Zombies Tour Guide Book
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The City
A place of bright lights and dark shadows, Morg City looks like an urban environment from somewhere in America, sometime in the early 20th century. Brilliant streaks of neon color the city streets alongside braziers of burning mystical flames. Mystical flames with a power and a purpose that can be tapped into.
Morg City is divided into three districts (Canal, Footlight, and Waterfront), and one central location that connect all three (the Junction).
As in past zombies maps, simply getting around the map is a dangerous task, as the endless waves of increasingly dangerous zombies (and other foes) only relent in their onslaught for a spare few seconds between each wave.
Stick together and move as a team while you explore. Splitting up is a bad idea until you know the lay of the land and your own capabilities (and, preferably, with some heavy firepower on hand).
You begin the Shadows of Evil map in a narrow alley, with a few notable points of interest nearby.
The Beast
All of the unfortunate that make up your party have been branded, marked in some way by foul and dark magic. Which, all things considered, is pretty horrible. But, there are some benefits to the eldritch symbols burned into your skin.
Approach the burning purple brazier and activate it; doing so transforms you into a terror of flailing tentacles and teeth. While in “Beast form,” you are fast, powerful, and can interact with the world with your new powers. Your time in this form is limited—when it expires, you immediately snap back to your human form and appear wherever you activated it.
Alert your teammates when you plan to Become the Beast and have them guard your mortal fleshy form—when you return to your body, you trigger an explosive wave of force that knocks back any nearby enemies, but it won’t always be enough to save you if you’re alone in a four-player game.
Zombies Basics
Levels
Your profile gains levels in Zombies mode, completely separate from your Campaign or Multiplayer progress.
Almost any action in Zombies mode helps you earn experience, and as your profile progresses, you unlock new beneficial bonuses, such as weapon kit attachment slots and Gobblegum flavors.
Cash
Damaging and defeating enemies in the city earns you cash (and you get a small amount from repairing barricades). With cash, you can open new doors, activate certain objects and traps around the city, buy Gobblegum and Perk-a-cola upgrades, and purchase weapons from wall-buys and the Mystery Box.
Barricades
Zombies pour in from alleys, doors, windows, jump out of murky water, and crawl out of any other dark hole they can squeeze through. No matter where you go in the city, expect zombies to emerge and attack you.
Doors
Your progress through the city is barred by doors. Some are unlocked by spending cash at the door, while others require powering a device nearby by getting some electricity flowing.
A few methods of transportation require mystical powers to access. Keep your eyes open! There are also a few ‘doors’ that are blocking debris. Just like a regular door, paying some cash can remove these obstacles, allowing some shortcuts for traversing the map.
Some of these zombie approaches can be delayed, however: by building (and rebuilding) barricades, you can prevent at least some zombies from joining the party for a short time. Use time between rounds to rebuild barricades (unless you have other, more pressing tasks!).
Waves
Zombies mode is defined by waves of zombies (and other supernatural foes). Once all of the enemies are defeated (or if your team leaves an area with a few damaged enemies for too long), the wave advances to the next round. At the start of each wave, you are given a brief reprieve to catch your breath, before the zombies renew their attack.
Every wave, the zombies get tougher, and more enemy types are introduced over time. This process never ends! How long can you survive?
The Train
Getting around on foot from one district to another can be a bit of a drag (and carries some risk of losing a limb), but there’s another option. If you can reach the Train and have enough cash to pay for the ride, you can use it to travel between the three districts surrounding the Junction.
This is very helpful when you need to reach a Perk machine located in another district quickly, or if you need to escape an overwhelming horde that has built up while defending the area. Of course, it’s not entirely safe on the Train—zombies and other horrors are perfectly happy to follow you en route, but it’s usually preferable to moving on foot.
If the Train is not at your current location, you can call it to your district for a small fee—just be sure you can survive until it arrives!
Zombie Trains
Not that kind of train. The zombie kind! More specifically, leading a large group of zombies along behind you, preferably in a circular loop, so you can keep them following indefinitely at a safe distance.
This has several benefits—it keeps your teammates safe, and lets you damage more zombies with penetrating shots or explosions.
Not every area is suitable for creating a train, and in a four-player game, you must usually get a few players moving together to herd zombies properly.
Headshots?
Headshots kill zombies fast. However, playing with your targets can generate more cash safely in the early rounds. If you use your melee attack very early on, then mix in body shots with your early weapons to milk extra cash from your undead adversaries. This gives you a considerable head start, and lets you pick up crucial perks and weapons quickly.
As the wave count climbs, burning ammo on body shots becomes wasteful and dangerous—shoot to kill once you’ve got your loadout squared away.
Last Zombie Standing
To buy yourself extra time, leave a few completely undamaged zombies alive at the end of a round. They can easily be herded around, giving your team time to safely explore, refresh ammo from wall weapons, experiment with Beast mode, grab Gobblegum, and so on.
Shadows of Evil Foes
As you reach later waves, each of these new enemy types is introduced. Their appearance is presaged by a visual distortion that briefly blurs your screen.
All three types of nightmare aberrations can make creating a safe zombie train difficult, as their movement patterns and attacks don’t mix well with keeping a tight horde of zombies moving where you want, when you want. Because of this, and the sheer danger these enemies present by themselves, they are priority targets when they appear.
Parasites
These flying nightmares are small, but dangerous. As small airborne enemies, Parasites can be difficult to hit with certain weapons, and dealing with their harassing attacks can lead to zombies mobbing you on the ground.
When you’re playing in a group, it’s helpful to have a marksman designated to take down Parasites quickly while the rest of the group focuses on keeping other enemies at bay.
Insanity Elementals
Disgusting balls of flesh, Insanity Elementals roll toward their targets and then detonate in a cloud of blood and tissue. Yeah, they’re kinda gross.
More importantly, they’re kinda dangerous. When you see clouds of flame descend from the sky, this is a warning of their imminent arrival. Be ready to destroy them quickly and from a distance. Seek out terrain that funnels them into an easy firing line, or elevated terrain that allows for a quick escape by jumping away.
Do not engage packs of Insanity Elementals in open terrain. Doing so with zombies mixed in the fray all but guarantees getting struck from behind, which leads to a quick down in a dangerous location.
Margwa
Massive, three-headed horrors, these demonic creatures appear in a cloud of brimstone, their footsteps shaking the ground as they lumber and charge toward you.
Margwa are durable, dangerous melee enemies. They can be damaged only by shooting the yellow glow inside their open mouths when their maw opens.
Worse still, after destroying one of their toothy faces, the Margwa enrages and stampedes toward you. Avoiding this rush is critical for survival, so engage the creature from a safe distance whenever possible (and preferably, from another level entirely, so the Margwa can’t rampage directly at you).
Buildables
Scattered about the city are bits of esoterica—mysterious items that can be combined and assembled into more useful objects. Comb the city carefully, keeping your eyes open for anything that looks out of place. Once these objects are secured, look for likely work stations where they can be assembled properly.
Weaponry
Zombies mode has a huge host of weapons for you to find, buy, and acquire. And every weapon can be upgraded to pack a punch, should you navigate the mysteries of the city streets successfully.
Weapon Kits
In the Zombies lobby, you can customize your weapons, similar to the way the Gunsmith loadouts work in Campaign and Multiplayer.
As your profile gains levels, you unlock new weapon classes to customize and the ability to add more attachments to your weapons. Initially, you can place a sight and two attachments, but eventually you can add up to a full five attachments on any weapon.
Customizing a weapon in the Weapon Kits menu causes that weapon to appear in-game with those customizations, which also includes any paint jobs and camo.
To unlock new attachments, each weapon must be leveled individually, just as you would do in Multiplayer. Because some weapons are comparatively rare (not being available as a fixed wall buy), leveling them could be challenging.
As a general rule, it’s a good idea to invest in leveling the easily accessible wall weapons first. This provides a nicely customized weapon that can easily be reloaded, early in a new match.
Work on leveling weapons from the Mystery Box later, you want a strong guaranteed weapon. Leveling rarer weapons for your loadout is a luxury.
Wall Weapons
Scattered throughout the city are a variety of weapons that can be purchased from white weapon outlines painted on walls. These run the gamut of weapons, from Pistols to Assault Rifles, but do not include every weapon possible to acquire in Zombies.
What they do offer is a reliable method of getting a solid weapon, and, once the weapon kit is unlocked for that weapon type, your personally customized version of that weapon will be acquired from that wall buy.
Additionally, wall weapons allow you to purchase full ammo reloads. Weapons acquired via other means can only be reloaded by picking up a Max Ammo power-up, which is not always in ready supply.
Mystery Box
The Mystery Box contains wondrous weapons, but you must find the box before you can use it, and you must pay a fee for each use.
There are stone markers around the city for possible locations of the Mystery Box. The location is random, and after buying a few weapons from the box, it has a tendency to vanish and appear elsewhere.
You can find weapons in the Mystery Box that can’t be acquired anywhere else, some of which are quite powerful. It’s even possible to find a special type of ‘grenade’ that can be extremely helpful when dealing with masses of zombies.
Be careful about over-spending on the Mystery Box early. When you (and your weapons) are still low level, getting an easily accessible, early wall weapon leveled up is more important than burning cash on random weapons that can only be reloaded with a power-up.
Power
Power, juice, electricity. Always a constant in Zombies, and always important.
There are electrical junction boxes located around the city. Most are tied to the Perk machines, while others power devices that serve other purposes. Once you discover how to electrify and activate the flow of power, you can use the attached machines for the remainder of the match.
Perks
Perk-a-Cola machines provide a powerful pick-me-up. Activate the power to the machine and you can spend a small sum to guzzle down a new perk in liquid form.
These perks are very important to your continued survival in the city, and figuring out how to efficiently activate and acquire them for your whole party is one of the first steps in progressing smoothly in Shadows of Evil.
Once purchased, perks are permanent unless you perish prematurely by going down. You can carry only four perks at a time (barring Gobblegum intervention), so choose your perk loadout carefully!
Quick Revive
Available immediately in the starting alleyway, this perk provides you with a free self-revive when you are downed by enemies in solo play, or much faster revives in Multiplayer.
Mule Kick
Mule Kick allows you to carry three weapons. Useful for making use of an extra wall weapon so you can purchase ammo, and keeping two more powerful weapons with a punch in reserve.
Widow’s Wine
Widow’s Wine transforms your regular Frag Grenades into web grenades that stick to targets like Semtex in Multiplayer, then detonate with an explosion of webbing, ensnaring all nearby zombies.
This upgrade is very helpful to have on a team; if a few members have web grenades, they can make use of the slowing effect to stagger groups of enemies, keeping other teammates safe.
Widow’s Wine also provides an additional layer of protection by trapping those zombies that strike you in sticky webbing. Though powerful, this ability consumes a grenade and can run out quickly if you’re not careful.
Double Tap Root Beer
Increases your rate of fire and shoots more bullets without increasing ammo consumption! It’s a powerful upgrade, greatly improving the power of your rare weapons that have scarce ammo to begin with.
Jugger-Nog
Jugger-Nog toughens you up, letting you sustain a bit more damage from the nasties that patrol the city streets. It won’t save you if you get mobbed, but it can absolutely keep you standing after a few grazing hits from a pack of zombies as you sprint past.
Speed Cola
Reduces the reload times on your weapons.
Stamin-Up
A delicious Stamin-Up extends your sprint duration, allowing you to run farther and move more quickly through the city, to avoid foes more easily.
Gobblegum
What better to go with your delicious and refreshing Perk-a-Cola than some tasty, chewable Gobblegum?
New in Call of Duty: Black Ops III Zombies, Gobblegum is a special new type of power-up that provides potent but temporary benefits—in contrast with the permanent bonuses from Perk-a-Cola, or the fleeting and instant effects of regular power-ups.
Gobblegum comes in a few varieties—one type lasts a certain amount of real time, another lasts a certain number of rounds, and the last type is triggered when a specific event occurs (such as getting downed or buying a wall weapon).
Gobblegum Packs
Before you enter a Zombies match, you can configure your Gobblegum Packs. These are sets of five different Gobblegum that you can choose from the Gobblegum menu. Initially, you can choose from just a few flavors. As your profile gains levels, however, new flavors with different effects become available.
You can customize your Gobblegum pack to support your favorite playstyle, or if you’re working with a particularly coordinated team, you can even collaborate and pick flavors that work well together.
You can save up to five Gobblegum Packs, so it’s worth it to set up a few different packs, both to experiment and to suit different situations depending on if you’re playing alone, with friends, or with other players online.
Gobblegum Vending Machines
To actually acquire Gobblegum, you must spend a bit of cash at Gobblegum vending machines located around the city.
Gobblegum vendors are fairly common, but you can purchase only one piece of random Gobblegum from you pack per round, and occasionally, the vending machine may take offense to your presence and become temporarily out of order.
Gobblegum is a very useful addition to your perk powers, but the benefits are temporary, which can get expensive early in the game. Wait to stock up on Gobblegum until after you have a solid weapon (and possibly a few perks) already secured.
Power-ups
Randomly dropped from downed foes, power-ups are instantly activated—one-shot boosts that give you an edge against the hordes. Don’t pick up the powerful offensive power-ups at the end of rounds, or Max Ammo if you still have a healthy ammo supply! You also need to watch out for missing power-ups, as they despawn after a short time if not used.
Insta-Kill
Allows you to kill an enemy with a single shot or hit from any weapon, melee or explosive. You can clear out a horde of enemies in seconds, clearing an area for a fast revive or removing lethal threats.
Nuke
Fry every active zombie on the map in one big blast! There’s a brief delay before it triggers and every zombie in the area goes down in flames.
This is the ultimate one-shot answer for saving a downed teammate, so don’t use the Nuke when you’re not feeling threatened. The Nuke power-up despawns fast, so quickly decide if you want to use it or not.
Max Ammo
Gives your team full ammo for all weapons they are currently carrying. Vital for refilling special weapons that cannot be reloaded.
Carpenter
Instantly repair all barricades across the map. Not quite as powerful as the other power-ups, but still a useful bonus that can give you a little extra time when new zombies join the fray.
Double Points
Does what it says—doubles the score awarded for all actions. Try to activate this at the start of a round, or delay it until a large zombie train has been gathered.
Fire Sale
Activates all the Mystery Box locations to spawn temporarily and reduces the price to 10 points for 30 seconds.
No escape from this city
It isn’t a question of if you lose in Zombies, it’s simply a question of when. There’s no end to the waves of enemies, growing ever stronger and more numerous.
Sooner or later your defenses will falter, or fatigue will set in, and then they will have their feast… but you can certainly make it tough for them.
There are mysteries to explore and a story to uncover, so if there is any goal to be had in the city (beyond discovering the Pack-a-punch machine and unleashing some fury), you can call it a Win if you’ve scoured the city for every buildable, and reached the end to the Zombies story.
Of course, there are always more weapon levels to unlock, and some new Gobblegum packs to try, and just how many waves can you survive?
