Call of Duty: Black Ops

The other solutions here are really good.

HOWEVER...

This will make it MUCH easier to get...

When you stop one of the excavators from breaching, for example "biodome", and the same excavator gets called in again...

LET IT BREACH!

You'll still get the achievement as long as the same person does all the hacking. If you stop an excavator one time, it's OK to let it breach the second time.

That way, you'll increase your chances of getting the other two excavators.

GOOD LUCK!

P.S. Everyone in the lobby will get the achievement as long as the same person does all the hacking.

On the moon zombies map, there are 3 Excavators that can breach the map, which normally would limit players ability to freely move about the map. The 3 areas that the excavators can breach are Tunnel 11, The Biodome and Tunnel 6. The power must be turned on for any of the excavators to begin to come out.

At one point, while playing, a lady over an intercom will announce that either excavator Omicron, Epsilon, or Pi is going to cause decompression in Tunnel 11, Biodome or Tunnel 6. Omicron is to Tunnel 11, Epsilon is to The Biodome and Pi is to Tunnel 6. Listen very carefully to the lady over the intercom. The last thing that you want is to risk your life trying to hack an excavator you already have hacked.

The wave that the excavators begin to breach is kind of random. And they do not breach in any certain order. You can get the same excavator to breach 3 times in a row if you're unlucky enough. After playing for this achievement about 10 times, I found that the 1st excavator will almost always breach between rounds 3-8. If you TURN ON THE POWER on round 3, there is a chance that an excavator will breach on the same round. The faster you get the power back on, the more likely you will get excavators to breach on earlier waves.

When the lady finally does announce that an excavator is going to cause decompression, I suggest that one person go for the hacker immediately. Usually its going to be the person with the best weapon so that they can protect themselves. If you need a place to camp I would suggest setting up on the right and left sides of the pyramid, they are easy to cover and it is really close to the hacker room. In order to get the achievement, the SAME (I cant stress that enough) person has to hack all three of the consoles at the start room. The consoles are pretty obvious, when activated they are green and flashing, simply walk up to them and hold x until the hack is done. Even though the same person has to hack all 3 consoles, all present players get the achievement when the last console is hacked.

Do not shoot explosives in any of the rooms that the hacker can be found in and don't shoot any explosives in the start room, that includes grenades. If you accidentally blow out a window, the room will no longer have air in it. Since the hacker does not have a space suit, while carrying the hacker, it very hard to hack the consoles in a room where you're slowing dying due to lack of oxygen.
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GENERAL TIPS: I suggest getting the zap gun and pack a punching it, the wave gun comes in handy in a plethora of situations, it is basically like having a wunderwaffe except with 28 shots in it, not to mention the 120 something electricity bullets you have. I would also suggest that you get Juggernaut, Stamina-up, Quick revive and Sleight of Hand, they are the most helpful out of all of the perks.

The astronaut will take your most recent perk from you if you get caught by him, along with being teleported away from your teammates, so try not to get caught by him, a good way to take him out is by shotguns or quantum grenades.

Gersh devices also come in handy when you need to grab a max ammo and there are too many zombies or just when you need to revive someone who is amidst a mass of zombies. May I also say that gersh devices will transport you to a different part of the map if you walk into the black hole where all the zombies die at.

If I were to make any more suggestions it would be that if you are in the position where you need to hack the last excavator for the achievement and you don't think you'll make it due to it being a high wave like wave 20 and up, send ALL players up to the hacker and run as fast as you can to the earth teleporter. If everyone is running fast enough, the person with the hacker shouldn't go down due to lack of air and you should teleport to earth. Step back on the teleporter as soon as it will let you and go back to the moon. when you come back to the moon, there will be no zombies in the map for about 10 seconds. you will also be in the start room, meaning you can easily hack the last excavator without worrying about hordes of zombies coming behind you.

A couple of other tricks that you may not know is that you can hack 500 points at a time to other players, if they do not have many points but are in desperate need of a weapon or perk. Simply pick up the hacker and walk up to the player you wish to transfer points to and hold x until it gives your points to them, you need a minimum of 500 points or you cant transfer. Another thing you can do is hack the random box 2 times every time it moves. Simply pay for a weapon and when the roulette stops, take out the hacker and hack the weapon for 600 more points added on to the 950 you already spent, it will cycle through another roulette and give you a different gun. If you hack that second weapon it will give you 950 points back and make the current roulette weapon available for any of the current players in the game to pick up.

You can also hack the weapon outlines on the walls. Hacking weapon outlines makes regular weapon ammo round 4500 points but pack a punched ammo becomes really cheap. Although hacking a weapon on a wall costs quite a few points, its up to you to decide if its worth those points. For example the steakout pack a punched ammo would be 750 points. The pack a punched steakout is a pretty good weapon up until round 20. Since it seems to be unclear, you cannot simply hack a weapon outline and then buy pack a punched ammo. Before you can actually buy the ammo off of the wall, you have to pack a punch (in this example the steakout) first on earth. Basically, you cannot buy pack a punched ammo without having the pack a punched gun first.

If there is anything you think I forgot or anything that is unclear to you please leave a comment and I will fix it or make it more clear to you.

The other guides are helpful, but there seems to be some missing and conflicting information.

There are 3 excavators - Pi, Epsilon and Omicron. The excavators will only have a chance to activate once the power is restored, and aside from the round the power is turned on, will only activate at the beginning of a round.

If an excavator does activate, a woman's voice will come over the speaker system and say "Excavator XYZ is about to breach ABC". It will say this multiple times, following by warnings that say "about to breach in 60 seconds" and "about to breach in 30 seconds".

There are three spots that can be breached:
Tunnel 6 (the purple corridors past the M14)
Tunnel 11 (the hallways past the Olympia)
Biodome (the dome near the teleporter to Area 51).

To get this achievement, you have to stop all 3 excavators, and it is random which one will activate. It is very possible that Pi will activate 3 times in a row, which means it may take several activations to actually have a chance to stop all 3. If you do this successfully, everyone in the game will get the achievement.

To actually stop an excavator prior to a breach, you must take the Hacker from the labs (the area just before the Biodome and teleporter to Area 51). There are 2 tables on each floor of the labs, and the Hacker will appear on one of them. If you drop the Hacker by picking up another PES, it will re-appear randomly at one of the 6 tables again.

Once you have the Hacker, take it to the starting area (running through the parts without oxygen like the power room and outside) and use it on the excavator terminal that has a blinking green light. There are three excavator terminals (these directions are entering from the door on Tunnel 6 side):
One is left of the door after entering
One is right of the door after entering
One is on the opposite side of the room

The key to trying for this is to turn the power on ASAP, so you will have a chance as soon as possible for the excavators to activate. Be careful to not use explosives in the Receiving Area, because it will cause decompression and the person using the Hacker will not have air while they try to stop the excavator. It is still possible to stop them without air, but you have to be quick.

The final tip I would give is to know where the Hacker is at all times if you're not carrying it. Then, when you hear the warning at the beginning of a round, you will still have plenty of time to play out the round, make a crawler and quickly grab the Hacker to run back.

I hope this is helpful and helps provide all the information necessary.

EDIT: As mentioned elsewhere by other helpful posters, as long as you stop a certain excavator from breaching once, you can allow it to breach later in the same round. In other words, if you stopped Pi from breaching and it activates again, let it breach so you have better odds of getting the other two next time an activation occurs.

Just to add a little strategy to this, assuming you already know what to do regarding the excavators from the above posts. In Solo I circled the area outside where the Mule Kick perk and AK47u is until I had enough points to Pack-a-Punch the starting pistol and buy the Flopper. Just keep circling this area purchasing more AK47u ammo when required. You'll hear the warning about the excavators at the start of any given round..usually every 3 or 4 rounds after you put the power on. When you hear the warning DONT get anxious. You have plenty of time! When you hear the warning dont kill any zombies, just round them up in this area until they stop spawning then go back through the labs, picking up the hacking tool on the way with the group following you. You will easily get far enough ahead of them for you to get back to start and hack the relevant console. The reason I suggest PaP the starting pistol is that its amazing for getting you out of trouble while circling in the Mule Kick/AK47u area. Hope this helps a little =D

Basically Play until you hear the warning of the excavators an as soon as you hear it run back to spawn where the quick revive is with the hacker which youll find on a desk in the room next to the pyramid(just go up the stairs right of the pyramid) . itll either be on the first floor 2nd floor or 3rd just check all floors until you come to it !

now your back at spawn ( where quick revive is ) theres 3 panels one of them will be flashing green this is the one you need to hack you cant miss it

an just do this until youve done all 3

tips: try not to hang around to long when you hear the warning , run straight to spawn dont forget the hacker and hack the panel whichever one is flashing green good luck :)

I recently got this achievement and had been trying for sometime with pretty good zombie players.

We had gotten to wave 23 or 27 you name it and we were having trouble with getting the right excavator to breach by this stage. We were letting them re breach and leaving them down but still no luck. But last night we ran a train down on earth a the beginning, we made sure no one died and we teleported to moon with enough points.

We played the first round in the spawn room and then had plenty of points to open up tunnel six and turn on the power and also the labs by the end of wave 2. For the first time ever the bio dome excavator was coming down on wave 3!! we always had the first excavator a wave 6-7.

Once this was hacked we got another at wave 6 and another at wave 12, there were all in order we didnt get any repeated excavators.

Not sure if this helps but the only things i noticed we had done differently were that everyone teleported to moon (no one died) and we had power on by wave 2 with doors open. I would suggest that if you are not getting an excavator by wave 3 to start again unless your very good at zombies as you will be looking at wave 25 upwards before the excavator you need to come down. Ps Biodome is your area to run a train!

Some advice that I have is this:
1. Get Gersh devices and ray gun/ MG
2. Get Juggernaug and Staminup (and whatever else)
3. HOLD IT DOWN IN THE BIO DOME!!!

Most people don't get the excavators to come quickly and if they do they repeat themselves, so stop it once then let them breach. If you want to use my method you need to keep the bio dome from being breached. You're also going to need to stay alive possibly into the round 20 somethings. What I did was to have the hacker in the bio dome and whenever something dropped like instadead, deathmachine, or whatever whoever has gersh devices needs to throw one and let whoever has the hacker hack the drop! It costs 5000$, but will turn into a max ammo every time!! This will constantly keep your gersh devices stocked and pack-a-punch weapons full! You can be pretty liberal with the gersh devices this way and kill A LOT of zombies easily. I got mine on solo. Doing this kept me alive long enough to stop them all and w/ some skill it will for you too!

I got this by Level 11, 2 person co-op. All i did was (get lucky) but by level 2 end opened up the doors to the power room flipped it on, then next round got the excavator Biodome to come, then by level 6 PI came down, then Level 11 tunnel 11 came down!

interesting on how they came down on the lvl number they were.

My suggestion is RUSH the power room for the highest chance of getting them in the early rounds.

Hope this helps :)

The next video shows how to ge the acjievement. Yo must try to get the power on as soon as possible. It will make it easier for you. You can do this solo or in CO-OP.

So four of us got this in round 10 after two of us in the group had been trying for about 10 hours overall. A few tips for a fast match as a group (although the last tip works for Solo):

1. Ensure you turn on the power in round 1. If you don't, restart.
(If you are playing Solo, it's possible to get the power on by round 2 or 3, depending on your opening attack on Earth, and any potential power ups you get early on such as 2x.)

2. If you don't get one Excavator moving by the beginning of round 3, restart.
(If you are playing Solo, you may need another 1-2 rounds, but if you don't have the power on by round 4, restart. You need 3750 points to open the 4 doors between your starting position on the Moon and the Power switch.)

3. BIG TIP: Don't kill the Zombie Astronaut! We discovered today killing the Zombie Astronaut resets the order in which the Excavators activate, meaning you may have the one of the 3 areas activate again and you may have to work until very late rounds (25+) to try and get the third unique one.

Excavators will activate on average every 4th to 6th round, but it's entirely RNG bound. In our winning game, we got the first Excavator in round 2, the second in round 4 (exceedingly good RNG), and the last in Round 10. We didn't kill the Zombie Astronaut - just kept our distance where possible (one of us got grabbed and warped away in one round, but it wasn’t detrimental to the overall achievement run.)

(https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Astronaut_Zombie and https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Excavator reference the caveat about killing the Zombie Astronaut.)

Okay, so I’m very late to the party here, but I recently tried a different solo strategy that worked really well for me, so I figured I’d share it here. Read everyone else’s guide before this one if you haven’t already.

To start, I’ll say that if you’re hesitant to try going for this achievement solo, I highly recommend you give it a try. I always hated playing solo back when this game originally came out, but I learned out of necessity recently because I don’t have the time to get a group together anymore. Honestly, it’s really not that bad after a little bit of practice, and at this point I actually feel like it’s easier to go for this achievement solo than it is with a group.

If you haven’t already gotten the following achievements, I’d recommend going after them first and then coming back to this one once you’ve gotten some Moon experience under your belt. Get familiar with the map, the mechanics, and learn where everything is. If you’re getting into solo play for the first time, try to get them all on your own to build up that experience as well.

One Small Hack for a Man…
Fully Armed and Operational
Perks in Spaaaaace!
One Giant Leap (solo possible split screen if you have a second controller)

Much of what I have to say has already been said here in one guide or another, but after 50+ tries at this I’ve cobbled together my own approach that served me really well. I’ll share a general strategy that was helpful for me, as well as a checklist of steps I followed every time. Once you work these elements into your strategy, this achievement just becomes a matter of patience and luck (the ratio on this one really is deserved, it’s one of the harder-won 10G on my account for sure).

Feel free to dive straight into my strategy if you’d like, but I’d recommend first watching this solo strategy video by GAME3VIDZ if you’re not already familiar with the map and the general survival strategy.


I don’t follow his approach entirely, but it’s a pretty good primer to the overall process of surviving on your own indefinitely. You can also see overhead diagrams of the map courtesy of IGN here.

https://www.ign.com/wikis/call-of-duty-black-ops/Moon

Strategy Steps

1. Spawn in Area 51. If Juggernog doesn’t land by the teleporter, start over
2. Knife as many zombies as you can in Area 51 before the siren goes off. After the siren goes off, train the zombies around until they stop spawning (in the video, GAME3VIDZ trains them through the cage past the Pack-A-Punch machine, but I preferred to train them outside of the cage so you don’t risk getting stuck in there)
3. At this point, try to kill as many as you can with your grenades. Once you’re out of grenades, line them up periodically and unload your pistol into them. Repeat until you’re out of ammo and have at least 2,500 points. Buy Juggernog and teleport to the moon
4. Knife zombies through rounds 1-2, staying in the starting room (the “Receiving Area”)
5. Shoot, then knife zombies rounds 3-4. By this point, I usually opened the doors and bought the M14 off the wall outside of the starting room, but you can skip the M14 if you’re confident in your knife + pistol skills. (Some guides recommend trying to turn the power on by Round 3 because there’s a small chance the first excavator will breach on Round 3 if the power is on, HOWEVER, I specifically advise against this since it’s unlikely you’ll also have access to the Hacker by this point)
6. Once you’ve saved up enough points to get to the power and the labs where the Hacker spawns (5,000 points if you’ve already left the Receiving Area, 5,750 if not), leave one zombie or make a crawler OUTSIDE OF THE RECEIVING AREA so you don’t blow out the windows. Buy your way to the power and turn it on, then head to the labs and look for the Hacker. If you’re lucky enough to find it in the first room, hack your way into the second room, buy the MP5 off the wall, then hack your way into the Biodome and play the next round out running circles around the Biodome. If you had to buy your way into the second room, hack your way into the Biodome and play out the next round there. Return for the MP5 afterwards (the MP5 is crucial because it provides a good weapon nearby that you can always buy ammo for without having to go outside)
7. Once you’re in the Biodome with the MP5 and the Hacker, this is where the real strategy begins. Train the zombies around per the route in the video guide (around 10:52) or any route that works for you, then cook a grenade at the end of each round to create at least one crawler
8. Purchase or hack the door at the back of the Biodome that leads directly to the teleporter pad. Go back to Area 51 and farm zombies to earn points, returning to the Moon to start the next round once you’re out of ammo or satisfied with the points you’ve earned. Be sure to resupply on MP5 ammo before you start the next round. (This process with Area 51 can be skipped if you’re not comfortable surviving there, but it’ll take longer to fully stock up on the tools that will keep you alive)
9. From here on out, your goal is to survive and hope for the best, stopping the excavators as they come. Continue stocking up per my recommended purchases below as you progress. This is the process if you hear the intercom announce an excavator at the beginning of a round
10. • Immediately run out the back of the Biodome outside to the teleporter pad with the hacker. You’ll get there quickly enough that you don’t need to worry about running out of oxygen
    • Stay near the teleporter pad at Area 51 until it reopens. You shouldn’t have too much trouble fending off any zombies that spawn while you wait, the gate pulls up just in time if you’re paying attention
    • Once you spawn in the Receiving Area, run to the console with the green light on it and hack it. (The locations of the excavator terminals in the Receiving Area are marked by an X in the upper left map image on the IGN guide) Once you’ve hacked a console, you’ll hear an announcement on the intercom. Run back to the Biodome as quickly as you can, only stopping to kill zombies that block your path. You should be able to sprint back before too many of them spawn (Gersch devices come in handy here if you get stuck)
    • Play out the round. Rinse and repeat
    Hack all three terminals

• Omicron (Tunnel 11 — M14 side)
• Epsilon (Biodome)
• Pi (Tunnel 6 — Olympia side)

As you earn points and progress from your home in the Biodome, this is my recommended purchase priority

• PHD Flopper — 2,000 (crucial if you get swamped and need to use one of the yellow teleporter pads in the Biodome to escape. Sometimes they miss and cause fall damage, which can kill you if you don’t have PHD Flopper)
• A second good gun from the mystery box to replace your M14 or pistol
• Speed Cola — 3,000
• Mule Kick — 4,000 (I like having a third gun, but if you’re confident or get the Wave Gun early on, you can get by with just two)
• Hit the mystery box for a good third gun, but ideally you’re ultimately looking for Gersch Devices or the Wave Gun
• Pack-A-Punch the MP5 + hack its ammo on the wall so that Pack-A-Punched ammo is only 600
• Pack-A-Punch all of your other guns

General Notes

• Always be careful with explosives inside pressurized areas. If you depressurize a room, it’ll make it much more difficult to navigate with the Hacker. In particular, if you depressurize the Receiving Area or the Biodome I’d recommend restarting
• If you ever drop the Hacker for the Spacesuit, always remember to pick it back up before starting the next round. The beauty of this strategy is that you’re always ready to stop an excavator at the start of a round, but only if you already have the Hacker in-hand

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions or if anything is unclear.

Last of all, GOOD LUCK!