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How to get the Specialist Bonus in Call of Duty: Warzone and how it works

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Despite being one of the most popular battle royale games out there, Call of Duty: Warzone has a lot of lesser-known features that most players tend to overlook. One thing you might’ve missed is the Specialist Bonus, a limited-time powerup that greatly enhances your performance as you play. The Specialist Bonus was in the game before but was removed in 2020, prior to the massive season 3 update. Now, with its season 3.5 update referred to as Reloaded, the powerup has made its way back into the game, and players have been having a blast with it.

In this guide, we’ll show you everything you need to know about the Specialist Bonus, including how to unlock it, what it does, and some tips for using it effectively. Here’s how to get the Specialist Bonus in Warzone.

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What is the Specialist Bonus?

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The Specialist Bonus is a powerup that grants the player all the perks in the game at once. This gives you a major advantage against the other players, as you can stack up on useful perks that you might not be using otherwise — especially since Ghost and Overkill are the meta. Being able to utilize High Alert along with Pointman and all the others makes it much easier to come out on top in any given game.

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But on top of that, the Specialist Bonus also grants the player with weapon perks, though this portion of the powerup is a little trickier. Based on testing, it looks like the Specialist Bonus gives you Frangible-Wounding, Mo’Money, Recon, Heavy Hitter, FMJ, Presence of Mind, and Sleight of Hand. In addition to all of those weapon perks, players with the Specialist Bonus are given a 10% boost to movement speed, which is major.

The biggest issue with the Specialist Bonus is that it only gives you weapon perks for Modern Warfare weapons. This is because weapons from that game are the only ones that support perks as an attachment, unlike those from Black Ops Cold War. So if you’re going to prioritize grabbing the Specialist Bonus, you should consider coming equipped with a Modern Warfare weapon instead. This might be tough since a lot of the meta weapons are from Cold War, but there are still plenty of great Modern Warfare guns like the Kar98k and CR-56 AMAX. You get the player perks regardless — you just won’t reap all the benefits of the powerup if you’re running a Cold War weapon.

Keep in mind that the Specialist Bonus only applies to your character for the duration of that life. Once you die, you drop the bonus, and it will show up as an item that can be picked up by anyone, including your opponents. The nice thing is that if an enemy takes you out and grabs it, you can retrieve it by getting revenge on that player. Basically, the powerup remains in play for the duration of the match — it just migrates to whichever player picks it up.

How to unlock the Specialist Bonus

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Now that you know how the Specialist Bonus works, you can decide if it’s worth it to pick up. To obtain it, you first need to head to the limited-time point of interest known as Nakatomi Tower from the Die Hard film. This is at the center of Downtown and is surrounded by three contracts for side missions called Unfinished Business. This area was added as part of the 3.5 Reloaded update and will remain until season 4 drops.

To grab the Specialist Bonus, you need to complete one of these Unfinished Business side missions. The nice thing is that many players have already done this, so picking up one of the contracts will be significantly easier than it was when the update first went live. Once someone picks up the contract, it’s gone for the rest of the match, meaning you’ll have to go for one of the others to give it another try. If all three are gone, you’ll need to retry in a different match, but at this point in the season, it shouldn’t be too hard to make your way straight to one of these contracts before someone else.

Completing the mission is fairly straightforward and works just like a scavenger contract. It will have you open three chests that are all spread out around Nakatomi Tower, and once you open the last one, you’ll be given a keycard. It’s best to be familiar with the layout of the building so you can quickly make your way to each floor that contains a chest for the side mission. Upon completion, you’ll need to take the keycard to the 31st floor to open the vault.

The easiest way to the 31st floor is to enter on the ground floor and take the zipline in the elevator all the way up to the 30th floor. Once here, simply make your way up one floor and find the vault on the north side of the building. You’ll be prompted to unlock the vault door, and upon doing so, you’ll be able to enter. Here, you’ll find stacks of cash, along with three safety deposit boxes. The Specialist Bonus is in the first one, so open it, and the powerup will spawn. Do note that you can get one Specialist Bonus for each member of your team in this room, which is highly effective for dominating the match. This is especially true since this area isn’t as popular as it was before, making it much easier to grab the Specialist Bonus for the whole team.

This area can be accessed in all modes across Verdansk, so take advantage and try it out during the season. This does mean it, unfortunately, won’t appear on Rebirth, but perhaps Raven will implement a new method of obtaining the powerup in a future season. In addition, it’s also possible a new method of obtaining the Specialist Bonus will be added to Verdansk after the next major update, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

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Joseph Yaden
Joseph Yaden
Joseph Yaden is a freelance journalist who covers Nintendo, shooters, and horror games. He mostly covers game guides for…
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