This year Call of Duty: WW2 has gone all Destiny 2 with its Headquarters area. It’s a Tower-like social space where you can tweak loadouts and gear, check your loot and play games with other people. It takes the form of a D-Day beach landing and is packed with things to do and people to visit. Let’s go through what’s on offer.
- 9 things I wish I knew before playing Call of Duty: WW2
- Watch how you Prestige in Call of Duty: WW2's new Headquarters area
Visit Major Howard for your orders
You’ll find Major Howard in the Operations Bunker directly ahead of you when you spawn. He hands out ‘orders’ which are basically bounties you can complete to earn rewards. These are anything from ‘Get 25 Kills in a TDM’, to ‘Get 10 Headshots with Sniper Rifles’ and so on. Completing them will earn things like Supply Drops, points or - most usefully - 25% XP boosts for 20 minutes. There are daily and weekly orders, so there’s always new stuff to do.
Make a bet with the Quartermaster
Just to the left of where you start you’ll see the Quartermaster sat at her desk. She deals with Contracts and Collections. Contracts are like orders - get kills, headshots etc - except that you buy them with in-game cash and they only last a few minutes. The rewards scale with the cost/difficulty, and can earn you things like extra XP and supply drops.
Collections on the other hand, are grouped selections of gear you can buy, again with in-game cash. These include things like skins for weapons, outfits, emotes and banners. Buying all the things in one set will unlock a special version of the gun it’s associated with. Not only will it have a cool look (gold’s a theme), but it’ll net you an XP boost for kills with that weapon.
Pick up your Mail
You’ll get some sort of mail everyday, whether it’s login bonuses, XP boosts or gear you’ve unlocked (you get a hat when you finish the single player, or Prestige, for example). It’s on the right of Major Howard when you spawn.
Open your supply drops
This is probably the most important thing you’ll do in Headquarters. You can open a supply drop anywhere by throwing a flare into a clear area. When you do, a crate drops with three cards containing common, rare, heroic and epic skins, emotes, outfits and other gear. You’ll get supply drops by leveling up and completing contracts and orders.
Test your aim in the Firing Range
On the far right of where you spawn is the live fire range. Here you can test out your guns to see what you like the feel of. You can also challenge others to a shooting contest for points and bragging rights.
Keep up with COD in the Theatre
You visit the Theatre when you first start online to get your Division tutorials, but if you need help finding it after then go to Major Howard and head left out of his bunker. This is where you’ll be able to watch community videos, eSports and Major League Gaming broadcasts.
Paint your barrels with the Gunsmith
Head out to the beach area behind Major Howard’s bunker and you’ll find the Gunsmith (just listen out for her swearing about sand and not cleaning your barrels). Here you can Prestige guns to earn XP, which unlocks things like the ability to attach a kill counter or clan tag to a fav shooter. It’s also where you can customise guns with paint jobs. You can create them, upload them for others, and see what sort of a mess everyone else has made.
Get some Scorestreak Training in
In the beach area you’ll see a big tower on the left where you can try out all the scorestreaks under the pretence of ‘practice’. Although, truthfully, for most of us it’ll mainly be just to see what the high level ones we’ll never reach actually do. Enter the tower and you’ll access a menu where you can select any of the 15 available Scorestreaks to unleash hell on an endless wave of enemy soldiers. You’ll almost feel sorry for them.
Make a masterpiece in the Emblem gallery
Tucked away behind the Theatre as you head out to the beach you’ll find the Emblem Gallery, where you you can express yourself as an artist. You’ll also be able to upload your efforts and view other people’s. Given that previous COD emblem artists have produced incredible art, this could be an interesting place to check out occasionally.
The Prestige
As you wander around the beach you’ll see the General standing on a bluff overlooking the sea. Should you reach Prestige you can visit him to be commended where everyone can see. There are flags, a plane flies by trailing smoke and you unlock some new bits and pieces (as well as showing off).
Hit your friends in the face with a shovel in The Pit
Obviously the only way to relax after all the online killing is with some more online killing. The Pit is a 1v1 combat arena where you can challenge anyone else in Headquarters to a fight. There’s a range of weapons to chose, everything from sensible options like machine guns and pistols, right through to comedy selections like one-hit-kill shovels and Panzerschrecks. If you win you’ll appear on a bunker roof that can only be reached by VICTORY.
Get some 8-bit R&R
There are 15 classic Activision games in the R&R area on the beach. And by classics we mean so, so old. Things like Pitfall 2, Chopper Command and SPIDER FIGHTER, which doesn’t need all caps, I just really like the name. Those three between them have a collective age of 103. They’ll cost you 10 amoury points to play but seeing as you’ll probably only do that once it’s not too expensive.
Find some Zombies
There are no actual zombies on the beach, just a dank bunker hidden away in a tunnel under Major Howard. You can’t actually do anything here at the moment except switch to Zombies mode, but the fact it exists makes me wonder if there are plans for it down the line.
