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Crafting debuts, and tactical nukes return, in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare

The ship that will deliver Infinite Warfare's new Tactical Nuke (if you ever get a 25-kill streak)

Weapon progression is the focus of a new trailer on the Call of Duty YouTube channel, revealing the grind that lays before those of you who choose to pick up Infinite Warfare, the latest in the assuredly infinite shooter series. The highlight (or lowlight) of the video? The confirmed return of the Tactical Nuke.

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You start by unlocking basic weapons, presumably via experience points as in previous titles in the series. After you’ve unlocked a base weapon, you can use the new crafting system to acquire more powerful “prototype” variants of that weapon. These prototypes come in four rarity tiers, with rarer guns having more and better perks. The Tactical Nuke, first introduced in Modern Warfare 2 as a reward for a 25-kill streak, is now called a “De-Atomizer Strike” and returns in the form of a weapon perk. This makes no sense, but this is Call of Duty, after all.

The perk is called “Nuclear”, and as before, you’ll need to get 25 kills without dying with any gun that has this perk – look for the rarer Legendary and Epic guns. Ability kills, such as those made with grenades, don’t count. Do this and you can call in a ship which will vaporise the map, killing all players on the enemy team instantly. This appears to give you an automatic win as before in deathmatch games, but notin objective-based game modes.See below for footage of JMoser97 pulling it off in the Infinite Warfare beta.

As for the crafting system, it may be something of a misnomer for what looks like a simple grind. A currency called Salvage is earned “in various ways” as you play, and then used to purchase whichever prototype you want from a menu. There’s no sign of anything more complex than this; no gathering different materials, recipes or blueprints as in H1Z1 or Skyrim, for example.

Feedback on the video has been largely positive, with players noting the move away from “Supply Drops” with random contents. These were present in the previous two Call of Duty games and could be bought with both real and in-game currencies. It seems weapon variants in Infinite Warfare are bought directly from the menu with Salvage, so you know exactly what you’re getting. No more rolling the dice.

Of course, the door is wide open for Activision to either sell Salvage or a second currency for real money, but there’s been no mention of this yet. Either way, it seems random loot boxes may be gone, which is good news. Check out the trailer above.