As always with a new Call of Duty game, there’s a grind to level up and unlock all your weapons, perks, killstreaks, and equipment, but Modern Warfare 3‘s player progression works a bit differently. This year adds the new Armory Unlocks system, which locks specific items behind daily challenges. Here we give you some tips to get everything in the armory unlocked fast.
Amory Unlock system explained
Modern Warfare 3’s Armory Unlock system adds to Call of Duty’s grind by requiring you unlock many of the game’s items through completion of daily challenges. This means several weapons, perks, killstreaks, and other equipment pieces that you’d normally unlock through natural player progression are now stuck behind these challenges, including the trophy system, Cold-Blooded and Covert Sneakers perks, VTOL Jet killstreak, and several new weapons.
Your set of three daily challenges will refresh every 24 hours at 9 PM PT/ 12 AM ET, and you’ll want to try to do them all in order to unlock some of the essential perks and gear locked in the armory. You’ll get one point for each daily you complete, but if you complete all three daily challenges, you’ll get a bonus challenge to let you earn even more unlock points.
The MP and Zombies challenges are separate, so you’ll want to try to do both sets of dailies to maximize your points earned each day.
How to access Armory Unlock menus
You won’t have access to these unlock challenges right away, but once you reach level 25 you can access the Armory. Under your daily challenges in the left hand side of the lobby menu, you’ll see an option to hit Triangle or Y on consoles to “select a new armory challenge.”
This takes you to your Armory unlocks. There is a tab for each category: Weapon, Aftermarket Parts, Perks, Equipment, Field Upgrades, and Killstreaks.
To make sure your points are counting towards the item you want most, you’ll need to actively select the item as an active armory unlock goal. You can set one to actively work towards, and queue other items you want to follow after it.
How to unlock items fast and efficiently
Armory unlocks add a huge grind to the game, but there are ways to make the experience a bit faster, and it keeps you from wasting too many points.
First, you’ll obviously want to prioritize things like weapons, perks, and killstreaks over smaller equipment like the Snapshot grenade. Make note of the items in these categories that you’re most likely to use and how many points they take. For example, the VTOL Jet killstreak costs 8 unlock points, whereas the care package streak only costs 2. Make sure you always have some of these priority items set in your queue.
Second, there is an additional way to unlock guns and equipment, so you don’t want to waste your precious unlock points on these. Modern Warfare 3’s Zombies mode works much like DMZ, meaning you can unlock weapons and equipment by successfully extracting the items. You can unlock all of the equipment and weapons this way, and this will save your precious unlock points for things like perks and killstreaks.
Most of the weapons can be found as either a Wall Buy or as a random gun in the Mystery Box, and the equipment is easily found in ammo caches and loot containers throughout the world. Also, make sure to communicate with your friends. If someone else already has a gun unlocked, they can drop it for you in Zombies for you to exfil.
Note: Some items can be bugged when unlocking through the Zombies exfil method. At the moment, the drill charge is not unlocking for me, but it did unlock for my teammates. Just keep trying.
For more on Modern Warfare 3, make sure to check out our guide on how to level up faster, including both player rank and weapon progression. Here we highlight all the MW3 mastery camos and how to unlock them.
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