It's January 2026, and I swear I can't load into a lobby without spotting that Shower camo on someone's rifle. You know the one—shooting stars skimming across the receiver like it's showing off on purpose. If you missed the Astra Malorum event, you'll probably hear about it anyway, because players won't stop flexing it. I've even seen folks trading tips on
BO7 Bot Lobbies
just to dodge the grind and get back to actually playing, which tells you how cooked the whole camo chase has gotten.What the event asked forThe rules sounded easy when you read them fast. Finish the main Easter egg quest, then land in the top 5 of your bracket before the event clock hit zero. Simple. Except it wasn't really about "being good." It was about being good and having enough free time to babysit a scoreboard. The bracket setup felt like it punished anyone who played consistently. You'd push a strong run, think you were safe, then watch the points jump in the last hour like everyone suddenly woke up and chose violence.My run, my setup, and the gut punchI did what most of us do when something's limited-time: I went full robot. XM325 as my workhorse, Ray Gun variant for the big threats, and I ran solo to keep zombie HP from ballooning. I'd rush the quest steps, get Acts 1 through 3 done in under 45 minutes, then post up in the courtyard and train. Pop conversions, chase the multiplier, keep moving. On my last attempt I hit 58k, slid into 4th, and finally relaxed. Two hours left. I grabbed dinner. Came back and I was 7th, knocked out by somebody at 62k. No warning, no mercy—just the quiet realisation that the camo was gone.After the bracket, the grind feels worseI still got the "Cratered" camo for top 10%, and yeah, it's fine. But it's not animated, and everyone knows it. Now it's back to mastery camos, and Zombies challenges are a slog: headshots, elite kills, weird weapon-specific asks that don't match how you naturally play. Public matches don't help either—teammates steal kills, exfils get messy, and half the lobby's doing their own checklist. You start understanding why some players look for shortcuts for the regular camo ladder, even if they'd never bother for a one-time event reward.What I want next timeIf Treyarch runs another bracket event, it needs guardrails—something that rewards completing the quest cleanly, not just no-lifing the final stretch. I don't mind losing to better players; I mind losing to a system that feels like it's gaming me. Until they fix it, people will keep hunting easier routes for progress, whether that's squad stacking, routing strats, or services that smooth out the boring parts like
RSVSR
while they save their energy for the stuff that's actually fun.
