From basic ammo to Field Upgrades and a loot rarity cheat sheet, this section breaks down the vast variety of equipment you need to store in your inventory.
Call of Duty Warzone Items and Inventory Guide
Unlike the traditional Call of Duty experience, your inventory in the Battle Royale mode of Warzone is available under a different set of circumstances. Aside from a handgun and a pair of fists, the items and weapons you carry are based entirely up to what you find within Verdansk.
This means you won’t last long unless you loot around the map.
A typical Operator’s inventory is not limited to weapons and ammo, although that is an important staple in what they carry. Here is everything that can be found on the ground in Warzone.
- Note: Weapon types aren’t specifically mentioned in this chapter, though they are available as Ground Loot, and in Supply Boxes, as well as your Loadouts taken from Loadout Drops.
- Note 2: Unless otherwise stated, the various types of Inventory can be found in all Warzone game modes.
Types of Caches
- Supply Boxes: Crates containing items. These are found throughout Verdansk, and come in a variety of colors, usually (but not exclusively) related to the rarity of the loot contained inside: Find Green (Uncommon), Blue (Rare), Purple (Epic), and Gold (Legendary).
- Special Supply Boxes: Crates containing rarer items. Only available as rewards during Scavenger Contracts.
- Buy Stations: Interactable portable comms station that exchanges Cash for Killstreaks, Armor Plates, Self-Revive Kits, and Loadout Drops.
Types of Loot
The following lists the usual types of Loot you can find throughout Verdansk and where they are likely to be found:
- Armor Plates: These to add protection to you or your squad mate (Ground Loot, Supply Box, Buy Station).
- Ammo: Ammunition for a particular type or types of weapon (Ground Loot, Supply Box).
- Cash: Different numerical values of in-game Cash, used in-game and only in the specific match, to purchase higher-value loot (Ground Loot, Supply Box).
- Contracts: Computer tablet granting a mission known as a Contract (Ground Loot, Supply Box).
- Field Upgrades: Equipment or an ability requiring manual activation in order to give a specific advantage in or outside of combat (Ground Loot, Supply Box).
- Gas Masks (Battle Royale only): A face mask allowing greater survivability within the gas of a circle collapse (Ground Loot, Supply Box, Buy Station).
- Killstreaks: Powerful, single-use reinforcement tools allowing skilled players the opportunity to turn the tide of battle if used wisely (Buy Station).
- Loadout Drops (Battle Royale only): A cargo crate dropped from the sky, containing your preferred Loadout during Battle Royale game mode (Ground Loot, Buy Station).
- Self-Revive Kits: Medical kits allowing you or a squadmate to self-revive after being downed during a match (Ground Loot, Supply Box, Buy Station).
- Weapons: Offensive armaments (Ground Loot, Supply Box, Loadout Drop).
Ground Loot
A loose piece of loot that can be found on the ground throughout the Warzone. Generally, ground loot is of lower quality – think ammo, common weapons, and the like – than loot found by other means.
Still, loot is loot, and in Verdansk, there is plenty of it lying on the ground in houses, buildings, and most other locations. Focus on gathering it early on in a match – so you have a functioning weapon for example – before the hunt for Supply Boxes begins.
Supply Box (and Special Supply Box)
A Supply Box is a small rectangular box that contains multiple loot items. Hundreds of these are randomly scattered around Verdansk, waiting to be opened. These are available in a variety of rarity colors, described in detail later in this section.
Upon interacting with a Supply Box, the contents of it will spring open in front of it, allowing you to pick up anything and everything that pops out.
Loot within a Supply Box can be of any rarity or type. There are also special versions of Supply Boxes (Special Supply Boxes), which are only available and marked via the Scavenger Contract and usually contain higher rarity loot.
No matter what type of Supply Box it is, you will hear an audible hum in-game whenever you are close to one. This hum will grow louder as you follow the noise, until it reaches its final crescendo when you are standing right next to a box and have not opened it. So, in general, remember to listen closely to this audible cue and find the source for a potentially game-changing reward.
Supply Box Tactics: As one would expect, Supply Boxes are hot spots for potential combat, given that there are only a finite number of these crates in the world. While the exact placement of every Supply Box is not the same from match to match, savvy Warzone Operators will eventually learn for themselves where they can usually find them.
Fortunately, opening a crate takes very little time, so the optimal strategy is to spring open the Supply Box, decide what loot is worth adding, and move on before any enemy catches you by surprise.
Alternatively, if you have a hunch about another squad approaching a box – or know, via UAV, Heartbeat Sensor, or other reconnaissance equipment – you could wait it out and spring a trap for them, gaining not only whatever is in the cache, but also anything those hapless rivals had on them.
Buy Station
The other stationary stockpile of loot is the Buy Station, an interactable portable comms station that exchanges Cash for Killstreaks, Armor Plates, Self-Revive Kits, and Loadout Drops. Each of these items costs a specific Cash amount that needs to be met in order to purchase them, and multiple items can be bought in a single trip to this station.
This includes Killstreaks, which appear on the right side of your HUD. If you already have a Killstreak available, buying another one will remove the previous one. They do not stack.
Unlike Supply Boxes, Buy Stations can be located on your Tac Map as small green shopping carts. This makes them easier targets for squads to go after and land at than Supply Boxes, as they provide visible markers that guarantee a place to earn loot. Plus, Buy Stations are usually in areas that contain Supply Boxes and even Contracts, making them high profile (and high reward) drop locations at the beginning of a Warzone match.
However, because of the versatility of loot on offer from these stations, they should definitely not be avoided during a Warzone match. This is, without question, one of the best ways to spend Cash earned from Contracts, downing enemies, or collecting it during a match.
While accessing a Buy Station, it is possible for an enemy player to down you. In other words, quick trips to this store are preferred rather than perusing through the menus. Or, request cover from your squad while you check a Buy Station. Like Supply Boxes, you could stake out an enemy squad you assume is heading for a shopping spree; but be warned that you may not be the only team with this tactic.
Loot Rarity
Outside of ammo, all loot in Warzone has a rarity level attached to them. This rarity level corresponds to their drop rate in-game; the higher rarity level a loot item is, the rarer it is as an in-game drop.
Rarity appears both as a symbol within a diamond, as well as an afterglow on weapons on your HUD.
For Battle Royale mode: The previous image contains the symbol for Player loot. This category is reserved for your starting handgun, as well as any items that come out of a Loadout Drop. While your starting pistol may not be that impressive, the weapons out of your Loadout Drop might be better than Legendary loot, especially for those who kit them out to their preference in the Gunsmith before a match.
Here are the other rarity levels:
Common and Uncommon Loot: is, as you would expect, the most frequent loot to find in the game. This includes your base weapons – most weapons with no attachments on them – or basic equipment.
All Common loot is denoted with a white diamond, while Uncommon loot is denoted by a single green diamond within a diamond and a green glow for weapons.
While Common and Uncommon loot is easy to find, it is better than nothing. So, should you find a gun lying around with a white or green diamond and have no other options, you might as well take it along for the ride until you find rarer loot.
Rare Loot: is a step up from Common and is denoted by two blue diamonds within a diamond or by a blue afterglow on your HUD’s weapon display.
Armor Plates, some equipment pieces and a few Field Upgrades have this rarity level, along with weapon blueprints with three attachments. Yes, rarer weapons in Warzone are the weapon blueprints you can play with in the other modes in the full version of Modern Warfare, as mentioned in our weapons section.
This rarity of loot is usually found within Supply Boxes, so if you are looking for a weapon that has a few attachments on it, look around for Supply Boxes rather than weapons on the ground.
Epic Loot: Loot that is given a purple diamond with three individual diamonds inside, or that have a purple afterglow on your HUD’s weapon display, is considered Epic Loot. This category includes more Field Upgrades and equipment, as well as weapon blueprints with four unique attachments.
These are more common within Special Supply Boxes (found as rewards during Scavenger Contracts) than Supply Boxes, which have a better chance of pulling rarer loot by design. Still, it is possible to find an Epic weapon or two, within a Supply Boxes, and if that happens, you may want to think twice before passing it up.
Legendary Loot: An orange-gold afterglow on a weapon or four gold diamonds inside of a diamond indicates that a loot piece is at its highest rarity level: Legendary.
Legendary loot consists of game-changing Field Upgrades, such as Stopping Power Rounds, weapon blueprints with all five attachment slots filled, and other hard-to-find in-game items like Self-Revive Kits and Gas Masks.
During a game of Warzone, you may only come across a handful of Legendary loot items in Supply Boxes, let alone on the ground. These usually come out of high Contract Level rewards, especially for Scavenger and Recon Contracts. Alternatively, some of these items, such as the Self-Revive Kits, can be bought outright at a Buy Station.
Only foolish Operators leave Legendary loot lying around for others to capture without even considering it as part of a loadout.
Ammo
A weapon is next to useless without ammo – even though looted weapons come with a magazine or two included, you may eventually run out of bullets if you don’t find any ammo in the Warzone.
Ammo in Warzone is simplified into weapon categories (compared with the full Modern Warfare game), with some ammo types able to be used for multiple weapon categories. Ammo is segmented into:
- Pistol/SMG
- Assault Rifle/LMG
- Sniper/Marksman Rifle
- Shotgun
- Launcher
There is a limit to how much ammo an Operator can carry, but in general, the more ammo you carry – no matter its type, the better. In Warzone, you never know what weapon you will find to be most effective, so it is best to keep ammo counts as close to the max as possible and pick up these drops in the world.
Note: The “Drop” menu (in the lower center of your HUD) allows you to drop (and optionally Ping) any ammunition you may be carrying, but aren’t using, so a squad mate in need of the ammunition can pick it up.
Armor Plates
Armor is your main form of Operator damage mitigation, shielding your hit points from ballistic or explosive damage. Armor comes in Plates, rare drops that can be equipped, expended, and stockpiled up to five individual Plates per Operator.
Operators start in Warzone with 100 health and two Armor Plates equipped out of three in total. Your current armor status is shown above the health bar in the bottom left corner of the screen. Taking damage will deplete this bar, which is segmented into thirds to represent each individual Armor Plate.
When used, an Armor Plate fills up the armor bar to the nearest third. In other words, if you get nicked by a bullet and your armor bar goes down past the two-third mark slightly, equipping an armor plate will only fill the bar back up to the two-third mark.
Because of this feature, it may be wise to wait until your armor fully depletes before putting on more plates, if you do not have the luxury of a full set of five reserve Armor Plates. Otherwise, if you have the armor to spare, it may not be worth worrying about topping off a bar rather than filling up an empty one.
Equipping an Armor Plate takes a few seconds and renders your Operator unable to fire or use equipment. However, they can still move and even sprint while equipping armor pieces, making a stow and scurry maneuver an effective option for gaining ground and defense.
- Note: You can technically have up to eight Armor plates carried by your Operator; up to five in reserve, and up to three worn and ready to absorb damage.
- Note 2: The “Drop” menu (in the lower center of your HUD) allows you to drop (and optionally Ping) any Armor plates you may be carrying, but aren’t using, so a squad mate in need of one can pick it up.
Cash
Cash is what Operators use to purchase loot items at Buy Stations. This in-game currency can be earned either by completing Contracts, finding them in the wild, or collecting them from the remains of your enemies.
Cash comes in all sizes; the larger the stack, the more Cash is in it. Whether its $500 Cash or $5,000 Cash, it all adds up on your Operator.
In a typical Warzone match, a good benchmark to hit is about $3,000 in Cash before visiting a Buy Station – this is enough to buy some of the items you’ll find at the Buy Station, and from here, only a few thousand more will be enough to get anything there.
As for the Plunder game mode, Cash is your win condition. This means completing Contracts, one of the more lucrative and guaranteed ways to earn Cash, becomes even more important in these matches. Full strategies for acquiring and utilizing Cash in Plunder is detailed in In-Game Modes section, including Cash Drops; large care packages dropped into Plunder mode games with sizable Cash rewards to gather before your enemies do.
- Note: The “Drop” menu (in the lower center of your HUD) allows you to drop (and optionally Ping) any Cash you may be carrying, but aren’t using, so a squad mate in need of cash can pick it up (and ideally use it at a Buy Station, or deposit during Plunder matches.
- Note 2: Cash is only useful during the specific Warzone match that you find it in. There’s no need (or point) to keep Cash for longer than a single match; as Cash isn’t tracked beyond that.
Gas Mask
Battle Royale Mode: As was mentioned in the Circle Collapse section, the collapse is a deadly gas that will down any Operator who spends too much time in it. The only way to avoid being damaged by it – outside of not stepping into it in the first place – is to equip a Gas Mask.
Gas Masks are single-use items that, when equipped inside of a collapse, allows your Operator to breathe freely for a little over 10 seconds. During this time, a vertical bar will deplete, which indicates the amount of time you have until the Gas Mask’s filter fully expires.
This item is considered Legendary loot, making it difficult to find within Verdansk. However, if it is found, how to use it, and when to use it, is extremely simple.
You may want to save a Gas Mask for later stages of a Battle Royale Warzone match, such as when the final circle collapse engulfs Verdansk completely, should you plan to survive that long. Otherwise, use it whenever your Operator is at risk of taking an unfortunate death to the elements.
Field Upgrades
A Field Upgrade is an additional equipment piece or ability that requires manual activation in order to give a specific advantage in or outside of combat.
Usually found in Loot or Supply Boxes, Field Upgrades will appear on the bottom right corner of your HUD when they are picked up. In certain game modes, such as Plunder, you can select a Field Upgrade to bring with you into the Warzone just like your custom Loadout.
Munitions Box
Upon activation, your Operator will deploy a box of ammo, refillable equipment (such as grenades), and weapons for you and your squad-mates. Be careful: if it is critically damaged it will explode.
Recon Drone
Pilot a small, remote-controlled drone, ideally from a safe position behind cover, around the map. The drone is fully maneuverable with precise yaw and pitch control, but with a limited health and fuel supply, meaning it can’t be used indefinitely and can be shot down. Enemies, equipment, and vehicles are shown on the drone’s camera display (foes appear as white circles), then you can mark them to earn XP points and track them, even through walls.
Dead Silence
Dead Silence temporarily makes your footsteps quieter, allowing you a greater freedom to move closer to enemy installations, locations, or activities with less of a fear of discovery.
Stopping Power Rounds
Add a bit more firepower to your arsenal with a magazine or clip full of Stopping Power Rounds. These ballistics are more powerful than your stock ammunition, as they deal extra damage to enemies and equipment. Activating Stopping Power Rounds will only supply ONE magazine or a clip full of boosted ammunition to your equipped weapon, so ensure that your current weapon is the one you want to load up with Stopping Power Rounds.
Trophy System
This autonomous defense system destroys up to three pieces of equipment or enemy projectiles that dare to enter its zone of control. Whether it is a Smoke Grenade or an RPG projectile, this tiny robot can come up big by intercepting any hostile projectiles outside of bullets.
Deployable Cover
Quickly deployable, this roughly five-by-four feet metal ballistic cover can provide critical protection under certain circumstances. Aside from the reasonable protection this affords you or a teammate, you can also mount your weapons to the horizontal top, or vertical sides of the Cover, granting you stability bonuses to your firing while doing so.
Tactical Insertion
Should you wish to spawn at a particular location in Verdansk, you can drop down a lit flare to mark it as your next spawn point. The next time you succumb to enemy fire, you automatically return to the flare’s location, to continue the battle; hopefully with a tactical advantage! These insertion flares can be seen and neutralized by others, so strategic use of them is of paramount importance.
EMP Drone
This EMP Drone detonates a powerful electromagnetic pulse that disables all electronics in the area. Upon activation, the EMP Drone can be targeted on the Tac Map via tablet. Once you select an area, the plane will dive down and explode, dealing significant damage to anyone in its immediate area and wiping out enemy radar, equipment, or other tech within a small radius from its point of impact.
Weapon Drop
Need to bring in the big guns? The Weapon Drop Field Upgrade brings a cache full of high-powered weapons via drone to a drop point marked by a dyed smoke grenade, which looks similar to a Care Package marker. Once the drone drops this box off, you or your teammates can interact with it to either add an additional attachment to your weapon or equip a fully customized weapon that uses all five attachment slots. The weapon and attachments are all randomly generated, but that roll of the dice may give you or a teammate exactly what you need to turn the tide of battle.
Cash Deposit Balloon
This Field Upgrade allows you to deposit Cash without using Cash Deposit Site. After activating it, interacting with it will deposit some of your or your squad’s Cash onto it. Teammates can also deposit Cash onto the balloon. Regardless of whether you deposit Cash on it or not, it flies away after around 10-15 seconds. Note the Cash Deposit Balloon has a limited amount of Cash it can carry, so don’t expect to deposit all of your ill-gotten gains. However, also remember these Field Upgrades can recharge and be used again, though their recharge rate is slow.
Killstreaks
Normally, Killstreaks are earned after getting a certain number of kills in a Multiplayer match. But in Warzone, Killstreaks can be bought from the Buy Station or can be found as some of the rarest loot items within Supply Boxes and as Ground Loot.
With enough Cash – or with a bit of luck – you can control these powerful tools that reward skilled players with the opportunity to turn the tide of a Warzone match if used wisely.
Here are the Killstreaks that are available in the Warzone:
Shield Turret
This manually-operated shielded turret can be deployed onto most surfaces upon activation. Once it is placed down, its owner or a teammate can hop behind it and control a powerful .50 caliber machine gun with plenty of ammo. The number of bullets remaining in the belt-fed magazine are shown in the bottom-right corner of the HUD, and when it, or the time meter in the middle of the HUD runs dry, the turret will be destroyed. The turret can also be destroyed by enemy fire or explosives. While the front-facing shield provides some protection, a Shield Turret gunner is exposed on their flanks, so it may be wise to have a buddy watch your six.
UAV
A Killstreak that immediately goes into effect upon activation, this recon drone flies around and scans the environment in short sweeps, picking up the locations of all enemies outside of those using the Ghost perk. You and any other squadmates will see these radar sweeps on the Tac Map.
Cluster Strike
Designate a mortar strike by pointing a handheld laser at any position within your line of sight. After aiming the laser towards an area and pressing fire, several artillery shells will pepper a circular zone in an explosive barrage. Using a Cluster Strike effectively comes down to understanding its zone of control. It may be limited, but anyone caught within its blast will have an uphill battle against survival. That includes you, so don’t run through your own Cluster Strike.
Precision Airstrike
Throw on those binoculars to designate a twin jet precision strike on a path in your line of sight. Once you mark the airstrike location, two jets will swoop down one after the other on the area to take out any hostile forces that cross its line of fire. Much like the Cluster Strike, anyone caught within the path of a Precision Airstrike – including its owner – is up against plenty of explosive power. Be careful when using this Killstreak.
