Don’t despair, though. We’ve got 10 Call of Duty: WW2 tips that can help you clear that Normandy beach, face down that mounted machine gun, and hit Prestige as fast as possible.
Find the mode that fits how you play
The Call of Duty series has long dished out streak bonuses to good players, allowing you to call in things like a care package or a bomb strike when you’re doing well in multiplayer. In recent years, what were called “Killstreaks” have now become “Scorestreaks,” making it possible to access bonuses for actions aside from player kills. That’s a sentiment you should apply to your entire Call of Duty experience. Figure out what you’re good at, and how you can contribute. The best way to do that is to experiment with different game types.
If you’re new to Call of Duty, for instance, you might want to start with Domination. The objective-based match is more about controlling territory than fighting. Hone your skills across a number of different game modes, especially if you’re looking to hop into the new War mode. War is a big, objective-based race between an attacking and a defending team, and it effectively mixes several different Call of Duty modes together. Learn the ropes of each, and how you can best contribute to your team.
Try a variety of loadouts
It’s easy to get set in your ways in Call of Duty: WW2. You might find you like a specific rifle, a specific Division, or a specific game mode, and never leave the comfort of using them. But you’ll enjoy yourself a lot more if you mix things up, and that starts with your loadout. Getting good at Call of Duty: WW2 means having the versatility to adapt a variety of roles. In some games, you might find success running and gunning with a submachine gun. In others, switching to a sniper to knock out a camper could help your team to victory.
This is especially true in War, where objectives and situations constantly change. Adapting to your teammates, your opponents, and the scenario you’re in will help your team win.
Listen to your in-game teammates
Even if you aren’t the kind of person who likes to talk with teammates, perk up your ears and listen to what their in-game characters are saying. Squads in Call of Duty: WW2 are very vocal and constantly, automatically, call out useful information. If your teammates spot enemy troops, they’ll usually say where they were located. In every game mode, it’s worth it to stick close to teammates to back them up, and help bring numerical superiority to battles. The fact that your teammates will help you in other ways is a pretty nice bonus.
Mounted machine guns are essential in War
In War, teams work together to try to either complete objectives, or defend set locations against other players. Scattered through defensive areas are mounted machine guns you can set up while on the defending team. Already, players are starting to stay away from these MGs, but they shouldn’t. War’s mounted machine guns are essential for victory.
Most of the time in War, the defending team needs to do its best not just to rack up kills, but to control ground. On the beaches of Normandy in Operation Neptune, for instance, it can feel like sitting on an MG is a death sentence thanks to snipers. However, it’s worth it to keep grabbing those machine guns and firing away at oncoming players, because it slows them down, takes some of them out, and generally makes it harder for them to organize. For most of the objectives in the game, like the bridge in Operation Breakout, the MGs can be the difference between a win and a loss because they give you overwhelming firepower. It’s worth taking a few deaths if you can wreck the other team in between.
You need to bring smoke grenades to War
Dovetailing well with the MG argument, is the fact that everyone should have a loadout with smoke grenades when playing the War mode. Smoke obscures players’ vision, and even knocks out their mini-map. It can be the difference between the other team shutting you down with their effective defense, or making it over the beach or across the bridge and on to victory. Have smoke grenades handy on your loadouts and use them liberally. They can keep you from getting stonewalled at key moments.
You can ignore Supply Drops (but you shouldn’t)
Much has been made about Call of Duty: WW2‘s loot box system, called Supply Drops, but in practice they’re not that important. Mostly you’ll unlock drops as you level up your character, and they’ll mostly dish out cosmetic items. But you do want to pay attention when Supply Drops dish out boosters, which automatically increase the experience you earn, and special weapons.
“Heroic” and “Legendary” versions of guns are prettier than their normal counterparts. They also offer a bit of a bonus. If you equip them in place of the regular version of a gun, you’ll earn experience points faster. It’s worth checking in on Supply Drops every once in a while, even if you don’t care about cosmetic items, because they might help you unlock what you do want more quickly.
Prestige is the only way to unlock top-tier gear
In previous Call of Duty games the option to “Prestige” your character was mostly a matter of pride. After leveling your character as high as you could, unlocking every gun and piece of equipment, you could hit the button to Prestige — giving you a cool emblem and restarting your progress, to unlock everything all over again. It was a way to show off your experience, but nothing more.
Prestige is different in Call of Duty: WW2, and it’s worth paying attention to. You can fully level up and prestige a lot of things — your character, as before, as well as each of the five Divisions, and every single gun in the game. For the guns, prestige is mostly cosmetic, but for your character and Divisions, prestige is the only way to unlock the best guns and Basic Trainings in the game. The good news is that activating prestige on any one of these things doesn’t reset the others, and if you prestige your character, you’ll also get a “Prestige Token.” It lets you immediately unlock any one item or weapon permanently, so if there’s something you love that you’d hate to lose when you Prestige, you can unlock it instead of having to wait to level all the way back up.
War is a quick way to level
If you’re looking for a relatively quick way to gain experience points and unlock good equipment, try War. It’s full of opportunities to score points. Each match has you playing both defense and offense for four different objectives. Taking objectives as the attackers earns points, and defending them earns points. You can also grab points by building defenses and setting up mounted machine guns. In all, there are a lot of ways to score.
In addition, a hard-fought War match might last as long as half an hour, giving you ample opportunity to rack up kills. Because it’s objective-based, War doesn’t affect your kill-to-death ratio, but taking down a ton of other players will still bring you lots of experience points. And switching between loadouts throughout the game means you can spread points among multiple Divisions as well.
Keep checking your orders
In the Headquarters social hub is the Operations Bunker, where you’ll find your commanding officer, Howard. Talk to him and you’ll be able to choose from numerous “Orders.” These are challenges you’ll take with you into multiplayer matches. Orders include things like knocking out a set number of headshots, winning a certain number of matches, or using a specific weapon in a match to get kills.
Orders come in daily and weekly varieties, and they dish out lots of experience points and other rewards when you complete them. Once you accept orders, they stay with your character until you complete them or you abandon them, but Howard’s list of challenges refreshes every day (and every week for the tougher orders). Keep stopping by Operations every day to make sure you’re getting all the orders you can. The rewards are worth snagging and help you level up faster, and they’ll encourage you to change up how you play, making you a better, more versatile Call of Duty: WW2 soldier.
The Rifleman Basic Training is OP
One of our favorite Basic Training perks is the “Rifleman” training. Unlocked at Rank 12, Rifleman lets you carry two “primary” weapons into battle, rather than a primary and a “secondary” gun like a pistol or a rocket launcher. It’s a great perk, because it lets you sling both a long-range rifle like the M1 Garand or Enfield sniper rifle, together with an automatic like the Thompson or Type 100. Rifleman is great for letting you deal with a variety of combat situations.
A lot of the Basic Training perks aren’t especially useful, and it’s easy to forget about them. But some are really great, like Gunslinger, which lets you shoot while sprinting; Undercover, which stops your kills from being marked on your enemies’ screen, making you a whole lot sneakier; and Lookout, which lets you see enemies from a lot further away, and gives you increased minimap coverage. Keep checking for Basic Trainings as you unlock them and make sure you’re trying out lots of them — you never know when you might discover the perfect perk for your play style.
