World of Tanks II: Fighting, Bragging, Raging Edition - All aboard the Lemming Train!

[Eldariel]

Somua was pain for me with it's useless "tower" . But so far S-35 CA is great, even with stock gun.

Hey, new patch. Hello, Jagdpanther 2

Ugh, T-34-85 is one of my favorite vehicles. The new gun better be worth a damn; I haven't grinded a second crew skill for the crew for no reason. Overall, I'm really interested in what comes out of this because it touches many of the tanks I play a lot now and intend on getting in the near future.

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This is why I love my M18.

Woah, that's mighty impressive already! I've been thinking of getting one too, this just consolidates my decision.

I'm considering starting this game (have to wait for it to patch when I get home) but I was wondering if any tips could be made available for a newcomer, I saw the video tutorials and read a guide or two on their forums, but it seems there isn't a ton of info for those who don't have experience with the game?

It seems as though the different nations have different trees, and thus need to be developed separately? If this is the case could I get any generalizations as to what each nation specializes in?

Ok, so a quick rundown:
- Every fight you get experience and credits.
- Some of the credits will be spent on repairing your vehicle and buying ammunition (the higher the level, the higher these costs are). The rest is stored, and can be used to buy consumable items, permanent equipment (Removed Speed Governor on Soviet vehicles is classified as a Consumable but isn't consumed on use so get that for all), new vehicles and better crew members.
- You earn experience for just the vehicle you played with. This experience can be used to develop better components (guns, radios, turrets, suspensions, engines) for the tank, and eventually next tanks in the tech tree.
- Every fight you also earn 5% Free Experience which can be used for anything (generally saved for when you unlock a higher tier tank and want to buy a better gun/engine/turret/suspensions right away), and you can convert vehicle-specific experience into Free Experience by spending real money on the game.
- In the start, you can get a Tier 1 Light Tank from each faction (currently Germany, Soviets, USA, France) for free. Each of these tanks leads to their nation's respective tech tree; you need to play a few games to unlock the tier 2 vehicles (which are split into the four trees: Tank Destroyer Tree, Light/Medium Tank Tree, Heavy Tank Tree and SPG Tree), which you then play to progress in that tree. There are also cross links.
- Your crew also earns experience in fight. You start with a free 50% crew; for 20000 credits a piece you can get 75% crew members and for gold (real money) you can get 100% crew members. Normally crew members affect basically everything in the tank (accuracy, loading times, acceleration, turning speed, etc.). At 100%, crew members can start learning specialization skills beyond their normal ability.


Generally you want to play through all the Tier 1 tanks and fully research them; that's a short operation and enables you to start any path on any nation. The game really "begins" around Tier 4-5 where you begin to have different roles; scouts, defensive and offensive tanks, artillery. Most maps are also locked until you've left the first few Tiers.

Of course learning the maps is a huge part of this game so you want to get started with that ASAP. It'd be hard to give you a rundown of each nation; while there are general trends, fact is that each vehicle is its own unique entity with its own unique considerations. That said:
- Russian vehicles generally have the strongest guns for their tier.
- German vehicles generally have the best armor for their tier.
- American vehicles have the highest gun depression (ability to lower the gun under firing straight forward) and the tanks have good turret armor as a rule.
- French vehicles on higher tiers have "auto-loader" which allows them to shoot a full magazine of ammo in a quick succession after which they have a long load time. They also tend to be fast but with paper-thin armor after the first 4 tiers.

For starters, I'd suggest heading to Tier 5 and picking up a good moneymaker; all the Tank Destroyer lines are fairly good options (Russians and Germans in particular), and then the KV-1 line and the PzIV line are fairly good (though PzIV line has the unfortunate Pz38na blocking the way for a while).

All the artillery lines are also doable though if you go with German artillery, avoid the Sturmpanzer II at all costs; it's an awful vehicle with no redeeming qualities. If you go German Arty (not a bad idea, Grille is a beast for its tier), play Bison and then go through Wespe.