Maps

Black Ops 4 shipped without a campaign, so its maps carry the story. Eight Zombies maps split between two storylines, Chaos and Aether, and every one of them hides a multi-step main quest that ends in a boss fight and a reward. Blackout, the battle royale, is a single sprawling map with unlock systems of its own. All thirteen of our map pages are walkthroughs. This guide puts them in order, tells you what each quest demands, how long it runs and what it pays out, and sends you to the right page for the step-by-step.

Every Zombies map at a glance

Quest length is the number of steps in our walkthrough, which is a fair proxy for how long a run takes. Where our writers called a quest easy or brutal, that verdict is noted too.

The Chaos story maps

Chaos is the new crew's story. Its four maps share the Sentinel Artifact, which is first collected on Voyage of Despair and returns on Dead of the Night, and they share the Hammer of Valhalla as their Specialist weapon. Three of the four quests also revolve around a map-specific Wonder Weapon that you must build and upgrade before the finale, so the items guide is worth a read first.

IX

IX drops you into an arena built around four gods, and its quest is the one our writers rate the hardest in the game. Nothing opens until you have unlocked Pack-a-Punch, and that alone means killing four Champion mini-bosses in the Ra, Danu, Odin and Zeus altar rooms by ringing each gong, then mounting their heads on the temple spikes. From there the quest runs through a statue head, the Death of Orion and its Serket's Kiss upgrade, a long Purge the Blight sequence, a shield build and tower trial, a storm and a flood before a two-part boss fight against Fury and then Wrath. Our page recommends a specific loadout before you begin, and it is worth following.

• Pack-a-Punch first: four Champion heads on four spikes.
• Death of Orion, then Pack-a-Punch it into Serket's Kiss.
• Purge the Blight: wood, skull, bone meal and spores in order.
• Build the Brazen Bull Shield and pass the Ra tower trial.
• Beat Fury, then repeat the strategy on Wrath once its armour is down.

Voyage of Despair

Set aboard the Titanic, Voyage of Despair's quest is called Abandon Ship and runs eleven steps. It opens with the Sentinel Artifact in the rooms beside spawn and its activation on the Poop Deck, then Pack-a-Punch, a hunt for clocks and symbols through the Galley and the flooded Cargo Hold, and the Kraken, which you pull from the Mystery Box and upgrade with an element. Power outlets and elemental trials, leaking pipes, a Pack-a-Punched artifact and a shootable planetarium lead to the final boss. Our page breaks each of the eleven steps into short tasks, and it is the gentler of the two launch Chaos quests.

• Sentinel Artifact from beside spawn, activated at the Poop Deck.
• Kraken from any Mystery Box, then Chamber, Barrel and Metal Tubing plus an element at the Engine Room workbench.
• Elemental trials at the power outlets, then the leaking pipes.
• Shoot the planets and use the solar system model to open the finale.

Dead of the Night

Dead of the Night is a haunted English mansion where vampires and werewolves join the zombies, and it is the only map with several quests worth doing in one game. The main quest brings back the Sentinel Artifact near the Grand Staircase, then makes Pack-a-Punch itself a puzzle of coloured smoke, clocks and perk machines. You craft Silver Bullets for the werewolves, build the Ballistic Shield, take Alistair's Folly from the Mystery Box or the Library safe, and upgrade it twice, to Chaos Theory and then Alistair's Annihilator, using Chaos Material from werewolves, Nosferatu and a vampire bat. Three side questlines around the telescope, knights and effigy lead to an invisible werewolf boss you trap on a green tile by aligning crystals, three times over.

• Side quest: the Savage Impaler crossbow, from knifed candles and a 1912 gravestone to a ritual circle that needs six vampire kills.
• Side quest: the mystery song, plus free rewards from the Billiards Room pool table and the leaking barrels.
• The jump scare location, if you want to see it coming.

Ancient Evil

Ancient Evil is the Greek map and the second DLC map in our coverage. Its quest opens with around six Oracle Tributes, timed mini-challenges scattered across the map, then three rainbow oil stains to ignite, statue heads to shoot with the Hand of Charon, cogs to jam, the Scepter of Ra, a pole for the sun dial, a sharpshooting circle, a number sequence, and a Ballista at the River of Sorrows that opens the portal to Pegasus and Perseus. The catch is that the four God Hand gauntlets are mandatory, and each has Redeemed and Exalted upgrades with their own trials, so our Ancient Evil Wonder Weapons page is the first half of the quest in practice.

• Dormant Hands spawn at the Spartan Monument, the Center of the World and the River of Sorrows.
• Charon, Ouranos, Hemera and Gaia each need their Redeemed form before any Exalted upgrade unlocks.
• Apollo's Will is a shield with a spear attached, useful even though it is not a Wonder Weapon.
• Perseus teleports to wherever his lightning lands, so move the moment it strikes.

The Aether story maps

Blood of the Dead, Classified, Alpha Omega and Tag der Toten pick up the long-running Aether saga. Alpha Omega continues directly from Blood of the Dead, Classified reworks Five from the first Black Ops, and Tag der Toten is the final map, written as the ending of the Aether storyline. These quests lean on the Spectral Shield and on Brutus, the warden boss whose key opens half of Alcatraz.

Blood of the Dead

Alcatraz hosts the longest quest we cover, fourteen steps that are really a chain of Wonder Weapon builds followed by a set of puzzles. Power first, then the shield and its Spectral upgrade, Pack-a-Punch, Hell's Retriever and Hell's Redeemer, the Blundergat and the Magmagat, the Spoon and the Gold Spork. Only then does the quest proper begin, at round 17 when Brutus can be lured into the Warden's House to open the hidden room. Five challenges named after the stages of grief follow, including a Morse code puzzle at the Docks and an escort through the Warden's Office, before the Summoning Key and a three-phase Warden fight where the Magmagat does the work.

• The Warden's Key from Brutus is used again and again, from voltmeters to locked cabinets.
• Phase one needs four Brutus kills, phase two eight, then Clown Richtofen and the Magmagat finish it.
• Every weapon in the chain is explained in the Wonder Weapons page.

Classified

Classified is the shortest quest at six steps, but it is gated behind the Black Ops Pass. Turn on the power in the lower-level laboratory, take the drawer key from spot five on the War Room key rack, amplify the teleporter and raise the Def Cons to reach Pack-a-Punch at Groom Lake, then hunt four secret codes that are different for every player. Enter them at the monitor and survive three rounds at Groom Lake. The reward is the Winter Howl and a cutscene that fills in the map's lore.

Alpha Omega

The first DLC Aether map returns to a much bigger Nuketown, and our page calls its quest fairly simple compared with the rest. After power and Pack-a-Punch you wake the A.D.A.M. Rushmore computer in Operations and keep coming back to it: set the clocks, escort a red Nova 6 Crawler to the Transfusion Facility, collect a 115 canister from Marlton, charge and deliver the Power Core against a timer, read four codes off the paintings, restore power and gather mannequin parts. The boss, Avogadro, is beaten by filling four soul canisters in the Beds, Storage, Diner and Lounge areas while he chases you, then pushing him back into the APD with Galvaknuckles. The reward is an Elemental Shard, which Tag der Toten later asks for.

Tag der Toten

The final map closes the Aether story, and it asks for preparation before the quest starts: Hermit challenges at the scarecrows, two challenge totems and the Dials from the lighthouse dumbwaiter. The ten steps then move through artifact storage, Apothicon offerings at hinted locations, the Seal of Duality, blood orbs, Samantha's music box, soapstones, the Elemental Shard and Apothicon blood before the Agarthan Device. Two buildables have their own pages because they matter outside the quest: the Pack-a-Punch and Golden Pack-a-Punch, which need the Dock and boat power switches, the hermit's gear box and crank handles, and the Riot Shield, whose Panel, Base and Gun each spawn in one of three spots around the Docks and the Frozen Crevasse.

Blackout

Blackout is the battle royale, one map stitched from series landmarks such as Nuketown Island, Firing Range, Turbine and the Asylum. Two systems on it get dedicated pages.

Character unlocks

Playable characters come from Character Missions. Each mission needs a unique item found in supply drops, stashes or specific spots (Reznov's Ushanka in the Asylum or the Estates, for instance), and the mission must be completed in the same match with the item still in your inventory, though winning is not required. Progress is measured in Merits, Blackout's experience points, which raise your Echelon level, and some skins come from Zombies progress or the Blackout Pass instead. The Character Unlocks page tables every mission for Blackout, Zombies and Multiplayer characters.

Helicopter spawns

Helicopters are the best escape from the closing circles, but they spawn by chance and in different spots each match. Our Helicopter Locations page maps all nine helipads: Nuketown Island's north-western street, the Construction Site, the southern corner of the Cargo Docks, the Factory, the eastern side of the Estates, Turbine, Firing Range, Hijacked and Rivertown. Learn them and you can sweep the nearest two before anyone else does.

Which quest should you start with?

Going by step count and our writers' own verdicts, this is the order of difficulty from the friendliest quest to the cruelest.

1. Classified: six steps and a survival finale, if you own the Black Ops Pass.
2. Alpha Omega: ten steps, but our page calls it fairly simple and the boss is not a hard one.
3. Voyage of Despair: eleven short steps and a Wonder Weapon that comes straight from the box.
4. Tag der Toten: ten steps plus the Hermit's requirements before you begin.
5. Ancient Evil: ten steps, but the four God Hands double the real length.
6. Dead of the Night: nine steps with two weapon upgrades and a three-phase boss.
7. IX: the toughest and most time-consuming by our page's own account.
8. Blood of the Dead: fourteen steps and a round 17 requirement before the quest even starts.

Questions before you drop in

Do I need the Black Ops Pass?

For Classified, yes, our page is explicit that the map comes with the pass. Ancient Evil and Alpha Omega are described as DLC maps and Tag der Toten as the final DLC, so expect the same requirement there.

Which maps need a Wonder Weapon to finish?

IX needs the Death of Orion, Dead of the Night needs Alistair's Annihilator, Ancient Evil needs all four God Hands, and Blood of the Dead needs the Magmagat for the Warden. Voyage of Despair's Kraken and Classified's Winter Howl are rewards rather than requirements. Every one of them is in the Wonder Weapons page.

What should I equip before a quest run?

Four perks and one Talisman, chosen before the match. The Zombies Perks page names the six our writers run, and the Talismans page explains which Amulets stop you losing a perk mid-fight. The wider systems, from Prestige to Blackout Merits, are in the mechanics guide.