Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Zombies component has received near-universal backlash from the game’s community. An unwanted departure from the traditional round-based survival format, players found it to be shallow and repetitive when it debuted alongside Call of Duty: Vanguard in November. Worse still, Treyarch, the development studio tasked with creating new content for the mode, has remained uncharacteristically uncommunicative, going so far as to leave major changes to the game out of the patch notes.
Reddit user TheShadowfest took to r/CODZombies to announce the discovery that the health cap had been surreptitiously increased from 200 to 300. The post, simply titled “Health is now 300 lol,” features a screenshot of the UI in the game's Zombies mode which shows that the player has indeed earned 100 more health points than was previously possible.
It’s worth noting that Call of Duty: Vanguard Zombies introduced a fairly drastic overhaul to the health system, to begin with. In previous Call of Duty outings, players would spawn in with 100 health, but this could be extended to 250 with the JuggerNog perk. In the new Zombies installment, JuggerNog has been replaced by Fiendish Fortitude, a perk that could originally be purchased up to four times, adding 25 health points each time. Now, however, it seems to add 50 each time, allowing for a total of 300 health when maxed out.
Community reaction to this sudden change seems to be mixed; while some are excited for the possibility of achieving higher rounds thanks to this change, others are berating a tweak that could make the already-slow first few rounds even more of a slog. Redditor zombieman115935 voiced their displeasure in the comments, asking “did they just made it easier? (Sic) I really don’t like that lol, low rounds are going to feel even more boring than they already were.” Redditor LetsGo2Narnia chimed in with a separate complaint, stating that “they f****** with the health cap too, on 15 I was 1 shotting with 5K damage.”
While changes both major and minor are to be expected over the next year, the cause for concern is Treyarch’s near-total silence on the matter. During Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s lifecycle, the studio was incredibly communicative, sharing every last detail in patch notes and community posts. When it comes to Call of Duty: Vanguard, however, Treyarch has been concerningly quiet.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One.