Rogue Run — Black Ops 7 Zombies Easter Egg Guide

You spawn with a randomly selected Common-rarity pistol and infinite ammo, no perks, no loadout weapon. Wonder Weapons and underbarrel attachments do not have infinite ammo even though primaries do.

You are teleported to an area with three pedestals, each drawing from a different reward pool: utility upgrades, weapons, perks, Field Upgrades, ammo mods and more. Claim one within the time limit or the game assigns one at random for you. Once all players have chosen, you move to the next arena.

Quick win: Don't dawdle on the choice screen — miss the timer and you lose the pick entirely to a random assignment.

Open with an ammo-mod pedestal (Dead Wire, Napalm Burst, Cryo Freeze or Brain Rot) plus a damage or fire-rate pedestal so your starter pistol carries you. Bank one sustain pick — armour, heal or revive — before the first HVT boss. Read what you already hold and take the pedestal that multiplies it; greedy picks that don't reinforce your core are how good runs die.

Tip: Season 05 now blocks the Aether Crystal reward if the weapon you are holding cannot be Pack-a-Punched, so don't expect it to save an off-build run.

Interact with it — mid-round or during the reward phase, or skip it entirely — to activate a random Cursed Relic for the rest of the run. You can trigger any Relic this way even if you have not unlocked it yourself in the separate Cursed mode. Activating enough Relics raises your Cursed Tier, which is tied to unlocking playlist Calling Cards, so it is not purely optional if you are chasing those. It disappears once used and respawns next round.

Quick win: The Relics themselves are unlocked elsewhere — via the Mysterious Object, which appears on Blackwater Lake in Ashes of the Damned after defeating Veytharion in that map's main Easter egg (reported by game8.co) — but once unlocked anywhere, the Curse Inducer here can activate them for free, tier-locked or not.

On Ashes of the Damned, each HVT has its own reward track (a GobbleGum and 1,000 XP at round 5, a Rogue Run feature unlock and 2,500 XP at round 15, a second GobbleGum or feature and 5,000 XP for the kill), plus stacking rewards on All Targets for beating one, two or all three HVTs in a single run (up to a Ray to Play Calling Card for all three), and a separate Endurance track rewarding pure round survival (10/20/30). On Astra Malorum, Casual, Normal and Hardcore each reward a GobbleGum at an early round, a second GobbleGum later, and a Calling Card for clearing five rounds at that difficulty's Relic Tier — the three final Calling Cards are named Virtu Alpha (Casual), Virtu Beta (Normal) and Virtu Gama (Hardcore) in the community wiki, though the patch notes do not print them.

Quick win: Even a run that wipes before the boss still banks whatever milestone rewards you crossed — nothing here is lost on death except the run itself.

Fewer zombies spawn per round; you now start with full armour and three plates; Ammo Mods transfer when you swap weapon rewards instead of being lost; the Uber Klaus HVT was replaced with a standard Uber Klaus in the every-five-round pool; and, as above, the Aether Crystal reward is blocked while holding a weapon that cannot be Pack-a-Punched. Health-regen and Mocha Maul bugs were also fixed in this patch.

A down (with no revive available) or a full wipe ends the run. There is no penalty beyond that — permanent unlocks earned from HVTs and challenges are already banked and apply to your next run in any playlist.

Tip: Because unlocks are permanent and playlist-agnostic, there is no wrong playlist to grind — pick whichever HVT roster or difficulty you find more survivable right now.