How do you complete the Ashes of the Damned main quest? . While the BO7 co-op campaign provides a fun few hours before unlocking the all-new Endgame mode, and MP offers the same rampant chaos as ever, we can’t overlook the best part of any new Treyarch game: Zombies easter eggs.
Only one main Zombies map launched in Black Ops 7 on day one, but it’s a big one, and this might be the biggest Zombies easter egg we’ve ever seen. With a heavy focus on your new ride, Ol’ Tessie, this quest takes you further than your feet will carry you, and a series of upgrades even turn your truck into one of the BO7 Wonder Weapons. Do all of that and more with our walkthrough for the Ashes of the Damned main quest.
These are the steps to completing the Ashes of the Damned main quest easter egg. As ever, a lot of these can be completed in different orders:
- First off, follow the directed steps to unlock your Pack-A-Punch on wheels.
- Free Klaus from his cell and use him to collect the Aether Barrel and obtain the Wonder Weapon.
- Collect the Abomination Carcass from Reba’s Diner.
- Use this Ol’ Tessie upgrade to destroy purple plants and collect Horde Chunks.
- Get Human Bones from a corpse at Vandorn Farm.
- Obtain the Jar of Spores from the main house at Blackwater Lake.
- Kill a Ravager at a Saw Trap and collect Ravager Eyes.
- Kill a Zursa with Tessie’s Beam to obtain the Mysterious Limb.
- Use a Wisp and Wonder Weapon to activate the mysterious mirror.
- Decipher the code in Yuri’s Lab.
- Use the Gauntlet to obtain the Nightbird Key.
- Get the Bruin Key from the radio tower at the Crashed Rocket site.
- Obtain the Terrapin Key from the Grounded Ship.
- Use the three keys to unlock the prism.
- Kill time in Ashwood.
- Complete four separate challenges around the map
- Prepare for battle, and fight Veytharion.
Obtain the Necrofluid Gauntlet
To craft the Necrofluid Gauntlet, the Ashes of the Damned Wonder Weapon, you must activate Klaus and get him to help you obtain the Aether Barrel. Take this to the basement in Vandorn Farm and use it to obtain the Wonder Weapon.
Now, you must get the Stabilizer Chip item. An Uber Klaus will spawn behind a truck to the northwest of Janus Towers Plaza after round 8. Kill him, and collect the item he drops.
Next, take this Chip to Klaus in his cell in Ashwood. Enter the chip into the panel on the gate, and then throw a stun grenade at his head. Once you get it, though, stars will spin around Klaus’ head before he gets up and frees himself from the cell.
Find him outside, where you can interact with him, and the party leader can control his location.
Now head to Support Systems in Zarya Cosmodrome, and ask Klaus to move to the broken panel on the wall. At this point, you must stand inside the red circle until the scan completes. Use Field Upgrades and teammates here for protection. If you fail, you just need to start the next Round to be able to interact with the panel again.
Now take the barrel to each of the Power Pumps in turn, place it inside, and protect it from attack while it extracts. The tough thing here is that the canister contents decay as you travel between pumps, so you have to move quickly.
Once filled, offer the canister to the cube in the basement room in Vandorn Farm, and interact with the eye. You must then match three symbols on the cube with three symbols around the map. These symbols change in every match, but are found on the roof of buildings around the area. They don’t have to be entered in any order, but only one symbol will be an option on each side.
To see the symbols, you need to use the jump pad between Vandorn Farm and Janus Towers Plaza. The three symbols are glowing red. If you’re unsure, it might be worth capturing the video of your flight.
Match the symbols, interact with the eye again, and the Necrofluid Gauntlet will be granted. Complete the subsequent lockdown by destroying red bulbs with the gauntlet’s barb recall.
Collect the Abomination Carcass from Reba’s Diner
Head to the diner and kill zombies inside until one of them drops the Freezer key. Use it to unlock the double freeze in the hallway, and collect the Abomination Carcass.
Head back to a garage with reliable Ol’ Tessie and upgrade her again, adding the Abomination Carcass this time.
Use Ol’ Tessie to destroy purple plants and collect Horde Chunks
Now use her to destroy the giant, glowing purple plants found on the main highways between POIs. Make sure you get out of Ol’ Tessie to pick up the Horde Chunks that drop from the plants.
There are multiple plants, but the item will only drop from one. If you don’t get it from the first, keep going.
Get Human Bones from a corpse at Vandorn Farm
Throw a combat axe at one of the hanging corpses in the main Vandorn farmhouse, and it will drop a foot. Next, burn the flesh from the foot with a Molotov to obtain the Human Bones item.
Obtain the Jar of Spores from the main house at Blackwater Lake
Head to the kitchen in the main house at Blackwater Lake. The Jar of Spores is on a shelf on the southern wall of the kitchen, near the sink.
Once you have it, go to Vandorn Farm and locate the horse corpse lying on the ground just outside the fenced-in main area. Interact with the corpse and progress two Rounds for the fungus to grow on the body, resulting in the item Widow’s Lantern item.
Kill a Ravager at a Saw Trap to obtain Ravager Eyes
This one’s as simple as it sounds, but be careful, as the first Ravager killed by the trap will drop the Ravager Eyes item. If you think you might have already done this, head back to the Saw Trap you used and check the area.
Kill a Zursa with Tessie’s Beam and collect the Mysterious Limb
Similarly, Zursas start to spawn from Round 15. Killing one of these should drop a Mysterious Limb. However, as we have seen in previous easter eggs, it might not be the first one. If they’re not dropping the item, you’re unfortunately just going to have to keep pushing Rounds.
Use a Wisp and the Gauntlet on the mysterious mirror
There’s a glowing mirror in the Tailer Shop in Ashwood. Purchase the Wisp Tea Perk-A-Cola or use a Gobblegum and shoot Zombies in the mirror room until the Wisp activates the mirror.
Once you have the Necrofluid Gauntlet, shoot the mirror to obtain Powder of the Forgotten, a Serum ingredient. Take this powder to Yuri’s Lab and interact with a tray on the table to reveal a hidden Pigpen code on the wall above.
Decipher the code in Yuri’s Lab
With the Serum items collected: Horde Chunks, Ravager Eyes, Human Bones, Mysterious Limb, Jar of Spores, and Powder of the Forgotten, head back to Yuri’s Lab. Interact with the tray that is missing the powder. This will start a fire under the beaker and reveal a code on the chalkboard above.
This is Pigpen code, and we’ve posted a guide to deciphering it above. At the moment, we don’t know all the possibilities, but deciphering the code will give you three words. Read these words from right to left and not top to bottom, this is the order you should interact with three of the other items on the table to trigger the next event. You’ll be put into a brief lockdown, and the team member who triggered the event will have limited health. Survive to continue.
Use the Gauntlet to obtain the Nightbird Key in Orda Graveyard
Look carefully at the large dinosaur skulls in Orda Graveyard, and you may see an item wedged in its teeth. Shoot your Gauntlet’s spike at it, then retrieve it to pull the Nightbird Key with it. If not, it may be in a third location, between the two Janus vehicles at the Exit 115 end of Orda Graveyard.
This key wedges itself into you rather than appearing in your inventory, causing you damage. The person carrying the key must be the person to interact with the prism.
Get the Bruin Key from the radio tower at the Crashed Rocket site
There are three locations you could find the Bruin Key. One is on the radio tower bridging the gap between the two edges of the Crashed Rocket POI.
If not, in the same area there is a spinning satellite on top of a building. The key can be up here.
Finally, it could also be on the top of the left cliff in the area between Ashwood and the Crashed Rocket, just outside the area sign.
Again, use your Necrofluid Gauntlet’s shard to shoot the key, then retrieve it to pull the key back.
This time, you’ll have no weapon on your journey back to the prism, so take care and move as quickly as possible.
Obtain the Terrapin Key from the Grounded Ship
Finally, though these can be collected in any order, there is a Terrapin Key on the Grounded Ship.
It can either be in an open container on top of the ship, between the barrels underneath the ship on the northern side, or in the cabin in the middle of the ship’s topside – just look through the window.
Again, retrieve the key with the gauntlet. The Terrapin Key slows you down, making it far more difficult to make it back to the prism alive. Use items, Field Upgrades, and teammates to protect you.
Use the three keys to unlock the Prism
Following the step in Yuri’s Lab, the prism previously viewed through the strange mirror now appears in Ashwood, near the jail. Use each of the above keys on the box to unlock three chains and trigger a cutscene, after which you’ll be given the DG-2 Turret Barrel to install onto Tessie.
Kill time in Ashwood
Head to Ashwood and you’ll be told to “kill time”. Use Tessie’s turret to shoot the floating clocktower, then use the gauntlet to shoot the clock fact with a shard and retrieve it. When done right, your Gauntlet turns purple.
You have only one shot when the weapon is in this state, so take care not to use it and lose it. You’ll need to start the next Round if you do. With the gauntlet in this state, complete the following four steps. You can recharge your Wonder Weapon at the clock tower for each one.
Vandorn Farm
In the family house, check the time on the clock and stand on the corresponding floorboard – there are faint Roman numerals marked in the ground. From here, look at the skeleton at the head of the table, and wait for him to turn to you, his eyes glowing red. Shoot him with your powered gauntlet, and then collect the following four items from around the building.
- Teddy bear in the upstairs bedroom
- Face mask in the second floor of the main barn
- Chalice in the cellar near the bathtub
- Pa’s Pigsticker, under the table in the Mystery Box shed
Now interact with the ritual circles that have appeared on the ground in the area. Interact with the items again to trigger a lockdown, during which you must protect the items from damage.
Zarya Cosmodrome
Here, you might need to two rounds for the first step, recharging your Gauntlet between them as you need to fire it at the two spinning satellite dishes. Once you have done so, they are both stopped, and a computer in the Control Room will read off a six-letter word in Pigpen, the same cypher we used before.
Once you know the word, then turn the letters into numbers using their placement in the alphabet, from 0 to 25. So a is 0, b is 1, c is 2, etc.
Find the six computer screens in Control Room that are scrolling through numbers, and shoot the red button on each monitor when it reads the associated number required to spell out the word.
Exit 115
With your gauntlet charged again, head to Exit 115 in Ol’ Tessie. Get out, and use the Gauntlet to shoot the clock on the roof of the gas station. This will start a 60-second timer.
During this time, you must melee the cash machine in the diner to wake the Waitress and lead her to the red lightning on the roof of the diner, where she’ll disappear.
Next, use Tessie’s Beam to shoot the back of a truck trailer, waking the Trucker zombie. Lead him to the roof red lightning.
Finally, request Klaus in the mechanic’s shop where he will wake the third zombie. Lead this one to the roof of the gas station and the yellow lightning.
This part can only be done on an even Round, and if you don’t manage to complete all three in one go (it’s tough), you can restart the challenge on any even Round to finish it off. Expect to progress through a good few Rounds here.
Blackwater Lake
Do this one last. If you’ve completed the other three correctly, there will be a wisp on the dock at the lake. Interact with it, and then shoot your Wonder Weapon at the projector inside the cabin. It will display four locations around Blackwater Lake.
The order of the images will differ in every game, so memorize your order before proceeding to shoot the film reels found in each location, in the right order. The film reel locations are:
- Back of the cabin – under the stairs
- Inside the cabin – near the roof at the top of the stairs
- Boathouse – in the ceiling
- Tool shed – on the shelf
Now call in Klaus from the nearby radio and head to the bedroom, where a small box on the end of the bed will open. Direct Klaus to the box where he will pick up an item and walk to the dock.
Prepare to fight, and face Veytharion
Finally, prepare yourself for the boss battle by ensuring you and your squad are properly kitted up. Drop Perkaholic Gobblegums, craft your chosen throwables and Self-Revive kits at a crafting bench, and check you’ve got the right gums in your inventory. When ready, interact with Klaus at the Blackwater Lake dock.
This boss fight isn’t particularly tough in the sense that it doesn’t change too much, and it’s easy to figure out. However, Vaytharion has a lot of health, and downing him is incredibly time-consuming.
As always, you basically want to aim at any weak spots where possible. The main thing to note here, though, is that, when Veytharion becomes immune, the only way to take him out of this state is to drive Tessie through glowing beams and drive her into the boss, using the ramps around the arena. This knocks the boss out of his invulnerable state and reveals a weak spot underneath his body, which is a great time to deal significant damage with Tessie’s Turret, a Ray Gun, or other damaging weapons.
Veytharion’s attacks consist of rockets, which you can avoid by looking at the red spots on the ground, and a powerful attack during which he throws Tessie at a member of your group. He also has a laser as a standard attack.
As soon as you finally down this big bad, the final Ashes of the Damned cutscene plays out and your work is done… for now.
Ashes of the Damned quest rewards
The quest rewards for completing the full Ashes of the Damned easter egg are the Oorah! Operator skin for Dempsey, 10,000 XP, and a map-themed Calling Card.
Just like in BO6, there are two versions of the Calling Card, the normal version and an exclusive version for players who complete the quest before Directed Mode is added.
With this step-by-step guide to the Ashes of the Damned main quest, you’re ready to head into the distorted Janus Towers Plaza and fire up Ol’ Tessie. Take a look at our guide to the best BO7 weapons to ensure you’re kitted out as best you can be, and pack some of our favorite BO7 Gobblegums into your loadout.
