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The Call of Duty Warzone Season 4 update is fast approaching, also known as the Mercenaries of Fortune update, in which players will see new maps, new gear, new operators and more besides coming to Warzone 2022. The last Call of Duty Warzone update featured Godzilla and King Kong scrapping with each other, and while this new season isn’t quite as cinematic, it does offer new features and gameplay experiences – most notably the Fortune’s Keep map, which will intermittently replace Rebirth Island and act as a new location to play the the Resurgence game mode with friends and strangers alike.
We’ve also seen that the Pacific Caldera map will be getting some sort of changes, with the addition of new locations – and even old ones returning – and changes to the map as a whole, with new camps, less water, and bunkers that need keycards to unlock. There’s a lot to get into, so we’ll cover everything we know is coming to Call of Duty Warzone Season 4, Mercenaries of Fortune, below.
Everything new in the Call of Duty: Warzone Season 4 update
The Season 4 update for Warzone, Mercenaries of Fortune, will add the following content to the game (and possibly more):
- A new map for Resurgence: Fortune’s Keep
- Changes to Caldera’s layout
- The return of Storage Town
- Mercenary Bunkers and Key Cards
- A new vehicle: The Armoured SUV
- A new Contract: Black Market Supply Run
- Golden Plunder Game Mode updates and ATMs
- Mercenaries of Fortune event
- New Battle Pass, Operators and weapons
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Clearly there’s a lot coming, a wide scattershot approach that changes a lot of smaller elements rather than adding one huge new aspect or alternating one singular thing. Check out the Warzone Season 4 release time if you want to know exactly when it’ll be playable, but in the meantime, we suggest you either scroll down or use the helpful tabs to check out whatever takes your interest!
Appropriately enough, the whole theme of this new Season appears to be wealth, fortune and the pursuit of hard cash above all else – the “call of duty” doesn’t really seem to be entering into it. Many of the changes to the gameplay are on that theme, but of course it still looks like Warzone at the core, with very little touching the central gameplay model of shooting soldiers until there’s only one soldier left. We’ll cover the changes below, starting with arguably the most significant one:
The New Fortune’s Keep Resurgence Map
Up until now, the Resurgence game mode, in which players constantly respawn if there’s at least one teammate left alive, has been nearly exclusive to the Rebirth Island map. Now there’s a new map coming in which Resurgence can be played: Fortune’s Keep, a “smuggler’s paradise” in the Mediterranean that includes a castle keep, a village, an elaborate winery, and more besides.
Fortune’s Keep is supposed to be roughly the same size as Rebirth Island, with lobbies of up to 40 players, though it’ll also apparently feature NPC “Mercenaries”, who appear as part of a Cash Extraction event – guarding a marked bag of money that you’ll have to kill the mercs to reach (not to mention any other players who want it).
It’s worth mentioning that Fortune’s Keep will not be replacing Rebirth Island permanently – instead, the two maps will effectively take it in turns, with Warzone swapping between the two every so often.
Changes to the Caldera Pacific Map
Caldera is being modified in numerous little ways all across the island – here’s a quick precis on some of what to expect.
- The Verdansk landmark Storage Town is coming back
- Foliage, trees and other small obstacles are being reduced for longer sightlines
- Small camps and military bases will be added in key locations
- There will now be seven Mercenary Bunkers, which will require Key Cards to open.
- The Capital rooftops are linked by a network of scaffolding or bridges for parkour movement.
- The giant bones at the dig site have been removed.
- A fully explorable ship has been put in drydock at the Arsenal.
- The Peak has been altered to be more easily accessible.
- Many areas of water have been dried up and become explorable in the process.
As far as we can see, the biggest changes worth mentioning are Storage Town, the Mercenary Bunkers, the reduction of water and the clearing of sightlines in many areas around the map. We’ll cover Storage Town and the Mercenary Bunkers in more detail below, but it will be worth considering when building new loadouts how the mixture of longer sightlines and more accessible, easily-manoeuvrable locations may tip the balance in the favour of ranged combat and cover, rather than stealth and ambushes. Verdansk famously engaged in this kind of variation all over the map, presenting an eclectic mix of open terrain and claustrophobic buildings that meant players had to be ready for anything. And speaking of Verdansk…
Storage Town returns from Verdansk
The original Warzone map, Verdansk, has been absent and unplayable since late 2021, where it was removed from the game and supplanted by the newer Caldera. Now a small piece of history returns, as the official Call of Duty Blog tells us that a location within the game, Storage Town, will be back and situated “between the Mines, Airfield, Village, and Dig Site.” It’s apparently been largely preserved as it was, though the hills around it mean that seeing into the area from the outside and accessing the rooftops will be easier than before.
Mercenary Bunkers and Key Cards
The seven existing openable bunkers across Caldera are now “Mercenary Bunkers”, which can be cracked open for all manner of great loot – but to open any of them, you’ll need a single-use Key Card. These cards can be found (rarely) from Supply Boxes or Contracts, or you can shoot an enemy Operator and pull one off their corpse, if they were already holding one. Of course, though Bunkers can only be opened with Key Cards, some players may just hang around the entrances waiting for others to come and open them up, just to ambush them and get the treasure for themselves.
The new Armoured SUV vehicle
A new vehicle will be added to Caldera in the Mid-Season: the Armoured SUV, a modified version of the existing SUV. It’s heavily reinforced, and can hold a driver, two passengers, and a gunner who operates the machine gun turret on top (though they’ll be a lot more exposed to incoming fire).
The vehicle also has a Nitro Boost that the driver can use, exactly what it sounds like – a short-term booster that hugely increases acceleration, which any savvy driver will know how to use effectively – to either escape danger or run it down.
The new Black Market Supply Run Contract
At time of writing this new Contract will only be in the Fortune’s Keep map, not Caldera or Rebirth Island, though it’s entirely possible it’ll be added to them at a later date. The Black Market Supply Run is a hybrid of Supply Run and Supply Drop contract, and introduces a new “Mercenary Buy Station”, marked in black and gold. The Black Market Supply Run contract works as follows:
- Player picks up the Contract
- A large yellow circle with an “Infinite-Snake” marker is placed over the map
- Somewhere in the circle is a Mercenary Buy Station.
- The yellow circle shrinks as the player gets closer to the Buy Station
- The Buy Station also plays a noise to help home in on it
- When found, the victorious team can spend Cash on incredibly powerful items.
It’s an interesting idea, to say the least – all the items in this special Buy Station appear to be exclusive to it, but tend to be pretty expensive, with some costing five figures. Miniguns, Foresight, and the Specialist Bonus – which grants the Operator every Perk in Warzone – can all be brought here. Clearly, anybody who has the money to use these will become very dangerous, very quickly.
Golden Plunder Game Mode and ATMs
The Golden Plunder game mode will be a limited-time addition, an updated version of the existing Plunder and Blood Money modes, that’s effectively a far more cash heavy version of the standard model. Player counts are increased, Cash drops are bigger, and the victory requirement is now $5 million. There’s also malfunctioning ATMs all over the map that spew money to be grabbed – a useful camping spot for players, to say the least.
Mercenaries of Fortune Event
The Mercenaries of Fortune Event is a gauntlet of eight challenges tied to both Caldera and Fortune’s Keep (sorry, Rebirth Island), that each drop their own individual rewards, like Calling Cards, Weapon Camos and more. Complete all the challenges and you’ll earn a gold skin for the Armoured SUV – because taste is clearly for the unaccomplished.
New Battle Pass, Operators and weapons
Aside from the new bundles being added to the Store, a new Season obviously means a new Battle Pass, with new rewards as a part of that. We haven’t seen the full Battle Pass yet, but we know that at least one of the three new Operators, as well as two new weapons, are being added as part of this Pass. Here’s what we know is coming to it:
- Butcher Carver (Operator): Battle Pass Tier 0
- Marco 5 (Weapon): Battle Pass Tier 15 (FREE)
- UGM-8 (Weapon): Battle Pass Tier 31 (FREE)
The fact that the last two are free means that players won’t have to pay anything to get them, only complete the Battle Pass up to the requisite tiers. We’ve also seen that the following Operators and weapons will be added later on in Season 4, accessible via different means:
- Callum Hendry (Operator): Purchasable via Store Bundle
- Ikenna Olowe (Operator): Purchasable via Store Bundle
- EMP Grenade (Equipment): Acquiry method unknown
- Vargo-S (Weapon): Acquiry method unknown
- Push Dagger (Weapon): Acquiry method unknown
The last two are pretty likely to be based around in-game challenges, if previous patterns in Warzone are any indication, usually based around achieving specific kinds of kills in spectacular numbers. That’s only a guess though, and it remains to be seen how the Vargo-S and Push Dagger can get into players’ arsenals.
The EMP Grenade has been shown in greater detail – while the exact method of how to get it hasn’t been revealed (it’s possible it may just be added to the player’s available equipment), we know that it’s a non-damaging explosive that shuts down vehicles temporarily, as well as briefly removing players’ HUDs if they’re caught in the blast.
There’s a lot more we’ve seen coming to Warzone as part of the update, including updates to the Warzone Ricochet anti cheat system and a soon-to-come mode called “Rebirth of the Dead”, but details are thin on the ground for those at time of writing and we’ll have to wait to see what they include. There’s also all manner of planned additions to Call of Duty: Vanguard, including the addition of the classic Shi No Numa zombies map.
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