Call of Duty 2025 Guide Complete Guide & Walkthrough

I've run through the BO7 campaign twice now and honestly the first four missions are glorified tutorials with the whole thing clocking in at roughly 7 hours across 11 missions. Once on Veteran. Once speedrunning for the operator skins. But Mission 5, Istanbul Breach, is where it actually starts feeling like a real game. Not a hand-holding simulator designed to teach your grandma how to aim.

So here's what I wish someone told me before I wasted an entire evening on Mission 3 and its godforsaken stealth mechanics. The stealth sections in this game are brutal and not in a fun challenging way either, just punishing and mean spirited even. The embassy infiltration has zero checkpoints between its three server rooms and if you get spotted in room two you're back to room one and there is no workaround for this and I tried literally everything I could think of including weird corner crouch-walking and smoke grenade spam before I figured out the weapon choice is the only thing that matters. The suppressed Kriger 6 makes it manageable though because headshots are one-tap kills on Veteran while bodyshots take three and alert every enemy in the vicinity. Took me about 40 minutes of failing before I figured that out and I was ready to uninstall at one point not gonna lie.

And the hostage AI in Mission 7 might actually be the single dumbest thing I have ever seen in a AAA shooter campaign. They walk straight into enemy fire like they're trying to get themselves killed and stand in grenade indicators waiting for the inevitable and somehow pathfind into walls. Into walls. I'm not sure about this but I think their behavior is tied to your proximity rather than any actual pathfinding logic because they seem slightly less suicidal when you stay close to them. Anyway the only reliable way to keep them breathing is to clear every room completely first and then go back and escort them through one at a time while all the threats are already dead and gone. The game doesn't punish you for leaving them behind in cleared areas so just do that and stop trying to be a hero about it.

For Mission 8 there's a cheese spot on the boss fight that makes the whole thing trivial and the armored juggernaut on the Shanghai tower follows the most predictable loop I've ever seen in a boss encounter. Two LMG bursts then reload then charge attack then repeat until dead. If you hug the left staircase railing the charge literally cannot reach you no matter how much it looks like it should connect on your screen. Takes about six minutes of plinking away but it's a guaranteed no-death clear. Worth the boredom honestly. Slap armor-piercing rounds on the DMR-10 and it drops to four minutes. You can go make a sandwich while he dies. Easy.

So the ending gives you a binary choice in Mission 11 and both endings unlock different multiplayer operators which means the optimal play is just replaying the final checkpoint to get both. Don't be the person who replays the entire mission because that would be genuinely stupid and a waste of like forty minutes of your life you'll never get back and nobody will ever thank you for it.

I've put around 60 hours into multiplayer at this point and the TTK sits somewhere between Cold War and MWIII which means it's faster than you'd expect going in blind but slower than what the hardcore crowd keeps demanding on reddit and twitter every single day without fail.

The Kriger 6 is kind of busted honestly and I expect a nerf in Season 1 because the recoil pattern goes almost perfectly vertical with barely any horizontal bounce at all and for now it's the only AR worth using past 30 meters if you actually want to win trades against competent players who know how to aim and position. And the KSV-74 SMG with muzzle brake and reinforced barrel and ergonomic grip and no stock and extended mag II absolutely dominates small to medium maps in a way that feels borderline unfair and I keep expecting them to hotfix it. But the XMG-7 LMG with bipod and 100-round belt is the play for objective modes where you're holding lanes and suppressing chokepoints for your team. And for sniping the LR 7.62 with suppressor and variable zoom is the obvious pick though you need decent aim to make it work consistently at range. The Marine SP shotgun with dragon's breath rounds cleans up on the tiny maps but it's useless everywhere else so don't bother on anything bigger than Nuketown. And the GS50 pistol with akimbo is still the best panic swap in the entire game when you run dry mid-gunfight. Total lifesaver.

But the real meta isn't the guns at all and if you think it is you're losing gunfights before they even start because it's actually all about the movement. Slide-canceling is back and it's faster than it was in MW2019 which I genuinely didn't think was possible given how cracked that game's movement already was. If you're not slide-canceling around every single corner and through every doorway you are going to lose trades against people who are and it won't even feel close to fair. Bind slide to a paddle or mouse thumb button, not the default key, and your fingers will thank you later when you don't have carpal tunnel from contorting your hand to reach some awkward keyboard binding.

Flak Jacket because grenade spam is absurd right now and you will die to random nade spam at least three times per match without it equipped. Assassin because showing up on enemy UAV is basically throwing the game for your entire team and everyone will hate you. Ghost always because the minimap is too valuable to appear on it for any reason whatsoever under any circumstances. And then Perk Greed wildcard lets you add Tac Mask on top of all that and yes four perks beats an extra attachment in this meta and anyone telling you otherwise hasn't played enough to understand how the radar economy actually works in high SBMM lobbies. Trust me on this one.

So here's my weapon ranking on patch 1.03 and I'm basing this on TTK consistency not just spreadsheet numbers that look good on paper but fall apart the moment you're in an actual gunfight against someone who knows what they're doing. The Kriger 6 and KSV-74 and LR 7.62 are S-tier because they win gunfights you should lose based on positioning and reaction time alone which is the definition of overtuned. The AMES 85 and C9 and XMG-7 and GS50 akimbo sit in A-tier with competitive performance and no real weaknesses that good aim and positioning can't overcome. The Model L and PP-919 and Marine SP and DM-10 are B-tier which means they're usable but you're working harder than the other guy for the same results and that gets old fast. The SWAT 5.56 and Tsarkov 7.62 and ASG-89 are C-tier so don't bring these to Ranked unless you actively hate yourself and want to watch your SR tank into oblivion. And the Goblin Mk2 is F-tier and genuinely broken with confirmed hitreg issues that Treyarch acknowledged publicly so just avoid it completely until they patch it and even then I'd be suspicious of whether they actually fixed anything at all.

But the SWAT 5.56 is the trap weapon of this game and I see so many people fall for it because the stats look decent on paper and the burst fire rate looks attractive in the gunsmith menu. The burst delay makes it wildly inconsistent past 25 meters and you'll lose every single trade against anyone running a Kriger who has even halfway decent aim and knows how to pre-aim corners. Don't be that person rolling up to Ranked with a SWAT wondering why you're going 4 and 18 against people who actually read patch notes.

So yeah the Zombies mode actually surprised me and Treyarch packed a decent amount of depth into Liberty Falls where the Easter egg takes about 45 minutes solo once you know the steps well enough to optimize the routing and skip unnecessary detours. Turn on both generators in the spawn area and church first then hit the fuse box in the bank vault to activate the PAP machine on the roof. That's your baseline setup done. Don't overthink it.

And the main quest has you filling six Aether canisters by killing zombies near specific locations around the map at the diner and the church and the bank and the gas station and the motel pool and the rooftop. But here's the thing and this is what tripped me up on my first attempt and cost me about an hour of wasted progress. Each canister needs a specific element from the matching Wonder Weapon upgrade and you can't just grab them all at once and run around filling them in whatever order feels convenient. Gotta do them in sequence. It's tedious but that's Zombies for you. Anyone who's played previous Treyarch Zombies modes knew this was coming. No surprises there.

For the boss fight you want triple-PAP shotgun and monkey bombs and kazimir grenade and self-revive and at least two armor plates minimum or you're going in underprepared and will wipe on phase two. The boss has three phases. Phase two is where most people die because it's a bullet-sponge tentacle nightmare with adds spawning behind you constantly while you're trying to focus the main target. Every time. And phase three has you shooting glowing weak points while dodging purple orbs that insta-kill you if you're not paying attention for even a split second. For phase two stay near the ammo crate in the northeast corner and do not ADS under any circumstances because hipfire is faster for the adds that spawn behind you and every millisecond counts when you're getting swarmed from multiple directions simultaneously.

Tbh I found the secret song on the third floor of the bank behind the teller counter and you need to interact with three musical notes scattered around the map to activate it at the diner jukebox and the church organ and the motel radio. Activate all three and the song plays and it's actually a pretty good track that I've had stuck in my head more times than I'd like to admit.

Endgame mode is their extraction-lite experiment and it's kind of like DMZ crossed with Zombies but faster and less punishing overall with three-player squads and objective rounds and extraction as the primary goal. The meta is still forming but a few things are already obvious to anyone who's put in the hours and watched how the mode actually plays out in practice. Bring one player with a riot shield for revives because getting someone up under fire without it is basically impossible past round 5 and you'll just wipe trying to be a hero. Stack teammate revive speed perks on everyone without exception. And always extract before Round 8 unless you have a full stack with mics and comms and everyone knows exactly what they're doing because Round 8 is where the AI difficulty spikes dramatically and enemies get armor and aimbot-level tracking and insta-down shotguns that will wipe your whole squad in seconds flat.

So my best solo strategy so far is a stealth loadout with suppressed SMG and focusing on intel contracts since they spawn fewer enemies than the other contract types available. Extract at Round 5 for consistent 12 to 15 minute runs that feel efficient and worthwhile. And pushing past Round 7 solo just isn't worth the risk to reward ratio unless you're specifically farming the rare weapon blueprints that drop from the Round 10 boss and even then I'm not convinced it's a time-efficient way to spend your evening. Maybe I'm wrong though.

And don't sleep on the decoy grenade in Endgame mode because it works on AI enemies and gives you roughly four seconds of clean extraction time when you're getting swarmed at the exfil point and every second counts when you're trying to call the chopper. I keep three in my Endgame loadout always and they have saved more runs than I can count at this point. Seriously.

Turn off crossplay imediately unless you're on controller because PC lobbies have a massive cheater problem right now and shadow-ban appeals take 7 to 14 days during which you literally can't play the game at all on that account. Console-only lobbies are noticeably cleaner and the overall experience is just better in every measurable way. The FOV slider goes to 120 but 105 is the actual sweet spot and past 110 enemy models at distance become comically tiny and you'll miss headshots you could swear you hit on your screen based on the visual feedback. And don't craft scorestreaks mid-life because dying resets your streak multiplier and all that progress goes straight to waste with nothing to show for it. Save them for a fresh spawn or right after earning a UAV so you can chain into higher-tier rewards and actually get value from the system. The Armory unlocks are account-wide but locked behind daily challenges and some of the best attachments like Quickdraw Grip II and Extended Mag II are Armory-exclusive which means you can't get them through regular weapon leveling no matter how much you grind the weapon XP. Check the tab every day even if you don't feel like playing. Missing a day locks you out of progression you can't make up later. And sound EQ is basically legal wallhacks and I feel slightly dirty using it but everyone at high ranks is doing it so you're handicapping yourself if you don't. Set audio to Studio Reference in the mix options and enable mono audio and crank the high-frequency slider all the way up. You can hear footsteps two floors above you and it feels like cheating because it kinda is...