Items

A camo in Black Ops 3 is a receipt. Every pattern in the game is attached to a specific thing you had to do to get it, and once you know what that thing is, the enormous unlock list stops looking like a grind and starts looking like four short lists sitting next to each other.

Some camos say you used a gun a lot. Some say you used it accurately. Two of them say you finished a whole collection. And a surprisingly large group says nothing about your play at all, because it came from a pre-order, an old game, or a fast food counter. This guide sorts the roster by what it actually certifies, and the full weapon camos guide has every entry in one place.

Proof that you used it

The two kill ladders are the simplest camos in the game and the ones most people finish first, because they need nothing more than time on a single weapon. What is worth noticing is that they are separate ladders with different steps. The campaign track climbs gently and stops at 650. The Zombies track starts at the same place and then runs half again as long, finishing at a thousand, which is exactly the sort of number a mode built around endless hordes can ask for and a scripted campaign cannot.

The Zombies set is the one crossover in the game's progression. Kills earned against the undead unlock patterns you then carry into a competitive multiplayer lobby, which makes a long survival run on any of the Zombies maps quietly productive even when the run itself goes badly.

Proof that you aimed

The multiplayer set is the long one, and it measures headshots rather than kills. Nine patterns sit on a single ladder that starts at five and ends at a hundred, and the gaps between them widen as you climb, so the first four arrive in an evening and the last one takes considerably longer.

The one that measures your loadout instead

Bliss is the only camo in the game whose condition is about how the gun is configured rather than what you did with it. You need optic sights plus five other attachments equipped at once, and then fifty kills with that weapon in that state. In practice it is a wildcard problem before it is a shooting problem, and it is worth lining up alongside a headshot push so the fifty kills are not wasted effort. The loadouts guide covers the attachment slots you will be spending to get there.

Proof that you finished

Two camos exist only as a summary of the others. Gold unlocks on a weapon once every camo available for that weapon is already unlocked, which means it is not a separate task at all, just the moment the list empties. Diamond then sits one level above it and asks for Gold across a whole class, with sniper rifles the example our guide gives.

The practical consequence is that mastery camos should be planned around a class rather than a favourite gun. Finishing Gold on one rifle you love achieves nothing toward Diamond if you never touch the rest of the family, and the headshot ladder is what dominates the time cost on every one of them.

The camos that prove nothing

A large slice of the roster was never a challenge. Supply Drops from the Black Market alone account for more than twenty Common, Rare and Legendary patterns that arrive by chance rather than achievement. The rest are attached to a purchase, a special edition, or in one case a burger chain, and are listed here so you know not to go hunting for a challenge that does not exist.

Camos are not the only way to change a gun

Worth remembering before you start any of these ladders: a full-gun camo is only one of two ways Black Ops 3 lets you change a weapon's appearance. The other is a custom paintjob, which covers specific parts of the weapon rather than the whole thing, and which is not gated behind any of the challenges above. If the goal is a gun that looks like nobody else's, paintjobs get you there without a single headshot.

If the goal is the mastery camos, though, the ladder is the ladder. Pick a class, work the headshot list across every gun in it, and let the kill camos accumulate on their own while you do. The mechanics guide explains which weapons your rank has actually made available to grind.