I think it's worth noting that while I was watching mcsportzhawk stream one of his teammates discovered that after you insert each staff onto it's altar in the crazy place you must kill zombies in the crazy place in order to upgrade the staff. Once you kill enough zombies the upgraded staff will teleport to it's place at the excavation site. The upgraded staff will have spikes that make it an effective melee weapon, a chargeable blast that uses more ammo but chain kills zombies for a few seconds, and the opposite end can be used to revive from a distance with limited ammo.