When people kept going on about how awful the Wicked tier relic grind was in Black Ops 7, I honestly put it off for weeks, even though I'd already been messing around with a BO7 Bot Lobby to warm up and level guns. On paper, a relic that kills all your weapon augments sounds like the game slapping you in the face for trying too hard, right. But once I actually sat down and pushed a serious run on Ashes of the Damned, it felt way more manageable than the horror stories made it sound, and nowhere near as messy as some of the old portal puzzles we've had to suffer through in previous updates.
Getting Ready For Wicked Trials
You cannot just queue into Cursed and expect the Wicked stuff to magically appear, the game is picky about it. You need the main Easter Egg done on standard first, then you need the lower relic tiers unlocked, and you've got to walk in with two Grim and two Sinister relics equipped or the whole thing just does not start. The first real step is around Round 20 when the phone hunt begins, and this bit catches a lot of people out because it is easy to forget in the middle of a chaotic round. You listen for that ringing red phone, usually somewhere in the Blackwater Lake cabin or hanging around the boathouse, hit it, wait for the red smoke and the Mr. Peeks laugh, then you know you are on track.
Phone Timings And Round Pressure
The phone check-ins every ten rounds are where most runs go sideways, not the actual combat. You have to repeat the phone interaction at Round 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60, always within that round window, and missing one of those is a full reset on the Wicked progress which feels rough after an hour of solid play. It turns into this background timer in your head while you are training zombies or setting up perks, so it helps to leave one crawler or slow walker alive while you sweep for the phone each time. Solo players especially need to build that into their rhythm, because you do not have a teammate to shout when the phone starts ringing.
Red Portal Trial And Damage Nerf
Once you finally hit Round 60 and tag the phone again, the red portal spawns in and the real trial opens up, which sounds terrifying until you realise it is just a six‑wave survival segment with a big damage nerf. Your output gets chopped in half, but if you are rolling a Pack‑a‑Punched Necrofluid Gauntlet or a Ray Gun that you actually kept fed, you still delete most zombies pretty fast, it just takes a bit more focus. The third and sixth waves throw HVTs at you, so you want a clean training route near the cabin traps, plus a panic escape line if you get boxed in. Most of the difficulty comes from not getting greedy, letting the traps do a chunk of work, and accepting that you are there for the long haul rather than flashy clips.
Why Blood Vials And No Augments Still Matter
The Blood Vials themselves feel strange at first, because switching off augments looks like you are nerfing your own loadout for no reason, but you quickly notice how much your raw aim and movement improve when you are not leaning on passive boosts. It is also the last piece you need for the full relic collection and the Tier 4 upgrades, so it ends up being more of a long‑term investment than a throwaway flex. Since the run to Round 60 is such a grind and server crashes or random teammates can wipe hours of progress, a lot of players now use services like RSVSR to handle weapon XP and camo work in safer sessions, almost like how you might buy game currency or items so you can save your energy for the actual high‑risk Easter Egg runs.
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