How to unlock the Katana in Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone

The Katana in both Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone can be a crucial melee weapon to have when you need to lay in one last hit to enemies. Of course, as most do, you can purchase the sword from a bundle in the game’s store, but you can also permanently unlock it without even spending a penny. This can be done by doing one of two challenges, both requiring that you put your melee skills to the test.

Unlocking the Katana in Vanguard and Warzone

Those who prefer to unlock the Katana through Vanguard’s traditional multiplayer or Warzone will need to get five kills with a melee weapon in a single match 15 times. Firstly, it must be noted that melee kills with your pistol’s butt won’t count toward this, so be sure to have a secondary melee tool (like the FS Fighting Knife) in your arsenal. More importantly, you’ll want to do this on close-quarter maps like Das Haus, as you can get five melee weapon kills in just a few short minutes each match. After this is done each time, you can even back out of the match and move on to the next without losing your challenge progress.

Unlocking the Katana in Zombies

You can also unlock this in all game modes by completing the Zombies challenge of getting five rapid kills with a melee weapon during 50 different Portal Objectives. Any veteran Zombies player knows this can take much longer than Vanguard’s challenge, but melee attacking zombies is far easier than doing it to other players. Furthermore, you can do the same portal objective as many times as you’d like, so it may be worth doing the shortest objective repeatedly until the challenge is complete.

Related: How to unlock the Cooper Carbine in Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone