How do you complete the Citadelle des Morts quest in Black Ops 6? Citadelle des Morts, the third Zombies map, was added with the arrival of Season 1 Reloaded. As ever, with a new Zombies map comes a brand-new easter egg questline to complete.
The Liberty Falls main quest and the Terminus main quest are both large, complicated missions that require you to jump through a lot of hoops, including getting your hands on powerful BO6 Wonder Weapons. The latest Black Ops 6 Zombies map, set in a spooky citadel in Avalon, France, takes you through the winding passageways of a castle as you complete the Citadelle des Morts main quest. Here’s how to do it.
Here are the steps to complete the main Liberty Falls quest in Black Ops 6:
- Unlock the castle
- Defeat a Doppelghast and activate the Pack-A-Punch machine
- Speak to Krafft
- Collect Page Fragments
- Collect Ritual Items
- Collect wax seal stamps
- Activate each of the Bastard Swords
- Complete Item Rituals and collect Incantations
- Repair the book and complete the puzzle
- Complete Incantations
- Charge Mystic Orbs
- Trigger and survive the final encounter
Unlock the castle
If you’ve completed either of the other BO6 questlines so far, you’ll know you have to unlock sections of the map to complete it. In Citadelle des Morts, you must reach the castle, but you only need to unlock half the doors to do so. If you’re playing with a team, try to keep door unlocks to a minimum to save Essence by heading either up the right or left side of the map to start with.
Once you reach the castle, use the Lion cannon to open the gates. Unlock either the door to the right or the left of the castle’s main entrance, and follow the rampart to the cannon. Turn the wheel to rotate it. It doesn’t take long, but you must still fight off zombies, so it’s best to ensure you have just one zombie left in the round or have teammates to cover you.
Defeat a Doppelghast and activate the Pack-A-Punch machine
Follow the quest markers through the castle until you reach the Oubliette Room. Again, unlock as few doors as possible to get there. Once inside, shoot the three locks on the large container. Spoiler alter, this contains an Elite enemy, so again ensure your team is around and that you have just one or two zombies left alive to make things easier.
Upon defeating the Doppelghast, it drops a Blood Aetherium Crystal which you must then use at the red glowing portal no found in the container. There is no interactivity prompt here as this is an easter egg, so just press your usual interact button and the Pack-A-Punch machine will appear in place of the red light.
Speak to Krafft
To trigger the main quest, you must find and talk to Krafft. This can only be done once you have unlocked the Pack-A-Punch machine, but can be done before or after you collect a Bastard Sword Wonder Weapon. Since activating the swords requires at least round ten, we suggest getting the next few stages out the way in lower (i.e. easier) rounds.
Krafft can be found behind the closed wooden door behind the Quick Revive machine in the Dungeon. Only once you have activated the Pack-A-Punch machine can you interact with the door to open the hatch, behind which Krafft will appear to talk to you.
Collect Page Fragments
Like most of these steps, this can be done at any time after speaking with Krafft. It’s easy though, and you’ll be nearby at this point, so we recommend doing it now.
Head to the sitting room, where the Stamin-Up machine is located where you can find four Page Fragments dotted around the room. There are a total of 12 spawn locations, but they are all inside this small room so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find them. You can spot them by the red glowing icon in the center of each.
Collect Ritual Items
Now you can also collect Ritual Items. They cannot be interacted with before speaking with Krafft, and can be found and activated in the following locations once you’ve done so:
Pegasus’ Horseshoe
- Shoot the horseshoe above the barn door.
- Pick up Otto’s horseshoe and carry it to the cannon.
- Get inside the cannon to fast travel to the Town Center.
- Look around the sky for storm clouds and lightning on either side of the Town Center. This is where the horseshoe has now dropped. Pick it up again, but beware of zombies spawning around you.
Raven’s Talon
- Use the cave slide in the Oubliette room
- Shoot the raven statue on your ride towards the bottom of the slide. You will be moving, so be prepared for this.
- Upon leaving the slide, follow and shoot the raven that flies off.
- Collect the Raven’s Talon dropped upon its death.
Ra’s Ankh
- With molotovs, light three fires in the castle courtyard. Be aware that lighting each will spawn a few extra zombies.
- One is directly above the main gates, and can be lit from the cannon.
- Another is on the western rampart from the cannon. Head along the rampart and another bonfire is above the first door.
- The third is on the eastern rampart. Head to the red locked door marker, next to the Oil Trap, and look out over the parapets, the bonfire is on the left.
- With each of these lit, another Doppelghast spawns. Kill it, and it drops Ra’s Ankh.
Paladin’s Brooch
- Shoot the red crystal above the Vulture Aid Perk-A-Cola machine in the Dining Hall.
- Stand in the general area the red beam points to, and shoot it again.
- Keep doing this until all beams are lit, taking you into the Alchemical Lab. The final beam points at a bust on the table, the Paladin’s Brooch spawns there after a few seconds.
Collect wax seal stamps
By now, you’re probably nearing round ten, so you can begin collecting stamps. These drop from special zombies wearing a pot helmet like the one in the image above, and they only spawn from round ten.
You can only carry one stamp at a time, and a separate stamp is required to activate each elemental Bastard Sword and complete Rituals in the main quest. In a full squad, one person can complete the next two stages for one sword. However, if you are going it alone, you need to do these steps four times.
Activate each of the Bastard Swords
With one stamp in your inventory, head to the castle Dining Room, the main room with four Knight statues in the center. Interact with any of the Knights to claim their sword.
Pay special attention to the carving on each Knight’s chest before you take a sword, as this relates to the location the sword must now be activated. The sword’s name also appears in the bottom right hand of the screen when you equip it, in case you’re unsure.
We recommend you complete this stage and the next stage at the same time, as each sword is required for one of the Rituals below. For example, once you have activated the Stag Sword, complete the Pegasus’ Horseshoe Ritual below. Then, return to the castle Dining Room, swap swords, and continue to the Raven Sword.
Stag Sword – Durendal
Trade another stamp for the Stag Sword in the Dining Room. Now, you must collect three Lightning Rods, some of which you could already have. One is easy, and is just sitting on the ground to the left of the Deadshot Daquiri machine outside the barn.
The second requires a weapon with the Dead Wire Ammo Mod attached. Head back to the Lion door and shoot the electrical box just opposite the door and slightly up the slope. Follow the electrical charge along the wire to where the third Lightning Rod drops.
Collecting the third Lightning Rod is a little but more difficult, but you equally could already have it by now. You see, this rod drops from a zombie, but we’re still not entirely sure of the requirements to get it to drop. Provided you have spoken to Krafft, killing an armored zombie in the Dungeon seems to do the trick.
With all three Lightning Rods in your inventory, return to the Hillside Rampart and place them into the metal pot located there. Now, kill the purple-eyed quest zombies that spawn in with the sword until it glows. At this point, use it to hit the Lightning Rods, and one will take that charge from the sword. Repeat this twice more. When the pot stops rotating, place the sword inside to charge it and equip it again. Head to the Pegasus’ Horseshoe section below.
Raven Sword – Balmung
Swamp out a third stamp for the Raven Sword – this Knight has no carving on his chest. Take this sword with you to the Alchemical Lab and find one of the following items – only one will spawn in your game.
- A horn on the shelves to the northeast of the room.
- A jawbone on the wall unit to the western side of the room.
- Twin bird skulls on the wall unit to the western side of the lab.
- A fossil on the cabinet to the north west corner of the room.
- A fossil on a table in the middle of the lab.
Now head to the tavern basement, interact with the large circular tablet in the wall, and place the sword beneath it by interacting a second time. Interact a third time to be able to move the rings and complete a puzzle. Rotate the outer ring until a purple portal spawns on the floor of the room.
Now, purple orbs will float from the puzzle towards you, and you must lead them to the portal by standing nearby. Once three orbs have been deposited into this portal, you must lead more to other locations in the tavern:
- The ground floor of the tavern
- The tavern mezzanine
Now head back down to the basement where a portal has spawned on the ground. Interact with it to place the sword inside, and it will reappear charged and ready for the Raven’s Talon part of the section below.
Dragon Sword – Caliburn
When you exchange a stamp for the Dragon Sword, interact with the dragon statue just above the stairs from the main castle entrance. This ignites three lights above the statue, indicating three braziers you must not interact with. These are all in the castle courtyard and on the ramparts.
You start taking fire damage upon interacting with a brazier, and must run back to the dragon statue and interact with it before dying. You must do this for all three braziers. To temporarily regain some health on the way, you can melee hit challenge zombies with purple eyes.
Once you have done this three times, you can reclaim the Dragon Bastard Sword and move on to the Ra’s Ankh section of the next step.
Lion Sword – Solais
To activate the Lion Bastard Sword, trade another stamp for the sword and head to the village ascent as glowing Parasites spawn in. Here, just down the slope from the well and on your right hand side, there is a door with a lion’s head knocker. Kill a glowing Parasite with the Lion Sword, then use it to hit the door. Do this four times, then interact with the door to enter.
Inside, deposit the sword in the stand and an icon will glow beneath the sword. Locate the matching icon on the wall and shoot it. Again, do this four times. Pick the now activated Lion Bastard Sword back up and move on to the Paladin’s Brooch section below.
Complete Item Rituals and collect Incantations
Again, you can complete these Rituals earlier if it makes it easier, as you only need the Ritual Items to trigger these events. However, you need the four Bastard Swords to complete them, so we’ve done it here.
For each, interact with their relative glowing golden circles on the ground, placing the Ritual Item above them. A new wave of zombies spawns for each, and killing them near the item charges it. Upon completion, a golden chest spawns in place of the item, which can only be opened with their respective Bastard Sword Wonder Weapon.
- Pegasus’ Horseshoe – Town Center
- Raven’s Talon – Castle Undercroft
- Ra’s Ankh – Castle Courtyard
- Paladin’s Brooch – Castle Dining Room
Find and repair the book
You now need to work out a six-digit string of symbols by interacting with six bottles in the tavern. These bottles each feature a symbol, and interacting with them reveals a Roman numeral, thus confirming the order in which the symbols go. Jot this down for the next step.
Now, purchase the Melee Macchiato Perk and head back down to the Undercroft. Inside, find and punch an exposed brick wall on the southern end of the room, revealing a series of glowing glyphs. Shoot the six symbols from the bottles in the correct order, opening an annex in the wall in which there is an ancient book.
Provided you have collected all four Page Fragments already, interact with this book to place the pages inside and note down the order of the symbols. Reading the book as you would a normal western book (left-right, top-bottom) gives the correct order for you game: top-left, bottom-left, top-right, bottom-right.
Using this order, kill zombies using the relative Point of Power traps. The trap itself looks like the red symbol shown in the book. You must remain inside the trap, and the trap’s power ends prematurely once you’ve killed enough zombies. Do this for each of the four traps in your book.
Complete Incantations
At this point, head back to the Undercroft Staircase where, if you’ve done everything right so far, four symbols now appear on the wall. Note the order they are in using the Roman numerals alongside them. Note the color and the animal to make things easier. This is the order in which you must now complete incantations in the Dining Room.
In the Dining Room, pick up your first incantation from one of the boxes around the room based on the first color you just noted down. Take this to the Knight related to your first animal, and, with their sword in hand, interact with them, triggering the incantation. Now inspect the sword using ‘I’ on keyboard or the left D-pad button twice on controller. This should cause the Knight statue to glow gold, confirming the incantation is complete. Now do this again for the remaining three incantations in the correct order.
Finally, pick up the Mystic Orb that now spawns in the center of the room.
Charge Mystic Orbs
Now, for all four swords, you must place the Mystic Orb in holders that looks like one above as detailed below.
Durendal (Stag) – Town Centre
Get Electrical elemental kills in the town center using Dead Wire or the sword.
Balmung (Raven) – Undercroft
Get Void elemental kills here, using the Shadow Rift ammo mod or the Dark Incantation.
Caliburn (Dragon) – Castle Courtyard
Get elemental fire kills near the orb, using the sword itself, Molotovs, or the Napalm Burst ammo mod.
Solais (Lion) – Dining Room Mezzanine
Get kills while standing in green orbs around the room.
Trigger and survive the final encounter
You made it! Well, this far. It’s finally time for the boss fight. Take the time to prepare yourself with Perks, Gobblegums, increased weapon rarity, Pack-A-Punch, and everything else you might need. Then, place the Mystic Orb in the wall on the Undercroft Staircase between the animal symbols. The wall opens up to reveal another secret room where you can find the Guardian Key. Pick this up and take it to the statue in the Town Center to trigger to final encounter.
We’ll let you find out what happens next!
Black Ops 6 Citadelle des Morts main quest rewards
If you manage to complete the Citadelle des Morts main quest before the map is officially added to Black Ops 6 Directed Mode, there are three great rewards to collect and show off. Two of these, the skin and the XP reward, are still awarded for completing the quest after Directed Mode is added, but the Calling Card will have a different look for those late to the party.
The rewards available for completing the Citadelle des Morts main quest are:
- 5,000 XP
- ‘Jackknife’ Operator Skin for Weaver
- Calling Card
When the new Black Ops 6 Citadelle des Morts main quest is available and complete, we’ll let you know every step to guide you through it too. Until then, stock up the new Black Ops 6 Perk-A-Colas and BO6 Gobblegums added to the zombie game as part of Season 1 Reloaded.