Early in the campaign for Black Ops 6 you’ll find cash — enough cash to fully upgrade your safehouse and unlock three additional facilities. Each facility has its own set of perks you can purchase with the cash you’ll find on missions. Make sure to search missions carefully, because some of these perks are absolutely essential. Grab these perks first.
For extra money you can grab early, here’s how to solve the Safehouse puzzle and collect $1,000 in cash. Skip unlocking the Gear Station and you can spend plenty of dollars on character perks and weapon upgrades.
More Black Ops 6: Zombies guides:
How To Save & Pause | Terminus Pack-a-Punch Guide | Liberty Falls Pack-a-Punch Guide
Best Perks To Unlock First
Perks are unlocked through the upgrade stations in your Safehouse. Between missions, use the big board in the corner of the briefing room to buy the three upgrade stations — you can purchase the Training Area, Gear Station and Weapons Bench. Each costs $500.
We recommend you buy the Training Area and Weapons Bench first. These stations have — in our opinion — the best perks for early players. Spend your starting cash on those two stations and collect the safehouse treasure on the second floor by following the guide linked above.
Once you’ve purchased the upgrade locations, travel to the actual bench. Each perk costs additional funds — and you can access all three perk stations from any of the benches. Just tab left / right to buy any of the perks. Every perk also has two levels of upgrade to make the even better.
- Best Weapons Bench Perks
- Armor Shredder ($200): Increase damage to armored enemies by 15%.
- Armor Shredder Level 2 ($250): Increase damage to armored enemies by 25%.
The best Weapon Bench perks are Armor Shredder — these increase damage to armored enemies. Elite enemies are by far the most dangerous threat you’ll encounter in the campaign, and armored soldiers become common the further you get in the story. Dealing damage is easily the most important perk. All the other perks for weapons are helpful, but none of them are essential.
- Best Training Area Perks
- Vitality Surge ($200): Increase your total health by +15%.
- Blast Resilience ($200): Reduce damage taken by explosions by 25%.
Giving yourself more health is basically required for all difficulty levels in the Black Ops 6 campaign — and enemies really, really like throwing explosives. Explosives can kill your character on Regular Difficulty in a single hit, even if you’re standing at the very edge of the blast radius. Getting an upgrade to keep you alive is basically required when enemies are dropping grenades on your position very frequently.
- More Best Training Area Perks
- Greedy ($400): Increases the value of cash dropped by elites by 25%.
- Last Stand ($250): When at death’s door, receive a brief burst of health and speed.
These perks aren’t required — but they are really useful. Elite enemies become much more common in the later levels of the campaign, so earning more cash per pickup will get you multiple free perks over the course of the entire story. The Last Stand perk is simply great, giving you a reprieve in the form of a health boost when you’re about to die. These perks are useful for the entire run.
- Best Gear Station Perks
- Heavy Duty ($200): Increase total armor slots to 2 and increase reserve capacity to 4.
- Loaded Up ($200): Carry 1 additional of each expendable equipment.
- Tempered ($400): Refill armor plates to full with 2 plates instead of 3.
All of these perks are useful but not so useful you need to buy them first. Two are related to armor plates, which you’ll steadily need (and want) more of as you progress in the story. Loaded Up gives us more expendable gadget slots — seeing as you’ll have so few available, the more you can carry the better.
And those are the perks we think are essential for the Black Ops 6 campaign. You’ll still want faster reload speed, weapon switching, sprint speed and more — but those basic unlocks can wait. These are the perks you’ll want to get first.
