Der Riese

Der Riese — "The Giant" — is Group 935’s main weapons facility in Lower Silesia, the fourth and final World at War map, and the one where Zombies grew its spine. Pack-a-Punch debuts here; so do the Monkey Bomb and the Bowie Knife; and the teleporter experiments at the heart of the map are the origin story the entire Aether saga keeps returning to. Its radios turned hidden audio into the mode’s storytelling method of choice.

Power

The switch is on the far side of the map from spawn, mounted at the big generator in the back courtyard beside the ruin of Dr. Maxis’s office. Either opening route gets you there; power wakes the perks, the electro-shock defences, the teleporter pads, and lowers the courtyard bridge.

The teleporters

Three pads — Z-A, Z-B and Z-C, one at the end of each wing — all link back to the mainframe at spawn. Linking is a two-player-friendly ritual: hold use at a pad to start a thirty-second timer, then reach the mainframe and confirm. Once linked, 1,500 points buys a teleport home, sometimes with a power-up waiting; the pads also gate the map’s two secrets and its Pack-a-Punch.

Pack-a-Punch

The first Pack-a-Punch machine in Zombies waits behind a blast door beside the mainframe. Each completed teleporter link lowers the door a step; all three links open it. Five thousand points a visit, and the Wunderwaffe DG-2 comes back out as the DG-3 JZ with double the magazine.

Wonder weapons and equipment

The Wunderwaffe DG-2 returns from Shi No Numa in the Mystery Box, chaining lightning through ten zombies a shot. The debuts matter just as much: the Monkey Bomb, a wind-up lure that gathers a horde and erases it, and the Bowie Knife on the wall near the power switch — 3,000 points for a melee that one-swings well past the early rounds.

Perks

The four World at War perks return: Quick Revive near Maxis’s office (no solo self-revive in this era), Jugger-Nog above the Animal Testing Lab, Speed Cola behind the shutters by the Automobile Garage, and Double Tap on the upper walkway across the lowered bridge.

Hellhounds

Hellhounds return from Shi No Numa with a lore upgrade — the first of them was Fluffy, Samantha’s dog, lost to a teleporter test. Dog rounds roll in with the fog every handful of rounds, the last hound always dropping a Max Ammo; deeper into a game they start mixing into ordinary rounds too.

Secrets

There is no main quest here — that invention waits for Ascension. Der Riese’s secrets are smaller and stranger: the Fly Trap, where a Pack-a-Punched shot at a panel beyond the fence starts a game of hide-and-seek with Samantha’s hidden toys, and the three green jars whose pressed switches play "Beauty of Annihilation". Seven radios carry the real payload — Group 935’s slide into catastrophe, in Maxis’s own voice.

Story

This is where the saga’s founding crime happens. The radios walk it in order: Maxis gives Samantha a dog; the dog goes into a teleporter; what comes back is the first Hellhound; and Richtofen locks Maxis and Samantha in the chamber and pulls the lever. The map’s own ending continues the chain — on 28 October 1945 the DG-2 overloads the teleporter mid-jump and throws the crew eighteen years forward, to a certain theatre in 1963.