Key Features
Corruption engines, Pack-a-Punch and the shield
- At spawn, shoot the four marked gravestones in the order shown: second → third → first → fourth from left to right, corresponding to Richtofen, Dempsey, Takeo and Nikolai. A sound confirms the sequence. If it fails, start the full sequence again. Then activate and defend the corruption engines at spawn, Der Eisendrache, Mob of the Dead and Verrückt. Each costs 500 points and connects its region to Nacht.
Read these four quest gravestones left to right; shoot 2, 3, 1, 4. - With all four engines active, use Nacht’s Tesla control when the giant Apothicon passes directly in front of the building. Enter its mouth after it is trapped. Shoot the three yellow tubes holding its heart to release Pack-a-Punch into the stomach. Return through the mouth to leave; the stomach is also used for the Arnie and egg steps.
- Build the shield at Nacht’s upstairs bench. One part is in Origins: by the entrance from spawn, near Wunderfizz, or beside the truck. One is high on a wall in Der Eisendrache; activate the four pyramid plates and collect it during low gravity. The last is in Verrückt: the pillar near Speed Cola, the kitchen table or the corner room beyond the stairs. Keep a fresh shield before entering a trial or boss arena.
Keeper Protector and upgraded Apothicon Servant
- Collect the three Keeper Protector parts and assemble them at a summoning altar. The skull is in Verrückt on the shelf beside Speed Cola, a chair near the old power room or a chair near the Mob jump pad. The crystal is on a barrel by the Primis statues, debris beside the pyramid or the small Kino table near the Verrückt jump pad. The flag is by Origins’ sandbags, the excavation mound corner or Mob’s cafeteria beside Mule Kick. Summon the Keeper when ready for its reel ritual; calling it early can waste its limited duration.
Skull region: Verrückt. Crystal region: Der Eisendrache / Kino. Flag region: Origins / Mob. Build at one of the Keeper altars. - Obtain the Apothicon Servant from the Mystery Box. Shoot the five floating blue rocks in the sky with it, using the photographs for the sightlines. Check spawn by the Shangri-La jump pad, two sights from Verrückt, Der Eisendrache above the Shangri-La direction, and Mob of the Dead near the Origins side. After all five disappear, Pack-a-Punch the Servant for 5,000 points. You also need Lil’ Arnies from the box and a Pack-a-Punched bullet weapon for the main quest.
Sky rock sightline from spawn. First Verrückt sky rock. Second Verrückt sky rock. Der Eisendrache sky rock. Mob of the Dead sky rock.
Main Quest
Three audio reels: Keeper, Arnies and bones
- Inspect the jump pads at Shangri-La toward spawn, Mob toward Verrückt, and Verrückt toward Kino for a small pointed rock. Summon the Keeper, bring it to the correct pad and use the pad so it enters cooldown. Keep the Keeper beside the rock until it starts chanting. Defend it through the long ritual, including the attacking Margwas, then collect the reel it leaves. Play this first reel at Nacht’s upstairs player.
Look for this added pointed rock beside a jump pad. Play the Keeper reel at Nacht. - Inside the giant Apothicon, identify the nine small parasite holes around its walls. Throw one Arnie into each of three different holes, then kill the spawned Margwas. Complete two more batches of three unused holes and their Margwas. Work around the room consistently and do not count a missed throw as a completed hole. Collect the reel from the central bridge and play it at Kino’s stage.
Keep enough Arnies available for the current batch and stay in the stomach until that batch’s fight is finished.
An Arnie must enter the hole, rather than land beside it. Play the second reel on Kino’s stage. - Find all six bone sites. At each, shoot the enclosing stone with a Pack-a-Punched bullet weapon, then absorb the released floating bone with the upgraded Apothicon Servant. The sites are spawn’s church, above Shangri-La’s Stamin-Up, outside Origins by the robot footprint, Verrückt’s waterfall, above Nacht’s Der Eisendrache portal and the third wall of the exterior Der Eisendrache wall-run course. Use the collection finder below to see each sightline.
Spawn / Shangri-La: Broken church window at spawn. Spawn / Shangri-La: Stonework above Stamin-Up. Origins / Mob: Outside the map near the giant robot footprint. Kino / Der Eisendrache: Third wall of the exterior free-perk wall-run route. Nacht: Wall above the Der Eisendrache portal. Verrückt: Rock beside the waterfall. - Return to Nacht and find the collected bones on the floor near Juggernog and the reel player. Shoot the pile with the upgraded Servant to form Sophia’s body, then shoot the body again to reveal the third reel. Play it on the table at Origins’ excavation mound.
Absorb the assembled body to reveal the final reel. Play it at the excavation mound.
SOPHIA, Kronorium, four eggs and gateworms
- Use each of the four corruption turrets and aim its beam at the reflective rock to the left of the nearby portal. The correct aim locks the turret and ejects you. Once all four beams are aligned, interact with SOPHIA above Nacht and follow her to Kino. Gather everyone in the teleporter. In the bedroom, collect the Kronorium from the bed before the automatic return, then place it on Kino’s stage podium.
If doing the optional spark reward, carry the spawn-truck spark into this bedroom visit and place it in the toy box before returning. Read that side quest first.
Aim at this kind of reflective rock until the turret locks. Take the Kronorium from the bed. Place the book on the stage podium. - Search the egg spawn groups with the location finder. Take an egg to one of the four incubators around the Apothicon’s acid pool. The player who placed it must earn its nearby zombie kills until it hatches. Pick up the gateworm. A player carries one egg or gateworm at a time; finish the current cycle before searching for the next.
Put the egg in an incubator at the acid pool’s edge. - Carry the gateworm around the four regions and listen to its beeps. Faster beeps mean you are closer to its buried rune. Interact at the fastest point, then collect the revealed rune. Repeat the egg, incubation and search cycle until you have four runes, one from each region. The scoreboard shows your collected rune set; photograph or memorize it before entering the next arena.
Egg, rune, bone & relic finder Open helper
Choose your current collection and region for exact photographs, sightlines and the required action.
After placing the Kronorium on Kino’s podium, find an egg, take it to an acid-pool incubator inside the Apothicon and supply its souls yourself. Carry the hatched gateworm to hunt a rune.
16 reference locations
Observations save on this device and are shared with the helper inside the guide.
Gameplay photos: COD Zombies Guides · game: Activision / Treyarch.
Kronorium sequence, four arenas and seven relics
- Gather everyone on the purple circle in Kino’s projection room to enter the trial arena. Interact with the Kronorium and record the four displayed runes in order. The helper lets you record their positions in your scoreboard’s rune row, avoiding ambiguous text descriptions. At the cycling purple symbol across the arena, interact only when the next required rune appears. Ignore the decoys. If the sequence is rejected, wait for another attempt and reread the book.
All players stand on the purple projection-room circle. Observe the book’s sequence in this match. Wait for each requested rune before interacting. - Survive four terrain phases, killing the Margwas to advance. Avoid the fire patches, lava, electrical hazards and void attacks. During the low-gravity phase, use the illuminated safe circles. Keep moving, shoot open Margwa mouths and use your specialist or wonder weapon to clear ordinary enemies. Collect the Summoning Key after the final wave to return to the map.
Use the illuminated safe areas when the floor becomes hazardous. Keep clear of the void phase’s attacks. - Throw the Summoning Key at all seven relics, in any order. The finder shows photographs for Shangri-La’s tree crystal, Verrückt’s fountain MG42, Mob’s cell poster, Nacht’s red barrel, Origins’ scaffold tombstone, Der Eisendrache’s clock and Kino’s chandelier radio. Listen for the success cue and retrieve the key after each throw. Look for its return marker when it falls out of bounds.
Portals can cause the carried key to disappear. Prefer jump pads while carrying it. If it seems lost, first check the return marker and weapon cycling; avoid risking the run with a deliberate down as your first recovery attempt.
Kronorium order recorder Open helper
Read your scoreboard’s four collected runes from left to right as 1–4. Record which position matches each page of the book. Use your own scoreboard, not the example photograph.
Open your scoreboard. Number the rune row 1, 2, 3, 4 from left to right. For each book page, select the position with the same shape.
Choose for page 1.
0 of 4 recorded.
Observations save on this device and are shared with the helper inside the guide.
Gameplay photos: COD Zombies Guides · game: Activision / Treyarch.
Shadowman and the ending
- Resupply and gather the team in Kino’s teleporter for the final fight. Put the Summoning Key on a green pedestal and charge it with nearby zombie souls. Pick up the charged key and throw it at SOPHIA. She fires a beam that removes the Shadowman’s shield.
Charge the key on one of the green pedestals. - While his shield is down, shoot the Shadowman until he is inside the giant Apothicon statue’s mouth. Interact with the Kronorium while he is in position to trap him. If the window closes, repeat the key charge and SOPHIA throw. The ending completes For the Good of All and ends the match; finish optional side quests before entering this fight.
- For the super Easter egg rewards, check the map-selection completion icons for the preceding BO3 quests before the run, including The Giant. Completing Revelations with the required quest completions represented in the lobby can unlock the RK5 starting weapon and related rewards. This guide’s completion checkboxes are local notes and cannot verify your game account’s quest flags.
Side Quests
Masks and helmets
- Most earned masks appear on the mannequins on Kino’s stage after an audio cue. Equip the one you want; only one mask’s effects apply at a time. The names below separate distinct challenges. Al’s hat is cosmetic and does not improve Mystery Box luck.
- Wolf: during Der Eisendrache’s low gravity, grenade the high wall opening used by the Wolf Bow skeleton on the original map. Feed the dropped skull nearby zombie souls while low gravity is active, until the cue. Viking / Helmet of Siegfried: shoot IX, III, V on the clock above the pyramid, then earn six headshots near each urn at the Primis-statue hall, Kino projection room, Verrückt kitchen and Origins room near Generator 3.
- Keeper: let the summoned Keeper Protector kill about 30 enemies, then kill seven Enslaved Keepers with corruption turrets. Having completed the Wolf mask can satisfy the second requirement. Fury: earn 15 Fury headshots outside the engine-activation rituals. For both, use the completion sound and stage mannequin to confirm the reward.
- Margwa: kill one regular, one fire and one void Margwa by destroying each of its mouths in a single bullet-weapon hit. Avoid damaging these targets with wonder weapons first. Helmet of the King: destroy one Panzer’s front power core and another Panzer’s faceplate, then earn the map-trap kills until the cue. Trap requirements are commonly reported around 50; the cue is the confirmation.
- Apothicon mask: while the stomach’s green fog is active, keep both yourself and the enemies inside the green acid pool. Kill 50 zombies, 15 spiders, 15 parasites, 10 Furies, five Keepers and three Margwas covering at least two variants. Listen for the individual completion cues. Kills outside the fog window or outside the acid do not count. Older guides list different enemy totals; these requirements follow the newer mask reference linked below.
- Al’s hat: interact with the hat in the isolated Mob cell near the door toward Origins. It is a cosmetic alternative when you want to remove a combat mask.
Upgraded Arnies, free perk and weapon trading
- Earn 150 collective Lil’ Arnie kills in the lobby, then throw an Arnie through the upper window of the broken church at spawn. A successful throw refills the grenades and upgrades the Arnies for players who have them. Do not confuse this church throw with the nine stomach holes used for the main-quest reel.
- Activate Der Eisendrache’s corruption engine and low gravity. Follow the exterior wall-run route above the portal to the floating perk bottle. Reaching it awards a free perk to the team. Wait for a fresh low-gravity cycle before starting the route.
- Collect the pink chalk from the high ledge in Der Eisendrache during low gravity. Move “Wish Too Often…” from Der Eisendrache to the old Verrückt power-room writing. Move the exchanged “Ascend from Darkness” to Nacht’s spiral stairs, then the exchanged “Salvation Lies Above” to the empty Help wall by Nacht’s other stairs. Take “Knowledge Itself…” from Mob’s infirmary entrance to the wall behind Kino’s teleporter; return the exchanged “A Soul Alone…” to the Mob spot. The cue unlocks the M1927 wallbuy in Der Eisendrache and the weapon-trading table in Nacht. Place a weapon on the glowing table so another player can take it.
Super Easter egg spark and timed melee weapons
- When the lobby has the prerequisite earlier quest completions, a spark can appear on the spawn truck’s headlight. Leave it until SOPHIA has reached Kino’s teleporter. Pick it up, reach Kino without taking an enemy hit, enter the bedroom and place it in the toy box. A hit loses the spark for this match, so clear the route first. This unlocks upgraded Mystery Box rewards and Takeo’s katana wallbuy in Shangri-La.
- Complete round 5 before 5:00 for Nunchucks, round 10 before 12:00 for the Skull Splitter, round 15 before 19:00 for the Buzz Cut, and round 20 before 32:00 for the Nightbreaker. Buy unlocked melee weapons at the wall between Shangri-La’s stairs and the Primis-statue area. These are elapsed match deadlines for finishing each round, not a timer started by visiting the wall.
The Gift, Nacht radio and story secrets
- For The Gift, interact with three teddy bears: on a chair in Kino’s front seating, on a stool in the lower Mob/Origins connecting area, and on a chair in Verrückt near the green tanks and Mob jump pad.
- For the Nacht music radio, quickly press the four buttons near the Der Eisendrache portal, the Tesla control, the top of the stairs by the shield bench, and the L-CAR 9. Coordinate players in co-op because the input window is shorter. The radio appears by the Mystery Box location; shoot it to play a song and knife it to stop.
- Revelations’ radios and ciphers provide optional story context. Use the community archive for their locations, transcripts and solutions; they are not additional prerequisites for the main ending.
Sources and review
Instructions adapted from Reddit community guides and the illustrated references below, with AI-assisted source checks on 3 October 2026. Gameplay images: mmmrkennedy, COD Zombies Guides and their credited community creators; game: Activision / Treyarch. Symbols and sequences marked as observations must come from your match. Source and software checks do not replace an in-game playthrough.
- r/CODZombies community guide ↗
- COD Zombies Guides illustrated walkthrough (2) ↗
- Steam Community walkthrough (3) ↗
- callofduty.fandom.com reference (4) ↗
Select any reference image to enlarge it. Screenshot and symbol sources are credited in the linked walkthroughs; this guide uses local copies for reliable access.