Buried — Black Ops 2 Zombies Easter Egg Guide

In this guide: full main-quest walkthrough, recommended loadout, interactive solvers, side Easter eggs & songs, boss strategy · Medium, ~35–60 min.

Open the interactive guide →
SALOON SWEETS
Black Ops 2 · 2012

Buried

An underground Old West town. The Victis crew's finale — power a pylon for Maxis (Gallows) or Richtofen (Guillotine). Free the giant, Leroy, to help you dig.

Released 2 Jul 2013 Mined GamesPick a sideFull needs 4
MediumEst. time35–60 minPlayers3 for Maxis · 4 for Richtofen (co-op required)Updated7 Sep 2026
Documented here9 walkthrough steps · 8 side Easter eggs (incl. 1 song, 1 free perk) · 1 interactive solver · 3 weapon builds · 10 named areas · 2 sources cross-checkedCounted from this page, not estimated. We publish what is documented rather than a percentage of what might exist — nobody can honestly claim to know the full list.

Quick answers

How do you complete the Buried Easter egg?

It is rated Medium and takes about 35–60 min. The run breaks down like this:
  1. Shared — free Leroy, power on, build Turbine + Resonator/Paralyzer
  2. Build the Gallows (Maxis) or Guillotine (Richtofen)
  3. Break/charge the 4 orbs
  4. Fill the lantern with souls, place on the Gunsmith roof
  5. Crack the sign code, punch the signs → Spire/Wisp appears
  6. Time Bomb + guide the light to the structure
  7. Sharpshooter — wish at the fountain, hit all 4 targets → done
Each stage is written out in full — with the exact locations, the order things must be done in and what to do when a step refuses to trigger — in the walkthrough below.

How long does the Buried Easter egg take?

About 35–60 min for a run that already knows the steps, and we rate it Medium. A first attempt takes considerably longer — almost all of the time goes on setup rather than the finale, so knowing the order in advance is what shortens a run.

Can you do the Buried Easter egg solo?

Players: 3 for Maxis · 4 for Richtofen (co-op required). This one genuinely cannot be finished alone — at least one step needs two players in different places at the same time.

Is there a song Easter egg on Buried?

Yes — “Always Running”. Malukah. Hold interact on the 3 teddy bears: by the hay near Quick Revive on the mines / Processing route, inside a Candy Store barrel, and in the Mansion Double Tap room. Once per match. Full trigger steps for it are in the side Easter eggs section.

What are the main areas on Buried?

10 are documented: Mine shaft / Spawn, General Store, Saloon, Candy Store, Gunsmith, Courthouse / Jail, Church, Stables / Barn, Mansion & hedge Maze and Bank & vault. Knowing the names matters more than it sounds — most guides, including this one, describe locations by area name rather than by direction.

How many side Easter eggs are on Buried?

8 are documented here — song, side quest, free perk, mechanic, buildable and free weapon. Each one has its own steps rather than a one-line mention, so they can be followed mid-game.

Are there solvers for the Buried puzzles?

Yes. Buried has randomised puzzles whose answer changes every match, so there is nothing to look up — this guide ships 1 interactive solver that take what your own game is showing you and return the answer for that run. They are embedded at the step that needs them and listed together in the solvers section.

When was Buried released?

2 Jul 2013.

Key areas

Mine shaft / Spawn

Underground drop-in by Quick Revive and the mine entrance (teddy #1 by the hay); tunnels ring the town above.

General Store

Arthur's hub — the giant is released here; buildable parts and desk.

Saloon

Dartboard (Ballistic Knife bullseye → ghost piano perk EE) and the piano.

Candy Store

Candy for Arthur; teddy #2 in a candy barrel; speakers buildable part.

Gunsmith

Weapons shop; rooftop matters for Mined Games lantern steps. Only one guide lists this — worth checking in game.

Courthouse / Jail

EE-tracker machine showing TranZit/Die Rise/Buried completions per player; jail cell across.

Church

Building with a quest battery behind it. Only one guide lists this — worth checking in game.

Stables / Barn

Animal buildings on the town edge; quest antenna spots. Only one guide lists this — worth checking in game.

Mansion & hedge Maze

Haunted mansion — the ghost lady steals 2,000 points per hit — with Double Tap and teddy #3; hedge maze behind with the secret bookcase route.

Bank & vault

Point bank with deposit/withdraw across games; vault interior is a PaP access piece.

Steps at a glance

  1. Shared — free Leroy, power on, build Turbine + Resonator/Paralyzer
  2. Build the Gallows (Maxis) or Guillotine (Richtofen)
  3. Break/charge the 4 orbs
  4. Fill the lantern with souls, place on the Gunsmith roof
  5. Crack the sign code, punch the signs → Spire/Wisp appears
  6. Time Bomb + guide the light to the structure
  7. Sharpshooter — wish at the fountain, hit all 4 targets → done
Careful with parts: two build-parts are shared between the Gallows and Guillotine — build them onto the right structure or you'll lock the wrong side. The Maxis ending is the confirmed canon in the official timeline. Original difficulty.

Before you start

What to have in hand before step 1 — from the loadout notes, from the walkthrough itself, and from the map's own quest documentation where the gate is never stated in a step.

Gates on this quest
  • Mined Games only runs on Original difficulty. On anything else the Easter egg items do not spawn at all.
  • Steps 1–5 are soloable. Richtofen's step 6 needs four players; Maxis' finale can be done with three.
  • Your Victis side locks per profile across TranZit, Die Rise and Buried: finish one side and it stays locked until the other is done, or until Buried's ending resets all three maps. To switch sides you have to be in the lobby from the start of the game.

Set aside 35–60 min · 3 for Maxis · 4 for Richtofen (co-op required)

Where your run will differ

Gathered here so you meet them before they cost you a run rather than after — quoted word for word from the guide below, or researched from the map's own quest documentation.

Solo or co-op

What changes with your player count. The rest of the guide is the same either way.

  • Richtofen's finale hard-requires four players; Maxis' finale can be finished with three.

Full walkthrough

0% complete

The quest in the order this guide runs it — tap any step to jump to it, and it fills in as you tick steps off.

1
Old West town

Setup — free Leroy

+

Drop from spawn into the town. Free Leroy/Arthur the giant (key by the jail; give him Booze from the Saloon) so he can smash debris. Turn on power (Candy Store upstairs). Build the Turbine + Subsurface Resonator (Maxis) or grab the Paralyzer (Richtofen).

2
Courthouse / Saloon

Build the structure

+

Maxis: build the Gallows (Hangman's Noose) by the Courthouse. Richtofen: build the Guillotine between the Saloon and Gunsmith. Each needs 4 parts.

3
Around the map

The 4 orbs

+

There are four crystal orbs. Maxis: break them with the Subsurface Resonator (Turbine-powered). Richtofen: charge them with the Paralyzer first.

4
Chapel · Gunsmith roof

The lantern

+

Cook a grenade and knock the floating lantern down, then fill it by side: Richtofen — hold the lantern and kill ~10 Ghosts in the Haunted Mansion; Maxis — kills by Arthur, traps or a Nuke power-up with the lantern-holder nearby. Reach the Gunsmith roof by firing the Paralyzer at your feet to lift up, then place the lantern there — a symbol code appears behind it.

If you go down while holding the lantern you must re-collect it where you fell. On the Maxis side, let Maxis finish his dialogue before picking the lantern up — grabbing it early triggers a known progression bug.

5
Mine signs

Crack the code & punch signs

+

Decode the symbols (tic-tac-toe cipher) to find which 3 mine signs to punch with Galvaknuckles, in order. The third punch spawns the light orb — the Spire (Maxis) or Wisp (Richtofen, needs Vulture-Aid to see).

All five possible sign names begin with a different first symbol, so decoding just the first character of each cipher is enough to identify the sign.

Helper: Pigpen Decoder

Pigpen Cipher Decoder

Ashes rocket launch / Yuri's Lab / Buried mine signs

These all use the classic pigpen (tic-tac-toe) alphabet. Click the symbols you see in-game, left to right — the word builds below, and for the Ashes rocket-launch console the six-number code (each letter's alphabet position, A=00) builds alongside it. For Buried's mine signs you just need the word.

What this is based onBuilt from the sources listed on this page · 2 sources cross-checked · guide last reviewed 7 Sep 2026.Not matching your game? It answers from the inputs you give it — re-check those against your screen, then see the walkthrough step.
6
Town → structure

Escort the light

+

Follow the wisp through town (touch each appearance within ~15s — Richtofen needs Vulture-Aid to see it), killing the glowing zombies at each stop to feed it, until it reaches your guillotine or gallows and the announcer confirms the charge.

Maxis double-escort: on the Maxis side, place a Time Bomb before meleeing the final mine sign, escort the wisp to the Gallows once, then detonate the Time Bomb to reset the wisp and escort it to the Gallows a second time to finish the charge. Optimisation: if Consumption Cross is one of your three signs, melee it LAST for the easiest route (only ~2 zombies in the upper Barn + 3 by the Saloon) — you can even force that by meleeing Consumption Cross first, then your three signs, then it again.

M
Mansion switchboard

Maxis — the bells

+

One player works the switchboard in the Mansion secret room (behind the movable bookcase); the lit bulb names a building — Candy Store, Barn or Courthouse — and one of its three bells. Teammates at those buildings ring the called bell before it times out (a wrong or late bell resets it). Repeat the pattern until Maxis confirms the gallows is charged.

R
Guillotine · hedge maze

Richtofen — Round Infinity & maze

+

Plant a Time Bomb at the charged guillotine and all four detonate together to enter Round Infinity — you get 60 seconds (zombies can't be permanently killed). Search the Victis-lookalike corpses around town for the small switch (13 known spots). The switch cannot be attached during Round Infinity — hold it and let the timer rewind you first, then attach it to the guillotine. Do not go down after finding the switch: it can glitch into the ground and force a full game restart. A failed search just needs another Time Bomb to retry. Finally, one player at each of the four coloured maze levers flips them together. Sparks only show after all four are flipped: a sparking lever means its position in the order is correct — lock those in and change only the non-sparking ones (reset by leaving and re-entering the maze) until all four spark. The maze layout also varies per game.

7
Town fountain

Sharpshooter (finale)

+

Make a wish at the town fountain (break its barrier with Arthur first). 84 cowboy targets then flash into view across four zones — one shooter each, with reloaded automatics, must destroy every target in their zone before its sequence expires. All four cleared → Mined Games + all seven perks permanently.

  • Haunted Mansion — 23 (watch from the left fence by the Church)
  • Saloon — 19 (2nd floor by the broken balcony)
  • Candy Store / Courthouse — 20 (between them by the big rock)
  • Original Mystery Box / Sheriff area — 22 (General Store roof / high town)

Side Easter Eggs & extras

Everything beyond the main quest. Tap any entry to open the full how-and-where breakdown.

Song

“Always Running”

+

Malukah. Hold interact on the 3 teddy bears: by the hay near Quick Revive on the mines / Processing route, inside a Candy Store barrel, and in the Mansion Double Tap room. Once per match.

  1. Hold Use on 3 teddy bears, in any order
  2. Next to a hay bale by Quick Revive
  3. In a barrel in the candy shop
  4. In the mansion, in the room with Double Tap
  5. 'Always Running' by Kevin Sherwood plays
Side quest

Leroy's favours

+

Feed the giant Candy (from the sweet shop) and he'll do jobs — build chalk weapons, clear crowds, guard spots; give him Booze and he smashes through barricades you'd otherwise pay for.

  1. Free Leroy: key by the jail cell, then buy him Booze from the Saloon to smash the first debris
  2. Feed him Candy (sweet shop) and he performs a task where you lead him — crawl spaces, crowd control, chalk help
  3. Booze = smashes the barricade you point him at, saving door money
  4. Keep him happy — an angered Leroy attacks until calmed with Candy
Free perk

Ghost mansion drops

+

The Ghost Ladies drain points on touch, but killing them pays out — and downing enough in a round drops a free perk bottle. The mansion run is also the route to the Time Bomb and Paralyzer synergies.

  1. Entering the haunted mansion swaps zombies for fast ghost-women who spawn endlessly while anyone is inside
  2. Each ghost touch steals ~2,000 points — avoid getting hit
  3. They're easy to kill but keep respawning until every player leaves (out the far side) or dies
  4. Feed the Giant NPC Candy to make him kill zombies, help build, fetch a buildable, or lock/re-spin the box
  5. Feed him Booze instead to smash certain barricades open
Mechanic

Bank & locker

+

The bank vault and weapon locker return — shared with TranZit and Die Rise, so you can bankroll a Buried run from earlier games.

  1. Buried shares TranZit's persistent bank and weapon locker
  2. Deposit/withdraw points that carry across games; hit the keys to drop Bonus Points for a teammate
  3. The Weapon Locker stores one non-wonder, non-starting weapon that carries into later games until retrieved
Buildable

Four buildables

+

Every part is in the General Store — build the Turbine, Trample Steam, Subsurface Resonator (the Maxis orb weapon; needs a nearby Turbine) and Head Chopper on any of the four town workbenches. Drop the parts by a bench and give Arthur Candy to have him assemble one for you.

Free weapon

Paralyzer & chalk weapons

+

The Paralyzer (Mystery Box) is the wonder weapon — regenerating ammo, and firing it at the ground lifts you to rooftops (it also heats the Richtofen orbs). Place the Gunsmith chalk outlines on the ‘?’ walls to set the map's wall weapons (AN-94, PDW-57, SVU-AS, AK-74u, Galvaknuckles).

Mechanic

Pack-a-Punch (Mansion route)

+

Break the Mansion gate (Arthur + Booze), clear the point-stealing Ghosts, cross the randomised hedge maze and take the Gazebo stairs down to Pack-a-Punch; destroy both fountains for a permanent teleport shortcut back to town.

Side quest

NAV table & Victis endgame

+

Build the surface NAV table (Processing / Barn parts) and insert the cross-map card. With Tower of Babble, High Maintenance and Mined Games all done on the same side and all three NAV tables linked, the Courthouse endgame panel completes the Victis Super Easter Egg.

Interactive solvers

Every solver for Buried, in the order you meet them. Each also appears inside its step in the walkthrough above — use whichever is handier. Browse every Zombies solver →

Pigpen Cipher Decoder

Ashes rocket launch / Yuri's Lab / Buried mine signs

These all use the classic pigpen (tic-tac-toe) alphabet. Click the symbols you see in-game, left to right — the word builds below, and for the Ashes rocket-launch console the six-number code (each letter's alphabet position, A=00) builds alongside it. For Buried's mine signs you just need the word.

What this is based onBuilt from the sources listed on this page · 2 sources cross-checked · guide last reviewed 7 Sep 2026.Not matching your game? It answers from the inputs you give it — re-check those against your screen, then see the walkthrough step.

When it isn't working

The stalls that actually cost people runs on this map, and what to do about each.

TroubleshootingEach of these is quoted from the step it belongs to, derived from a gate the guide already states, or researched from the map's own quest documentation — nothing here is guesswork about what might be going wrong.

Copied an answer from another guide and it did not work?

Some of this map is randomised per match — the answer you were given was correct for somebody else's game and cannot be correct for yours. Read the value your own game is showing you, then use the solver on this page: Pigpen Cipher Decoder.

Wisp disappeared and Vulture Aid shows nothing

The wisp expires if not passed through within 15 seconds and only players WITH Vulture Aid can see or move it; on expiry you must hit the tunnel signs again. The three signs to hit are named by the tic-tac-toe cipher over the gunsmith symbol — only the first letter of each 17-character sign needs decoding.

Time bomb used, no switch found — quest dead?

Not dead: you need another Time Bomb. Box-cycling works (force the Monkey Bomb out first) or a Max Ammo restores the used Time Bomb; the switch spawns on one of the crew bodies at 13 possible spots and 'sometimes only two or three spawn'.

We can't do the final step with our player count

Richtofen's step 6 (Time-bomb round ∞ switch hunt) 'MUST' have four players; Maxis' path final step works 'with at least 3 players'. Steps 1–5 (Richtofen) / 1–6 (Maxis) are soloable. On Easy difficulty no EE items spawn at all.

Guillotine/gallows parts missing

Both builds share parts — placing parts commits your side for the game ('some parts can be used for both the gallows and the guillotine'). If a part isn't at its bench, the other side's build may have consumed it.

Ghost lady drained all my points

Each hit steals 2000 points; go in with minimal points, or clear her for the every-5-rounds free perk (mansion windows lit = available).

Common Buried questions

Direct answers to the specific things players look up mid-game — part locations, puzzle steps and more.

How do I free Leroy?

The key is by the jail. Take it, then give him Booze from the Saloon and he smashes through barricades you would otherwise pay to open. Feed him Candy from the sweet shop instead and he does jobs — building chalk weapons, clearing crowds, or assembling a buildable for you if you drop the parts by a bench.

Where is the power switch on Buried?

Upstairs in the Candy Store.

How do I get to Pack-a-Punch on Buried?

Through the Mansion. Break the gate with Arthur after giving him Booze, clear the point-stealing Ghosts, cross the randomised hedge maze and take the Gazebo stairs down. Destroy both fountains while you are there for a permanent teleport shortcut back into town.

What is the ghost lady doing to my points?

Draining them, 2,000 a hit. Killing them pays out though, and downing enough in a single round drops a free perk bottle — so the Mansion is a risk worth taking rather than just a tax on your bank.

Which build parts can I waste?

Two parts are shared between the Gallows and the Guillotine. Build them onto the wrong structure and you lock yourself out of the side you wanted, so decide Maxis or Richtofen before you assemble anything at all.

What does the Paralyzer do?

It is the Mystery Box wonder weapon, and its ammo regenerates, so it never really runs dry. Firing it at the ground lifts you onto rooftops — which is how you get up to the Gunsmith roof with the lantern — and it is what heats the orbs on the Richtofen route.

How do I decode the mine signs?

The symbols are a tic-tac-toe (pigpen) cipher, and you do not need to decode all of it: all five possible sign names begin with a different first symbol, so working out just the first character of each one identifies the sign. There is a pigpen decoder on this site.

Why did my wisp disappear?

You have roughly fifteen seconds to touch it at each appearance, and on the Richtofen side you cannot see it at all without Vulture Aid. Kill the glowing zombies at each stop to feed it and keep up — it does not wait for you.

What is the machine in the Courthouse?

An Easter egg tracker. It shows which of TranZit, Die Rise and Buried each player has completed and on which side, which is the quickest way to work out whether your group can actually finish the Victis chain.

What happens in the Sharpshooter finale?

Make a wish at the town fountain, once Arthur has broken its barrier. 84 cowboy targets flash up across four zones, one shooter to a zone, and every target has to be destroyed before its sequence expires — so reload before you start. Clearing all four ends the quest and gives all seven perks permanently.

Visual guides & sources

Screenshots and exact part locations live in these — open one on a second screen.

CoD Wiki — Mined Games
Both paths, detailed
GameRant — Buried (Maxis)
Clean step-by-step

Map discussion

A shared community board for Buried — posts are public, saved on the server and visible to everyone across devices. Handy for strategies, spawn variations you've noticed, or steps to double-check. Please keep it civil and on-topic.

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Part of the Zombies Easter Egg Codex — step-by-step Call of Duty Zombies Easter egg guides for every map. Open Buried in the interactive codex for the solvers and map discussion.