Rex Infernus — Black Ops 7 Zombies Easter Egg Guide

⏱ Before you leave spawn — the five-minute checklist. Each of these costs you a return trip if you skip it:

• Play the piano: 8-6-7-5-6-5-3-5-4 — in notes, A·F·G·E·F·E·C·E·D. Two Intel and 300 essence, and it works before you answer the phone.
• Bounce on the bed — the Squish document.
• Solve the four-cube wall early (Veytharion, below). It opens the Well/Portal and the Mystery Perk machine — and it is the prerequisite for rain, which the Veytharion temple item needs. Death Perception + Hidden Gems highlights the cubes through walls.
• Slot Shatter Blast and Shadow Rift before the match — the temple chain needs both. PhD Flopper helps with the Fracture of Nyxara, or just carry Semtex/C4 instead.
• Shoot the basketball out of the roof rafters — from inside the house before you leave, or from the Forge afterwards (both work).
• The moment Pack-a-Punch opens, start the grapple-upgrade symbols. They appear one per round flip and you need four, so get them running while you craft the Wonder Weapon rather than after.
• ⏱ Know the two round gates — they set your whole route. The Forest only opens from ROUND 8, and the exfil the grapple upgrade needs only comes on rounds 11, 16, 21…. The optimised route from the team that finished the quest first is to get all four temple setup puzzles done before round 8 — the Nyxara beam and vine, the cube wall, the Dravakar riddle and the Caltheris plates. None of those need the Wonder Weapon, so they are pure dead time later if you leave them.

You start inside Her House — Samantha's house from Revelations, rocketed onto the map in the intro — and the front door is sealed. Hold out, clear rounds and bank Essence.

Do the house Easter eggs before you leave. The door seals behind you and getting back in needs the exfil trick in step 11. While you are in here: play the piano code 8-6-7-5-6-5-3-5-4 for two Intel and 300 essence, bounce on the bed for a third, and HOLD INTERACT on the painting LEFT of the telephone to SLIDE it aside — behind it is the map's first Power-Up Statue (Max Ammo), not a one-off pickup. It slides, it does not break: meleeing it does something else entirely (see the repeatable painting Easter egg below). The gramophone is here too, and the basketball that starts the grapple upgrade is in the broken window — you shoot that one from the Nexus Forge side in step 11.

A phone rings on the lower floor. Answer it: the Twins from Paradox Junction are on the line. Confirmed in-game since launch: the Twins are the two timeline versions of Samantha Maxis — spelled out in dialogue between Grey and Caltheris — which is why this is her house. The call ends, the front door opens, and the portal at the cliff edge takes you to the Nexus Forge.

• Piano code played (2 Intel)
• Bed bounced (1 Intel)
• Max Ammo painting
• Phone answered
• Portal taken to the Nexus Forge

At the Forge, place the World Seed on the central pedestal. The Warden speaks, and a red Dread Skull — one of the Twins, in their other form — flies off to one of the temples. Both skulls are Samantha Maxis, split across two timelines.

Which temples the skulls visit is randomised each game. Do not follow a guide that names them; follow the skull.

1. Chase the first Dread Skull. Clear the debris on its route, follow it inside and shoot it down.
2. In that temple's main chamber, interact with the brazier holding the Usurped Flame. You catch fire and carry it — run it back and light one of the two Nexus Forge braziers.
3. A second Dread Skull flies to a different temple. Destroy it, take its Usurped Flame, and light the second brazier.
4. Rotate the two crank wheels beside the platform. It lowers to reveal Pack-a-Punch — on this map a pool of ether energy, not a machine.

Carrying a flame is a committed run — you cannot bank it and you are lit up while holding it. Clear the route back before you pick one up, and finish the first flame before starting the second skull.

• World Seed placed
• Dread Skull 1 down, flame in a brazier
• Dread Skull 2 down, flame in the second brazier
• Both crank wheels turned — Pack-a-Punch open

Once Pack-a-Punch opens, green lanterns — small pillars with a glowing green orb — light up around the Nexus Forge. Interact with one to take the Void Claw.

The Void Claw is a temporary tactical, not the Wonder Weapon. Each pickup lasts roughly 30–60 seconds and then it is gone — but the lanterns are re-usable indefinitely, so grab a fresh one whenever you need it. Plan grapple sequences around a single charge rather than expecting to keep it. Reports differ on the exact timer (30s vs 60s), so treat it as "about a minute at best".

You need it constantly from here: traversal across the gaps, grappling purple orbs, grappling dig piles, and repositioning the wall crystals in step 6.

• Void Claw taken from a green lantern

Steps 4 to 10 all build one thing — the Warden's Blight. Three parts from the Forest, a crystal, a beam puzzle and a riddle, then the anvil. It is the longest single stretch of the quest, so it helps to know you are inside one job rather than six unrelated ones.

Buy PhD Flopper first — this step does not work without it.

Go to the Dravakar Entrance and get onto the platform above the inside of the entrance — wall-jump or grapple up. From up there, PhD-dive into the right-side wall (the structure hanging from the central wall). The wall opens, and inside is the Fracture of Nyxara. No PhD? Use an explosive lethal. A Semtex, C4 or similar thrown at that breakable wall opens it just as well as the dive — both routes are confirmed, and we verified the lethal one ourselves in-game — a crystal with clock-hand pointers.

• PhD Flopper bought
• Fracture of Nyxara collected

Learn this once — you will make purple fire many times. The generator and the temples ask for it over and over, and it is always the same recipe: grab a Void Claw or Talon → grapple a purple orb (Spatial Rift) into Pack-a-Punch so it orbits → crank the Nexus → the orb splits into the two cauldrons by PaP → interact with a cauldron to carry the flame. It is one-use and on a carry timer, so repeat the orb delivery every time a later step calls for it.

Find a purple orb (a Spatial Rift) floating around the Nexus Forge and grapple it into the Pack-a-Punch so that it orbits.

Then interact with the wheels either side of Pack-a-Punch to "Surge the Nexus". The orb is thrown up into the two cauldrons at the top of the stairs. Interact with a cauldron to pick up the Astral Flame — the purple fire.

One report has the interact glitching in solo play. If the prompt does not appear, back off and re-approach, or try again the following round.

• Orb grappled into Pack-a-Punch
• Nexus surged
• Astral Flame carried

Move quickly — carry the Astral Flame to Nyxara Sanctuary and shoot the eye statue across the gap with it. A purple orb/laser starts bouncing around the room.

Using the Void Claw, reposition the wall crystals to route the bounce through toward Nyxara Main Chamber. You will reach a point where a crystal mount is empty — wall-jump or grapple up to it and install the Fracture of Nyxara.

Keep adjusting the crystals until the orb strikes the marked door to Nyxara's Inner Sanctum, which opens it.

Grab a fresh Void Claw before you start. The routing takes more than one charge if you are learning it.

• Eye statue hit with the Astral Flame
• Fracture installed in the empty mount
• Inner Sanctum door opened

⏱ The Forest cannot be entered before ROUND 8, however early you finish the vine. Start the vine early anyway — it is one of the four setup puzzles worth clearing before round 8 — then come back and go in.

Inside the Inner Sanctum, stand at the central vines until the progression bar fills. It drains your health the whole time, so arrive healthy and be ready to break off.

Then wait a round, come back, interact with the vines and eat the fruit — you teleport to the Forest, the Astral Plane.

The Forest is re-enterable roughly once a round, so you do not have to do everything in there on the first visit.

• Vine bar filled
• Waited a round
• Ate the fruit — arrived in the Forest

Three charred bodies in the Forest hold the Wonder Weapon parts:

• Against a rock in the middle of the area — a short animation plays, then you get the part.
• At the broken house (the cabin) — melee the FLOOR just to the LEFT of the body to release the part. We confirmed this one in-game: the floorboard interaction is on the body's left, which is the detail most write-ups leave out.
• Opposite the spawn side, near the cavern entrance — the dead Warden figure.

Only the third trigger is still open: one account describes it as meleeing a smoky wisp near the cabin rather than the body by the cavern. Check both if one does not give you a part.

Lore worth the detour: Samantha's music box is in here and plays the Paradox Junction piano theme, along with a Paradox Junction toy box. Neither has a known quest use.

• Part 1 — body against the rock
• Part 2 — cabin floorboard
• Part 3 — near the cavern entrance

The riddle is randomised every match. There is no answer to copy — so we built you a solver: set each symbol to the direction your riddle gives it and it returns the shortest lever sequence. Open the Dravakar Pillar Riddle Solver

Hear your riddle: melee the blue writing on the wall in Dravakar Sanctuary — the rotating-pillar room, not the Entrance. A quote plays naming four symbols — Moon, Star, Galaxy and Runner (the comet, sometimes called the traveler).

The levers. Three levers rotate the pillars and the central-pillar lever confirms:

• Middle lever — in the blue-writing room, on the wall opposite the writing.
• Left lever — left side of the pillar room, near the stairs.
• Right lever — right side of the pillar room, inside a wall.

How they move. Each lever rotates a fixed pair of pillars in opposite directions — e.g. the left lever turns Galaxy clockwise and Runner counter-clockwise; the right turns Moon counter-clockwise and Star clockwise. Pillar layout is Galaxy top-left, Moon top-right, Runner bottom-left, Star bottom-right.

Worked examples from the community pool — read for the pattern, then match your own riddle:

• "I drift to the runner that travels moons, who borrow from galaxies when stars stay true." → Left ×3, Middle ×2, Right ×1
• "I remember the runner that travels to stars, while moons and galaxies stay true." → Middle ×2, Right ×3
• "I drift to stars that remember moons, who borrow the runner that travels galaxies." → Left ×1, Middle ×2, Right ×2
• "I remember galaxies that drift to moons, who borrow the runner that travels the stars." → Left ×2, Right ×2

Confirm with the central lever — the pillar lowers and reveals an opening.

Why we now trust this enough to automate. We held off building a solver for two days while two competing lever models were circulating. The community's open-source interactive map settled the mechanics, and we validated the model against every pooled riddle that publishes its target directions — all three reproduce exactly. The solver runs that same model. The worked examples below are the raw data it was checked against, so you can verify it yourself.

• Riddle heard
• Pillars aligned
• Central lever confirmed — opening revealed

Grapple into Dravakar's Inner Sanctum through the secret passage the pillars opened, and interact with the anvil to craft the WARDEN'S BLIGHT — the map's Wonder Weapon. Dual crossbows firing green venom bolt volleys.

Pack-a-Punch it to unlock the alt-fire.

The anvil also UNCRAFTS — this is the best economy trick on the map. Once the Warden's Blight is built, hold interact at the anvil with any weapon equipped and it consumes that weapon, handing back its upgrades as items: a Legendary Pack-a-Punch III gun returns a PaP-3 crystal and a Legendary rarity wrench, which you can then apply to a different weapon. It is an upgrade transfer, not a refund into thin air. This is what the earlier “sacrifice altar” reports were describing. Community-reported, confirmation pending — and obviously, do not feed it anything you want to keep.

Possible exploit, flagged because it may not last: players think combining uncrafting with Mule Kick's multipack could duplicate Pack-a-Punch tiers in Cursed mode. Unconfirmed, and the sort of thing that gets patched.

Naming, one more time: this is the Wonder Weapon. The Void Claw is the temporary grapple tactical from step 3. Bloodthorn is the skin for finishing the quest, and Golden Claw is the store blueprint.

• Warden's Blight crafted at the anvil
• Pack-a-Punched for the alt-fire

Start the first two sub-steps as soon as Pack-a-Punch is open — do not wait until the Wonder Weapon is finished. The four blue symbols need four round flips to appear, so get them cooking while you craft the Wonder Weapon. Only the bathroom shot later in this chain needs the Warden's Blight built and Pack-a-Punched. The payoff is the Void Talon — the upgraded grapple, which lasts significantly longer than the Void Claw's ~30–60 seconds and is required for the Forge and temple work that follows.

1. Shoot the basketball out. It sits at the TOP of the broken window, up in the roof rafters.

   Safest play: do it from INSIDE the house, through the broken window, before you leave through the portal. That is what the written guide recommends, and it removes any doubt.

   Missed it? You have not lost the run. We confirmed first-hand that it can also be shot from outside after you teleport out — stand at the Nexus Forge, look back at Her House and keep shooting until it falls out of the map. Guides that say this must happen before you leave are wrong; the outside shot is your recovery route. You also do not need to wait for Pack-a-Punch.

2. Then wait for the symbols. The four blue symbols do not start spawning until Pack-a-Punch is open — they begin appearing the round after it unlocks, then land on Her House one per round flip — four in total. Note the first, then flip the round three more times. Memorise the order they appear in, and do NOT shoot them yet. (First-hand: shooting the ball early loses you nothing, because the symbols are gated on PaP, not on the ball.)
3. On an Exfil round — those are rounds 11, 16, 21 and so on — shoot the symbols in spawn order, oldest first.

   ⚠ Get the order wrong and you lose four rounds. A fail tone plays and all four symbols are wiped, so you wait for them to respawn one per round all over again. Screenshot them as they appear. Get it right and the Twins dance in the window — that is your confirmation.

4. Answer the Exfil telephone at the Nexus Forge — it will not end your game — then kill the Exfil HVT.

   Pack-a-Punch the Warden's Blight NOW, before you take the portal. The next step needs a charged shot and you do not want to discover that on the other side.

   Take the portal to Her House; the Twins drop the “Raw Aether Crystal”.
5. From the upstairs bedroom corner, fire a charged Warden's Blight shot into the bathroom barricade window — towards the end of the shot the “Eye of the Forge” lifts out of the barrier. Pick it up.

   ⚠ Picking it up starts a LOCKDOWN. Ravagers and Doppelghasts spawn — stay in the house and survive until the phone rings, then answer it and the portal returns you to the map. Do not grab the Eye with no ammo left.

6. At the Forge, place the Eye of the Forge at any ONE green-orb station to empower it → that station now dispenses the VOID TALON, the upgraded grapple with a far longer duration, which you need for everything that follows.

   Choose that station carefully — only the one you pick is upgraded. Every other lantern on the map still hands out the basic Void Claw. Pick something central that you will actually be passing.

This is also your second chance at the house Intel — if you left spawn without the piano code or the bed intel, get them while you are inside.

• Basketball shot out of the map (do this early)
• Four symbols observed across four round flips — order noted
• Warden's Blight built and Pack-a-Punched
• Symbols shot in order, Exfil HVT killed, exfil taken
• Raw Aether Crystal from the Twins
• Eye of the Forge collected — lockdown cleared
• One green-orb station empowered — Void Talon collected

You need the Void Talon for this. Do the grapple upgrade first — the Void Claw's ~30–60 second timer will not carry you through it.

D0 · Reveal the Portal — the four-cube wall

⚠ This is a required main-quest stage, not a side Easter egg — it is how you make it RAIN, and the temple chain needs rain five or more times. Do it before the temples.

We documented this wall and its four symbols first — Chris found them in-game on launch night, hours ahead of every public source, when every other guide still had it as decoration.

1. Collect the four stone cubes hidden around Veytharion — Fire, Water, Air (the “hand”) and Earth (the “plant”/leaf). Same four blocks every game, spots vary; Death Perception outlines them. Reference spots: Water under the Sanctuary green lantern · Fire by the GobbleGum machine (wall-jump) · Plant in the Mule Kick room past the wall-buy (wall-jump) · Hand on the Mule Kick room's bottom floor by the spawn window.

   Set them down near the wall device but not so close they get sucked in before you are ready to load in order.

2. Load the device — the order varies per game, so read your own marked slots. The four valid loads are Water·Earth·Air·Fire · Earth·Water·Air·Fire · Fire·Air·Water·Earth · Fire·Air·Earth·Water. All four blocks shine YELLOW when loaded correctly. Get it wrong and you collect the blocks again next round.
3. The transfer mini-game. Move all four blocks to the far side by placing them in the rectangles and sending them across with the wheel/dial — melee it once the Air block sits on the middle bridge.

   The rule, so you can recover from any state: Fire must never be left alone with Water or Earth. Air is safe with everything — it is your ferry.

   The working sequence is fixed and identical every game: Fire + Air across → leave Fire, ferry Air back → bring Water over → stack Air on Fire, Water on Air → ferry Fire + Air back for the Plant → Plant onto Water → final pass, Air onto Plant and Fire on top. Use the step-by-step sequencer below if you lose your place.

4. The wall opens on a random Perk and the pool/portal. Interact with the portal — an audio quote plays. This is what activates the Rain Pool: from now on, one interact with the pool guarantees rain the next round.

   Generator refusing to charge later? Come back and interact with this portal again. It is the known fix and the single most common stall on the quest.

D1–D5 · Reconstruct the generator

1. Break every seal — 15 plates. With the Void Talon: 3 around the top of the Nexus Forge, one each on the inner, middle and outer ring; then 12 in the Nexus Core — six on each side of the room, two on each door. The Talon's duration covers the lot in one or two grabs.

   This count is ours, first-hand — and the canonical guide matches it exactly. If you are one short it is almost always a high one near the ceiling. When the last plate drops, a wave of spiders attacks — clear it.

2. Burn the webs on the three openings on each side. A cauldron flame works and Molotovs are confirmed; Wonder Weapon shots and explosives also work, and the most stubborn web yields to a thrown purple fire.
3. Surge the Nexus — deliver another orb into Pack-a-Punch and crank.
4. Engage the gears — the window is very short. Straight after cranking, run down and interact with the floor lever a few times until the gears fully engage. Miss it and you must wait out the crank cooldown and go again. You know it worked when all three sections of the Forge are spinning.
5. Aim the monolith beam. Crank the handle on the back of a pillar: that pillar moves the SMALLEST amount, the other two move MORE — and all three move in the SAME direction. They usually start one space apart, with the laggards catching up to whichever you crank.

   The direction switch is the handle UNDERNEATH Pack-a-Punch: oriented left-to-right → the pillars travel anticlockwise; up-to-down → clockwise. Interact to flip it. Most people who cannot make the alignment work are fighting the wrong rotation.

   How to play it: crank a pillar so a mover catches up and pairs with it. If the third is still behind, flip the direction downstairs and crank so the pair catches the third.

   Aligned but pointing at nothing? Interact inner → middle → outer, one crank each, and the whole aligned set shifts one spot. Repeat until it faces a temple — this is also the fast way to hop temple to temple later.

   ⚠ Aligned on a temple but no beam? That Shadowsmith's corruption item is not in their brazier yet. Place it and the beam fires.

• Four cubes collected and loaded — all shining yellow
• Transfer solved; wall open; PORTAL INTERACTED with
• 15 plates removed (3 rings + 12 in the Core); spider wave cleared
• Webs burned, both sides
• Nexus surged, gears engaged — all three sections spinning
• Three pillars aligned on your first temple

Every temple uses the same ten-step chain. Only four things change per temple — the item, the plate trigger, the beam target and a couple of quirks. Learn the chain once, then read the four variables.

Order: any works, but do Veytharion last — its item needs rain. Bring: decoys, Aether Shroud, or Wisp Tea's Zombie Sitter augment, which holds the last zombie docile while you stand on plates. Hit the Rain Pool every round during this phase — you will want rain repeatedly.

THE CHAIN — for each temple in turn:

1. ALIGN the three monolith pillars on this temple (previous step). Re-do it every time; the beam must stay on the temple you are working.
2. GET THE ITEM — per-temple, below.
3. Place the item in the temple's CAULDRON, the fire pit in its main chamber.
4. Throw purple fire into the cauldron. The item burns and a mist rises and attaches to a nearby zombie, marking it. If that zombie dies the mist transfers to the next closest, so you cannot easily lose it.
5. Lead the marked zombie to the RIGHT Titan, bring it to the middle and activate the trap — it walks to the correct wrist by itself.

   The rune map, confirmed — this is not guesswork:

   • Veytharion and Nyxara runes → the Titan outside VEYTHARION. Veytharion uses the inner/left arm nearest the entrance; Nyxara the outer/right arm.
   • Caltheris and Dravakar runes → the Titan outside CALTHERIS. Caltheris uses the inner/left arm by its entrance; Dravakar the outer/right arm.
   The trap switches off and a quote confirms it. One shackle per temple, four across the two Titans.

6. THE PLATE. Interact with it first to hear the quote — Dravakar gives two — then release it with that temple's trigger below. All four triggers are cumulative: you can step off, deal with zombies, and resume.
7. Charged Warden's Blight shot at the revealed MIRROR. It rises and a light beams through it. Steer it by shooting the mirror: hit the OUTSIDE for large movements, the CENTRE for fine adjustment.
8. Test the alignment before you spend kills on it. Kill one zombie so a soul enters the beam:
   • Orange/gold cracks forming on the wall = aligned. Keep killing to fill the soulbox until the wall opens on a statue face.
   • No cracks = adjust and retry.
   • ⚠ A PURPLE RUNE lights up on the wall instead? Your Titan step was not completed for this temple. Go back and do it, then realign. This is the wall most stuck players hit, and nothing else on screen tells you.
9. Shoot the statue → LOCKDOWN. You are locked in until you find and shoot four shadow souls — they show on the minimap and are audible, and they are weak to the Light Mend ammo mod. Then shoot the statue again until the screen flashes white.
10. THE FINISH — needs a rain round, so hit the pool the round before. Grapple a purple orb to the temple's orb spot, then launch it up into the giant head with a charged shot (the eyes or mouths glow; if it misses, the orb was not in line). Then during the rain, grapple onto the little island facing the head and throw purple fire at the head's exact target. Lightning strikes the temple. Cleansed.

Count your lightning strikes. Four strikes is what unlocks the boss — not four broken shackles.

THE FOUR PER-TEMPLE VARIABLES:

• DRAVAKAR

  • Item — the Blacksmith's Hammer. Slot Shatter Blast, go up to the Wonder Weapon forge room: a shield in each of the four corners. Proc Shatter Blast on zombies beside each one — behind them is an ammo mod, a self-revive or the Hammer, and which is random.
  • Plate — stand on it and RE-PLATE YOUR ARMOUR about five times. That is the actual mechanic. Every earlier method that seemed to work — frag kills on the tile, taking zombie damage, charged shots at your own feet — worked only because it forced you to re-plate. Just re-plate directly.
  • Beam target — the back-right wall near the plate. Souls — one in the ceiling (genuinely hard to spot), one on the second floor above the entrance door, one up the parkour spot. Orb — under the temple entrance. Flame — just above his eye, from the little island in front.

• NYXARA

  • Item — the Ancient Scroll. Slot Shadow Rift, go to the Forest and train the biggest horde you can, then spray Shadow Rift into it — the more zombies it procs across the better your odds, and the scroll drops as they fall. Big hordes beat picking off singles.
  • Plate — PRONE for a net 30 seconds, cumulative. Zombies bothering you? Spam charged Wonder Weapon shots at the ground while you lie there.
  • Beam target — downwards to the bottom-left, threading the needle through the gap. The trickiest angle of the four — use centre-of-mirror taps and lean on the crack test. Souls — spread wide, including underground. Orb — onto the platform under her head. Flame — the small purple glow between her eyes, from that platform.

• CALTHERIS

  • Item — the Thread. Grapple purple orbs and interact until it drops — pure RNG, one orb or five. Speed it up by clearing the four-plate sharpshooter trial (plate 1 = wall in front · plate 2 = four more marked spots · plate 3 = behind you including the ceiling · plate 4 = the wall to your right; too slow and you sink through, resuming from the same plate next round). It opens a room of extra orbs, and interacting with the lantern in there spawns more.
  • Plate — stand on it AIMING DOWN SIGHTS at the Mystery Box for a net 30 seconds. You can shoot, and you can step off and return.
  • Beam target — the back left of the room. Souls — one up high, one hidden by the multiphasic injector. Orb — in front of the Caltheris entrance. Flame — the boil/purple mark on her head, from the platform facing her.

• VEYTHARION — do this one last

  • Item — the WOVEN SASH. It only spawns while it is RAINING, and it MOVES EVERY ROUND. A spot that was empty last round may hold it this one, so sweep all three every rain round and keep the pool rolling. A metallic sound at the round change hints it has spawned nearby; it shows as a small blue circle. All three spots are OFF the map — that is intended. Grapple out and hold or spam interact as you fall; you die-warp back but keep it.
    • Spira Insula — the Juggernog island. Grapple up and spam interact as you fall.
    • Between Caltheris and Dravakar — behind the Mystery Box location and PhD Flopper, around the back of that wall at its base.
    • Aranea Insula — by Widow's Wine, behind the box location on the wall.
  • Plate — JUMP on the boss-face stone about 30 times, in the very centre, cumulative. In co-op, everyone jumping together helps if it is being fussy.
  • Beam target — behind the zombie barrier down the left hall (the left window, bottom). Titan — the trap right outside its entrance, inner arm closest to the door. Orb — directly under the entrance; his mouths glow. Flame — the shining light above the middle mouth, from the little island. Its lockdown can add an Abomination.

• Dravakar cleansed — lightning strike 1
• Nyxara cleansed — lightning strike 2
• Caltheris cleansed — lightning strike 3
• Veytharion cleansed — lightning strike 4
• Four lightning strikes counted — the boss is unlocked

⚠ THE GATE: the entry circles only appear once all four temples are fully cleansed — meaning four LIGHTNING STRIKES, not four broken shackles. If the circles are not there, one temple's chain is unfinished. Count your strikes. A round flip, or re-interacting with the cube portal, clears stuck states.

Prep before you drop in:

• ~50,000 essence banked. Ammo runs out fast.
• As many perks as you can hold — and run the Ted trials through your game. With every perk owned, the boss's Veytharion blessings become persistent perks. That is the reason to bother.
• A bullet weapon at PaP-3, gold or legendary rarity. The meta pick is the SoCal LMG build in the loadout section — it one-phases the tail. Mammoth, Novaline or the backlash Echo-12 otherwise.
• The Warden's Blight at PaP-2 minimum, PaP-3 ideally. Never at 1.
• Wearables: the Space Helmet (+30s grapples) and the Goat Mask (stationary fire ring) both pull real weight in the arena.
• GobbleGums: Perkaholic, Raindrops, Power Keg and a revive gum. No-money-spent: Shields Up, Power Keg, Cashback.
• Kazimirs as lethals; Light Mend somewhere in the team (it heals, and it melts shadow souls); field upgrade Aether Shroud extended, or Frenzied Guard for armour economy.

⚠ THE RED-EYE TRICK — do this before you descend. Grapple the Eye of the Forge back OUT of the station you installed it in and carry it down with you. You can install it into the boss arena's grapple stations and run the upgraded Void Talon for the entire fight. In a fight decided by mobility, this is the single best piece of preparation available.

The way in: head under Pack-a-Punch into the Nexus Core. There is a circle per player on the floor. Stand on them and hold interact → a vote starts → DESCEND, into The Final Encounter.

• Four lightning strikes confirmed
• ~50,000 essence, perks maxed, Ted trials run
• PaP-3 bullet weapon; Warden's Blight at PaP-2 or better
• Space Helmet and Goat Mask equipped if you have them
• Eye of the Forge carried down for the arena grapples
• Stood on the circles, held interact, voted to descend

✅ Fully documented and cross-checked across the three guides that cover the fight — MrRoflWaffles, MrDalekJD and MZC. Beaten legitimately by MrDalekJD and CodeNamePizza's team on 21 August after a 26-hour marathon, and by MrRoflWaffles' team on Day 3.

What you are fighting: a spider/scorpion hybrid form of the Warden — extremely aggressive and fast. His hits knock you back and can throw you off the map. Four damage phases — and the fourth begins after you think he is already dead.

Every phase runs the same three beats. Only the interference changes. Learn the loop once, then read what each phase adds — the same way the four temples worked.

YOUR TWO WEAPONS HAVE DIFFERENT JOBS. Getting this backwards is the most common reason a first attempt stalls:

• The Warden's Blight — skulls and stingers. Its shots home in on the skulls, so fire in their direction and they track. It also clears stingers fast and does solid non-crit damage to the Warden himself.
• Your bullet weapon — the tail, and only the tail. Low-recoil, high DPS, PaP-3 at gold or legendary. This is where the fight is actually won.

THE CORE LOOP:

1. He summons a Dread Skull companion — grey-blue, orbiting him. Destroy it with the Warden's Blight. The backlash Echo-12 two-shots them, which is worth a Mule Kick slot.
2. He is stunned for about five seconds. Kazimir down at his feet as the stun lands — that is the window.
3. His scorpion tail is exposed as the crit spot — swap to the bullet weapon and dump everything into it. The SoCal LMG build in the loadout section one-phases him inside a single stun window.

⚠ THE ARMOUR RULE — the single thing that decides how long this fight takes. Between damage phases the Warden retreats to his throne to drain aether and goes immune, and shadow souls spawn out at the edges of the arena. Shoot the souls to bring him back — and if you leave them alive, he returns with hardened armour. The souls are not an optional side job; they are his armour. Light Mend melts them and heals you at the same time. If skulls seem to stop spawning, it is because there are souls you have not cleared.

Movement. Stay permanently mobile, orbiting the arena. Two fountains, one on either side, refresh your grapple — live on them, especially solo, where he hard-focuses you. If you carried the Eye of the Forge down, install it into an arena station and run the upgraded Void Talon for the whole fight. Do not be standing in zombies when he knocks you back — that combination is how most deaths actually happen.

His main attack is the CHARGE — grapple away from it. If it connects he follows with a swipe that makes you BLEED, and the bleed blocks your health regeneration. Plate up and disengage until it wears off.

WHAT EACH PHASE ADDS:

1. Phase 1 — the loop, clean. Skull → stun → tail, with nothing else in the way. As the phase ends a Max Ammo and a Max Armor drop, often alongside Veytharion's blessing.
2. Phase 2 — three new problems at once. Four shadow souls to clear. Stingers: plant-like shooters that rise out of the ground, fire at you and constantly knock you off the map — individually weak, but they respawn. And a portal attack, a projectile that travels toward you from the sky — shoot it down every time it appears.
3. Phase 3 — the prison, at roughly two-thirds health. You are teleported into a closed room; in co-op every player gets their own. You draw one of two trials: kill an elite zombie (reward: +movement speed for 60s), or survive the elemental zombies for 30 seconds — Frost Zombies and Onis, which appear nowhere else on the map — (reward: +health for 60s). Back in the arena: four more shadow souls and more blessings. Two guides described this step differently and both were right — they simply drew different trials.
4. The final phase — he gets back up. Phase three ends, the Warden goes down, and he is not dead. He returns enraged, with more Max Ammos and Max Armours and all four blessings on the floor. Souls → skull → tail a handful more times and he is finished for good.

⚠ THE STINGER WIPE — and it is cancellable. If enough stingers are alive at once they connect to each other and charge a wipe that clears the arena. Switch the whole team onto destroying stingers and the wipe aborts. Do not run — kill them. (If one does fire, jumping off the map as it lands still skips the blast. Emergency only.)

⚠ Armour economy. With no plates he can ONE-SHOT you below 250HP. Stop, kill a horde with your ammo mods, then run through the pile of corpses to hoover the plates. Frenzied Guard earns its slot here.

THE SHADOWSMITH BLESSINGS — pickups through the fight. The lore is that the Shadowsmiths are repaying you for the earlier maps' Easter eggs:

• Veytharion — two free random perks. With every perk already owned they become persistent perks, which is the whole reason for the Ted-trials prep.
• Caltheris — a free Full Power (field-upgrade regeneration, 60s).
• Dravakar — a free Max Armor: full health and armour replenished, 60s.
• Nyxara — invulnerability to the Warden's slam, 60s.

Pre-nerf difficulty. Around 30 downs for one of the completion teams. If you beat it now, you did it at its hardest.

⚠ ENDING SPOILER — skip this line if you want the cutscene cold. After the Warden falls the crew departs, on a “the cycle continues” note. Community reception of the ending has been mixed.

Rewards for finishing: the Bloodthorn skin for the Warden's Blight, a Calling Card and 10,000 XP — plus, if you finish before Directed Mode is added, a unique Calling Card variant that can never be earned afterwards. All 14 Intel adds another Calling Card and 10,000 XP, and the Mastery Challenge pays an animated card.

• Eye of the Forge installed in an arena grapple station
• Loop running: skull (Blight) → 5-second stun → tail (bullet weapon)
• Souls cleared between every phase — or he re-armours
• Plates kept up; never below 250HP unarmoured
• Charge grappled away from; bleed waited out before re-engaging
• Phase 2: stingers kept down, portal attack shot out of the sky
• Stinger wipe cancelled by switching everyone onto stingers
• Prison trial completed
• Final phase — he gets back up; finish him