IX For Beginners

[83457]

Hi, and welcome to icks....er, I mean Nine. The main purpose of this post is to describe the basic layout of the BO4 Zombie Map "IX", to alleviate newbie confusion and keep you from blowing early cash on unecessary doors and running in circles, lost.

 

IX is a fairly simple design though it does not seem like it when being chased around on your first attempt at it.

 

Start Room: You start in a hallway connected to a large round arena, the center of a coliseum (head out to center, hallway closes behind you). Around you, if you look up, are 4 Towers (temples) around this inner arena. Each Tower represents one of the God Perk/Idols from your Chaos Character's Create a Class link. There are even matching statues and a flag triangle symbol on each.

 

Each of these Towers contains a perk that matches the one that you set in Create a Class. Each Tower has an upper section (Perk and Champion for PaP unlock), a middle section (door to center arena), and a lower section (door to circular tunnels under map). The Start Arena doors to Danu and Ra Towers' middle section can be opened from the Start Arena. The middle doors of Odin and Zeus must be opened from inside the Odin/Zeus Tower that it connects to (can't be opened from Start Arena), so basically you go through Ra or Danu, through the underground tunnel, then up to Zeus and/or Odin Tower.

 

At the bottom of Danu(or)Ra, you open to the tunnel. There are 2 doors which will allow you access to the rest of the circular tunnel to the bottom doors of Zeus/Odin, as well as the underground center arena called Temple (PaP), and the Pit, where the Shield is built. You only need to open 1 of these 2 doors in the circular tunnel, it is a circle, just go back the other way.

 

(0)Sample opening (Use Custom Mutations, have 50,000 points to start, set Zombie Max Speed at WALK if you want to follow along with my text descriptor here. Leave all zombies alive to keep them calm for as long as possible).

 

1. Open Danu (left door), go upstairs to Perk/Champion Gong, check out middle, check out lower, check out gun wallbuys. This is vine-y and overgrown and green.

 

Danu has a door upstairs (perk/gong), this bridges to Ra, which is real close to Danu. Opening this destroys easy early running in the top of both Towers, so leave this closed in all Towers for now. The middle area (just like each Tower) goes to Start Arena (it is open, you came in here), and the bottom door opens to the tunnel (leave it closed for now).

 

2. Go back to Start Arena, take right door to Ra (yellowish stonework inside). Upstairs has perk/gong, door/bridge to Danu (leave it closed, this is the other end), middle area has door to arena (open, you came in here), and the lowest floor door can open to the tunnel. Open this bottom level door (next to Bowie wallbuy).

 

Note: 1 shield part, 3 locations, should be on the upper floor of Ra (large, easy to spot). (Shield has 3 pieces, 3 spots each, in Ra, Odin, and Zeus Towers). Go fetch that piece and come down here and out to the tunnel.

 

3a. In the Tunnel now, look left and right and up. The Ra door that you just exited has a flag with some sort of triangle on it. The tunnel around Ra looks like the Ra motif; yellowish stonework, same as in Ra Tower. Very close by on the right is another triangle flag (different triangle), with vines and greenery. Look by there to see the other side of the Danu lower door (from 1, above. Leave it closed). Just past the lower Danu door, you hit a tunnel door (leave it closed). (This is a good little mp camp spot).

 

Okay, for now, this is your "Danu/Ra side indicator"; seeing the green and leafy motif in the tunnel means that you are approaching the dead end by Danu/closed tunnel door, and closed Danu lower door. Here, you either want to go up Ra, or turn around in the tunnel. Playing like this will help you learn the tunnels quicker. So this half of the circle is Dead End, Closed Danu, Open Ra.

 

3b. Turn away from the Dead End/Danu, head past lower Ra door (in tunnel still), you pass through a 90° bend and you will reach a buried large statue, the ?box, and the second in-tunnel door, open this one.

 

You are now in a larger circular room called "the pit". Here is the Shield Workbench and one of the side entrances into "temple" where PaP will be. Go in temple, check it out,  but come back out this same entrance.

 

3c. Continue around the tunnel in the same direction you were headed. Soon you will encounter an area with 2 more Triangle Flags hanging from the ceiling (2 different triangles than Ra and Danu) near the opposite side of the "temple" (another entrance). One tunnel section will have round shields by a door (Odin Tower lower door), next to it will be Whitish Stone tunnel section (Zeus Tower lower door). If you continue on in the tunnel, you'll hit the closed tunnel door near Danu Tower lower door (tunnel full circle), leave it closed for this walkthrough.

 

4. Head back to Odin/Zeus flags, open Odin. You are on the lower level. The middle level opens to Start Arena (no need to open it), the upper area has perk/champion gong, and the door/bridge to Zues that destroys the training here (leave it closed).

 

Odin flag part has 1 location on upper floor, 1 on middle (shield rack), and 1 lower area spot.

 

Head down to tunnel, eyeball the Zeus flag and head to the Zeus Tower lower door, open it.

 

5. You are in the lower Zeus Tower area, by a bath (1 shield location on wall opposite this newly opened door. It is tiny, look carefully), head up to middle area (door to Start Arena here, leave it closed) There is a shield part location, by a statue. Head upstairs to Perk/Gong (door/bridge to Odin here, leave it closed), there is a Shield part up here, look carefully as it is small.

 

Your map is now completely open without unnecessary doors. You may of course open it much differently, or you may eventually open more, or all doors, but I wanted to walk you through with minimal doors to save your hard earned points in a real match. By keeping the triangle flags, tower motifs and general tower design in mind, the map is actually simple to keep track of or visually recognise where you are at any given time.

 

I usually open Ra, get Bowie and Shield Part, open tunnel to Odin + Zeus, get Shield parts, then build shield with Danu unopened. If I want an early perk, I set it in Ra, with last perk in Danu maybe. (But I usually pass on perks early).

 

If you buy a wallbuy gun, say "gun name, tower name" or "ammo, tower name" (or "tunnel near location X") a couple times, so you remember where to buy ammo for it.

 

6. Shield: Take the 3 shield parts (1 part each, in 3 locations, in Ra, Odin, Zeus Towers) to The Pit in the tunnel, build at workbench. It comes with sword and pistol.

 

7. Pack a Punch: Top floor of each Tower, ring the Gong. You will fight 1 or more champions. (I suggest just fighting them during a round including round beginnings. Have a decent gun for this). Trying to keep a few zombies alive while you do this is harder than just fighting all at once.

 

Champions may be several tigers, Giant Axe man, Useless Hyper guy, or a pair of Useless and Axe. (You may get random spawn of these on the same round too, just fyi). Each champion or set of champions will drop an item for you to collect once they are killed, simply move through it to collect it.

 

Tigers, you'll see them on regular rounds too, just avoid the run-pounce-swipe and shoot them. Prioritize tigers because they block you and are just dangerous to have mixed with or running around the horde.

 

Axe man. He takes lots of headshot damage, he loses his helmet, then you headshot him easily. He is mostly a joke. He'll often axe-throw at you as you headshot him, or he'll slap you pretty good if you actually let him get close. It is not even worth avoiding the axe-throw (normal difficulty), just headshot him and keep your distance.

 

Useless hyper guy. This smaller boss also must be "helmet then headshot". If he lands next to you for a couple of seconds, he will take most of your health in a brutal beating with his blade-hands, but just stay away and headshot him. Parasites are more threatening than this guy.

 

Once all 4 champions are defeated (often in same round, they are so easy), go to tunnels, then to center temple. Give the center thingy of Temple the Champion Blood (things that the champions dropped), and in several seconds, you'll have PaP. (It is this center stone, it does not look like Aether PaP, it looks wierd and red).

 

This concludes the basics of IX, I hope this makes IX easier to understand and traverse for some new players.

 

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Some alternate openings of note: 

 

The Pit: If you open Ra to the tunnel, but go right, past Danu, and open that door then head (through Cursed room, Crypts) to Flooded Crypt, go between columns into Temple, and across and up the other steps, you end up with "The Pit" area being closed off except for the Temple entrance. This then allows a camping spot in Pit by an unopened door, as well as easy circular training near the shield.

 

Some higher round strategies involve the bridges between Towers, which I suggested you leave closed in my basic tutorial above. I just want to reiterate that my basics were just to inform you of the general map layout, not necessarily a plan on the best way to open the map.

 

Some Tower lower rooms are good for training, check them out for yourself.

 

At start, you can stay in the spawn hallway until you have enough to open several doors. Use Knife, Wraith's Fire, and your Special Weapon, with your improved starting gun, if you have one. With multiple players, can one stay in here to hold it as a camp spot (switch off players as each gets perks/guns, et cetera)?

 

Happy gaming!

 

 

[Guest]

Nice work @83457! The only thing Id add is a little Color to dat text and slap a few fine azz pics on this bad boy. Keep up the great work my friend. 

[83457]

On 5/14/2019 at 1:09 AM, Guest said:

Nice work @83457! The only thing Id add is a little Color to dat text and slap a few fine azz pics on this bad boy. Keep up the great work my friend. 

Thanks for the kind words!