Call Of Duty: Warzone’s new Iron Trials ‘84 mode has been hailed as the toughest, most challenging way to play the game yet. Raven has tweaked the rules to make it much more difficult to down or kill an opponent, and to force players to be less reliant on Loadout Drops.
Iron Trials ‘84 is still fundamentally a battle royale mode – in fact, in some ways, it makes Warzone more like a classic battle royale than ever before – but it demands quite a different style of play to the game’s standard battle royale modes. Players will certainly want to study some expert tips before dropping in.
7 Adapt Those Existing Loadouts
Iron Trials ‘84 isn’t so radically different that players will need to completely rebuild their loadouts from scratch, but existing favorite loadouts will almost certainly need to be adapted to suit this new ruleset.
One way to look at it is that thanks to the increased base health, a duo in Iron Trials ‘84 can take about as much damage as a quad in standard Warzone. So players should consider building similar loadouts for Iron Trials ‘84 as they already use in quads. Various Perks are more or less useful in Iron Trials ‘84, and when it comes to weapons, players are going to want a lot of bullets per magazine.
6 Use High Capacity Weapons
In Iron Trials ‘84, players are going to need to unload a lot of rounds into an opponent to take them down. Thanks to the increased base health, it’s best to assume that every enemy you meet is going to have a total of 400 health including plates. Low capacity, low power weapons aren’t going to do enough damage to kill before needing a reload, and reloading is a huge risk.
High accuracy, low recoil weapons aren’t going to cut it in this mode, even those with high capacity, so go for something a little heavier. And whatever weapons players use, they should generally always attach the highest capacity magazine available.
5 Keep Moving
While in Warzone’s standard battle royale modes, teams can generally sit tight, holding a position and waiting for their free loadouts, in Iron Trials ‘84, Raven has taken steps to force players into a more dynamic style of play.
There are no free loadouts, so players need to keep moving in order to find as much loot as possible. Mobility is also important on a firefight level. Given that every player has increased health, there’s a greater window of opportunity to duck, weave and evade when coming under fire, so it pays to get good at doing that.
4 Play As A Team
Teamwork is absolutely vital in Iron Trials ‘84. For a start, any player who wanders off alone without their buddy is pretty much guaranteeing a quick death for both of them. But there’s more to teamwork than simply sticking together.
One key factor is knowing when to cycle – whereby one player engages enemies then quickly withdraws while the other provides covering fire – and when to two-man stack – whereby both players charge in together. As a general rule, cycling is the best tactic when initially engaging an enemy team, while a two-man stack is best for a duo who has already gained the upper hand over an enemy in some way.
3 Start By Scavenging
At the very start of an Iron Trials ‘84 match, every player has 250 health, so it’s going to take a lot of hits from the starter weapons to take anyone down. This is why it’s best not to bother. Instead, players should use the early stage of a match to scavenge as much gear and cash as possible.
Cash is particularly important and, in Iron Trials ‘84, hard to find in large quantities. But without a lot of cash, players won’t be able to call in their custom loadouts. It is possible to win Iron Trials ‘84 using only ground loot, but custom loadouts are always a better option.
2 Use Semi-Auto Sniper Rifles
Sniping has been pretty aggressively nerfed in Iron Trials ‘84, with snipers having to get within 30 meters of a target in order to get a kill from a single headshot. At any longer range, it’s going to take more than one shot to down an enemy.
For this reason, snipers should consider hanging up their favorite bolt-action rifle, and switching to something semi-automatic, so as to be able to get off two or three shots in quick succession. Otherwise, that target is going to dive into cover before the sniper can get a second shot away.
1 Keep To Cover
This is an important tip in any mode really, but it bears emphasizing in Iron Trials ‘84 because staying mobile is particularly important. So do bear in mind, mobility does not mean running around in the open the whole time.
What it does mean is moving from cover to cover quickly and efficiently, and with a clearly communicated plan. Whenever players do have to break across open ground, they should check their surroundings first, and anticipate where they might get attacked from. By the same token, being able to anticipate when enemy teams are about to make a run for it is also a valuable skill.
Call Of Duty: Warzone was released in 2020 and is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.