The worst (or best) part of jumping into a new Call of Duty is earned everything all over again. Call of Duty: Vanguard follows the same model, with each weapon having its own separate levels and unlockables. Each gun starts with just a few customization options, and you’ll have to work to unlock the rest. That’s bad news for your favorite weapons, but there are ways to earn more Weapon XP faster and breeze through those challenges. This is a Multiplayer game, so there aren’t any exploits (yet), but if you’re new to the game, this is how you’ll want to go about earning that weapon XP efficiently.
More Call of Duty: Vanguard guides:
Zombies: Everything You Need To Know About Der Anfang Map Guide | Zombies: How To Survive Into High Rounds Solo | Zombies: How To Get Free Quick Revives | Multiplayer: Settings To Change First
Weapon XP Tips | How To Farm Weapon XP
Weapon XP is earned by using weapons — and you’ll unlock attachments and camo for your favorite weapons just by leveling up or completing challenges. I prefer unlocking everything I can as early as possible. If you’re looking to earn XP fast and blaze through your challenges, here’s a few tips.
- For fast weapon XP, play on SMALL MAPS. The faster the better.
- Play on Shipment [Hardcore] — or any maps on Hardcore. Hardcore is how you earn camo faster.
- Alternatively, you can try Das Haus [Patrol Blitz] — or any Blitz mode map. Blitz gets you into the action insanely fast. That makes getting lots of kills (and weapon XP) easier.
- If you need to farm headshots for challenges, play any map in [Free For All].
Hardcore is one of the best ways to farm weapons for one simple reason — all weapons are equally deadly when playing Hardcore. It doesn’t matter if your guns aren’t optimized. You can still score kills with the weakest weapons.
Blitz in small maps (10v10) are good for general grinding. That’s obvious. You’ll be getting kills left and right. Even if your K/D ration is .5, you’ll still be getting good kill numbers for your time.
The trick is to swap weapons every once in awhile to keep from burning out. You’ll also want to select Launchers as your secondary and grind a separate primary. Grinding a Launcher and a different Primary (any at all) will make your life so much easier. Trying to grind a Launcher on its own is a pain.
The worst part of grinding Weapon XP is that you have to play online, even if you’re not fully prepared with your loadout. If you want to take your time, you can earn Weapon XP solol.
How To Grind Weapon XP Solo
Weapon XP and unlocks are shared between Multiplayer and Zombies. Go to Zombies and select Solo — you can play by yourself locally and still earn XP and unlock attachments / camo with any weapons.
Zombies Weapon XP isn’t as fast as playing on Hardcore or Blitz. The only real benefit is that Zombies is easy, and it can be done solo without any other players, so you’re free to grind endlessly on your own. Zombies is at least very good for earning enough XP to level up a few times. I was able to level up on a single session. If you’re not familiar with Zombies, don’t worry — nobody is, because the Zombies map in Vanguard is one of the strangest departures from the series yet.
Zombies is simple at its core. Complete challenges (marked on your HUD) to earn Hearts and get points by killing zombies. Save points for the Pack-a-Punch to upgrade your gun ASAP, and trade Hearts to the Covenant Altar to get bonuses. Unlock perks from the skull stations. The first perk is free.
Upgrade your gun with the Pack-a-Punch, and don’t even bother using the Mystery Box. You’ll just want to focus on a single gun, and you can. There are no special Wonder Weapons here. Whatever weapon you want to grind should be your only weapon. You’ll be able to upgrade your gun fully in the Pack-a-Punch by Round 10.
Zombies is a great resource for grinding. In Black Ops Cold War it absolutely was the best way to grind for weapon XP, but that really isn’t true in Vanguard. It is a good way to earn weapon XP solo, but it isn’t the most efficient method.