Call of Duty: Cold War's latest patch makes guns level up faster

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Weapon XP has been permanently boosted in multiplayer and Zombies.

cod cold war endings
(Image credit: Activision)

Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War players grinding for weapon camos can rest easy. Only two weeks after launch, Treyarch is permanently boosting weapon XP earn rates across both multiplayer and Zombies. Today's patch also addresses a Zombies bug that awarded less weapon XP than intended when playing solo.

Since day one, weapon XP has been a sticking point for Cold War players. You don't have to look far on the Cold War subreddit to find folks upset that their weapons are leveling up way too slow. "Please, for the love of god, increase weapon XP," reads a post by Dsaxon. Anecdotally, I've certainly noticed a longer grind to unlock basic attachments than the breezy pace I enjoyed in Modern Warfare. Other areas of Cold War's progression, like player levels, feel reasonable by comparison.

A good example is this post by Reddit user evchev, who reached over 1000 kills with the Pellington 703 and is still locked out of several of the rifle's scopes, stocks, and grips. At the old XP rate, they'd still need few hundred kills to unlock the thermal scope. Wowza.

1k Elims with only Pelington and still don't even have access to final camo tier. Weapon XP NEEDS BUFFS from r/blackopscoldwar

Hopefully today's patch will soften that grind a bit. Treyarch didn't specify how much more weapon XP players should expect to earn, so we'll have to see for ourselves. Treyarch is also planning more double XP periods throughout December to make up for a bug that shortchanged solo Zombies players during the Thanksgiving weekend double XP event.

With the Nuketown 24/7 playlist still in rotation this week, it's a good time to test out the increased weapon XP. Just don't think about exploiting the out-of-bounds glitch that plagued the map in its first week—that's been patched as well.

Morgan Park
Morgan Park
Staff Writer

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.