COD: Black Ops 3 – Zombies Chronicles: Ice Staff Code and Upgrade Guide

Don't get cold feet, it isn't too complicated.

The Ice Staff in CoD: Black Ops 3 Zombie Chronicles
Image via Treyarch

The Call of Duty: Black Ops III expansion pack Zombie Chronicles gifts players with eight remastered maps from World at War, Black Ops, and Black Ops II. One of four buildable elemental staffs in the Origins map, the Staff of Ice—also called the Staff of Water in the game’s files—fires a beam of ice at zombies, slowing them down and eventually freezing and disintegrating them.

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After upgrading the Staff of Ice, it gains further range with the Ull’s Arrow, which is obtained by completing a riddle in the Crazy Place.

How to find the Staff of Ice

A zombie and many mechanical robots wandering around the Origins wasteland
The “Origins” map originated from the Apocalypse downloadable content for Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Image via Treyarch.

In order to craft the Staff of Ice, you must find three scattered parts of the staff, the elemental crystal, the gramophone, and the correct records to access the Crazy Place and the lower levels of the Excavation Site.

The staff parts can be found in digspots during a snowy round. It typically snows on Rounds 2-5, Round 10, and during random rounds after that. One staff part can be found in the starting area (spawn to the workshop), one in the middle area of the map, and one near the church.

That’s the easy part out of the way. Now, you need to find the blue record, which is located near Generator 2, specifically inside the tank station on one of the shelves. As for the gramophone, it always spawns on the floor inside the Excavation Site. Finally, the record to access the lower levels can be found outside around the Excavation Site.

That leaves the elemental gem, located inside the Crazy Place. In order to access it, you must have acquired the blue record and the gramophone. The entrance to the Ice Tunnel is near the church, which is also where you’ll find one of the staff parts, so you might want to kill two birds with one stone.

Once in the Crazy Place, there will be a pedestal bathed in a blue glow with the elemental gem ascending from within it. Note: the gem may only be picked up if the Crazy Place was accessed from the tunnel matching the element of the gem, so in this case, it would need to be the Ice Tunnel.

Once all parts are in your possession, the staff can be built in the lowest level of the Excavation Site, in the blue pedestal.

How to upgrade the Staff of Ice to the UII’s Arrow

The Staff of Ice powering up
Upgrading to UII’s Arrow allows the Staff of Ice to reach its full potential. Image via Treyarch.

Now that you have your Staff of Ice, you’ll no doubt want to make it as strong as can be with Ull’s Arrow. In order to upgrade, the player must first solve the riddle located in the Crazy Place. Above the portal, there are six panels of floating stones with symbols etched onto them. On the wall, there is a blue ice panel with dots in various patterns.

To solve the riddle, the player must use the pattern shown on the blue ice panel on the wall in order to determine which floating stone panel to shoot with the Staff of Ice. Be warned, the code changes every time, so you’ll have to study the below chart and learn how to read the pillar.

The symbol chart needed to upgrade the Staff of Ice
A chart of the stone symbols, their numeric counterparts, and the symbol equivalent. Image via Treyarch.

Once you’ve inputted the correct sequence (you’ll know this because the stones flip around if shot in the correct order), you’ll need to find three tombstone locations and shoot those with a weapon that isn’t the Ice Staff. 

The first one can be found by the soul chest behind Juggernog, the other directly behind it inside one of the giant’s footprints (near a body impaled on a stake), and the third is near the tank station—just hop up on the tank and look to the left of the downed robot.

After completing that little errand, go back underground. You’ll be able to rotate the giant rings on the amplification device using the handles around the stairs. When you line them up, ensure all of them are blue to correspond with the Staff of Ice. When you head to the bottom, if you look inside the middle of the rings, you’ll see a floating blue ball—shoot that with the ice staff.

Now you’ll need to head back to the Crazy Place. Go to the Ice Staff holder and put it inside. By killing nearby zombies, you’ll be charging the staff to its full power. After around 25 zombies, your staff will be completely charged. When you pick it up, you’ll have a fully upgraded Staff of Ice.

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Chynna Mansfield
For over 7 years, Chynna has been a noteworthy presence within creative media. As a self- proclaimed geek and driven by a passion for horror, comic books, video games, and modern cinema, she takes pride in providing only the best publications. She likes to label herself as an innovative writer doing what she loves, especially when it concerns her favorite interests. Aside from personal written projects, she can be credited as an award-winning screenwriter, published poet, and accomplished academic writer. She has taken the media industry by storm, producing short stories, screenplays, articles, features, and poetry that thoroughly engage, excite and thrill those fortunate enough to read them. She enjoys watching anime, horror movies, and animated shows; her life revolves around cinema, video games, and tasteful literature.