Call of Duty Vanguard camo challenges and mastery skins explained

Call of Duty Vanguard Camo challenges mastery — (Image credit: Activision)

Call of Duty Vanguard camo challenges and mastery skins are often seen as must-haves for anyone looking to show off their skills and dedication in a Call of Duty game. While a Diamond-encrusted barrel or gold-plated rifle can look pretty garish on the battlefield, but taste is relative and other players can at least admire what it took to get that skin. Mastery challenges and weapon camo skins aren't easy to unlock, with each one requiring special levels and challenges to do so. We've got all the information you'll need on COD Vanguard's camo challenges and mastery skins below, including the Gold, Diamond, Atomic and the Dark Aether skins that are often highly sought after.

Call of Duty Vanguard camo challenges for weapons explained

Weapon camo challenges and mastery skins in Call of Duty Vanguard are tied to specific challenges on each gun, as well as achieving certain ranks and levels to boot. It's a bit fractal and layered, but we'll lay out the process below for achieving the vast majority of specific skins and camo challenges.

Unlock the gun you want to customise via levelling up in the game and increasing your Military Rank.
Level up the gun's individual rating via use in Multiplayer/Zombies.
This will unlock Challenge categories you can check out in the Camouflage section of that weapon's Customize tab (in the Gunsmith/loadout menu).
More camo Challenge categories will unlock as you level up that weapon.
Each category is a chain of individual challenges that unlock new camo skins for your weapon, as well as unlocking the new challenge in the chain.

Challenges and camo for weapons are divided separately into Zombies and Multiplayer modes, though you can bring camo unlocked in one mode through into the other. So if, for example, you can only unlock the Plague Diamond camo in Zombies mode, you can still put it on your Multiplayer loadouts once you've earned it battling the undead.

Challenges themselves vary and are usually tied to specific kinds of kills in-game, ranging from basic "kills while crouching", to more elaborate challenges based around specific builds, attachments and loadouts. By paying attention, players can make a set-up and playstyle that fulfils multiple challenges at once.

Camo Completionist and Mastery challenges

The most elite of the elite challenges in Call of Duty Vanguard, the camo mastery or "Completionist" challenges unlock the rarest and most difficult weapon skins for your guns possible, and there's mastery challenges for both Multiplayer and Zombies modes. We'll lay them out below, and what you need to do to complete them successfully.

Multiplayer Mastery/Completionist Camos

Gold camo: Complete all weapon camo challenges for this weapon
Diamond camo: Unlock the Gold Camo for all weapons of that class in your loadout
Atomic camo: Unlock the Diamond camo for all weapon classes

Zombies Mastery/Completionist Camos

Golden Viper camo: In Zombies, complete all weapon camo challenges for this weapon
Plague Diamond camo: In Zombies, unlock the Golden Viper Camo for all weapons of that class in your loadout
Dark Aether camo: Unlock the Plague Diamond camo for all weapon classes

It's important to keep in mind that at time of writing, you can't unlock every skin in Multiplayer. The Call of Duty Vanguard Assassin Proficiency glitch means that players who want to fill out the Automaton's weapon camo scoresheet can't, as one of the challenges demands players use an attachment option that doesn't seem to be in the game yet. This means that Gold Camo for the Automaton, Diamond Camo for Assault Rifles, and Atomic Camo for anything in multiplayer is currently impossible until they fix it. Woops.