It's finally here — Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 just dropped, and ever since playing the final beta, I'd been counting down the days to finally get my hands on the full release. Why? Zombies remains one of the greatest propositions in the Call of Duty franchise, and the Vandorn Farm map, while snug and small, has been on my mind since the first week of October.
Now, with the game out, Ashes of the Dead is an immensely brilliant map for veterans and intermediates. But, if you're a new player, or even just an old one trying to figure out how to get to those elusive high levels and reach level 50 in Vandorn Farm, the smaller of the two maps available right now, well, it's simple, actually. Keeping shooting, don't die.
Of course, there are more than just a couple of things that you could also be doing to make sure that the "don't die" part of those instructions comes a lot easier, and as long as you remember these, reaching level 50 in Black Ops 7 Zombies' Vandorn Farm might even start boring you.
If you're a beginner, this is what you need to do
The first steps (and levels) are crucial
If you're a complete beginner in Zombies, then the tutorial should've gotten you up to speed. There are perks, gumballs, Pack-a-Punches, upgrades to get, and tonnes of zombies to shoot. In Vandorn Farm, you're going to be moving in, circling around, and shooting zombies in a small, cozy little farmhouse and barn as waves upon waves of the undead try to get you to join them. The first thing to do, at least for the first handful of levels, is to stick to your default weapon, and get your score up. This is what will help you unlock the door to the shed in the farm, which will offer up significantly better weapons.
Make sure you also buy the dual-armor jacket for yourself ASAP, because while it's costly, it'll prove to be priceless in the coming levels. However, make sure you don't already have a max-plate-and-jacket Gumball in your inventory. If so, use that and keep your money intact.
If you're held up on 'turning the power on', go ahead and kill enough zombies to earn 2000 points. Unlock the barn door and climb up the stairs, turn around, and you'll see a power lever to interact with. Turn it on, and let the waves begin.
Don't kill the last zombie in a wave
It gives you an incredible amount of breathing room
Picture this: you're in the tenth wave, or even the twentieth, and you just ran out of grenades while exploding zombies and thinning out the crowd. A lot of zombies then lost their legs and began crawling towards you. You pick them all off, but leave one little crawler alive. Why? Because all that zombie can do is slowly chase you on the ground, while you can simply take all the breathing room you want.
Collect all the salvage lying around, plate up, go into the barn and buy plates, tactical and lethal devices, drink Perk-a-Cola from the vending machine, all while that poor chap chases you. This is where you can basically stop time, collect yourself, take stock of your ammo and other devices, and be fully prepped for the next round before finally putting the final crawling zombie out of its misery.
Bonus tip: If you want this to happen more often, use more explosives in crowds of zombies — a lot of them will lose their legs and spoil you for choice regarding which one to keep alive.
Don't ration your Shredder uses
If you think you need it, you do
There's a shredder right outside the barn that costs coins to turn on, and it comes with a cooldown. When you turn it on, it pulls in every surrounding zombie with a huge alarm, and cuts them up with sharp blades, killing them by the dozens. Now, you might be inclined to save your uses of the Shredder for when a bigger boss comes around, or for when the hound dogs come calling in droves, but trust me, you want to use that thing when you feel like you need to.
The promise of the next level is only as good as your health right now, which means that if ever you feel overwhelmed (which is very possible during later levels), you need to turn that thing on immediately and stand on the top of the vehicle next to it. That'll get you plenty of kills, salvage, and even a drop or two.
As you get to higher levels, you may well want to ration it, but in the early levels, every single time you use it could be the difference between life and death... or undeath?
The farmhouse is your best friend when overwhelmed
Go for a stroll in the backyard
I cannot overstate this enough — in Vandorn Farm, one of your best friends is the farmhouse in the center of the map. Sure, it raises your weapons rarity in the basement, and it offers up Gobblegums on the porch, as well as a Perk-a-Cola machine on the first floor balcony, but the best thing about it? Its structure itself. When the horde of zombies surrounding you or your friends gets too much, make sure you circle around the back of the house, in either direction. If you're in a team, even if one player does that regularly, the crowd of zombies will be thinned out rather effectively.
So, every time you feel like the zombies are crowding up and coming at you from all sides, just turn around and circle around the back of the house. This one maneuver could save your life multiple times. Sure, you'll find stragglers there as well, and the zombies will chase you by cutting through the house, but this move is extremely underrated for just how much it helps you regain control over almost the entire horde chasing you.
One thing I wouldn't recommend
However, during the later levels, try not to cut through the basement entrance on the back — it's a near-guaranteed way to get yourself boxed in between zombies from the barn and zombies from the backyard. Nine times out of ten, it won't end well. So just keep circling around the back of the house if you need short whiffs of breath during a level and need to plate up or reload.
Don't forget you can wall jump
The heat of the moment can make you forgetful
In every single Zombies game ever made, there comes a time when you're a sliver away from certain death. No armor, no health, and if a zombie so much as breathes in your direction, it's curtain-call. I ran into many of these instances myself, but the one thing you mustn't forget is that this is Black Ops 7, and the new game brings with it a new movement system. Heck, even I forgot to use the new wall-jumping mechanic, since I thought I could only do it in the game's multiplayer modes.
But in Black Ops 7 Zombies, if you're in Vandorn Farm and need to gain some distance from the zombies chasing you, you can always wall jump. There are two structures in the center of the farm — a wooden pole and a bell tower. You want to be constantly bouncing off of these to gain airtime and distance away from zombies.
On more than one occasion, suddenly remembering that I can jump off the walls saved my life when I needed just a couple more seconds for my health regeneration to kick back in, and that's what you can use. So make sure you spam that Jump button whenever you need some vertical breathing room.
Another movement trick that every Zombies player knows
Speaking of movement, there's one trick that every seasoned COD player knows and uses, but if you're a beginner, you might not be familiar with — sprint sliding. You're going to be sprinting through the game, but if you're ever faced with too many zombies in your front, then a well-timed slide can always get you away unharmed from the zombies' outstretched arms. Don't be afraid to spam the sliding mechanic, either — it's a lifesaver.
There's an easy way to take out the Zersa bears
Those zombie bears will stand for you to shoot them
After every few levels, Vandorn Farm will throw the Zersa mini-bosses at you — huge, zombified bears that stop at nothing to attack you and drain your health. They're tough to kill, I'll give them that, but it's not impossible, either. The first part of the mini-boss fight is obvious — you shoot the glowing, infested outgrowths on its body and its head, but the final outgrowth is right on its belly.
Now, the Zersa does stand upright to let you get a shot at the outgrowth on its belly, but it also lunges straight at you a second later when it does that. So, this is where your tactical gear becomes your friend. Concussion grenades in the game are ridiculously helpful in defeating the Zersa bears. Just throw one in its direction when it's the belly infestation you need to shoot, and it'll just stand upright, unmoving, for a good ten seconds to let you mag-dump into it, taking away a significant portion of its health bar. Heck, it even works for when two Zersa bosses attack, and you use a Concussion 'Nade to crowd control one, making it wait its turn for your weapons and ammo.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 65/100 Critics Rec: 36%
- Released
- November 14, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs
- Developer(s)
- Treyarch, Raven Software
- Publisher(s)
- Activision
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- IW Engine
- Genre(s)
- Action, FPS, Sci-Fi
Vandorn Farm is small, but immensely rewarding
Vandorn Farm is the perfect launching pad for getting non-COD friends into Zombies.
Vandorn farm is one of the best Zombies maps I've played in a long while, and that's because of just how snug it feels. It feels like the perfect launching pad to get more of my friends onboard the Zombies train, who have never played the game before.
When the movement, the perks, and the pacing all click together, Zombies really becomes that rare mode where you feel both out of control and completely in command. It's brilliant, and so far, Black Ops 7 is doing a fantastic job of keeping Zombies' fun alive.
