Rex Infernus Directed Mode Guide: How to Beat the Warden

Black Ops 7's Season 06 update, The Haunting, landed on September 17 and quietly solved the biggest problem with Rex Infernus: nobody could find the Main Quest. Treyarch's climactic Round-Based Zombies map launched back in August with no in-game hints, so most squads never got past round 10 without a wiki tab open. Directed Mode fixes that by putting the story on the screen, and it's the fastest way to actually see Black Ops 7's Zombies story end before Season 06 wraps up the game's post-launch run.

01Directed Mode: What's New for Rex Infernus's Main Quest

Directed Mode is a new way to load into Rex Infernus, selectable alongside the map's standard difficulty options from the map-select screen. Pick it before you load in and the game overlays on-screen quest steps as you play, walking you through the objectives that were previously undocumented by Treyarch. In exchange for the guidance, Directed Mode caps your run at round 15 — you won't be pushing for a round 50 badge here, so treat it as a story run rather than a survival grind, and plan on it taking somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour with a coordinated squad.

Finish the Main Quest on Directed Mode and you'll unlock the "Netherclaw" skin for the Warden's Blight wonder weapon, the "Rex Infernus Directed Mode Completion" calling card, and 5,000 XP. It's also the cleanest route into Season 06's Super Easter Egg, which checks whether you've cleared the Main Quest on every Round-Based Zombies map in Black Ops 7 and unlocks the Warden as a playable Operator if you have. Treyarch has flagged Rex Infernus as the final Round-Based Zombies map planned for Black Ops 7, so this is effectively the last new story beat before attention shifts elsewhere.

02Best Loadout, Perks and GobbleGums Before You Drop

Rex Infernus throws Deathspinners, Hellhounds, Ravagers and Abominations at you on top of the standard horde, so build for crowd control first and single-target damage second. A high fire-rate SMG or LMG clears trash fast enough to keep quest objectives moving, and you'll want a hard-hitting secondary in your back pocket for the Web Mother and Deathspinner encounters. Quick Revive is close to mandatory on your first Directed Mode clear since round 15 still throws enough at you to down a squad that's still learning the map layout in real time.

Grab Mule Kick from the Wunderfizz machine as soon as it's affordable so you're never without a Pack-a-Punched weapon in a pinch, and keep an eye out for Vulture Aid drops to stretch your ammo and equipment between rooms. Support items like the ARC-XD and Disciple Injection are both confirmed to be active on Rex Infernus this season, and either one is worth a slot if your squad is still memorizing spawn points — Disciple Injection in particular buys you breathing room to reposition around a Deathspinner nest without eating a full horde's worth of damage.

Save any Ultra-Rarity GobbleGums for the last few rounds rather than burning them early — with a 15-round cap, you get far fewer chances to farm replacements than you would on a normal, uncapped Rex Infernus run.

03Relics and Augments Worth Running

Rex Infernus keeps the full Relic system from the rest of Black Ops 7's Dark Aether arc, and Season 06's own patch notes confirm several specific Relics are still active on the map, including Spider Fang, the Valkyrie Helmet, Film Reel and Dancing Arnie. Treyarch hasn't published exact effect numbers for any of them, so treat their strength as unconfirmed until you test them yourself — but Film Reel is worth calling out because it swaps your melee weapon, which matters if you're relying on a Pack-a-Punched knife for a specific Deathspinner interaction later in the quest.

On the Augment side, the Necromancer Augment and the Helping Hound ability both showed up in Season 06's bug-fix list, meaning both remain part of the current build. If your build leans on either one, double check its behavior around the Wunderfizz and against non-aggressive zombies in the map's Astral Plane section before you commit a full round to it, since both interactions were specifically patched this season and may still behave differently than you remember from earlier maps.

04Surviving the Early Rounds in the Warden's Stronghold

You start Rex Infernus dropping into the Warden's stronghold with the crew, and Directed Mode's first markers point you toward opening up the map rather than turtling in the spawn room. Prioritize whichever Wall Buy and Mystery Box locations sit closest to your spawn, then push toward the Nexus Forge — several of Season 06's own bug fixes reference Forge Panels and the Forge Engine, confirming it's a central stop on the Main Quest path. Clear rooms methodically instead of training zombies through them; Rex Infernus's corridors are tighter than Kowakujō's, and getting boxed in by a Hellhound pack early is the single most common way a Directed Mode run ends before round 5.

Keep some essence in reserve for the Wunderfizz rather than spending it all on wall weapons — Directed Mode's round cap means you have less time to rebuild a bank if you go broke chasing a specific gun early, and a bad perk roll at round 3 is far easier to recover from than an empty essence counter at round 8.

05Boss Strategy: Deathspinners, the Web Mother and the Titan Trap

Deathspinners are the map's recurring mid-tier threat, and Season 06's patch notes confirm they can be damaged through the Forge Engine's webbing with Fire Damage, so keep an incendiary attachment or lethal in rotation if you're stuck on a webbed objective. The Web Mother is the bigger test: it's tanky enough that Directed Mode expects you to have a Pack-a-Punched weapon in hand before you trigger the fight, so don't rush the encounter on round 6 or 7 just because the quest marker updates.

The new Titan Trap is Rex Infernus's environmental weapon against both threats. It's built into the map rather than crafted from parts, so look for its activation point near the Warden's stronghold approach and lure groups of Deathspinners into it instead of trying to gun them down one at a time — it's dramatically faster than clearing a Deathspinner nest with bullets alone, especially once you're past round 10 and enemy health scaling starts to bite. Watch your footing around the trap's radius too; several of this season's fixes targeted zombies clipping through nearby geometry, which suggests the area around it was one of the more heavily reworked spots on the map.

06Directed Mode Walkthrough: Step by Step

Here's the order Directed Mode pushes you through once you understand what each on-screen marker is actually asking for:

Directed Mode Walkthrough

1. 1Clear the two-story stronghold immediately — hit the nearest Wall Buy and the Mystery Box before you push forward, since Directed Mode assumes you're already armed when its first marker appears.Round 1-3
2. 2Follow the quest marker through to the Forge Engine and start working the Forge Panels — this is the map's first major objective hub and where several of Season 06's own bug fixes are concentrated.Round 3-6
3. 3Don't force this fight until you're holding a Pack-a-Punched weapon. Directed Mode updates the marker early, but going in undergeared is the fastest way to burn through your Quick Revives.Round 6-9
4. 4Lure Deathspinner groups into the map's built-in Titan Trap near the stronghold approach instead of gunning them down — it clears nests far faster once enemy health scaling kicks in past round 10.Round 8-11
5. 5Follow the on-screen steps to build charge on the Warden's Blight wonder weapon. You need it fully charged going into the finale, not partway through it.Round 10-13
6. 6The final confrontation throws Deathspinners and the Web Mother back at you alongside the Warden himself — lean on the Titan Trap to thin the horde so your squad can focus fire the boss.Round 13-15
7. 7Clearing the quest before the round 15 cap unlocks the Netherclaw Warden's Blight skin, the Rex Infernus Directed Mode Completion calling card, and 5,000 XP.Round 15

07Side Easter Eggs and Puzzles Scattered Around the Map

Beyond the Main Quest, Rex Infernus is dotted with smaller side Easter eggs that Directed Mode doesn't walk you through. Season 06's bug-fix notes confirm a Rain Pool puzzle involving cubes near a location called Veytharion, a Grapple Challenge tied to a character called Mister Peeks, and a locked door guarding Dravakar's Temple that requires purchasing an earlier door first. None of these are required for the Main Quest, but they're confirmed to exist in the current build and are worth a detour with a full squad if you clear Directed Mode with time to spare — just don't expect on-screen guidance for any of them, since that hand-holding is reserved for the Main Quest alone.

08Starting Room: The New Solo-House Survival Challenge

Season 06 also adds Starting Room, a separate Rex Infernus mode that strips the Main Quest entirely and dares you to survive using only the two-story starting house. You're locked out of the rest of the map, fighting the undead through the upstairs bedrooms and the downstairs fireplace and dining room using whatever the house's Mystery Box, the Warden 308 and Coda 9 Wall Buys, Quick Revive, and the GobbleGum Machine can give you. It's confirmed as a separate milestone track from Directed Mode, with rewards at round 10, round 25 and round 50, so it's worth a few runs on its own once you've cleared the Main Quest — the confined space makes for a much tighter, more tactical fight than the full map ever asks for, since you can't rotate away from a bad spawn the way you can on the open map.

Both modes are included with the standard Black Ops 7 Zombies rotation, no extra purchase required beyond owning the game itself. Check the full Season 06 content breakdown for everything else The Haunting changed outside of Zombies, including the Rogue Run pedestal updates that now touch Rex Infernus's loot pool too.