The four Elemental staffs of Fire, Ice, Wind and Lightning are powerful weapons that you can utilize to mow down the zombie hordes that swarm you in the latest DLC for Black Ops 2, called Origins. However, as powerful as they are, they serve a more sinister purpose in the Easter Egg for this map.
Before you can use them to their fullest, you need to upgrade the staffs and unlock their full power. You do this eight times, twice for each staff.
There will be one challenge for each staff in the normal world, and one challenge for each staff in ‘the crazy place’, which is accessed through the elemental tunnels.
For more help on Black Ops 2 Origins, read our How To Build Elemental Staffs guide.
Black Ops 2 Origins Crazy Place Challenges
Crazy Fire Challenge
How to Complete. For this one, enter the portal with the fire staff and go to the Fire area to find four strange pots/cauldrons. Stand near the pots and start a round, then kill the zombies using the staff as they come close.
When the zombies die, their energies are sent into the pots to light them up. You’ve completed this one if you light up all of the pots.
Crazy Ice Challenge
How to Complete. Get the Ice Staff and enter the crazy place to the ice area. Here you’ll find some slabs floating in the air with some symbols on them as well as a changing Symbol that appears on a nearby pillar.
The symbol on the pillar corresponds with a particular symbol on the floating slabs.
You must hit the correct slab with the ice staff to flip it over, and flip over all the slabs in this way. If you hit a slab the symbol changes, to signal that you must now hit another slab.
You’ll have to use trial and error to figure out the symbols and the corresponding slabs. I’m sure there’s a logical pattern but I wasn’t able to uncover it.
Crazy Wind Challenge
How to Complete. Take the Wind Staff to the wind area of the Crazy place. Here you should see several large stone rings with symbols on them on the ceiling. You can also see some symbols on the rocks that line up with the rings.
You can rotate the rings by hitting them with the staff of wind to create different combinations of symbols.
This is most likely a number puzzle that involves adding or subtracting the symbols on the rings to produce the symbol on the rocks. However, since I can’t figure out which language/code they’re in, here’s a simple picture of the correct combination.
Crazy Lightning Challenge
How to Complete. This one is a bit tricky, but musicians will get it no problem. Head over to the lightning side of the Crazy Place and you’ll find a collection of weird glowing purple triangles on one side and three strange symbols on the other.
You need to think of the triangles as piano keys, with the lower triangles as white keys and the upper as black ones. The symbols are the key as to which triangles you need to hit, and in which order.
You need to strike a total of nine triangles, in sequences of three. Counting the triangles from left to right, here is the order:
First Sequence
- Sixth lower triangle
- First lower triangle
- Third lower triangle
Second Sequence
- Third lower triangle
- Fifth lower triangle
- Seventh lower triangle
Third Sequence
- Fourth lower triangle
- Sixth lower triangle
- Second lower triangle
Black Ops 2 Origins Normal World Staff Challenges
Fire Staff Puzzle
How to Complete. In the normal world, head under the church and you should find a row of torches with some numbers under them. Above the church you’ll find some strange symbols on the walls that will look like flaming dots and circles.
These symbols are denoting which four of the seven torches inside the church you need to light up. If you don’t want to bother with decoding the symbols just know this; from left to right they mean 11, 5, 9, 7, 6, 3 and 4.
Of the seven symbols, four will be glowing, and these are indicating which torches need to be lit. So if symbols 5, 7, 3 and 4 are glowing, then that means you have to head inside and light the torches with 5, 7, 3 and 4 written underneath them.
After both Fire Staff challenges are completed, head down to the excavation site and line up the four stone disks so they all have the red symbol in front. Then shoot the red orb that appears under the disks with the staff.
Ice Staff Puzzle
How to Complete. For this challenge you first need to go around in search for three carts/wagons that’ll be lying around on fire. They’ll usually be surrounding the excavation site.
You need to shoot the ice staff at the carts in order to put them all out. Make sure to do this quickly as the fires will eventually come back.
After the fires are out, search around the borders of the trenches for these grey tombstones that seem to be dripping with water. There are three of them and you need to freeze them using the Ice Staff. Once they’re all froze, go around again and shatter them by shooting them.
After both Ice Staff challenges are completed, head down to the excavation site and line up the four stone disks so they all have the ice symbol in front. Then shoot the ice orb that appears under the disks with the staff.
Wind Staff Puzzle
How to Complete. Go around the trenches again but this time look for some smoke stacks. They may look like ornaments or statues. When you find one, you need to blast it with the wind staff in such a way that the smoke starts floating towards the excavation site.
Samantha should chime in if you do it right. After both Wind Staff challenges are completed, head down to the excavation site and line up the four stone disks so they all have the yellow symbol in front. Then shoot the yellow orb that appears under the disks with the staff.
Lightning Staff Puzzle
How to Complete. For this one you need to find a total of eight panels that are scattered throughout the map. One of the panels will be sparking. Go up to the panel and rotate the switch on it until the panel is no longer sparking.
This will cause another of the eight panels to start sparking. Do this for all eight panels.
After both Lightning Staff challenges are completed, head down to the excavation site and line up the four stone disks so they all have the lightning symbol in front. Then shoot the orb that appears under the disks with the staff.
Finally, once all the challenges are done, you need to go back to the Crazy Place and place all the staffs on their respective pedestals. Now you must kill zombie near the staffs to charge and upgrade them.
