Treyarch revealed a hidden mechanic in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s Zombies mode that lets players make their weapons stronger if they’ve got enough points to spend.
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Black Ops 4 has only been out since Friday, but players have already taken issue with how strong the guns are in the game’s Zombies mode, or rather how weak they appeared to be. While using the Pack-a-Punch Machine to strengthen weapons has always been the most obvious answer, Treyarch revealed that those who want even stronger guns should return to the Pack-a-Punch Machine multiple times to get a 25 percent damage boost each time a gun is Pack-a-Punched.
Jason Blundell, Treyarch’s senior executive producer for the Zombies game mode in Black Ops 4, confirmed the hidden damage boost mechanic in a Twitch stream. Treyarch took questions from the community in a Reddit AMA and then answered many of them in a video where they addressed concerns, explained decisions, and tackled other questions. When discussing some of the changes to the perks and points system that were made in Black Ops 4, Blundell said in the Twitch clip below that people were talking about weak guns without fully understanding the game mode’s new mechanics.
“They are completely missing a very important point which is: Every time you re-Pack with a Pack-a-Punch Machine, you get a 25 percent increase on the damage. Which you can do four times, ’cause it’s Black Ops 4. So, everyone’s only Packing twice right now and going ‘These weapons are garbage, I can’t kill anything.’ Well, maybe you should re-Pack it. Keep it going.”
Black Ops players aren’t new to re-Packing their weapons in the machines to get different effects, but this is the first time that the guns can be put back in the Pack-a-Punch Machines to get a damage boost after the first transformation. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 introduced a system where players could Pack-a-Punch a gun multiple times to get different attachments, though that feature wasn’t widely known when the game first came out either. Noticing a 25 percent increase in damage on different guns within the mayhem of Zombies isn’t as easy as spotting a new attachment though, especially when it can be done four times, so it’s likely that this mechanic would’ve remained hidden for at least a while longer had Blundell not confirmed it.
This doesn’t mean that powering up weapons will be cheap though since every Pack-a-Punch trip to continue increasing a weapon’s power will cost 2,500 points up to a total of 12,500 spent on one gun, but players at least now know how this part of Black Ops 4’s Zombies mode works.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is now available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
