What ARE Augments in Cold War Zombies?
The relentless hordes are closing in, the air thick with the stench of decay, and your survival hinges on more than just raw firepower. In Call of Duty: Cold War Zombies, every advantage counts. While skillful aiming and map awareness are crucial, the secret to truly dominating the undead lies in understanding and mastering the powerful system of Augments. Augments can grant you improved weaponry, enhanced armor, better support and boosted skills to improve your game. But what exactly are augments in cold war zombies, and how can they transform you from zombie fodder into an unstoppable force? Let’s dive into the world of augments and discover all that this awesome system can provide.
Simply put, Augments are special upgrades that significantly enhance your abilities within the Cold War Zombies game mode. They offer a diverse range of improvements, affecting everything from your weapon damage and armor resistance to your movement speed and equipment effectiveness. Think of them as passive bonuses that stack on top of your existing perks, weapon upgrades, and field upgrades, giving you an extra edge against the ever-increasing waves of undead. They are your key to staying alive longer and dealing significantly more damage.
Unlike perks, which provide specific, pre-defined benefits, Augments are more granular. They offer fine-tuned adjustments to various aspects of your character and gear. They are not field upgrades, as field upgrades require manual activation. Nor are they weapon upgrades because they are not bound to one particular weapon.
The important thing to remember is that augments are permanent upgrades that you unlock and enhance using resources you earn within the game, meaning the more you play, the more powerful you become. You can access and spend the resources needed to get augments from the Zombies menu in the main menu, before entering into any given map.
Types of Augments & What They Provide
Cold War Zombies boasts a comprehensive array of Augments, catering to diverse playstyles and tactical preferences. They’re broadly categorized based on what they enhance, so you can tailor your build to suit your preferred approach. Let’s break down the major categories and some examples of what they offer:
Weapon Specific Augments
These Augments focus on amplifying the effectiveness of your arsenal. Want to deal more damage with every shot? Need to reload faster under pressure? These upgrades are your answer.
Critical Damage: This augment increases the critical hit damage of all weapons. This can be further enhanced with ammo mods and the brain rot ammo mod, which also increases the critical hit damage. This can be considered the best augment in the game.
Reload Speed: Cut down on those precious seconds spent reloading, keeping you in the fight longer. If you hate constantly reloading, this augment will be a must have.
Aim Down Sight Time: Get your sights up faster, giving you an edge in those split-second encounters. This will greatly increase weapon handling for the most cumbersome weapons.
Hip Fire Accuracy: Improve accuracy when firing from the hip, useful for close-quarters combat and maintaining mobility. Great for shotguns or weapons that are slow to aim down sight.
Bullet Penetration: This greatly increases the penetration damage to enemies and objects. Essential for crowd control and for taking down hordes with minimal ammunition consumption.
Armor Specific Augments
Staying protected is paramount in the face of relentless zombie attacks. Armor Augments enhance your defensive capabilities, allowing you to withstand more punishment and stay in the fight longer.
Armor Repair Speed: Patch up your armor faster, minimizing downtime and keeping you safe.
Explosive Damage Resistance: Reduce the damage taken from explosions, protecting you from grenades and other explosive hazards. You’ll thank yourself when you’re standing next to an exploding propane tank.
Maximum Armor Plates: Increase the number of armor plates you can carry, providing greater overall protection.
Melee Damage: Significantly boost your melee damage, making those knife attacks and finishing moves far more effective.
Support Specific Augments
Field upgrades and support items can be game-changers, but these Augments make them even better. Shorten cooldowns, extend durations, and maximize their impact.
Field Upgrade Cooldown: Reduce the cooldown time of your field upgrade, allowing you to use it more frequently. Essential for those who rely on abilities like Aether Shroud or Energy Mine.
Support Weapon Duration: Extend the duration of your support weapons, like the Chopper Gunner or Artillery Strike, giving you more time to inflict devastation.
Maximum Equipment: Increase the number of equipment items you can carry. This is a crucial upgrade for holding onto grenades, decoy grenades, and stimshots.
Equipment Charge Rate: Reduce the charge rate of your equipment items.
Skill Augments
These Augments directly affect your core character abilities, improving your survivability and movement.
Regeneration Speed: Increase the rate at which you regenerate health, keeping you alive longer.
Starting Health: Begin each game with more health, giving you a buffer against early-round attacks.
Movement Speed: Move faster, allowing you to outmaneuver zombies and navigate the map more efficiently. Great for any map that allows running loops.
Tactical Sprint Duration: Increase the duration of your tactical sprint, allowing you to cover more ground quickly.
Zombie Specific Augments
These augments primarily focus on killing zombies and increasing your lethality.
Damage to Elites: This is a very powerful perk as it allows you to drastically increase damage to elites. Elites have high health pools and tend to be a major threat on the battlefield. This augment mitigates their ability to create dangerous situations.
Zombie Health Mitigation: Allows you to deal significantly more damage to zombies. In late rounds zombies are very difficult to kill due to their extremely high health pools. This fixes that issue and allows you to maintain lethality.
Zombie Movement Speed: This reduces the movement speed of zombies by a certain percentage, thus allowing you to avoid zombies more easily. This is an excellent skill to use while training zombies.
Unlocking and Upgrading Augments
Earning these powerful upgrades takes time and effort. You’ll need to earn Aetherium Crystals, the primary currency for unlocking and upgrading Augments.
Aetherium Crystals are primarily earned by reaching high rounds in zombie games or completing daily zombie trials. Once you’ve gathered enough crystals, navigate to the Zombies menu. From here, you can purchase and upgrade all of your augments. You’ll want to unlock as many augments as possible as soon as you can.
Each Augment can be upgraded multiple times, further enhancing its benefits. These upgrades are tiered, with each tier requiring more Aetherium Crystals. Think carefully about which Augments you want to prioritize, as resources can be limited early on.
Best Augment Combinations & Strategies
Choosing the right Augments depends on your playstyle and the map you’re playing. Here are some recommendations:
High-Round Survival: Prioritize Augments that boost survivability and damage output. Regeneration Speed, Maximum Armor Plates, and Critical Damage are all excellent choices. Pair them with weapon-specific Augments that complement your favorite weapons.
Objective-Focused Play: Focus on Augments that improve your movement speed, equipment effectiveness, and field upgrade cooldown. This will allow you to quickly complete objectives and stay ahead of the horde. Tactical Sprint Duration and Field Upgrade Cooldown are key.
Solo vs. Co-op: In solo play, survivability is paramount. Focus on Augments that keep you alive. In co-op, you can specialize in certain roles. For example, one player could focus on weapon damage, while another focuses on support and healing.
Some augments also synergize with each other. For example, critical damage paired with bullet penetration can cause increased damage to hordes. Or, bullet penetration paired with reload speed can allow you to quickly mow down hordes.
Different maps also require different Augments. On Die Maschine, you can stay high on the roof and spam explosives, so having armor plate and explosive resistance will be highly beneficial. On Firebase Z, it is more confined and tight, therefore movement speed may be a higher priority. Mauer Der Toten is dark and full of close quarters, therefore hip fire accuracy may be more useful.
The Enduring Power of Augments
Although Cold War zombies is no longer supported with content updates, the game and its augments have stood the test of time and remain a key feature of the zombie slaying experience. Experiment with different combinations and find what works best for you. Master the system, unlock its full potential, and you’ll transform yourself into a true force to be reckoned with. You are a master zombie slayer now. Good luck out there, and stay frosty.
