Call of Duty Black Ops III – Zombies High Round Crash/Freeze Solution

Have you ever attempted to go for a high-round Zombies game in Black Ops 3 and your game crashed and freezes at a high round number? This guide will go over a few potential solutions I found to be helpful and methods to reach high rounds without experiencing these issues!

My Solo Experience

Throughout the many times I have played this game and attempted high rounds, I usually noticed the crashes/freezing occurring anywhere from Round 90-100+ regardless of the map. I conducted multiple tests to see what could be the issue that led to the game crashing/freezing on high rounds. Below are some potential fixes that may solve the issue for some people.

Lowering Graphics

Lowering graphics may help people who are crashing/freezing in general and possibly those who are going for high rounds as well. No matter how powerful your PC is, its worth giving this a shot. For context, I am currently running an RTX 3090ti, i9-12900KS, 64GB Ram and I still have issues with the game crashing/freezing.

Although the game won’t look the best, this may help lower end PCs run the game better, preventing any sort of crashing/freezing when playing Zombies.

Moving Around In-Game / Wonder Weapons + Re-Packed Guns

During one of my tests, I noticed that my game froze much sooner when I was sitting in a corner for a while blasting tons of zombies with the THUNDERGUN and RE PACK-A-PUNCHED weapons (will talk more about the weapons later). I was sitting in a corner, blasting massive hordes of zombies, when suddenly I shot a BLAST FURNACE onto a massive horde and the game froze. This could’ve been caused due to far too many entities on screen, causing the game to freeze.

As previously mentioned, in regards to the wonder weapons and re-packed guns, sometimes the game may crash/freeze if you shoot at a huge horde of zombies using these types of weapons. This is caused simply due to the amount of entities on screen and the game not being able to process everything happening. Below I will list the weapons that I have tested on high rounds with big zombie hordes to give you an idea which weapons you may NOT want to shoot at huge zombie hordes in order to prevent potential crashes/freezes:

Wonder Weapons:

• Thundergun (Tested, Froze/Crashed Game at Least Once)
• Wunderwaffe DG-2 (Not Tested, Be Cautious)
• 31-79 JGb215 (Not Tested, Be Cautious)
• Apothicon Servant (Not Tested, Be Cautious)
• Ray Gun + Ray Gun Mark 2 (Tested, No Issues)

Re-Packed Weapons:

• Blast Furnace (Tested, Froze/Crashed Game at Least Once)
• Dead Wire (Tested, Froze/Crashed Game at Least Once)
• Fire Works (Tested, No Issues)
• Thunder Wall (Tested, No Issues)
• Turned (Tested, No Issues)

I put these two in the same category since I tested scenarios where I was sitting in a corner shooting at a massive horde and simply shooting at massive hordes while moving around. My best tip, would be to move around as much as possible and do your best to clear up zombies in chunks if they’re collected in a massive horde.

Tabbing Out Of Game

I know I know, sometimes going for high rounds may be tiring and you may want to “tab out” of the game to take some breaks in between your gameplay. However, there is a high risk that your game may instantly crash when trying to tab back into it, especially once you’re on the higher rounds. I tested this multiple times and tabbing out while on a high round (even during the end of the round with no zombies around) crashed my game upon tabbing back in. A simple solution to this is perhaps taking your break without having to tab out of the game e.g. watching YouTube videos on another device, going outside rolling in the grass, etc.

Potential Global Issue (Game Freezes/Crashes No Matter What)

My final test conducted was simply leaving the game running in the menu overnight to see what would happen. I performed this test 3+ times and each time I left the game running more than 8-10+ hours, it eventually froze. No matter where I left the game overnight (main menu and solo zombies game paused) the game still ended up freezing. This led me to believe that the main problem lies within the game itself. It seems the game cannot withstand running for more than 8-10+ hours on a single session non-stop.

Using GobbleGums

As mentioned above, the game seems to be crashing no matter what after 8-10+ hours of non-stop runtime. For those who want to get to high rounds, this is a major issue considering the fact high round matches take up quite a bit of hours to achieve. Because time may be an issue, below I will list the best gobblegums to use to achieve high rounds faster.

Some of the Best GobbleGums to use for High Rounds to Reduce Time:

• Dead of Nuclear Winter: (2x Activations) Spawns a Nuke Power-Up
• Fatal Contraption: (2x Activations) Spawns a Death Machine Power-Up
• Mind Blown: (3x Activations) Gib the heads of all the zombies you can see, killing them
• Kill Joy: (2x Activations) Spawns an Insta-Kill Power-Up
• Temporal Gift: (Activates Immediately, Lasts 1 round) Power ups last longer (extra 30 seconds)
• Killing Time: (1x Activation) All zombies freeze in place for 20 seconds. If they are shot they will be annihilated when the time is up. This gobblegum not only freezes zombies, but freezes other props in the map, as if the map is frozen in time.
• Round Robbin’ (THE BEST GOBBLEGUM TO REDUCE TIME TOWARDS HIGH ROUNDS): Ends the current round. All players gain 1600 points. This gobblegum cannot be used in Area 51 (Spawn area on Moon), it will simply fail to be used – this will not consume the gobblegum.
• Power Vacuum: (Activates Immediately, Lasts 4 rounds): Power-Ups spawn more often. The drop change is greatly increased, the normal cap of only 4 drops per round is ignored.
• Reign Drops: (2x Activations) Spawns all the core power-ups at once (Nuke, Double Points, Fire Sale, Insta-Kill, Random Perk Bottle, Max Ammo, Death Machine, Carpenter, Personal Points).

As mentioned above, Round Robbin’ will be your best friend in terms of reaching high rounds as fast as possible. I highly recommend only using this gobblegum on higher rounds (Round 80+) as that’s when rounds start to take significantly longer.

Question: When My Game Crashes, Does My Progress Save On My Stats?

You may be thinking: “Ah shoot :’0 I just reached round 100 and my game crashed, I got like 20,000 kills, will these show up on my combat record???”

Answer: Yes and No. Kills and Headshots WILL be registered to your combat record. As for leaderboards, kills, shots fired, shots on target, headshots, explosive kills, revives, distance traveled, doors opened and perk-a-colas used WILL also be registered to your leaderboards stats. All weapon specific kills will be added to the “Weapons” tab and all used GobbleGums will be added to the “GobbleGum” tab of your combat record. Even the amount of time you spent playing during that time period will be added to your “Played” time on your combat record. HOWEVER, your rounds survived AND whatever high round you achieved on said map will NOT add onto your statistics.

For Example: Before a high round attempt on Kino der Toten, my “Rounds Survived” was 3000, I have 100,000 “Kills” and “Highest Round” on Kino der Toten was 26. My game crashes on round 92 and I obtain 18,000 kills. Upon restarting the game, my “Rounds Survived” will remain at 3000, my “Highest Round” on Kino der Toten will remain at 26, but my “Kills” will show 118,000 (100,000 + 18,000 kills during the crashed match).