Your Operator may face death in pursuit of victory. Fortunately, being down does not mean you are necessarily out.
In most Call of Duty®: Warzone™ experiences you’ll have, your Operator has the chance to get back into the fight, or even spring back up from being downed. How you can redeploy – or if you even can in the first place – depends on the mode and ruleset you are playing within Warzone.
For most Warzone matches, your Operator will enter a downed state after they drop to zero health. During this time, the Operator will bleed out as indicated by a bar in the middle of the screen. When this bar drops to zero, your Operator is eliminated, but could still be brought back to life under certain circumstances.
Currently, here are the redeploy situations within Battle Royale and Plunder modes:
Battle Royale
An Overview of Redeploys
The life, or should we say lives, of a Battle Royale Operator can be saved in four distinct ways, which can lead to multiple redeployments within a single match.
Take the example of our friend [ATVI] Bravo, recounting the experience of playing a Battle Royale match, and all the different eliminations that were suffered:
Team Revive (Downed Player): Immediately after pulling his parachute and landing on the ground, [ATVI] Bravo was brought down by an enemy player. [ATVI] Bravo’s squadmates come to the rescue, knocking out the enemy who shot him and reviving their teammate before he dies.
Self-Revive: His squadmates, sensing that he’ll be in trouble soon, tell him to buy a Self-Revive Kit from the Buy Station. He gathers enough Cash, goes off to purchase one, attempts to leave the vicinity, and is immediately brought down again by enemy fire. Fortunately, he drops to a prone position behind cover. His Self-Revive Kit allows him to actively gain health before he bleeds out or is finished off by the enemies. He completes the revive, bringing him back to life.
Gulag Win: Unfortunately, that enemy is still there. The enemy drops him in a remote area of the map, and finishes him off while he is bleeding out, sending [ATVI] Bravo to the Gulag. He winds up winning a 1v1 Gunfight in the Gulag, which grants him redeployment via plane infiltration.
Squad Buyback: [ATVI] Bravo is too busy celebrating his Gulag win that he drops into a hot zone, and is brought down by a hail of gunfire. He immediately dies and is eliminated. His squadmates, (mostly out of pity), bring him back to life by purchasing his redeployment through the Buy Station.
Victory! [ATVI] Bravo comes back into the game and teams up with his squad to ultimately win the game.
While it can look confusing at first, just know that an Operator can have multiple redeployments within a single match. Don’t back out of a game as soon as you die, because you could be brought back to life and win.
Here’s a more in-depth look at the four ways of redeployment for Battle Royale Warzone matches:
The Gulag
Most likely, the Gulag is the first type of redeployment you’ll experience in the Warzone.
After dropping to zero health and fully bleeding out, your Operator will be brought to the Gulag. Technically, this is not the same Gulag that is accessible on the map, but rather a “purgatory” where you can fight to be brought back into the game.
Win your Gulag 1v1 with a player who also met a similar fate, and you’ll redeploy via infil plane, albeit with none of your loot or Cash from when you were alive. Lose, and you’re eliminated (though you can be brought back into the game via a Squad Buyback).
Given that the Gulag has different maps and plenty of strategy to surviving it, we cover it in this section of this guide.
Team Revive (Downed Player)
There are cases where you’re dropped by an enemy but haven’t been eliminated, and you have squadmates who can reach your prone form before you expire. Fortunately, your squad can save you from death by performing a manual revive.
Any non-downed squadmate can run over to your downed body and perform a revive, which only takes a few seconds. A squadmate produces a Stim, plunges it into the downed player, and returns them to combat having stopped the bleeding, after which a short rest allows him to return to full health.
Note: This is not the same type of Stim as the Tactical equipment piece, which allows you to increase your health after being wounded, but before being downed, instead of waiting for your health to replenish. Stim equipment does not provide any additional benefits when reviving a squadmate.
A downed player will have a cross icon above their body, which changes depending on the situation. Look for a different icon depending on the following:
Situation A: An Operator that has been downed and/or is bleeding out.
Situation B: An Operator utilizing a Self-Revive Kit.
Situation C: An Operator being revived by a squadmate.
If you are the downed player and in need of a revive, try shimmying behind cover so that your squadmates aren’t exposed to enemy fire. Alternatively, you can also crawl closer to them if they are further away, which may increase their chances of reaching you for the revive.
If you are trying to revive a downed player, it may be wise to either eliminate the hostile enemy players in the area before performing a revive, or setting up defenses around the downed squadmate, such as a Deployable Cover or Riot Shield, for cover.
Self-Revive Kit
Another method of on-the-spot redeployment, which also means keeping all the loot and Cash you’ve accrued, is the Self-Revive Kit.
These loot items can be acquired in one of two ways:
Purchase: Obtain one from a Buy Station, where they are one of the more expensive loot items in the Warzone. Pay using Cash.
Looted: These kits also have an extremely rare chance of spawning out of Supply Boxes or Scavenger Contract Supply Boxes.
That spawn rate increases within Scavenger Contract Supply Boxes after gaining multiple Contract levels, but in actuality you’re more likely to purchase one of these with Cash before finding one in the wild.
A Self-Revive Kit is manually activated after you are downed. A small bar in the center of the screen shows you the remaining time it will take until you are self-revived, and when that fills up, you’re brought back to full health with all loot and Cash intact.
Obviously, this is an extremely helpful tool to aid your longevity in the Warzone. However, it’s worth being careful where you use this item and when during a battle that it’s advantageous to use: Time it wrong, and it can bring you back into the same firefight that you just died from!
A lesser-known use of the Self-Revive Kit is its ability to reduce revive times for a squadmate, otherwise known as the “topping off” technique. This can be done by the downed Operator with a Self-Revive Kit reviving themselves until a sliver of their revive meter is left, then allowing a squadmate to finish the revive.
This is effective for two reasons: it preserves the Self-Revive Kit and, during an engagement, the less time one needs to revive someone else, the more time they can spend in the fight.
Redeploy Squadmate (Buyback)
If you lose a Gulag fight, or win a Gulag 1v1 and subsequently die again in a standard Warzone match, you will be eliminated. During this state, you will be able to spectate your teammates, who can work to purchase your redeployment from a Buy Station.
In a separate Buyback tab within the Buy Station, you can purchase individual redeploys for any teammate who was (or is likely to be) eliminated during the game. After purchasing one, that specific teammate will redeploy via infil plane back into the match, albeit without any loot or Cash on hand.
Like Self-Revive Kits, redeploying individual squadmates costs plenty of Cash. You may not have enough to redeploy both squadmates, so you might have to make a tough decision between squadmates if you are presented the opportunity.
Should you and all your squadmates die, then your team is fully eliminated from the game, making redeployment impossible. You can still stick around in the lobby, and spectate, to watch and learn from others and see who wins.
A Note About Rebirth Island - Resurgence
In Resurgence game modes on Rebirth Island, redeployment is also possible through the Rebirth Countdown.
If a squad member is eliminated, but at least one other squad member is still alive, a countdown will appear beside their name. When this countdown hits zero, they will redeploy to Rebirth Island. This countdown can be shortened by your squadmates who perform specific in-game actions, such as eliminating squads, incentivizing aggressive play.
The Rebirth Countdown increases in length after each death, and towards the end of a match, it turns off, making a redeployment via the Buy Station the only way to return to life after an elimination.
Redeployment in Plunder Mode
When playing the Plunder mode, redeployment is automatic after you are downed and fully bleed out. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of your Cash; you’ll lose part, or all, of your carried Cash upon death, which makes banking it before you die crucial.
Self-Revive Kits can also be purchased within Plunder, allowing you to get back into the fight quicker than dying and waiting out the redeploy timer; usually after around two seconds of waiting compared to the standard 12 seconds (both times are approximate). Self-Revive Kits also have the advantage of preventing your percentage Cash loss that otherwise occurs once you bleed out.
When Redeployment Isn’t Possible
There are few cases in Warzone where it is not possible to redeploy.
This occurs late in a Battle Royale Warzone match. After a given number of circle collapses (usually four), the Gulag will shut down, closing off a crucial method of redeployment.
Pay attention to in-game prompts and rulesets, which will both make you aware when you only have one life to live within Verdansk.
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