on the irreplaceable stuff: a Wildcard you build around (Gunfighter, if you're running eight-slot setups for the camo grind, is a strong first pick), the Perk you hate playing without, or the Field Upgrade that anchors your classes. Lock the things you'd genuinely miss every single reset, in the order you'd miss them.

Each prestige also pays out that one-hour Double XP token mentioned earlier, which quietly makes prestige runs a self-fueling loop: reset, collect a token, spend the token shortening the next run.

Whether prestige is worth it at all

If you're mid-camo-grind, prestige is pretty painless, since weapon progression never touches the reset. The only real cost is re-earning your equipment ladder, and Permanent Unlocks soften that each time. If you mainly want the prestige icons and the Prestige Master grind, the fastest route is the same one that levels weapons: objective modes on small maps, Zombies Directed runs to round 25 with a clean exfil, or Endgame sessions, with daily challenges stacked on top since prestiged players get a permanent bump to daily challenge XP payouts.

One concrete planning note to finish on: before you prestige, finish any high-level weapon unlocks you still need for camo progress, spend the token on Double Weapon XP during an Endgame or Nuketown session, and only then hit the button. That way the reset costs you the least while you're between big grind pushes.