You're pushing through wave after wave, the undead keep piling in, and every corner feels like a bad idea. At some point, you’ve got to ask yourself—do we keep grinding or just get out while we still can? Black Ops 7 doesn’t just stick to the old-school survival formula, it throws in that tactical twist: exfil. It’s tempting, but it’s not just “run to the exit and leave.” There are specific chances to pull it off, and knowing them can be the difference between walking out with your hard-earned rewards or getting eaten alive. For the first window, you’ve got to clear Round 10. As soon as Round 11 kicks in, the game flashes a notification to let everyone know exfil is on the table. Miss that? You’ll get another shot every five rounds—so 16, 21, 26, and so on. And when it’s active, you’re not safe anywhere. You’ve got to get to a set exfil zone—maybe that old Telephone booth in Ashes of the Damned—then trigger the sequence. Time’s tight, so hesitate and the offer vanishes till the next cycle. That’s why seasoned players in modes like CoD BO7 Bot Lobby are already moving the moment the call comes in.

What makes it tricky is the chaos mid-round. You’ll clear a wave, and just before you think about moving, a fresh batch of sprinting zombies will spill in from every spawn point. The clock keeps ticking, and the map will work against you. This is where knowing routes counts. If you’ve got a squad, make sure someone’s calling out positions and not just shooting for kills. If you’re solo, you’d better know your escape lanes because you won’t have another player covering your back. That mad dash to the exfil zone is often more dangerous than the defence itself—players underestimate it all the time.

The defence phase is no picnic either. Once you activate it, you're in a contained fight. The game throws in a spike of enemy spawns, so holding your ground becomes a proper choke-point challenge. Overloading your ammo supply before attempting exfil’s always smart—running out mid-defence is a death sentence. And if one teammate goes down here, do not break formation chasing revives unless the zone is totally secure. It’s better to leave together than to lose the run because you split.

But what if things really tank earlier, maybe on Round 13, nowhere near the next scheduled window? That’s where the right Gobblegum can flip the script. “Exit Strategy” is the golden ticket—it lets you trigger exfil on any round. No five-round wait. You still have to make it to the zone and survive the defence, but you control the timing. I’ve seen squads bail on 12 just because everything was going downhill—low ammo, teammates dropping, no perks left. Without this Gobblegum, you’d just slog on and probably get wiped before 16. Having it ready is basically an insurance policy for long runs.

In the end, mastering both the scheduled exfil and pulling off an emergency escape with Gobblegum changes how you play. You stop thinking of it as “leave when it’s offered” and start treating it as part of your survival strategy. The best players walk that line—knowing when to push for another round and when to cash out. It’s about keeping control in a mode built to take it from you, whether you're in casual runs or serious grind sessions like buy CoD BO7 Bot Lobbies.