Kowakujō — Black Ops 7 Zombies Easter Egg Guide

Open both sides of the map and capture the two ward banners — interact, then defend the circle — on the right by the kitchens and on the left in the training area. That removes the gate glyphs on the central courtyard door, letting you into the Tenshu entrance and on to the war room.

A special oni spawns there. Kill it, take the shogun hanko and slot it into the golden circle door. Upstairs, kill the purple-aura marked zombies to fill the World Seed with souls, and Pack-a-Punch appears.

Grab the toxins note now — it is the most-missed item on the map. It sits on the bottom shelf of the wall at the bottom of the Pack-a-Punch stairs. You cannot complete the murder deduction without it, and people routinely reach the final step and have to go hunting.

Two other early grabs: the first ceramic shard drops by the PaP stairs when the oni dies, collectable any time after. And in the stables lava, when the lava periodically cools and hardens, a small statue is stuck in it — cook a Molotov onto it and the twin brothers statue pops out nearby.

Loadout: an accurate ranged weapon for the dragon, and spawn with Molotovs and decoys — both are used in the quest. You will need PhD Flopper and Death Perception during the run.

Quick win: Four intel pieces need nothing but a detour on the way to power: Two Brothers under the Outer Ward spawn bridge, Subverting Control in the right-hand corner of the Training Area building (enter facing east), Paydirt behind the rock by the lava right of the Flower Garden exfil phone, and What About the Cat on the lantern table through the doors left of Mule Kick at the Tenshu Entrance. Three more open with Pack-a-Punch: the PssPssPss barrel right of Double Tap in the Kitchens, the Hair Raising shelf — enter the open wall-buy wall behind you at Pack-a-Punch and melee the shelf on your right — and the Extra Crispy pizza on the Collapsed Study roof (mantle over from the Onsen Baths facing the big tree).

Quick win: Nine hidden statues, not five — see the Hidden power-ups section. The Nuke is right here in the Training Area lava opposite Melee Macchiato and the Max Ammo is in the out-of-bounds room; C4 both and you have a mid-quest panic button.

Quick win: Free perks from the Neko Café: collect the five toy mice (Gatehouse, Flower Garden, Kitchens, Stables, Training Area and Tenshu Entrance are the reported spots), then scare off the five cats one at a time — a new one appears every two to four rounds — and look up at the cats on the Tea Garden hut roof. Two random perks appear on a table (one guide counts a third, an instant Mystery Perk) plus the Neko Café calling card. It also unlocks the catnip the Valkyrie Helmet relic needs.

Cursed only — The Druid Stone needs one player to reach round 20 with zero zombie damage; the Mannequin Turret needs no lost Assault Wave flag before round 60. Decide before round 1 which of the two you are playing for.

Three parts, three possible spawns each, then craft at the bench next to the Vulture Aid machine.

You will need two of these — one for the paw-print circle and one for the coin-purse step — so remember you can rebuy at the bench with salvage after using the first.

• Bell — on a wooden beam left of the spawn door in the staging area, hanging on the submerged house front door in the stables, or pinned right of the Warden wall-buy in the training area
• Cat figurine — on the box in the gatehouse, on the barrel opposite Double Tap in the kitchens, or on a barrel-table on the far side of the kitchens
• Figure of a man — in the storage rooms: on the ground opposite PhD Flopper, on the hallway table, or in the workshop beside the barrel

Buy PhD Flopper and slide-bounce at the hanging cage in the Tenshu entrance to drop it, then pick it up and throw it into a deep, actively molten lava pool — the training area or the far side by Wisp Tea. Flip the round.

Paw prints. At four or five gateway spots, kill a couple of zombies in the doorway until prints appear — the player holding the cat grenade should be the one doing it. The gateways are stables to training, stables to staging, flower garden to staging, flower garden to kitchens, and kitchens to central courtyard.

Following the trail: kill zombies about five metres in front of the direction the prints face and the next set spawns. Repeat until the prints form a circle. Roughly five kills with nothing appearing means try a different gateway.

Throw a cat grenade into the exact middle of the circle — and only while that lava is still molten, not cooled. It can bounce, so aim carefully. The cat leaps out and an abomination spawns; kill it and the cat runs off into the wall. Flip the round.

The sleeping cat. Buy Death Perception to highlight the creaky floorboards, then check the spots — two in the kitchens, one in a training-area corner.

Crouch-walk only. Sprinting, shooting or using a field upgrade anywhere near it scares the cat and costs you the round. Weave between the glowing floorboards, then interact to scoop it up.

Carry it to the World Seed on Pack-a-Punch. It floats in, corrupts, and the seed pulses red — after five pulses, melee the seed repeatedly between pulses, since the pulses knock you back. The seal breaks and the cat flies out as the Nekomancer.

Quick win: After Pack-a-Punch, the paper-fish flagpole on the Tenshu Rooftops sells the Ninja Kite for 500 essence — gliding once banks the Ninja Kite artifact, and you need the kite for the fox mask anyway.

Eleven lanterns, timed. Shoot them all with the Nekomancer in quick succession: spawn, then the one visible through the right door toward the Flower Garden, the mid-map pair left then right, the stables middle, the training-area one out in the lava (genuinely hard to see), the tea garden, mid-map, up through the Tenshu entrance, the central courtyard by the middle tree, and the kitchens.

Confirmation cue: a sound and a character line about the lights being on.

Interact with the ghostly samurai body in the war room for a cutscene. Then take the rooftop kite and hold both sticks right to swing over the rooftop, mashing interact mid-flight to grab the fox mask.

The mask wall in the storage rooms by PhD: place the mask, then play Simon-says three times — sequences of three, then four, then five masks flash, and you kill the matching masked zombies in that exact order.

Do this at end of round so you are not fighting the spawn rate. A wrong kill gives black smoke and a retry next round.

Success gives a glowing blue mask and a cutscene, after which the mask flies and must be shot down at three perches, each dropping evidence. It then flies into the World Seed. Deposit all three at the meditation room evidence wall for painting 1.

Keep returning to that wall throughout the run — later evidence sets are gated behind earlier paintings.

Quick win: Two audio logs appear here: Takeo's Resolve behind the ghost in the War Room after the lanterns, and Mitsuhime's Reverence just left of the masks once the glowing mask is placed. Grabbing the fox mask mid-glide is also the Kitsune Mask artifact.

• Workshop shelf — Kiyoshi's pipe
• Collapsed study above the beam, back corner near WunderFizz — Takeo's case
• Onsen baths window left of Elemental Pop — Mitsumasa's comb. Shoot the top-left of the window; it is near-invisible

One mystery-box platform has a small wooden tag on its side. You need the box to actually be there — spin it away manually, use a Fire Sale gum, or use Mr Peeks with the Peek’s Favour minor augment to summon the box wherever you cast it.

Then throw a cat grenade on top of the box and spin it. A blue floating coin purse appears — grab it, then interact with the ghostly coin pouch next to the Rampage Inducer in spawn for a cutscene.

Box platforms: spawn, flower garden, kitchens, the big tree mid-map, tea garden centre, stables, the right side of the Onsen baths, opposite PhD, and the roof.

Quick win: Takeshi's Dread drops in front of the Rampage Inducer after the coin-purse cutscene.

The Gardener. Find a bucket — Onsen baths rooftop, the cat café in the tea garden, the gatehouse corner behind Speed Cola, or the stables left of Death Perception — and fill it at the tea-garden puddle or the Onsen pool by standing in the water. Sprinting, jumping or taking a hit spills it, so walk. Water the three weeds on the Flower Garden paths. The Gardener spawns immune: destroy the glowing orange flower pots to open damage windows. Drops gardening shears.

The Merchant. In the kitchens, melee the fruit basket to drop a plum, then jump on one piece three times for the plum pit — that is poison evidence, pocket it. Separately, melee the shelf by the arsenal machine for a second fruit and leave it alone, clearing the area entirely for a round or ninety seconds. Come back and a zombie will be kneeling eating it — lead it to the staging-area window and kill it there, and the Merchant climbs out. He has high health but eats the tomatoes on the ground while vulnerable. Drops the mercantile abacus.

Keep those two kitchen interactions separate — the basket gives the jump-fruit for the plum pit, the arsenal shelf gives the bait. The basket only yields once per round.

The Nobleman. Craft decoys and throw one at each of the three boarded windows above the training-area gatehouse in quick succession. The windows open and the Nobleman hurls blue grenades down. Cook and throw grenades back at whichever window he is currently in — he moves fast, so wait for him to pause. Each clean hit does around 28,000 damage and three should finish him. Drops the noble’s hat.

Deposit shears, abacus and hat for painting 2.

Take the flower from the crack in the floor right of the workbench in the Flower Garden — a fixed spawn, but hard to see — and place it in the flower pot left of the Xville booth at the Tenshu entrance.

Then knock down the empty ash pouch with a charged Nekomancer shot at the rafters above the training-area gate pillar.

Volcanic ash means deliberately hurting yourself. Wait for a fissure — a red map icon — and stand in the choking ash letting your health drain to roughly 150 with Jugger-Nog, or about 55 without, until “volcanic ash” lands in your inventory. Lap the fissure if it is slow. Add it to the pot.

The cherry-blossom buff. Melee a live glowing cherry tree — dead trees never glow, so try another: mid-map, kitchens, by Melee Macchiato, or up in Tenshu — and stand under it until you are overhealed and glowing, with a green health bar and a ringing sound.

The last bit is fiddly: run circles around the flower pot until your buff drops a flower-power speed pickup near it. Circles that are too tight will not trigger it, and there is roughly a 30-second cooldown after any drop. The pot glows pink and you collect the monkshood flower.

Needs painting 2 placed first. In the storage rooms, solve the 3×3 scroll grid: hitting a scroll toggles it and its orthogonal neighbours — a lights-out puzzle — and you need every scroll flush.

Use a solver. Enter the in-and-out state and follow the click order; the perspective in that room makes it very easy to misread which scrolls are actually out. Success pops out the pestle and a death-records note.

In the kitchens, put the pestle in the pot for green gas, then put Brain Rot on a weapon and kill Brain-Rot zombies beside it until the soul box completes. Interact with the ghostly pestle for a cutscene, and the pufferfish appears in the window at the back of the room.

Deposit the plum pit, monkshood and pufferfish for painting 3.

Quick win: After the pestle and pufferfish cutscene, Takeo's Devotion is in a basket opposite the Mystery Box spawn in the Kitchens.

You need two ceramic shards: the first from the oni area by the PaP stairs, and the second pulled off painting 3 itself — hold interact in the middle of the painting.

Repair the sake bowl at the tea-garden table, flip the round, and it glows blue. Interact for a ghost cutscene and pick it up. Then place it at three locations, defending each from blue-eyed zombies.

Failing a defence destroys the bowl and you recraft it next round.

The third one is different: at the cat café there is no defence — a hellhound steals the cup and loops the map, centre to the kitchens side and back through the middle. Run the opposite way round to intercept it rather than chasing.

Deposit the horse, brush and whisk for painting 4.

Quick win: Takeshi's Perception is left of the Tea Garden table once the cup cutscene ends.

• War room, by the big Japan-map painting — drops the horse statuette
• Collapsed study corner near WunderFizz — drops the calligraphy brush
• Cat café in the tea garden — the hellhound steals it; kill it for the tea whisk

With the kintsugi set done, the rubble at the bottom of the storage rooms reveals a clock. Interact and read the four numbers the hands stop on — you can re-interact to replay it.

The next round is an assault wave: kill the flag-carrying zombies so their wisps fly to the staging area, and finish the wave.

How the maths works: at the staging-area rack, each flag’s value is its symbol count. Around the map are four numbered wall glyphs marking locations 1 to 4 — spawn, the Flower Garden by Wisp Tea, the central courtyard and the stables roof — and which glyph is which number randomises.

Place flags in the bamboo shoots under each glyph so their values sum to your clock digits in order, location 1 matching digit 1. One or two flags per spot, and each flag is single-use, so plan combinations — if you need two sixes, use the 6 at one and 5+1 at the other.

Confirmation cue: a character quote per correct flag, and the clock face lights the digits you have entered. Wrong digits lit means redo the maths.

All four correct opens the clock for the crest medallion — deposit for painting 5.

Quick win: Mitsuhime's Trepidation is in the corner opposite the clock, and interacting with the clock itself (once painting 4 is up) banks the Lantern Clock artifact.

Gather three facts before you place anything.

The accomplice: activate the ghost-archer wall traps — spawn, flower garden and the big tree are the eligible ones — and get 15 to 20 kills during a single activation. Then find the extra ghost facing the wrong way in the window before the trap ends. With subtitles on, his line either says nothing to report or names the merchant, gardener or courtier. Try another trap if you get nothing.

The two notes: the doctor’s note left of the paintings gives the cause of death and a time of death with a zodiac animal. The toxins note from the bottom of the PaP stairs gives hours-to-kill per poison.

Placing the evidence. Painting 1 is always the comb and painting 5 is always the crest medallion. Painting 2 is the accomplice’s item — abacus for the merchant, hat for the courtier, shears for the gardener. Painting 4 is read off the painting’s background: mountain takes the horse, bird the brush, fish the whisk.

Painting 3 — the murder weapon — depends on the accomplice as well as the symptom. Nobleman with emesis takes the pufferfish, nobleman with noxious plant the monkshood. Gardener with noxious food or emesis takes the plum pit, gardener with paralysis the monkshood. Merchant with noxious plant takes the plum pit, merchant otherwise the pufferfish. MrDalekJD maps on symptom alone, which diverges at the edges — cross-check with the murder-case solver if a submission fails.

The zodiac wheel to the left: take painting 3’s poison, read its hours-to-kill from the toxins note, take the animal from the doctor’s note, find that animal on the disc — boar is pig, stallion is horse — and rotate the dial that many hours anticlockwise, back in time, from it.

Submitting: light the incense on both sides of the wall — and it is very easy to nudge the wheel while interacting on the left, so check it before you light the second. Success sends a spark to the World Seed. Failure spawns an elite and you retry next round; if you change the poison, re-set the wheel to its new hours.

Interact with the World Seed to be teleported to a mini-boss oni in the central courtyard — dodge its homing masks and shoot it down. The dragon then lands on the PaP roof and the kite fast-travel to the boss arena appears.

Quick win: Get it right first time and the Onryō fight hands you the Path of Sorrows — turn round in the Pack-a-Punch room, it is stuck in the wood — which is the last artifact and the key to the Dragon Egg relic. As Takeo, a Psych Grenade in the War Room starts Takeo's side quest: the Katanas Out audio log is right of Pack-a-Punch when you spawn at the World Seed, and (community-reported) killing there with the katana pays a burst of epic and legendary loot and upgrades the blade to Ultra.

Well worth the detour: the upgraded grenades create a bubble shield that makes you immune to zombies, which is excellent for the flag captures in the boss fight.

Activate the central-courtyard trap, use a combat-bow score streak through the window to hit the blue target, then from in front of the tree shoot the remaining targets. White powder spawns behind the trap. Add the piece under the kitchens cooker and the matches on the shelf in front of Double Tap, then return to the cat-grenade bench.

Quick win: Community-reported: every three rounds a rock floats up out of the lava by the Training Area — ride it and parkour the sinking rocks to the statues before the timer ends, and each finisher gets a free Ray Gun.

The whole fight runs on flag captures. Onis spawn carrying flags — kill one, run through the flag, plant it at the marked zone and stand in the circle to capture. A captured zone is a blue area that makes you immune to both the boss and the zombies while you pour damage into the dragon’s glowing weak spots.

The escalation: phase 1 needs one flag, phase 2 needs two, and phase 3 needs three captures before each damage window. Weak spots move from the eyes to body spots to the wings. Max Ammo and max armour drop between phases in the middle.

Attacks: lava strip sweeps in phase 1, electrified tornadoes and lava geysers in phase 2, then fire breath that locks off arena sections and insta-down fireballs in phase 3. When the arena burns, get behind the rocks at the edges.

Shadowsmith blessings in the arena are worth knowing: the big bald one gives loot including a Pack-a-Punch crystal, the one with Viking braids gives an instant damage circle, and the horned one gives a gun-buddy. There are ammo crates too, and Kazimirs cover the gaps between immunity windows.