One of the most drawn-out and tedious things to do in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Zombies is fully upgrading your weapons. That is by design since you would be much too powerful in lower rounds with the firepower you can put out later in the game. Regardless, while Pack-A-Punching weapons are straightforward and can be done by simply killing zombies and going to the machine, upgrading the damage tier of your gun is a little more luck-based, with you needing to rely on defeated zombies to drop the proper salvage for you to pick up. That is where the Aether Tool comes into play.
What is an Aether Tool?
The Aether Tool is a Legendary rarity item that you can pick up only in Outbreak at the time of this writing. When you pick it up, any weapon you are currently holding will automatically be upgraded to the next damage tier on its path. Ensure you are holding the gun you want to be upgraded in your hands when you pick it up. Also, we recommend using the Aether Tool on weapons that are already at higher damage tiers since it is much harder to upgrade weapons the longer you go. For example, gathering the blue salvage to upgrade from Epic to Legendary takes a very long time to complete, so if you have an Epic weapon in your inventory, strongly consider upgrading that first.
How to get Aether Tool?
While the Aether Tool is rare to drop on the field, you can get one in multiple ways, one being guaranteed way.
The Aether Tool is guaranteed to drop if you complete the Fury Crystal side objective. In this mission, you need to destroy all orange crystals that have popped up in an area within a time limit while zombies quickly spawn in and swarm you. If the final crystal is destroyed before you hear a laugh, an Aether Tool will drop onto the ground from that crystal. In solo, these objectives can be challenging if you do not know the placement of the crystals, but in a team, it is much easier, although only one tool will drop regardless of team size.
As for the other ways an Aether Tool can be found, it can be fished out of the water, dropped by a defeated Orda, or in extremely rare cases, dropped by killed zombies or shattered purple crystals.
