Here’s everything coming to Vanguard Zombies in Season 5, including The Archon map, Main Quest, boss fight, and gameplay improvements.

Call of Duty: Vanguard Season 5, the last season before Modern Warfare 2, brings the final round-based Zombies map to the game. Here’s everything we know about The Archon map, as well as the patch notes for Vanguard Zombies in Season 5.

After the huge success of Black Ops Cold War Zombies, players were less-than-impressed with Vanguard’s Zombies offering due to its lack of classic features and divergence from the round-based format.

Season 5 arrived on August 24, and it will be Vanguard’s final season ahead of Modern Warfare 2. This final update brings one more round-based Zombies map to the game with a new Main Quest and boss fight.

Here’s everything we know about the Vanguard Season 5 Zombies update, including gameplay improvements and patch notes.

Vanguard Season 5 Zombies brings The Archon, a round-based reimagining of Season 2’s Terra Maledicta map.

Although the same play space we’ve seen before, Treyarch have upgraded the map with “the full suite of round-based Zombies mechanics, an updated visual style, new Dark Aether intel, and a slew of new secrets to uncover.”

It will have all of the gameplay mechanics you’d expect in a round-based Vanguard map such as “Perk Fountains, Altar of Covenants, Tome of Rituals, and the Pack-a-Punch machine.”

The Rampage Inducer, which appeared in Cold War Zombies and Vanguard’s Shi No Numa, will also return for players who want to crank up the pace.

Treyarch have called The Archon’s boss fight at the end of the Main Quest the “crown jewel” of the Zombies map.

After completing a series of trials and objectives around The Archon, Zombies players will be tasked with fighting Kortifex, the Big Bad of Vanguard’s storyline. Treyarch said that “Rather than devoting valuable development time to additional features or more Covenants,” they prioritized the Kortifex boss fight which is “on a scale rarely seen in Zombies.”

The Main Quest will go live with The Archon’s launch on August 24th at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET / 5 PM BST.

No, there isn’t a new Zombies Wonder Weapon arriving with Vanguard Season 5’s The Archon.

Instead, Treyarch have added all three previous Wonder Weapons (Ray Gun, Wunderwaffe DG-2, and Decimator Shield) to the map. This is so they could devote more time to creating the “truly memorable boss fight.”

The Decimator Shield has seen some tweaks though, which are detailed in the gameplay improvements section below.

Treyarch released a couple of the major Zombies changes coming to the Decimator Shield and Covenants:

Vanguard Season 5 also brings classic weapons from both MW2 and Advanced Warfare, as well as classic Call of Duty villains.

Here are the best controller settings for Call of Duty: Vanguard Season 4 to help maximize your accuracy, movement, and aim assist.

Call of Duty: Vanguard offers controller players a ton of customization to perfect their aim and movement, so we’ve got the best controller settings you can use on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC in Season 4.

Vanguard Season 4 is the latest major multiplayer update for the WW2 title and it brought along a new map, the Marco 5 SMG, and UGM-8 LMG, but perfecting your aim remains as important as ever.

Vanguard is on the same engine as Modern Warfare and Warzone, so many of the controls will carry over, and aiming and movement feel almost the same.

Here are the best settings to maximize your aim and movement while playing in Call of Duty: Vanguard Season 4.

Getting the best sensitivity is really up to you and your preferences. We recommend starting around 6 and messing around with it until you find the perfect sensitivity.

And we highly recommend the Tactical Button Layout Preset as it binds your crouch/slide button to the right thumbstick. This allows you to slide-cancel, crouch, and go prone without taking your thumb off the stick.

Deadzones are entirely dependent on your controller. Depending on how old it is, you may have some stick drift. You should set your Deadzone to 0, then incrementally increase it until the stick drift is gone.

For Target Aim Assist, setting it to ‘On’ will have the same feeling as Warzone and Modern Warfare, which is a huge benefit if you’re used to those games.

Tactical Sprint remains vital in Vanguard, and unfortunately, repeatedly pressing it will quickly wear out your controller. To counter this, we recommend using Automatic Tactical Sprint to preserve both your controller and thumb.

And there’s nothing worse than accidentally mantling an object or wall, so we’ve set Airborne Mantle to Manual, so you’ll only do so when intending to.

Like Warzone, Vanguard has separate Aim Response Curves so you can fine-tune your aim. Here’s a breakdown of the three types of Aim Response so you can make an informed decision:

Standard will suit the majority of players as it has the classic Call of Duty feel, suiting both long-time and new players well.

However, Dynamic allows for finer control over your aim, making those micro-adjustments for long-range fighting much easier. If you’re a confident player, we highly recommend learning Dynamic.

Aim Assist is vital for controller players, and Vanguard allows you to choose from four different types.

For the Aim Assist Type, we only really recommend using Default or Legacy. Even if you’ve been playing more Warzone, one of these options will feel natural to you.

Call of Duty’s sniping is one of the many aspects that made the franchise what it is today, and quickscoping is just as powerful in Vanguard. With these settings, you’ll be able to hit faraway targets and quickscope up close.

For Aim Response Curve, we recommend Dynamic. This allows you to make the fine adjustments needed to nail those headshots and quickly transition between targets when quickscoping.

And for Aim Assist Type, there’s not much reason to deviate from Default or Legacy. However, if you feel you could do with some extra control, it’s worth trying out Precision.

Thankfully, Sledgehammer included a field of view (FOV) slider for Vanguard on consoles.

Increasing your FOV gives a huge advantage in allowing you to see much more of what’s in front of you, but also shrinks everything to fit more into your view. This can make hitting far-off targets much more difficult.

Warzone has settings to combat this, and Vanguard should follow suit. By having Scale Aim Assist with FOV set to Enabled, your Aim Assist will feel consistent, no matter your field of view.

We recommend jumping into a Private Match and battling bots on Dome to find the perfect settings.

To maximize your time while testing out the settings, here’s what we’d recommend:

Dome is a relatively small map, so you’ll be able to get into constant action with the bots. And the Recruit difficulty means that they’ll hardly shoot back at you.

Also, be sure to check out the best controller settings and PC settings for Warzone Season 4.

Vanguard and Warzone Pacific Season 5 feature new Umbrella Academy skins to unlock and here’s everything you need to know about the bundles.

Vanguard and Warzone Pacific Season 5 features an Umbrella Academy crossover bringing brand-new Operator skins to the game, so here’s how you can get your hands on them.

The Warzone Pacific developers have brought a fair share of crossovers to the game, with King Kong and Godzilla arriving in Season 3 and the Terminator being added during Season 4 Reloaded.

Now, Warzone Pacific Season 5 and Vanguard Season 5 feature a crossover with the popular superhero series, Umbrella Academy, and brand-new cosmetic items as well as outfits are up for grabs in the game.

You will be able to get your hands on the Umbrella Academy cosmetics in Warzone and Vanguard by purchasing the Hazel and Cha Cha bundles from the store. These two are hitmen working for the Temps Commission in the popular Netflix series.

Both of these characters will be available as Operator skins in Season 5, and their designs are based on the comic book versions. We’ll provide an update concerning the price once they’re available in the store.

Purchasing the Hazel Warzone bundle will get you access to his legendary Operator skin which features the pink dog mask that he wore in the Umbrella Academy comic book. The bundle also features a Weapon Blueprint and Charm.

Here’s everything in the Umbrella Academy Hazel Warzone bundle:

The Legendary “Cha-Cha” Operator Skin comes with a blue bear mask which is the character’s main look in the Umbrella Academy comic book series. As with Hazel, you can get additional cosmetics along with the skin in this bundle.

Here are all the items in the Cha-Cha Season 5 bundle:

Players who purchase both Umbrella Academy bundles before September 30 will be rewarded with the exclusive “Time’s Up” Legendary KG M40 Blueprint, a Legendary Weapon Charm, and a Legendary Calling Card.

That covers everything that you need to know about the Warzone and Vanguard Season 5 Umbrella Academy crossover. Be sure to purchase both bundles as soon as they’re available in the store.

For more Warzone content, check out everything you need to know about the Rage Serum Field Upgrade in Season 5 as well as all the new weapons that will be arriving in the update.

Image credits: Raven Software / Netflix

Here are the best settings you can run in CoD Vanguard for PC, allowing you to get the best visuals and FPS no matter your hardware.

To get the best Call of Duty: Vanguard experience possible, you’ll need to apply the best settings. Here are the best PC settings for Vanguard in Season 4, no matter your hardware.

Since crossplay has become the standard in Call of Duty, more and more players are switching over to the PC version. It offers improved visuals, higher frame rates, and much more options for you to tweak.

By applying the correct settings, you can find the perfect balance between visuals and frame rate. To get the most from Vanguard on PC, here are the settings you should run, no matter the power of your hardware.

Here are the minimum and recommended system requirements you’ll need to run Call of Duty Vanguard. For the minimum requirements, you only need a slightly more powerful rig than if you were to play Warzone.

You’ll need a fairly beefy PC to meet the recommended requirements, with you needing a GTX 1070 8GB to get a solid balance of frame rate and visuals.

Before diving into Vanguard on PC, we recommend you check that your graphics drivers are up to date to make sure your rig is reaching its optimal performance.

Here’s how to update your graphics drivers.

If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, the GeForce experience app will handle this for you.

If you have an AMD GPU, you can use the Radeon Settings to update your drivers.

NVIDIA DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) allows players with NVIDIA RTX graphics cards to get much more frames at higher resolutions. DLSS sets your game to a lower resolution, increasing performance, but giving the appearance of a high resolution.

Turning on DLSS in Vanguard is simple, as it’s included in the Post Processing Effects tab in the Quality Settings. From here, you can set DLSS to Ultra Performance, Performance, Balanced, or Quality.

Ultra Performance will give you the most frames but won’t be as visually appealing, and Quality will retain the impressive picture.

If you are somewhere between the minimum and recommended settings for Call of Duty Vanguard, you want to be prioritizing reaching at least a steady 60 FPS.

Vanguard still looks great on low settings, and you’ll have a much smoother and more enjoyable time when hitting a decent frame rate.

Here are the settings we recommend using if you’re on lower-end hardware.

You want to make sure that your Framerate limit matches your monitor’s refresh rate. If you’re reaching frames well above what your monitor can display, you may see screen tearing.

If you have your VRAM Usage Target too high, you could see stuttering and hitching. If this is happening to you, keep lowering the target until you’re seeing smooth gameplay.

Normally, we’d recommend having Anti-Aliasing set to either off or the lowest setting, but Vanguard forces you to use either SMAA T2X or Filmic SMAA T2X. Filmic can make your game look blurry, so we recommend using the regular T2X.

And for Filmic Strength, you should always have this set to 0. It adds unnecessary visual noise to your game, making it look worse for no reason.

If you’re on lower-end hardware, you should have your FOV set somewhere between 95 and 105. You’ll still take advantage of seeing more of the world in front of you but won’t suffer from the performance hit.

And for the other options such as Motion Blur and Depth of Field, you always want to have them set to off.

There’s no point in forking out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on the best hardware if you’re not going to take advantage of it. NVIDIA 20 and 30 Series GPUs will be able to easily display high-quality graphics and reach high frame rates.

Here are the settings we recommend you use if you’re on high-end hardware.

You want to make sure that your Framerate limit matches your monitor’s refresh rate. If you’re reaching frames well above what your monitor can display, you may see screen tearing.

High-end hardware should manage a VRAM Usage Target of 90%, but make sure to lower it if you begin experiencing stuttering or hitching.

Although Filmic SMAA T2X is the higher option, it will make the game appear blurry, so it should be avoided. And again, Filmic Strength should always be set to 0.

If you’re on higher-end hardware, you can likely crank your FOV all the way up to 120 without suffering from a significant performance hit. But, some players dislike how it distorts and shrinks the screen, so you may want it slightly lower.

And for the other options such as Motion Blur and Depth of Field, you always want to have them set to off.

And that’s the best PC settings for Call of Duty: Vanguard! You can also check out the best PC settings for Warzone Pacific Season 4.

Image Credit: Activision / Sledgehammer Games

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