Warzone Gulag tips: how to win in the Gulag

How you can use the Gulag to respawn and head back into the fight? Learn how the Gulag works with our Call Of Duty: Warzone Pacific Gulag guide.

The Gulag has always been one of the most fascinating selling points of Call Of Duty: Warzone. Stick to the end and we'll also offer up some top-tier tips on winning fights in the Gulag.

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How to respawn in Warzone

Call Of Duty: Warzone gives you more chance than most other Battle Royales to get back into the game after being killed. Let's quickly go over how many second chances you can get in a Warzone match:

• Reviving from Knocked:
  • When reduced to zero health in Warzone, if you have at least one teammate still living you'll enter a knocked state, where you can crawl around but otherwise cannot act, and you will slowly bleed out unless revived in time by your fellow teammate.
  • You can however (and often will) be finished off by nearby enemies while knocked, to deprive your team of the chance to immediately revive you. This is often called "finishing", or "thirsting".
• Respawning through the Gulag:
  • If you fully die, you will be sent to the Gulag. In the Gulag, you'll get one chance to earn a chance to return to the main battle: you must defeat another Gulag member in a short 1v1 fight using limited equipment. Win, and you'll be returned to the world.
  • You can only visit the Gulag once, so if you've already gone through this process, returned to the fight, and then died for a second time, you can't go through the Gulag again.
• Respawning through Buy Stations
  • If you lose in the Gulag, you can still return to the fight as long as you have a living teammate. If that teammate earns $4,500 Cash and reaches a Buy Station, they can spend that Cash to respawn you.

Note that if you respawn through the Gulag or through a Buy Station, you respawn with nothing but your starting pistol. All your previous weaponry and equipment will be gone. But if you are revived from a knocked state, you keep all your equipment.

How does the Gulag work in Call Of Duty: Warzone?

The Gulag in Call Of Duty: Warzone is a one-time opportunity to earn passage back to the world of the living. To do so, you must defeat a randomly chosen enemy who has also been sent to the Gulag.

If you've played the main Modern Warfare game, you'll likely recognise the Gulag fights as being very similar to Gunfight games. They all take place on the same tiny map (which is an adjusted version of the Gulag Showers map from Gunfight), and they follow similar rules to Gunfight. Here's how Gulag fights work:

• Both players are given the same weapon. They're also given lethal and tactical equipment such as smokes, stuns, frags, or C4 - but they can't use them until five seconds after the fight has started.
• There is no normal health regeneration in the Gulag. If both players are still alive after the time runs out, a flag will appear in the centre of the tiny map that can be captured by standing near it for a few seconds. Capturing the flag wins you the fight - and what's more, the first time you touch the flag by moving through it, you are healed back up to full health.
• There are four possible outcomes to a Gulag fight:
  • One player kills another before the time runs out, winning the fight.
  • Both players stay alive, but one captures the flag, winning the fight.
  • Both players stay alive, and neither one captures the flag, but one has higher health than the other, and thus wins the fight.
  • Both players stay alive at exactly the same health, and neither one captures the flag. In this case, the fight is a draw and both players earn the right to return.

Another very important thing to note in the Gulag is that if you aren't immediately matched with an enemy, you'll be put into a queue while you wait for an opponent and/or a free arena. During this time, you can spectate players fighting in your arena from the sidelines. This is important because if you're lucky enough to have a teammate spectating your fight, then you'll have a huge advantage because your teammate can watch your opponent's movements and call out their location. Players in the queue are even given five rocks that they can throw into the arena while a fight is going on. They deal no damage, but they can be used to reveal a player's position to their opponent.

Call Of Duty: Warzone Gulag tips and tricks

Now that we're clear on how the Gulag actually works, let's finish off with a few top-tier tips that we've learnt from our time in the Gulag of Call Of Duty: Warzone:

• Gulag fights are decided by equipment. Once you have a decent idea of where the enemy is, throw in a stun or a flash grenade. If you hit, it's basically game over. 90% of fights in the Gulag are decided by equipment. Get into the habit of using them when possible, and watching for the hit marker around your reticule.
• Pay attention to the spectators. If you have a teammate spectating you, get them to call out the enemy's position (nothing too complex, just "left", "right", "mid" will do). But even if you don't have teammates, many spectators will just throw rocks at both players. So watch where the rocks are being thrown, and you're likely to have a good idea of where your opponent is hiding.
• Use your ears. On such a ridiculously tiny "map" as Gulag Showers, these fights are all about knowing where the enemy is at all times. Most players don't opt for the sneaky route; they're too bloodthirsty. They're likely to head in for the kill, not bothering to sneak. Listen to their footsteps, pinpoint their position, and punish them for their audacity.
• The ultimate dirty tactic: abuse latency. This may not always be the case, but as things stand, with 150 players per match, sometimes there is a slight issue with lag in Warzone; and this does sometimes seep into Gulag fights. If you're into your dirty tactics, a good idea is to abuse this latency as much as possible. Pre-fire where you're expecting the enemy to appear, and use A/D spam when rounding corners. You might be accused of cheating, but really you were just playing smart, right? RIGHT?!

Feel that? You're now a master of the Gulag in Call Of Duty: Warzone. But if you're looking to become a master in the various other areas of Warzone, be sure to check out our other guides!