Astra Malorum does not ease you in at all. You spawn, hear the alarms, and you are already thinking about the Harmonic Oculus instead of chasing early rounds, which feels weird if you are used to camping and racking up kills in a CoD BO7 Bot Lobby. The map is dark, busy, and kind of claustrophobic, so you quickly learn that repairing the Oculus is your first real job. Parts tend to hide in awkward spots in the Cargo Bay or along those grim Maintenance Tunnels, and half the time you are checking corners while trying not to get clipped from behind. Once you finally get the Oculus spinning, the whole layout makes more sense, extra doors open up, and it stops feeling like you are just running in circles waiting to die.
Getting Set Up
Early on, the big mistake people make is trusting regular guns for too long. You can slap Pack-a-Punch on an AR and it feels fine for a bit, but the mid-game lockdown step will show you how wrong that is. The LGM-1 really is your main ticket here. You want it upgraded to its elemental version before you even think about pushing main Easter Egg steps. The soul trap near the generator catches a lot of teams out too. The game wants kills inside that exact zone, and if your squad is spread out farming headshots on the edges, the progress crawls. Call out where you are standing, funnel zombies into the circle, and avoid wasting rounds shooting stuff that does not count.
Puzzles And The Brain Run
The Observatory puzzle sounds straightforward on paper, but under pressure it gets messy. You are rotating those planetary rings, trying to copy the diagram on the wall, and suddenly a Mangler spawns behind you and ruins your focus. It helps to clear the wave first, leave a crawler if you can, then take a breath and line the planets up slowly. Once that is done, the map shifts from “spooky science lab” to flat-out horror. You unlock the route to the Cryo Chamber and go hunting for Dr Thurston’s brain, which is grim in the best way. Carrying that jar is rough: you cannot sprint, you feel like a walking target, and every stray hit makes you worry the whole thing is about to smash and force you to repeat the round.
Trip To Mars
Slotting the brain into the mainframe feels like flicking a switch on a totally different game. The portal kicks off and suddenly you are on Mars, dealing with low gravity and a new sense of distance. Movement gets floaty, jumps carry further than you expect, and your normal zombie kiting routes stop working. You have to relearn spacing, especially when specials spawn in. If you overjump a corner or miss a slide, you can drift into a bad angle and get pinned. It is worth running a couple of “test laps” round the Martian arena just to feel out how far you can hop and where the safe lines are when you are rotating under pressure.
Facing Caltheris
The Caltheris fight feels more like a raid than a standard round-based boss. Phase one is simple enough: chip away at his armour plates, keep the arena clear, do not get greedy. Phase two is where most squads start wiping, because the firestorm hits hard and fast and you have to stick to cover instead of chasing damage numbers. Phase three is the real wall, though. When he starts healing, the whole fight turns into a DPS check on the LGM-1. If you hesitate or your shots are sloppy, you watch his health bar crawl back up and it drains your morale. By phase four, armour plates are usually gone and everyone is a bit shaken, so you play wide, stay mobile, and let the boss walk into your sightlines instead of rushing him. When he finally drops, the mix of relief and hype is huge, especially if you have been grinding in a cheap CoD BO7 Bot Lobby just to practice your routes and timing for this one moment.
