D.I.E. Shockwave

The Decompressive Isotopic Estrangement Machine — D.I.E. Shockwave, to everyone — is Die Maschine’s two-stroke wonder weapon: the alternate fire vacuums zombies helplessly toward the muzzle, and the primary fires them back out as a shockwave. It launched the Dark Aether era’s tradition of wonder weapons that are guaranteed, not gambled.

Getting it free

The box sells it for 950, but the map hands one over: kill a Megaton for its keycard, open the Weapons Lab cabinet for the D.I.E. Remote, and find the machine itself in the old bunker’s living room — held by a giant skeleton the community named Walter. Charge its vacuum on zombies killed through the hole in the wall, fire it to blast the door open, and it is yours.

Four elements, one quest

Four free capacitor swaps build its variants — the gas-lobbing Nova-5, the freezing Cryo-Emitter, the beam-firing Electrobolt drawn from Dark Aether crystals, and the plasma Thermophasic — and Die Maschine’s main quest requires all four, one per leg of Der Wechsler’s containers, to turn the split Megatons back into the man they used to be. A later season even let it Pack-a-Punch into the D.E.A.D. Thunderblast.