The Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War battle pass is on its third iteration alongside Warzone Season 3, promising plenty of shiny new Cold War weapons like the PPSh-41 SMG and Swiss K31 sniper rifle. As ever, there are 100 tiers with 100 items and a new featured operator you’ll unlock instantly upon purchasing the battle pass. The new battle pass contains a free and a premium track, with very limited rewards on the free track. If you purchase the battle pass for 1000 CP (CoD Points) then you’ll get access to the premium track, with all the cosmetics and the chance the earn back 1300 CP if you finish the pass.
Activision says that you earn battle pass tiers through a combination of factors, including how much time you put in, how much XP you earn, and the challenges you complete. With challenges contributing a huge amount of XP upon completion it seems that ultimately this is all about XP and time played.
In order to earn some of the new Warzone guns you’ll need to reach a certain tier in the battle pass. In order to ensure you’re not wasting time playing modes you don’t like or not tempted to go AFK for the sake of some easy progression, here’s how to level up your Call of Duty battle pass fast.
How to level up the CALL OF DUTY cold war battle pass fast
The fastest way to rank up you battle pass in Cold War is to play long matches, earning double XP and CoD points. So we suggest multiplayer game modes such as Domination, Hardpoint, Dirty Bomb, and Zombies.
It’s up to you how much you want to factor challenges in, but our advice is to prioritise these if they’re easy, as the XP dumps will feed a lot of progression, these include daily, career, battle hardened, and dark ops challenges. Any ribbons, camo challenges, or missions you finish will also give you healthy boosts to your rank up times and you can often tick off several challenges in a single match if you focus on them.
We obviously don’t recommend AFK tactics as it ruins the experience for others, but as XP is a significant factor here it’s worth flagging that AFK tricks won’t get players very far, which is good. Instead, try a hectic map such as Nuketown 24/7 due to its small scale making it easy to achieve a high kill count.
Finally, it’s worth flagging that double XP doesn’t appear to affect your battle pass progression at all. You earn some of these bonuses through activating the battle pass itself, so there’s no advantage for players who have bought the premium track of the battle pass system. Very occasionally, Activision will host a double battle pass XP weekend, but there’s no consistent schedule for this.
How to get more XP from Warzone
Warzone may be the only way to gain battle pass progress if you’re only playing the free-to-play battle royale mode, rather than multiplayer. Fortunately, Warzone is also one of the most efficient ways to gain XP in Cold War as matches last for a long time and the main factor that dictates your progression rate is in-match time across all modes. So long as you’re staying alive for as long as possible, you should be able to rack up plenty of battle pass levels.
In addition to how long you survive for, Warzone also grants bonus XP for contracts, combat, opening loot crates, and placement. Contracts and placements are the most lucrative of the two, and if you’re aiming to live for a while then both of these work well with that playing style. Recon and Scavenger Warzone Contracts are the best of the two, but Scavenger wins out as each stash also boosts your loot XP bonus.
And there you have it, some quick tips on grinding through the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War battle pass as fast as possible.