The grind is real. Honestly, if you're looking at that massive list of Zombies camo challenges BO6 and feeling a bit overwhelmed, you aren't alone. It’s a lot. We’re talking thousands of critical kills, hunting down specific elite monsters, and trying not to lose your mind while a Mangler breathes down your neck.
But here’s the thing. Most players approach this the wrong way. They just jump into a standard match, run around like headless chickens, and wonder why it’s taking ten hours to gold a single pistol.
You’ve gotta be smarter than that.
The Absolute Basics: Military Camos
Before you can even look at the pretty stuff, you have to slog through the Military tier. For almost every primary weapon in Black Ops 6 Zombies, this means one thing: Critical Kills. You need 2,000 of them.
Yeah. Two thousand.
It sounds like a nightmare, but it’s basically just a test of patience. You’ll unlock nine different camos along the way—Slate, Desert, Evergreen, all the way up to Purple Tiger once you hit that 2k mark.
📖 Related: Why Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is the Best Game You Probably Skipped
Pro Tip: Don't even bother with standard matches for this. Use Directed Mode. Specifically, Liberty Falls is your best friend here. If you stay in the spawn area or head to the bowling alley (Liberty Lanes), you can manipulate the spawns to keep things manageable.
Special Challenges: Where Things Get Weird
Once you’ve got those 2,000 crits, the game throws two "Special" challenges at you. These are unique to each weapon. For example:
- XM4: You might need 300 Napalm Burst kills or to kill 30 Vermin.
- SVD: Usually requires 300 Pack-a-Punched kills or fast consecutive critical kills.
- Melee Weapons: Often involve kills with Brain Rot or taking out Armored Zombies.
If you’re stuck on "Vermin" or "Parasite" kills, Terminus is usually the better map. The narrow hallways and the biology lab area spawn those little buggers way more frequently than the streets of Liberty Falls.
The Mastery Grind: Mystic Gold to Nebula
This is why you're really here. The Mastery camos are the ultimate flex in 2026.
Mystic Gold
To get Mystic Gold, you need to finish all Military and Special challenges for a weapon, then complete a final task. Usually, it’s something like "Get 10 kills rapidly 15 times."
👉 See also: Why Mario Odyssey for the Nintendo Switch Still Beats Every Other Platformer
It’s easy. Just horde up a group of 10+ zombies, line 'em up, and let loose.
Opal
Now it gets tricky. To unlock the Opal challenge, you need Mystic Gold on every weapon in that specific class (e.g., all Assault Rifles).
The challenge? 30 Special Zombie Eliminations. Manglers and Mimics count. Abominations do too, but they’re a pain. A really solid strategy is to use the Liberty Falls Directed Mode trick. If you open the church, the round caps at 11. You get a guaranteed Mangler spawn. Kill him, save and quit, reload. Or, just hang out in the bowling alley where they spawn regularly without the chaos of high rounds.
Afterlife
This one is a "no-hit" challenge. You typically need 20 consecutive kills without taking damage, 10 times.
It sounds scary. It isn't.
Grab Aether Shroud. Pop it when you have a big horde. Kill 20. Profit.
If you’re doing melee, use the "truck cheese" in Liberty Falls—climb on top of a vehicle, and the zombies have to do a slow climbing animation, giving you plenty of time to bonk them before they swing.
Nebula
The big one. The purple animated beauty.
You need Afterlife on 33 different weapons. Then, you have to kill 10 Elite Zombies.
The "HVT" step in the Liberty Falls Easter Egg is the gold mine here. You can spawn an Elite (like an Abomination or a high-health Mangler), kill it, and then purposely fail or reset the step to spawn another one immediately. You can literally finish the Nebula challenge for a gun in 15 minutes if you don't finish the quest step.
How to Speed Everything Up
If you want to be efficient, stop playing "normally."
✨ Don't miss: Why BioShock Explained Matters More Than Ever in 2026
- Deadshot Daquiri is Mandatory: It snaps your aim to the head. Without it, getting 2,000 critical kills takes twice as long. Period.
- The Bank Counter Strat: On Liberty Falls, stand at the end of the knee-high counter in the bank. Zombies jump up one by one in a straight line. It’s like a conveyor belt of headshots.
- Ammo Mods Matter: Use Napalm Burst for Manglers and Dead Wire for basically everything else. It helps with crowd control while you’re focusing on specific challenge requirements.
Don't burn yourself out trying to do ten guns a day. The Zombies camo challenges BO6 are a marathon. Pick a class, get them all to the "Special" stage, and then knock out the Mastery tiers in batches.
Focus on getting your 2,000 critical kills in the early rounds (1-15) where zombies are slow and easy to headshot. Once the rounds get high and the sprinting starts, it's much harder to be precise.
Start with the weapons you actually like. Once you see that first Mystic Gold pop up on your screen, the rest of the grind feels a lot more doable.
Make sure you're always checking your progress in the "Camo" tab between matches. There’s nothing worse than thinking you finished your Vermin kills only to realize you’re at 29/30 because you ended the game too early. Keep a mental tally or a checklist on your phone. Get in there and start clicking heads.