Compared to Ashes of the Damned, completing the Astra Malorum main quest easter egg is a walk in the park with an annoying robot in it in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Zombies. There are fewer annoying steps to bug you for hours, if you know how to solve each puzzle, though.
Astra Malorum Main Easter Egg Guide And Steps
By following the steps below, you’ll reach the Astra Malorum boss fight in under an hour, but first, you need to build the wonder weapon. This is the full and separate guide for the gun, which is also easy to obtain with no complex steps or puzzles. Got the LGM-1? Let’s proceed with the quest.
Step 1: O.S.C.A.R. Planets Puzzle
You can not eliminate O.S.C.A.R. forever on this map. What you can do, however, is solve the puzzle of what he plays when you’re tracking him. There’s a recording from Dr. Thurston that plays if you sneak behind the big robot, and he mentions 3 planets that are different every game. Note the planets, and find their number with this cheat sheet:
- Mercury = 1
- Venus = 2
- Earth = 3
- Mars = 4
- Jupiter = 5
- Saturn = 6
- Uranus = 7
- Neptune = 8
These are the order of the planets in our solar system based on their distance from the Sun, and once you’ve got the code, you need to enter it on the machine that’s in the Pack-A-Punch room.
Doing so will drop a platform where you can climb on and obtain a key from a corpse. This key will open our way to Dr. Thurston’s brain; no jokes.
We’re about to detach the doctor’s brain, and for that, we need a saw that can be found in the museum in one of the display cases. Break the glass, and press the interact button to grab it.
Now head to the Machina Astralis, where Dr. Thurston’s body is held inside a tube. Interact with the head to unlock and hold the interact button to detach the brain from his head. Yikes.
Step 2: Dr. Thurston’s Brain Challenge
Now you need to make this brain function so that we know what to do next in the Astra Malorum main easter egg quest. Bring it to The Luminarium, and place the brain inside the purple case that’s on the left side of the door. This is also the place where you find one of the Mr Peeks headsets for the map’s easter egg music, in case you want to check that too.
Make sure you’re fully prepared for what comes next, as there will be a bunch of zombies invading the process, and if you’re on a bad luck streak, O.S.C.A.R. will send his regards as well. Aether Shroud and Monkey Bombs are king in this step, and it should be done in no time.
Now there’s a similar-looking case right in the middle of the Machina Astralis. Place the brain there, and you wouldn’t have to carry that thing any longer. Hold the interact button in front of the machine to fix and activate it.
Step 3: Doctor’s Favorite Books
Now, for the next step, head to the Pack-A-Punch room and use the giant telescope to look at the not-so-empty space. I assume you’ve found the Sun already if you’ve got the LGM-1 wonder weapon, but now you need to look for Mars. Place the cursor right on Mars and note the 4-digit code in the bottom left corner.
Head back to the Machina Astralis, and enter the code on the machine that’s right at the entry on the left side of the Mystery Box spawn location. If done correctly, you can now interact with the screen left of Thurston’s brain case, and it’ll reveal a number of books. For me, it was:
- Echoes of Andromeda
- The Black Veil
- Witchlight Codex
- The Unknowable Void
The books will be different each game, and you need to note them all down for the next part. Head to the room that’s on the right side of the brain, and find 3 statues as you see here:
There are 3 spots beside each statue to search for the books. Interacting with each of these spots will show you the name of a book that may or may not be in your list. Now, if only one of the three books found beside a statue matches one from your list, then that statue’s code will be 1. If there are two, the code is 2, and if all three books are in your list – which is rare – then that statue’s code will be 3.
The code indicates the number of times you need to interact with that particular statue to turn it. This can only be done right at the beginning of a round, so make sure you’ve got your Aether Shroud ready, change the round, and tilt the statues.
There are no certain orders to this, and as long as you turn the statues the right amount of times, this part of the Astra Malorum main easter egg quest should be solved. If done correctly, a small room will open up the ladder that’s in this room, and you can grab a Neptune planet from it.
Step 4: Fixing The Solar System
The next thing you want to do is find 3 notes with compass coordinates on them. You’ll find the first one in the same room as the statues on the table. Note the direction words and the planet on it.
You’ll find the second note upstairs behind the machine you entered the code on earlier. And the third and final code is in the trap room in The Luminarium on a small table. Remember that planets and directions will change every game, so it shouldn’t be the same as mine here.
So I’ve got:
- SW – Neptune
- SE – Mars
- NE – Saturn
And now what we need to do is head to the Machina Astralis and place the Neptune planet you’ve got from upstairs. The Solar System is now complete, and you need to shoot the planets you got so that they stand in the right direction.
You can use the game’s compass in the HUD or the one under the Solar System to find directions. For example, I need to shoot Neptune to match the Southwest, Mars to the Southeast, and Saturn to the Northeast. If done correctly, you’re ready for one of the harder steps of the Astra Malorum main easter egg in Black Ops 7 Zombies.
Step 5: Astra Malorum Shangri-La Easter Egg
With your Pack-A-Punched weapons and best Gobblegums at hand, interact with the machine on the right side of Thurston’s brain case, and a lockdown begins. Remember, you should not fight any zombies or O.S.C.A.R. in this 2-minute-long lockdown. All you need to do is run in circles to evade the attacks and look out for the small red drones attacking the portal. Shoot them down!
If you prevent the drones from interfering with the process, the portal will be whole, killing everyone in range and sucking players in. Welcome to Mars! Shangri-La easter egg theme from Black Ops 1 is played, and all the theories about Tag Der Toten and the map set on Mars are now true. W.
Here, you need to pick the brain case again and place it upstairs. Now hold one last zombie, and hold the interact button with the brain until you hear an audio queue. You’ve got a small time window to reach the left side window downstairs and straight to shoot 4 pylons in the exact order you see above.
Once all pylons have glowed blue, turn back and shoot the one behind you on the top side. This will trigger a small flying object to fly over the area. Do not shoot! You need to somehow snatch this thing by holding the interact button and jumping toward it as it comes a bit closer to the ground.
If you fail, the thing flies away, and you need to redo the process in the next round. I wasted more than 5 rounds on this one, and I hope there’s a fix to how players can reach something that’s flying 4 meters above the ground.
Step 6: One Puzzle Away From The Boss
Place the flying object you’ve obtained on the pillar to the right side of the Mars area. With LGM-1 at hand, now you need to shoot 5 antennas to activate 5 pillars and make them interactable.
This is yet another puzzle, and you need to actually head back to the Pack-A-Punch machine and note the symbols displayed on the right side of the machine that’s right in front of it. The symbols don’t change every round, so take your time and write them down.
There’s a total of 4 symbols and 1 static sign. Go back to Mars, and you’ll find similar symbols on the pillars. In the right order, you need to interact with the pillars. Remember that the static sign is the symbol that you don’t have on the list, so, for example, if it’s #3 on your list, you need to interact with the pillar that has a different symbol from all you’ve noted on the 3rd spot.
Once you do the step correctly, you can interact with the brain case and start the boss fight with the second Shadowsmith. Good luck out there in the Dark Aether.
