Modern Warfare 4 is three days old and the patch cadence has not let up. The October 25 update is mostly cleanup, but it carries one line that changes how Search and Destroy fits into the rest of the game: XP for one kill goes from 100 to 300, in Search and Destroy and in the new round based Collateral. Infinity Ward frames it as the first move in a wider review of Multiplayer XP earn rates rather than a one off tweak.
Confirmed. Both numbers come straight from the official Modern Warfare 4 patch notes on callofduty.com under the October 25, 2026 heading, and Infinity Ward posted the same change from its own account the same night. This is the studio describing its own build, not a report about it.
Why Hardcore SnD cares
A one life mode is a slow mode. You get one body per round, the clock is short, and a good anchor can finish a match with four kills and a win. Measured against Domination or Hardpoint, that is a brutal XP rate, and the practical result has been Search and Destroy players leaving their own mode to grind camos, weapon levels and Prestige in respawn playlists. Tripling the per kill payout does not close that gap completely, but it closes most of it.
- Camo grinds stop pulling you out of the mode. Weapon and camo progress is shared across Multiplayer and DMZ, so the only reason to leave Search and Destroy was the rate. Three hundred a kill makes staying in your own mode a real option.
- Prestige prep gets cheaper for SnD mains. Classic Prestige resets level unlocks and Create-a-Class progress, so the climb back up matters. Earning it where you compete means your warmup and your grind are the same session.
- Collateral gets the same rate. The buy phase mode runs Search and Destroy mechanics with an economy on top. Equal XP means you can practice the economy without paying a progression tax for it.
- Nothing about the round changed. This is a payout change, not a tuning change. Plant timings, bomb carrier routes and loadout choices are exactly what they were yesterday.
What else the update touched
- Bomb stretching fix rolled back. The earlier Search and Destroy fix is reverted because it was causing the bomb pickup failures, and Infinity Ward says it will address bomb stretching again as soon as it can.
- Collateral bomb disappearing fixed. The notes list a fix for the bomb vanishing after players interacted with it in Collateral.
- Loadout freeze fixed. Editing a loadout for the first time during a match could briefly freeze the game. That is listed as fixed.
- Weapon classes corrected in the menus. The Patriot XMR, Oden and Cronen Squall were being shown as Battle Rifles in places. The notes list that as fixed, which matters if you sort Gunsmith by class.
The mode you prove yourself in should also be the mode you level in.
What is still open
Kill XP is one input. Round wins, plants and defuses are the other, and the notes give no numbers for any of them. The same update also says the team is looking at potential weapon tuning for a future update, which is the line to actually watch: a tuning pass is what would move the Search and Destroy meta, not a payout change. Treat both as signposted and unpriced until the next set of notes lands.
The October 25 entry sits at the top of the Modern Warfare 4 patch notes page on callofduty.com, above the October 24 and October 23 entries. The XP line is in the Multiplayer section, under the paragraph about XP earn rates.