Welcome to Modern Warfare® Zombies, a game mode within Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare III. Modern Warfare Zombies isn’t like many versions of Zombies that you’ve seen before. If you’ve played Zombies in the past, you will have a slight familiarity with how MWZ works. With up to two other squad members, you are dropped into the outskirts of Urzikstan, a large map filled with many different zones and sectors to explore and attempt survival.
To get the real picture of how big this map is, check out the Tac-Atlas: Urzikstan. This details every sector within Urzikstan with strategy on how to use each one. While you won’t find things like Contracts and Activities, as their locations are randomized, you will learn the topography and the building placements, making the Tac-Atlas a great reference.
When you load into your first session of Modern Warfare Zombies, you may have some questions about how to proceed. If you’ve played Zombies in the past, you’ll have some experience in how to approach the tactics and strategy, but MWZ is a different way to experience Zombies with a full focus on keeping the classic feel of the mode. The first thing to understand in Modern Warfare Zombies is the Open World Experience that is Urzikstan.
While on Urzikstan, you will have access to the entirety of the map so long as you can reach it without being taken down by the hordes of undead or the squads of NPC Mercenaries.
When you and your squad load into the Exclusion Zone, you will spawn with up to 23 other players. You can enter a MWZ session as a solo, duo, or trio squad which means that other players can too. No matter your starting squad, everyone has the ability to combine squads up to a total of 6 players. Other players on the map are interactable in many ways. You can help each other complete Activities and fight off hordes, but it’s important to remember that only your squad can join in on completing Missions. MWZ is purely a PVE, or player vs. environment, game mode. So, run around and complete your missions, fight Zombies, fight Mercenaries, and more without having to worry about other players making things difficult for you. The Zombies will make things difficult enough.
Introduction
Zakhaev, thought to be dead has reemerged and is more dangerous than ever. He’s hired PMC muscle, “Terminus Outcomes,” to locate rumored Enriched Aetherium in Urzikstan. They found exactly what they were looking for. While making his get away, Zakhaev was forced to use one of the vials as a last resort. The vial shattered, releasing a wave of unnatural energy that created an incursion, unleashing hordes of Zombies upon Urzikstan.
Initiated by the CIA, Operation Deadbolt has been put into action sending you and other familiar faces into Urzikstan to gain intel and contain the immediate threat. Fight your way through hordes, take down Zakhaev’s Merc Fortresses, and extract valuable intel, and materials that are vital for Operation Deadbolt’s success.
There are many ways to play Modern Warfare Zombies, and there are many ways to learn how to play the mode. If you would like a breakdown of how to get into the game and how we recommend you spend the first few hours, be sure to check out the Modern Warfare Zombies: How to Play tutorial guide. However, if you’re someone that learns by doing, most of ACT I’s Missions will run you through an experience that is meant to expose you to specific beginner elements. Once you nail down these ACT I features, you will be far more comfortable roaming free around Urzikstan. Learning the main mechanics of Modern Warfare Zombies are vital to surviving Operation Deadbolt, so spend some time focusing on the Story Missions and you’ll be well equipped with the knowledge to at least be successful in no time.
Be sure to listen to handlers as you progress through Missions. Your Handlers are the allies giving you vital information over comms, during your missions. You can tell they’re speaking to you because they’ll show up in the bottom right of your screen and you’ll hear them so long as you’re not being overwhelmed. However, becoming overwhelmed with a horde is easy, so stay vigilant and listen as best as you can. Picking up Contracts and completing them will eventually become second nature to you, but before that, Handlers will give you the basic information that you need in order to complete each one as you pick them up.
Story Missions
As you progress through each Mission, you will learn more and more about the situation at hand and just how dire everything might be. However, within each of the three Acts is a set of Story Missions that is vital to your progression through the narrative of Operation Deadbolt. You'll be required to complete all Tiered Missions before you can begin the Story Missions of each Act. Once you’ve completed all missions within an Act, you then can move on and start the Tiered Missions in the next Act.
Tip: When deploying with a Story Mission equipped, your squad will spawn into a session normally. Once you exfil via the Story Mission exfil, you and your squad will be left to complete the Mission on your own.
As part of Operation Deadbolt, you and your squad can find other players or squads on the map to team up with to support or ask for help. It’s also important to note that you can totally ignore other players and pretend they don’t exist. There are rewards that you earn by completing Contracts and events, and these rewards are not affected by the members of your squad or the assistance you get from other players. This means that multiple squads can participate in an event happening on the map, and as long as you participate you will be rewarded with XP and Essence, but only the squad that took the Contract will gain access to the Reward Rift. For public Activities, all players will be able to access the locked loot crate, if there is one.
Each deployment of Operation Deadbolt onto Urzikstan will have up to eight different squads of one to three players in each squad totaling to a maximum of 24 players. The reason for up to three players per squad is because in addition to being able to help each other out by participating in Contracts and Events, squads can combine into larger squads. Two squads of three can combine into one squad of six. Alternatively, six solo players can also combine into one six player squad. As long as the squad is six players or under, players can combine at will.
Die together or die alone, the decision is yours. There are many benefits to combining squads and very few drawbacks. Who knows, you might even create a lifelong friend along the way, or at the very least someone you can experience MWZ with in the best ways possible.
From a helicopter view, the general gameplay experience of Modern Warfare Zombies is relatively straight forward, however as you dive deeper into the chaos you’ll find that the strategy is quite a bit more robust. Following the core loop of earning Essence, obtaining loot, and surviving will take you through the basics of what it means to play MWZ, but everything you can do in-between and around these core features is what gives you so much more to do. Further into this chapter is a full guide of Tactics that will help provide more complex strategies to try during your deployments. For the purposes of this guide, you’ll learn the basics of what it means to play a round of Modern Warfare Zombies.
ACTIVITIES
As you equip your Operator with a Loadout, you’ll also be able to equip a Mission. The Mission you equip should be your priority when deploying into Urzikstan. The first handful of Missions in Act I are meant to function as a tutorial where you will learn about the different Contracts and Activities available around the map. You and your squad have 45 minutes before the map begins to push you to start extracting. Then, you have 15 minutes to exfil and get out of the EZ. This leaves you an entire hour to do what you want, so there’s no rush to complete your Mission as fast as you can. If you see an event happening on the way, feel free to stop and take care of it. Who knows, maybe you’ll get some great rewards that will help you complete your Mission.
Collect
Essence is the currency used for almost everything, Wallbuys, Mystery Boxes, Buy Stations, Upgrades, etc. and most of what you do grants you Essence as a reward. Collect Essence as you progress through each deployment but remember that you don’t get to keep Essence once you’ve extracted from Urzikstan. So, as you collect, be sure to also spend it. Any excess Essence left when you extract will be converted to XP, you will also get XP for completed Missions. So, complete Contracts, complete Activities, kill Zombies, and loot the environment to earn as much Essence as you might need to afford your upgrades.
Spend
As you collect Essence, you may want to spend it. You should spend as much as you can, and as often as you can until you know what you’d like to save it for. For instance, you may have upgraded your weapon once and you know you’ll need to upgrade your weapon again in the next Difficulty Zone. So, instead of getting to the next upgrade opportunity or a Perk-A-Cola machine and attempting to earn Essence, it’s a much safer method to save up some Essence to afford your upgrade as soon as you get there. However, sitting on thousands of unused Essence without a plan could mean that you won’t survive long enough to develop the plan to spend it later. So, spend it now by buying some Armor Plates or an upgrade wherever you can.
Survive
When you look at the map, you may notice that it is split up into three zones, a Low Threat zone, a Medium Threat zone, and a High Threat zone. These colors and a non-color represent the Difficulty Zones that Operation Deadbolt is separated into.
All players spawn into the Low Difficulty Zone to represent a calm beginning. If you choose to do so, you can spend the entire hour of the game in this zone. It’s calm-ish, you can collect some basic weapons and gear, and it might feel good to take down a couple hundred Zombies while doing so. If you have played Zombies modes in the past in Call of Duty, you can draw a parallel to the difficulty increases as it compares to round increases in a previous iteration of the mode. Keep this in mind if you’re coming from previous games and want to use your experience to help you know when you should have upgraded your gear.
The next zone is orange, and it represents the Medium Threat Zone. Here you’ll have more difficulty surviving as there will be larger hordes and tougher zombies, they may also have some special upgrades. Using your upgraded gear and Loadout, you will know that you’re ready to fight here if you don’t find yourself taking a long time to take down a small group of Zombies. If things feel too dangerous, the great thing is that you can always travel back to the Low Difficulty Zone and continue gearing up. Part of the skill when playing MWZ is knowing how to put together a strong Gear setup.
Finally, the red High Difficulty Zone. Knowing that you’re ready to survive in the High Difficulty Zone is a difficult task on its own. It is also where the greatest rewards will also be found, so enter at your own risk.
Rewards
As you complete Missions you will receive rewards. Whether it be Acquisitions or Weapons, there will always be something useful after completing a Mission, as well as a significant amount of XP. When looking at the first few Missions’ rewards, there is a good amount of XP and some weapons. Remember that if you are eliminated in Modern Warfare Zombies you will lose everything that you’re carrying, including the Loadout you brought into the deployment. So, additional weapons as a rewards can be extremely useful if you’ve had a bad few runs and are losing weapons fast. Additionally, as you progress through each Act, you may find some juicier rewards.
While you’re in Urzikstan, not only can you complete Contracts for Essence, but you can also participate in other Activities and Events. Completing these Activities will also end with rewards. A Reward Rift will appear and when you loot the orb there will be all sorts of goodies. Use this loot to support you through the rest of your deployment, and if you didn’t bring in a second weapon, take additional weapons that you find through exfil so that you can store them back at home.
In addition to story advancement while completing Missions, you'll also receive permanent rewards called Schematics, which is one of the type of Acquisitions you can also find in Urzikstan. Schematics are permanent in the sense that once you have earned or extracted with one, you’ll have the ability to craft the item for which the schematic represents. When you have a consumable unlocked via a Schematic, you’ll be able to craft them and bring them into a match to use immediately. As you explore and loot, you will learn of all the combinations you can collect, and which ones are important to keep. Always having at least one of each type of consumable or storable upgrade is a great idea because it allows you to start a deployment with a large amount of power compared to a normal start.
There are different types of Acquisitions that can be found in Urzikstan or earned as rewards. Acquisitions are described as one time use items or weapons that are found in game that buff the player at the start of the game session. Most that you’ll find are items that you can use right away or extract with them and use them at the start of a deployment.
Schematics are blueprints that you can bring back to your Stash and they unlock the ability to craft the corresponding item outside of a match. Schematics are very powerful because you only need to extract with one of each craftable item. Once you craft one of the Acquisition consumables, you will need to wait a specific amount of time before you can craft it again. For items such as Wonder Weapon Cases, the Crafting Cooldown can be quite long. So, if you find a Schematic, consider it a big win, and try your best to extract with it.
Described in full detail in the Tac-Atlas and with the overview of what each Difficulty Zone is meant for above in the General Gameplay Experience section, is the basic idea behind how each Difficulty Zone is designed to be played. However, there isn’t necessarily a rulebook to how to play Modern Warfare Zombies, especially considering its open-world design.
Each zone on the map is designed to be a major difficulty hike, but that doesn’t mean you have to travel to higher Difficulty Zones at any designated time determined by the game. You don’t even have to travel to these zones at all if you don’t want to. The point of MWZ is to play at your own pace. If you wish to get to the highest Difficulty Zone with the most efficiency possible, you are encouraged to attempt as many feats as you’d like. You are also encouraged to take it easy and learn everything you can about each zone at whichever pace you’re most comfortable with. Medium and High Difficulty Zones are significant upticks, so taking your time to utilize these guides can help walk you through the process.
Hour Long Game Sessions
Each deployment will provide a variety of different experiences throughout the session. However, there are three things that you’ll experience no matter what, assuming that you survive.
First, you and your squad will deploy into the Low Difficulty Zone. You will always deploy on the outskirts of the map in a location that likely won’t get you killed very quickly.
Second, as soon as you deploy you will have an hour to do whatever you want. Complete Contracts, Missions, Activities, etc. The world is yours, so feel free to run around and explore.
Finally, in the last 15 minutes of the hour-long session, the Aether Storm will begin spreading across all of Urzikstan until it kills you or you extract via extraction helicopter. The Extraction Points can be located and marked on the map, so get familiar with looking for them quickly and making your way out. You have 15 minutes from the start of the Storm spread, but the closer to the center of the map you are, the harder it will be to secure and call in an extraction.
Zakhaev has hired the Terminus Outcomes Private Military Contractor group as his muscle, and they are embedded all around Urzikstan. These PMCs are not friendly to the Zombie hordes, as you run up on enemy encampments, you may find the mercs fighting a horde, themselves. Use this to your advantage and try not to attack anything not an immediate danger to you or take them all down indiscriminately, it’s your call.
Encampments are not the only threats that Terminus Outcomes has set up, as things get more difficult you may come across Strongholds and Fortresses. These are harder and more fortified than encampments, Fortresses being the most hardened. If you can figure out a way to use both sides to fight each other in order for you and your squad to infiltrate these locations, they will be easier to wipe out. Fully wiping merc locations out will earn you a rewards cache, and the items you receive can be large upgrades. Tread lightly and with a large stick to complete these Activities, and once you do, reap your rewards.
Now that you’re briefed on what it means to be an Operator in Modern Warfare Zombies, you’re now prepared to begin your first few deployments. For the rest of your experience, please reference this overview as well as the Modern Warfare Zombies: How to Play tutorial as well as the breakdowns of each major section in the rest of this chapter. Good luck and watch your back!
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