The Tomb — Black Ops 6 Zombies Easter Egg Guide

Stay in spawn for the first few rounds building points — the Rampage Inducer speeds rounds up without changing points per kill. The first vermin round lands around 5 or 6; push through it, then start opening up.

Follow the objective markers and buy doors until you reach the Subterranean Temple and the Door to Nowhere. Hold interact on the table marker in the temple to place the amulet from Citadelle des Morts, opening a red gateway into the Dark Aether Nexus where Pack-a-Punch sits.

Watch for this: placing the amulet also spawns burning purple crystals at around fifteen locations across the map — by Quick Revive, Speed Cola, Stamin-Up and elsewhere. Those crystals drive the staff steps below, so start noticing where they are now.

Loadout: an AR or LMG with a drum mag — you want a big magazine for artifact damage in the boss fight, and explosives are weak there. Aether Shroud is the field upgrade both creators run; in co-op take the Group Shroud augment plus Extra Charge. Solo, Dead Wire with Big Game so it affects Elites.

The staff quest cannot start before round 8. On round 8 the first shock mimic spawns, guaranteed. Kill it and it drops the Monocle on the floor — pick it up.

Shortcut worth knowing: a Wonderbar! gum spins the Mystery Box for a guaranteed Wonder Weapon, which can hand you the Ice Staff outright and skip the entire build. MrRoflWaffles puts it at roughly a 50/50 chance of being the staff on this map; MrDalekJD simply calls it not guaranteed. Repeated box spins can also get lucky.

Two mural puzzles, one behind the first door off spawn on the right (Neolithic Catacombs, by Deadshot Daiquiri and the crafting table — the Hunter) and one on the left (the Tombs — the Bull). Both need the Door to Nowhere open and the Nexus visited.

Move the light source. Destroy the burning purple crystal in the zone with a bullet weapon; roughly 45 seconds later it respawns at another of the spots in that area. Repeat until it lands directly beside the Hunter or in front of the Bull. If ten or so tries get you nowhere, start destroying crystals slightly further afield too.

Confirmation cue: with the light in the right place, glowing symbols illuminate the mural wall — left of the crafting table on the Hunter side.

Shoot the symbols in numerical order. Each is a Roman-numeral variant. The Hunter mural has ten symbols, the Bull has eight. The on-wall arrangement is randomised every game, but the numeral-to-symbol mapping is fixed and identical on both murals — the Hunter simply runs two numbers higher.

Fail state is forgiving: a wrong symbol does not end the attempt — you resume from the last correct numeral. If fewer symbols than expected display, that is a known visual bug: shoot any symbol to reset and redraw them.

Mini-lockdown. A purple wisp then moves through three or four spots in the area, one wave each — purple-wisped zombies, parasites, Doppelghasts, vermin, and shock mimics on the Bull side. A Max Armor drops mid-sequence. When the orb returns to the numeral wall, clear the final wave.

Confirmation cue: screen flash and a Max Ammo, and the mural yields its part — the headpiece on the Hunter side, the staff piece on the Bull side.

Take all three parts into the Dark Aether Nexus and interact with the broken wall machine directly in the middle to start the build. Then defend it for about 60 seconds.

The rule that matters: only enemies trailing purple smoke attack the staff and drain its health — everything else is coming for you. Train the normal zombies in front of the machine, prioritise parasites, and keep checking behind you for anything smoking purple.

Fail state: too much damage to the staff fails the step. Advance one round and retry.

Confirmation cue: the horde wipes out — pick up the Staff of Ice.

Shoot three of the burning crystals with the Ice Staff so they freeze rather than explode, all within roughly ten seconds.

Set it up first — do not just run at it. Shoot a crystal with a bullet weapon to destroy it and it respawns about 45 seconds later somewhere else. Use that to line up three spots you can either sprint between or hit down a single sight-line.

Speed help: PhD Flopper’s Tribologist augment or Stamin-Up’s Hot Foot. In co-op, two Ice Staffs can exist in one game — split the crystals between two staff-holders.

Confirmation cue: a voice quote from the board character. Do not move on until you hear it. This one takes several attempts for most people; failing just means re-freezing.

The other guide: MrDalekJD reports needing the three in three separate map sections, finishing with the Subterranean Temple. MrRoflWaffles imposes no such rule, so try any three first.

In the Nexus, look up. Three floating rocks near you — not the distant skybox ones — carry purple glowing symbols and give a hit-marker and blue tint when shot with the staff. Spawns vary, so walk the whole area looking up, and check both sides of each rock since symbols can face away.

Shoot all three with the Ice Staff in any order; each shot lowers its rock toward you. Note the three symbols before you leave.

Confirmation cue: a quote after the third rock, and one of the four exit portals seals. Portal colours map to locations — blue is spawn, red near Quick Revive, yellow near Stamin-Up, green near Speed Cola.

Leave through a still-open portal and go to the map-side door of the sealed one. It shows eight symbols: shoot the three matching your rocks with the Ice Staff, in any order. The portal reopens whether you were right or wrong.

Fail state: the teleporter puts you on a high platform — if your symbols were wrong, it drops you out of the sky. That fall is the fail message. Retry next round at a different, newly sealed door.

If you were right, the platform holds a purple orb — hold interact to start the escort. It descends and circuits the Nexus, spawning zombies, mimics and Doppelghasts, behaving like a mobile soul box: kills near it feed souls in and keep it moving.

Stay glued to it. Straying any real distance fails the step instantly. The whole escort is about a minute and a half.

Co-op rule: all team members must enter the Dark Aether together and all must escort the orb, or it fails.

Fail state: the orb flies off into the sky. Next round, shoot three symbols on a new sealed door and restart the escort.

Kill the Amalgam that spawns near the Pack-a-Punch stretch — taking it down powers the orb on. MrDalekJD skips it, but do not count on high soul income carrying you.

Confirmation cue: the orb flies into the broken-wall staff machine. Hold interact there with the staff to upgrade it.

Needs confirming: the upgraded staff’s name is garbled across both transcripts — Ull’s Arrow or Ull’s Fury.

All four run the same loop. In the Nexus, flip the staff to its alt-fire end (left on the d-pad — the staff spins 180° to a green tip). Shoot the matching statue podium’s crystal so it glows, hold interact to take the dark energy, carry it out to the matching map statue, complete the lockdown, take the energy again and return it to the same podium — via any portal except the one you came out of.

Carry rule: the energy has its own health bar and zombie hits drain it. Destroy it and you re-grab from the podium and redo the whole run.

The other guide: MrDalekJD reports only one teleporter being active for each return trip, which is stricter than the rule above.

Confirmation cue: with all four done, four purple beams fire from the crystal above toward the boss door.

• Vermin — blue portal to the spawn room. A huge vermin flood; charged Ice Staff shots freeze whole groups and trivialise it
• Parasite — yellow portal to the Shrine of the Hierophants. Certain parasites glow purple; kill them, collect the purple orbs they drop and carry them to the central statue before the timer
• Doppelghast — green portal to the Ossuary. Masses of Doppelghasts while the floor throws spikes and lasers; a charged staff blast at the ground shreds the pack
• Amalgam — red portal, down through the Subterranean Temple to Deep Excavation by Quick Revive. The Elite raises a bubble shield tethered to a nearby armoured zombie; kill the tethered heavy to break it, then resume damage

Prep — this is the point of no return: all perks (Perkaholic ideal), tier-3 Pack-a-Punch at max rarity, tier-3 armour, and an AR or LMG with a drum mag for artifact damage. A Mutant Injection is a genuine run-saver in the late phases. Shields Up, Idle Eyes and Kazimirs are strong; skip explosive spam. Solo, bring the upgraded Ice Staff for wave-clear.

At the very back of the Nexus, hold interact on the pedestal to extend the bridge. Interacting with the Sentinel Artifact starts a team vote.

The structure: there is no physical boss. The Artifact multiplies and cycles orange laser phases (survive) and ghostly purple damage phases (shoot it). Health drops about 10% per phase, and a Max Ammo spawns centrally after each one — grab it immediately, then kill zombies to recharge Aether Shroud before the next window.

Laser phases: beams sweep the lower floor then the upper and back, stunning and heavily damaging — later they one-shot. Dodge by floor-swapping: stay high when the beam is low, low when it is high. Solo, MrDalekJD found underground much safer from about four artifacts onward.

Damage phases: when the artifacts turn transparent purple-blue, pop Aether Shroud and focus all fire into one artifact — ping it in co-op. Broken ones float back to the middle and turn red, meaning immune.

Carrier phases — waves build 1, 2, 3 then 4 artifacts, and from about phase 5 instead of appearing centrally, an artifact is carried by a special enemy — an armoured heavy, then a supercharged red Doppelghast, then an electrified Mimic, then a supercharged Amalgam. Clear the Elite escorts first, kill the carrier, then pour everything into the dropped artifact immediately — if the cycle ends first it returns to the middle and the phase repeats with fresh spawns. Do this while the central artifacts are in their orange phase.

The red Doppelghast carrier one-hits you even at full health and armour without Jugger-Nog. Keep maximum distance and keep a full LMG mag reloaded and ready for the drop.

Final phase — the one that can end your run: all artifacts align in a semicircle in the centre and one moves slowly away. Dump absolutely everything into it. If it is not destroyed before the timer ends, the whole team wipes and the Easter egg ends.

Finish: interact with the Sentinel Artifact in the middle to place the amulet — ending cutscene, quest complete.

The other guide: MrDalekJD counts the artifacts 1→2→4 with a single heavy phase, and reports the Mimic-phase artifact splitting into two when shot down.