Call of Duty Mobile Guide: Tips, Cheats, and Strategies

Our Call of Duty Mobile Guide will help bring you up to speed with the smaller, touchscreen-focused version of the smash hit shooter franchise. Activision has partnered with Tencent to bring the multiplayer shooter to mobile, and it’s absolutely brilliant.

Whether you’re a series regular or a complete newcomer, our guide is for you. We’ll walk you through the basics before providing a bunch of tips and tricks to help you master this awesome shooter.

If you’re looking for more Call of Duty Mobile content, check out our Complete Guide, which includes links to everything we’ve written up to this point.

Call of Duty Mobile: The Basics

Call of Duty Mobile is the console and PC shooter as you know and love it, just on mobile. Many of your favourite maps, weapons, and modes return, so you might already have a solid idea of how to play.

What you might struggle with though – at least initially – is the controls, which are designed with a touchscreen in mind. In the opening tutorial, you can choose between a simple mode, which fires automatically whenever your crosshairs touch an enemy, and advanced, which allows you to fire and look down your ironsights simultaneously.

We recommend spending time with both modes to really get a feel for what’s comfortable for you. There’s no right and wrong in terms of touchscreen controls. What we found worked best for us is to use simple mode and use a double tap to bring up ironsights. Generally, we like to remove as many virtual buttons as possible, but you might feel differently.

When you’ve decided on your control scheme it’s time to get into the game proper. You’ll probably begin by customising your loadout. Here you can choose your favourite weapons, perks, grenades, scorestreaks, and more. During the beginning, you won’t have a lot of options, but that will quickly change as you level up – particularly if you purchase the battle pass.

The battle pass functions much the same as it does in Fortnite or PUBG Mobile. You pay around $10 to gain access to exclusive rewards each time you rank up. To rank up, you have to complete the various different battle pass challenges, some of which change daily and weekly. It’s worth checking back in to see if there’s anything new to dig into.

When you’re set, it’s time to choose a mode to play. The two modes currently available include the standard Call of Duty multiplayer, which offers team deathmatch, domination, search and destroy, frontline, and more on familiar maps from the Modern Warfare and Black Ops series. You can play in unranked for fun or take things up a notch in ranked, which is a lot more competitive.

You’ve also got a battle royale mode, which shares aesthetic similarities with Black Ops 4’s Blackout but plays more like PUBG in terms of pace. It’s a lot slower than Blackout and you won’t get into fights all that often – particularly if you choose not to drop into a named location. Other than that, it’s battle royale as you know and love it: loot weapons, kill enemies, and survive.

Rounding up the experience is a bunch of limited events that reward you and the community for performing various actions. Right now, there are rewards for killing enemy players, playing a certain number of matches, and completing challenges. Much like with the battle pass, it’s worth checking back regularly to see if you’ve earned anything new.

Call of Duty Mobile: Tips and Tricks

Now that you understand the basics, let’s take a look at a few tips and tricks that should help you master the experience.

• Pick a loadout that matches your playstyle: Your equipment will help or hinder you depending on how you like to play. Prefer to get up close and personal? Bring an SMG or shotgun. Like to fight on the periphery at range? Grab a sniper or assault rifle. No matter your playstyle, adapt your loadout to it. That way you’ll have the most success.

• Play around with control schemes until you’re comfortable: We’d argue that the most important tip in Call of Duty Mobile is to get comfortable with the controls. Play around with the two major control schemes, and then fine-tune them in the settings. Play against bots or go unranked until you’re comfortable before taking on the competitive challenges.
• Caution pays in Call of Duty Mobile: We’ve found caution to be the best approach in Call of Duty Mobile. Most players seem to want to get stuck in, and rush around looking for combat. We found the most success by seeking out hotspots and picking off enemies from a distance. You can also walk around the periphery and bring down hapless combatants that stray to the centre.
• Use your scorestreaks as soon as you unlock them: Whenever you get a scorestreak in combat, use it – especially if got all three available. Scorestreaks don’t stack, but you can earn points from using them. Points that go towards even more scorestreaks. There really is no point in waiting.
• If you purchase the battle pass, chase challenges: If you do end up grabbing the premium battle pass, make sure you make the most of it. We recommend chasing the challenges – even if it involves playing a game mode you don’t like. What you ideally want to do is earn enough COD Points to purchase the next battle pass for free, and keep doing that so you never have to pay for it again.

Glen Fox

Head of Editorial

Glen has over a decade's worth of experience in gaming journalism, writing for Pocket Gamer, Pocket Tactics, Nintendo Life, and Gfinity. When he's not badgering everyone about the dangers of passive text, you can probably find him playing Wild Rift.