Http://www.worldoftanks.com

The Tanker's Handbook v1.0By Tariz

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – The basics. Because everyone has to start somewhere!– Introduction to the Garage– The Depot & Inventory– How to use the Store– Statistics– Basic Tech Tree Function & Vehicle Specs– Barracks & Crew

Chapter 2 – Basic outfitting, upgrading, and “What does this spec mean?”– Ammo loading– How to purchase and install upgrades– Part Specs Explained

Chapter 3 – Advanced Outfitting: Equipment and Consumables– Differences between the two– Equipment List & What do they all do?– Consumables

Chapter 4 – General Game Information– Vehicle class/type breakdown: Know your role!– Top mistakes new players make, and how you can avoid them– The basics of “Damage” and “Penetration”, along with proper ammo selection.– List of common acronyms

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Chapter 1 – The Basics!

In this chapter we will discuss the basics of getting around in World of Tanks, and that starts in your garage. The garage is the first thing that shows up when you log in. Here you can see what type of tanks you currently own, as well as a 3D model of them. The currently selected tank will appear as a 3D model on the garage floor in the center of the screen, asshown below:

1) These are your menu buttons, and they show you which screen you are currently in. Right now we are in the garage, so that button is highlighted. Clicking on any of the other buttons will navigate to that section.

2) This is your currency display. It shows you (from top to bottom):- How many days you have left on premium (if any) and the option to extend it.- How much gold you currently have- How many credits you currently have- The amount of Free XP you currently have. Free XP is a special type of experience that is more versatile than regular XP, and we'll discuss that in more detail later.

3) The menu button is here.... clicking this will open the game menu, where you can adjust your settings, disconnect, etc.

4) This button opens your research tree for your current tank. The number next to it displays how much XP you have available for this tank. This button normally says “Research” instead of “Transfer”.

5) Battle! This big red button is how you get into combat... click it to instantly join a game!6) Your crew is displayed in this area, as well as their proficiency levels and any

specializations.

7) The “Repair” button does exactly what it says – It repairs your tank if it becomes damaged or destroyed. The colored bar shows the percentage of damage done to your tank, and the amount of currency displayed to the right of that bar is how many credits it will cost to fully repair your tank to 100%. You cannot join a battle unless your tank is fully repaired.

8) This is your ammunition display. Notice it says in this example “70/93” in the top bar. The first number is how much ammunition you currently have loaded in this tank (70 shells) and the second number is the maximum number it is possible to carry in this tank. (93) The button underneath marked “Auto-Resupply” is how you quickly refill your ammunition if you don't need to make any loadout changes. The price to automatically refill your ammo is shown to the right of the box.

9) These buttons will show you what modules (if any) are currently installed on your tank. From right to left, these are: Gun, Turret, Engine, Suspension, and Radio. We will cover these further in the chapter on upgrading your tank.

10) This is a graphical ammunition display. Each of the boxes has both the shell type acronym (AP, HE, etc.) as well as the quantity currently loaded. Clicking any of these 3 boxes will bring up your ammunition loadout screen.

11) These boxes are equipment slots. Click on them to bring up the equipment list, where you can purchase and/or replace equipment. We will cover this in detail later on.

12) These are slots for consumables. Click on them to purchase, load, or unload consumables. Like equipment, we will cover these in detail.

A few other things to note that I didn't number in the picture... The text on the right side of the screen displays technical statistics for your currently selected tank, while the row of tanks at the bottom acts as a selector.... simply click on the tank you wish to see from the row of thumbnails, and it will move that tank into your active garage. The garage interface is very well designed and layed out, and it will quickly become second nature to you. Now let's talk about some of the other menus.

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The Depot

The depot is basically what is called your “inventory” in other games. It will allow you to both view everything you own including tanks, modules, equipment, and consumables – as well as sell them in exchange for credits.

1) Nation filter: You can set it to “USSR”, “Germany”, or “All”. Simply filters the selected item type by nationality.

2) For vehicles, select which type: All, Light, Medium, Heavy, Tank Destroyer's, SPG's (artillery)

3) Category of items to show. Choose between vehicles, modules, shells, equipment, and consumables.

4) The price you will get for that piece of gear, in credits.5) Sell button – Click this to sell that particular piece of gear.

If you select some of the other tabs like Shells, Modules, etc. there are many different filters available such as only showing equipment that is not compatible with any of the vehicles currently in your garage (modules from old tanks that you upgraded and have since sold, etc.) The best way to familiarize yourself with the depot menu is simply to browse through it and see – it's very well designed and pretty self explanatory. It's a good idea to go through once in a while and sell all the old shells, modules, etc. that will inevitably pile up in your depot – many people never realize that this stuff is even there, and after a while you can have a significant amount of credits piled up in your depot and never even realize it!

Another important thing to note about selling vehicles in the depot is that many times equipment from one vehicle can be used on another vehicle, and in this case it can be well

worth it to save that equipment and use it on another tank instead of selling it. For example, many of the German tank destroyers use the exact same engines as tanks from the German medium tank line. Efficient use of the tech tree will help you make intelligent decisions on what excess equipment to save, and what to sell.

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The Store

The store is much like the depot, and is self-explanatory enough not to require a picture. It's where you can purchase new tanks, as well as modules, equipment, shells, and consumables. Realistically, everything you can buy here can be purchased right from the garage, so 99% of the time you will use the store solely to purchase the tanks themselves.

It contains most of the same filters as the Depot does. The price shown is the actual price you will pay in credits (or gold, in some cases) for that vehicle or piece of gear. It's important to note that you cannot purchase things that you have not researched yet, with the exception of shells, equipment, and consumables, all of which don't require any research to purchase.

Statistics

The statistics menu allows you to track your personal combat stats. The actual statistics are fairly self-explanatory and well laid out. The picture below shows the statistics menu:

The left column shows all your vehicles and your numbers of battles and victories in each. Selecting the top one “Overall Results” will show the menu at right, which is an overview of all your stats. Selecting a specific vehicle model in the left column will show detailed statistics for that vehicle in the display window on the right.

Medals are shown across the top of the window. Mousing over them will show you the name of the medal, and right-clicking will bring up the window that tells you what the medal was awarded for.

The Tech Tree

The tech tree is where you put all that XP you have saved up to use in upgrading your tanks, as well as progressing to unlocking bigger and better tanks. It's one of the screens you will spend a lot of time in, planning out your course through the game and comparing different models of tanks.

Here's the basic tech tree:

The tabs at the top will switch between the USSR and German tech trees. The star in the boxes indicate that you have researched and unlocked that tank, and the number next to it shows how much XP you have available in that tank for research.

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Clicking on any tank will bring up the research window for that vehicle, showing the available upgrades. It looks like this:

The amount of experience you have available is shown in the top right corner, under “Experience not distributed:”. Free experience is shown underneath this. In the modules themselves, right-clicking and selecting “Display characteristics” will show detailed information for each specific module. Modules that are bright, with no numbers underneath them have already been researched and unlocked. Modules that are greyed out, like the Grille in the bottom right corner of the image, have not yet been researched. The total amount of XP needed to reearch them is shown underneath the image for modules, or in the bottom right corner (as shown) for vehicles.

Let's take a second to discuss the differences between XP and Free XP. Regular XP is gained from playing games. At the end of each game, you receive a certain amount of credits and XP as a reward, based on your performance during the game. That XP is just that, regular XP. It gets applied to the vehicle you fought the match in, as it adds up it is used to unlock upgrade modules for that specific vehicle.

Free XP is slightly different in that it can be applied the same way as XP to any vehicle, not just the one you earned it on. You will automatically gain 5% of the XP you receive from each match credited as free XP. Once a tank has gained “Elite” status via unlocking every available upgrade in it's tech tree, including the next vehicle in the tree after it, the XP you gain from fighting in this vehicle builds up and can be converted into Free XP by spending

gold. This can provide you with a way of supplementing your leveling through the trees by fighting in different vehicles, if you have the gold you can even fight solely in a specific vehicle and convert all that XP into free XP, and level through other trees and even skip entire vehicles without ever actually playing one.

Now, let's get back to the tech tree. Right clicking on a vehicle in the tech tree will bring up the specs for that vehicle, looking something like this:

Let's take a look at what each of these values mean. From top to bottom in this image, they are as follows:

Health – How many “Hitpoints” the vehicle has. Hitpoints are worn away by the tank taking damage. Pretty easy.

Weight/Load Limit – The weight the vehicle currently weighs, and how much the vehicle can carry. The load limit can be increased by upgrading the suspension.

Engine Power – How many horsepower the engine puts out. Higher horsepower results in faster acceleration and a greater top speed.

Speed Limit – The top speed that the tank can reach. This is highly dependent upon acceleration, which is not shown. The tank may be rated for 54 km/h but some tanks will only reach that speed after going totally straight on a road for quite a ways, or going down a hill.

Traverse Speed (degrees/sec) – How fast the TANK will traverse in degrees per

second. This basically means how fast the tank can turn... higher values means the tank will turn faster. It does NOT have anything to do with how fast the turret rotates, that's an entirely different stat.

Hull armor (front/sides/rear, mm) – How thick the hull armor is on the Front/Sides/Rear, in that order. Measured in millimeters. So a tank with an armor rating of 30/15/15 would have 30mm of front armor, 15mm of side armor, and 15mm of rear armor. This is the armor on the body of the tank, NOT the turret.

Standard Shell Damage – The range of damage that the currently mounted gun will do. This is shown as a range, from low to high. The amount of damage actually done is usually somewhere in the middle of this range, and is affected by a variety of variables including range, angle of impact, penetration, etc. as well as an element of randomness for balance.

Standard Shell Penetration – How much armor the shell will penetrate, presented in a low to high range. This is also influenced by a wide range of factors including range to target, angle of impact, etc. as well as a certain degree of randomness for balancing purposes.

Rate of fire – How often you can load and fire the gun, presented in rounds per minute. Lower values equal a slower rate of fire for this field, and this number will change based on the skills of your loader and any equipment or consumable modifiers.

Turret traverse speed – How fast the gun turret will traverse, in degrees per second. For SPG's (artillery), and tank destroyer's, this is how fast the gun can move in it's limited range, before actually hitting the point where it moves the whole vehicle.

View range – How far you are capable of locating and identifying targets, before modifications such as obstacles in the way, and their skill in camouflage.

Signal range – How far your current radio can transmit information on targets you spot to other tanks. For a scout, this is especially important since a person attempting to scout with a short ranged radio may be out of radio range of his team, thus nullifying his efforts.

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Barracks & Crew

The barracks tab is where you will find your crew members both from your current tank, and from any other tanks you own or may have saved from old tanks. It looks something like this:

The filters on the left let you organize what is shown in many different ways, including by qualification, vehicle competence, and nationality. The crewmembers shown in GREEN are the ones that are operating the vehicle you currently have selected, those in RED are crew from vehicles you currently have in your garage but not actively selected, and those in GREY are crew that are not associated with any vehicle in your garage.

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Right clicking any crewmember will bring up detailed information about them, like this:

Most of this information is pretty self explanatory. The tabs on the right do several things, including allowing you to re-train crewmembers into different vehicles, select additional skills when they are available, or change the crewmembers name and/or portrait. (For a fee!)

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Let's talk briefly about changing their competence. A crewmember's competence is what vehicle they are currently trained on. They can only be competent on ONE vehicle at a

time, in order to change that you must re-train them and pay the subsequent fee if you want them to keep all or a portion of their competence level. Look at the image above. This crewmember's current competence is in the JagdPanther tank destroyer. Say I wanted to retrain him so he can serve as the loader on a Stug III... here's how:

Select the vehicle you want to retrain them on from the dropdown list. As you can see from the picture, we've selected the StuG III. The prices underneath is how much retraining will cost.... Free if you want to drop their skill to 80%, 20,000 credits for 90%, and 200 gold to keep their skill at 100%. If you want to retrain them to a vehicle in a different branch, say medium tanks. The free skill level would be 60% (vs 80%), the 20,000 credit skill would be 80% (vs 90%) but for 200 gold they would be able to transfer over at 100%, even to different trees of vehicles.

Under the skills tab you will find secondary skills. Once a crewmember reaches 100% basic competence level, he can start learning his first secondary skill.... there are currently 3 secondary skills:

-Camouflage: Visibility range decreases as crew member skills increase. Basically reduces the range at which targets can detect you.

-Repair: Your crew will execute repair of damaged modules faster.-Firefighting: Crew gains extra skill at fighting fires.

The exact modifier for each skill is based on averaging across the entire crew, so the more crew members trained in a skill the higher the value. It's usually considered a good idea to train them all in the same skill at the same time, or in groups of two or more.

Once your secondary skill gets to 100%, you can pick another and eventually have all 3.

Chapter 2 – Outfitting & Upgrading

In this chapter we're going to discuss everyone's favorite pastime – upgrading! After all, that's the whole point of the game isn't it? Get better upgrades, blow up more tanks!

Let's start with ammunition. You can't blow anything up with that shiny new cannon if you don't know how to load it. This is done through the main Garage screen:

Click on one of the shell icons on the bottom of your screen to open the Ammo Resupply window. Here you can use the slider bars to allocate how many of each type of shell you wish to load. In this example, we're loading AP rounds. The bar at the top says we have 26 out of a possible 60 shells loaded already. The “In Depot” column shows how many of each type (if any) you have stored in your depot, and the “In Tank” column shows how many of each type you have currently loaded. Adjust the slider bars or the up/down tickers to adjust your loadout. At the bottom of the ammo window you can see the ammo bar that shows at the bottom of your garage screen – The green bar shows how much ammo you have loaded, and the Credits and Gold icons to the right show how much it will cost to reload whatever ammo you have expended back to the values you selected in the ammo resupply window. Once you set a value in the ammo window, it's saved until you change it. E.g. you open the ammo window and select it to only load 15 AP and 15 HE. Hitting the auto-resupply button will automatically reload any fired ammunition, but will ONLY reload it back to 15 AP and 15 HE shells – because that's what you set in the ammo resupply window. Once you set it up initially, it won't be necessary to open the ammo resupply window again – you can simply hit the Auto-Resupply button to reload. (Unless you want to change the quantity of each that will be loaded each time) Sound complicated? It's not, I promise.

Purchasing & Installing Upgrades

So, you've researched some new stuff in the tech tree! But how do you actually purchase and install that shiny new cannon in your tank? The different modules of your tank are shown in the module bar in your garage screen, which looks like this:

If you remember from our Garage orientation, left to right they are: Gun, Turret, Engine, Suspension, and Radio.

To start the process, click on the module you wish to upgrade. We'll use guns as an example:

The window that opens above the button will show your available upgrade options. The gun that is CURRENTLY equipped looks like this:

A gun that is NOT yet researched or purchased will look like this:

A gun that HAS been researched but not yet purchased looks like this:

The price shown is how many credits it will cost you to purchase and install that upgrade.

And finally, an upgrade that you have ALREADY purchased but is NOT CURRENTLY EQUIPPED will look like this:

If you wish to change a module, simply click one of the available modules that are in yellow... they will turn green, and show up (if there's anything to show) on your 3D Tank view in the Garage.

The same basics apply to all other module types as well.... The currently installed module will show in green with a checkmark, modules that you currently have in your depot but are not installed will be yellow with a checkmark, modules that you have researched but not yet purchased will show a price, and modules that you have not researched yet will show a price and a bright red “Research” tag.

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Part Specifications & What They Mean

Stats can be confusing at times. We'll talk briefly about what part specifications mean, and how to look at them.

Open your research tab and right click on the part, or click on a vehicle in the tech tree and right click on the module you want to get specs for. In this example, we'll open a gun.

What do these stats mean? From top to bottom:

Caliber – Size of the shell

Rate of fire – Displayed in rounds per minute, this number will change based on your crew skill levels and any additional equipment that you have installed to reduce loading time. How fast you can shoot, with lower numbers in this column meaning slower firing guns, and higher numbers meaning faster firing guns.

Average Penetration – How much armor the gun can penetrate. Notice there are three numbers shown here – 203/237/44. This is how much average penetration you will achieve with different ammo types, shown right to left: AP (armor piercing) / Premium / HE (High Explosive). Some SPG's are different, looking at the shell display on your main Garage screen will tell you what shells you have. (90% are AP/Premium/HE) Notice this is AVERAGE penetration – for a more detailed idea of the penetration ranges, you will have to look at the shells themselves. They are affected by a wide variety of factors, including but not limited to the range to your target (farther shots means less penetration due to velocity dropoff), the

angle of impact, etc. as well as a small amount of randomness thrown in for balance.

Average Damage – How much damage you will average per shot, again with each ammo type shown in the format AP / Premium / HE. Much like penetration, the amount of damage done will vary depending on several factors, primarily the armor rating of the target being struck.

Accuracy – How accurate is this gun? The lower the number here, the better!

Aiming time – How long does it take your aiming circle to shrink to it's smallest size? That's the value shown here.

Weight – How much the gun weighs.... this can be important as some guns are heavier than others, and may require an upgraded suspension, turret, or both to handle the extra weight. You will receive an error message if you attempt to mount a gun that's too heavy.

Now let's take a look at suspension. Suspension stats look like this:

Not much there. From top to bottom:

Load limit – How much weight can this suspension support. Some modules and equipment are heavier than others, and may require an upgraded suspension with a higher load limiit to mount.

Traverse Speed – How fast will the tank turn with this suspension installed. This is the primary reason for upgrading suspensions, as the upgraded suspensions generally make the tank turn faster.

Weight – How much it weighs.Let's take a look at engines. The stat screen is as follows:

The stats are, from top to bottom:

Engine power – How much horsepower does it have? More horsepower will increase the top speed, acceleration, and how quickly the tank can climb hills.

Change of fire on impact – If you take a hit in the engine, this is the % chance that it will cause a fire when it hits.... fires are extremely dangerous, and a fire can take even the biggest tank to their knees quickly.

Weight – Self explanatory.

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Now, turrets. The turret stats look like this:

Armor: Front/Sides/Rear armor values, in mm. Upgraded turrets are generally more heavily armored than their standard variants.

Traverse Speed – How fast does the turret “spin” or rotate? Shown in degrees/sec

View range – How far can the commander see from this turret? Upgrading the tank often will increase the vehicles view range.

Weight – Self explanatory.

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Let's look at radios. It's the simplest of them all:

Signal range – How far you can radio to your teammates when you detect targets.

Does your brain hurt yet? There's a lot of stats to remember, but once you get the hang of it you will be able to recognize and interpret them without need for a reference, and make your own informed decisions about which modules to purchase and install. The system is just complicated enough to be rewarding and fun, without needing a 5000 page manual and a solid month to learn enough to do anything.

I'm going to move on now, try and keep up!

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Chapter 3 - Advanced Outfitting

In this chapter we're going to discuss more advanced outfitting, primarily equipment and consumables. First let's talk about the differences between them:

Equipment – A permanent (mostly) addition to your tank that gives you a bonus to a certain aspect of your tank's performance. These include loading speed, general crew skills, repair speed, and several others. Some are “passive” equipment, which provide a specific bonus all the time with no need for certain conditions to be met, and others are “active” equipment which provide a specific bonus only after certain conditions have been met. We'll discuss passive and active equipment in more detail when we break down each piece of equipment so you can see exactly what each of them does.

Consumables – These are lower cost items that provide a small bonus or useful function, such as repairing a damaged module, for either a limited time (for credits) or completely through the end of the match (for gold). The difference between consumables and equipment is that once a consumable is used in combat, it disappears and you have to reload your tank with a new one back in your garage after the match. They are “one time use only”, with one exception that we'll cover later.

It's important to note when discussing equipment that very little information has been officially presented on equipment by the game developer's, and as a result there is a lot of totally false information going around about what each piece of equipment actually does. I highly encourage you to ask on the forums if you have more questions, as you'll get much better answers than from a lot of the “armchair professors” who frequently give erroneous and/or totally false information in response to questions in the general chat channel in-game. All information here is the result of player based testing and collaboration, and will give you a great idea of the current in-game effects of each module. So without further ado, let's get down to the nuts and bolts.

Equipment List

Toolbox : +25% to Repair Speed.

Pretty straight forward.... increases the speed that your crew will repair damaged modules by 25%. It's important to note that this is one of only 3 pieces of equipment that CAN be removed and transferred between different tanks.

Fill Tanks with Co2 : - 50% chance of fire when fuel tanks are damage.

Again, simple. 50% less chance of a fire breaking out when your fuel tanks are hit. Not transferable.

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Enhanced Gun Laying Drive: +10% to aiming speed.

The big green circle that shrinks when you aim, and expands when you move get's to it's

smallest diameter 10% faster. Can be a miniscule addition, or an extremely valuable one... it all depends on the gun you're using it on. Faster aiming speed guns will benefit less, and guns that take longer to lay in will benefit more. This module is non-transferable.

Coated Optics : +10% to View Range.

These are the “passive” equipment version of the Binocular Telescopes. They provide a fixed 10% increase in your view range, all the time with no special conditions attached. They are still affected by camouflage, and line of sight restrictions. Non-transferable.

Binocular Telescopes : +25% View Range to a Stationary Tank.

These are the “active” vision-range enhancing equipment. In order for the increased view range to work, the vehicle must be COMPLETELY motionless for approximately 6 seconds. For tanks, this includes moving your turret. For tank destroyer's and SPG's, you can move the gun around freely but the second you move the tracks even a little bit, the effect breaks and takes another 6 seconds of stillness before it becomes active again. The same also applies to tanks who move their turrets. As you can see, this is more beneficial for a tank destroyer or SPG than for a turreted vehicle. This module is one of three that IS transferable to another tank.

“Cyclone” Filter : Adds 50% to Engine Durability.

Pretty much what it says... the engine can take 50% more damage before changing status to “damaged” and requiring a repair kit to fix. It can also help improve the time you may use the “Removed Speed Governor” consumable before your engine is damaged. Not transferable.

Vertical Gun Stabilizer : Decreases the aim spread during turret or movement by 20%.

Ever noticed that when your tank, turret, or both are moving, that accuracy circle gets larger? This improves that effect by 20%, allowing you to shoot much more accurately while moving. Widely considered to be a “Must have” upgrade for high level tanks only, since only Tier 8+ vehicles can use it. Not transferable.

Spall Liner : +15% to armor protection from ramming and explosions.

Pretty self-explanatory. While not a commonly used module for lower level tanks, it's use becomes more widespread at higher levels, as that extra 15% protection from HE rounds can be very useful. Note that it does NOT protect against AP (armor piercing) rounds. Not transferable.

Gun Rammer : -10% Loading Time.

Pretty simple, it decreases the amount of time required to load each shell by 10%. Faster firing guns benefit less from this, and slower firing guns benefit more. The slower the gun, the more benefit you will gain from it. Non-transferable.“Wet” Ammo Rack : +50% Ammo Rack Durability

Self explanatory.... makes your ammo rack more durable, which results in less of a chance of

having it blow up and instantly destroy your tank, regardless of how much HP you have left. Not transferable.

Improved Ventilation : 5% Increase to Crew Skills

A passive, all the time increase of 5% to all crew skills. While initially it may not seem like 5% is that much, you have to consider that each crew member gets the 5% bonus, and that extra 5% added to your commander also stacks with the passive bonus he gives to each crew member.... So if you have a 100% crew, your commander's skill will be 105%, but after the increased commander's bonus the actual performance of each crew member (other than the commander) will be 116%. An extra 16% out of each crew member can be huge, considering that crew skills affect EVERYTHING – acceleration, loading speed, accuracy, etc. and when you take into account the price, this is easily one of the best low-cost upgrades available. Easily worth it as a “stepping stone” while you save up for something else, or as a cheap upgrade for a lower level credit-farming tank. (Note: Mouse over your crew skills to see their skills after the bonus, see image below) Non-transferable.

Camouflage Net : -25% To being detected while vehicle is stationary.

Functions the same way as the binocular telescopes – Takes approximately 6 seconds of absolute motionless before it deploys. In a tank, even moving your turret will break it and reset the 6 second timer before it starts working again. In a tank destroyer or SPG, you may move the gun around without breaking it, but the second your tracks move it comes off and takes another 6 seconds to re-deploy. This CAN be transferred between vehicles at will.

Suspension Upgrades : These come with varying names, but the description is always “+10% to suspension load capacity”. Includes “Enhanced Torsion Bars”, “Enhanced Christie suspension”, etc.

These are the subject of a lot of bad information. These DO NOT …. let me say that again, these DO NOT improve acceleration, top speed, traverse rates, or ANYTHING ELSE. Their ONLY function is to increase the amount of weight that your tank can carry. Larger tanks sometimes have problems with handling the weight of some heavier equipment like Spall Liners, and as a result they may have to install a suspension upgrade in order to have enough weight capacity to install some equipment. Attempting to install a piece of equipment that you don't have enough capacity for will result in an error message.

Additional Grousers : 10% increased movement over medium ground. 5% increased movement over soft ground.

Only for German tanks, these increase your top speed over rough ground. Useful for scouts. For anything that doesn't rely on speed, probably not worth it although they can help with climbing hills.

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Those are the major pieces of equipment available at this time. Note that some equipment may not be available for all models and classes of vehicles, so don't be alarmed if the equipment you really want doesn't show up for your vehicle. The three boxes next to the

ammo buttons in your main Garage window is for equipment management:

Installing and purchasing equipment is done right from here, exactly the same as module purchase and installation except there's no research requirements. Green background means the equipment is on your vehicle. If the red “On vehicle” sign does NOT appear (see camo net in picture) it means the item can be removed and transferred to another tank. Just click it to remove it and/or reinstall it. If an item shows in YELLOW, it means that piece of transferable equipment is in your depot but not currently installed.

Consumables

Manual Fire Extinguishers : +10% Ability to firefighting skills.

Basically, if your tank catches fire these are consumed and give your crew a10% bonus to their firefighting skills. Can be a lifesaver in higher level tanks thathave a great risk of fire, however low level tanks don't catch on fire nearly as often so they may be a bit wasted. Still, they only cost a few thousand credits and they don't trigger that often, so they can be a good investment. Do NOT require you to activate them, will consume automatically on fire. (Despite the slightly misleading name “Automatic fire extinguishers” for the premium version)

Small First Aid Kit : Heals an injured tanker for 2 minutes.

If your driver gets hit, your tank becomes less maneuverable, acceleration and top speed both greatly decrease. If your gunner gets hit, your loading times go up slightly and your accuracy goes way down. If your loader gets hit, your loading times go through the roof. If your commander is hit, everything goes down a small amount, but your view range goes way down. This will bring that injured crewmember back to max performance for 2 minutes, after which he goes back to being injured. Can be a great investment, as crew member hits are extremely annoying.

Small Repair Kit : Repairs a damaged module for 2 minutes. (AKA “Roll of Duct Tape”)

Effects are mostly the same as crew injuries... if your gun gets hit, it's accuracy goes down. If your ammo rack gets hit (and doesn't explode) you lose some of your ammunition, and your loading times go way up. Engine gets hit, your acceleration and top speed are reduced. If you get your tracks blown off, you can't move. These will fix that damaged module, but after 2 minutes they go back to being damaged. Extremely useful for getting tracked, simply activate this, and select your tracks and you're back in the game... at least until you get tracked again. Note that if BOTH tracks are hit, it only fixes one. And if your track gets hit again 2 seconds after you blew your roll of duct tape fixing it, it gets blown again and you have to wait for your crew to fix it. One-time use only, so use it well.

100 Octane Gasoline / Lend-Lease Oil : Increase engine power by 5% for the rest of the battle.

Pretty simple.... 5% increased engine power that lasts for the rest of the battle. The gasoline version is for German tanks, Lend-Lease Oil is the Soviet equivalent.

Removed Speed Governor : Adds 10% to engine power but damages the engine.

This is for Soviet vehicles only. Adds 10% to engine power, but after about 2 minutes of use,

it will turn your engine to “damaged” status, reducing acceleration and top speed just like you took a hit to the engine. NOTE: This “consumable” is PERMANENT and does NOT get consumed on use – It can be mounted and dismounted at will, but if you use it during a battle it never goes away. It can also be switched ON and OFF by toggling it as you need it. Can be useful for climbing hills or for that little bit of extra bump to make it back to your base to prevent a cap, etc. - Just don't forget to shut it off, and only use it when you actually need it.

“Premium” consumables are those that offer a larger effect upon your vehicle, but which cost gold to purchase. They are much more expensive, and the tooltips are pretty self explanatory. Since this is the beta and you're only getting 150 gold per day, and each premium consumable costs 100G, I'm not going to cover them here since I doubt a lot of people are actually using them just yet.

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Chapter 4 – General Game Information

So.... you've read everything up to this point, and you have a pretty good idea of how to perform the basic game functions, as well as read and interpret a lot of the most common information that can be confusing for a new tank driver. Now what?

Let's discuss some of the basic game concepts, that can make or break your first impressions of the game and greatly affect the amount of fun you have, as well as your equipment choices. I call this “Know your role”. Now, these are what would be considered “mainstream” definitions of each role, and there are many players out there who regularly do something completely different, and do it well. Eventually you will develop your own play style and your own way of doing things, and if it works, great! But to help you get started, and give you some building blocks:

Light vehicles – Scouts. Fast, agile, lightly armed and armored tanks. Their primary role is to run around near or behind enemy lines and find targets for their team's artillery and tank destroyers to kill at long range. Their secondary skills are artillery hunting, e.g. finding the enemy SPG's and destroying them, and anti-scouting which is exactly what it sounds like – hunting down their counterparts on the opposing team and destroying them before they can fully scout the friendly team or destroy any friendly artillery.

Medium vehicles – These come in two types, “fast mediums” and “heavy mediums”. The primary role of “fast mediums” is to engage and destroy other mediums, usually by “dogfighting” them. Dogfighting is a technique where you run in circles around your opponent, using your combined tread traverse and turret traverse to keep your gun pointed in at the enemy, firing shots preferably into his less-armored sides and rear. This tactic is effective against even heavier enemies when you hit them in the rear, and especially effective against tank destroyers which will generally not be able to turn fast enough (because they lack a turret) to train their deadly guns on you. Fast mediums are usually faster and more agile than heavy mediums, but also lack their heavy armor. Heavy mediums are one step below graduating into heavy tanks. They usually mount decent guns, and have great armor compared to the fast mediums in their tier. Their primary role is to travel with the heavy tanks, and provide support – both against the enemy mediums, and supplemental fire against the enemy heavies.

Heavy vehicles – The goliaths. Heavily armed and armored, they are the titans of the battlefield. They generally have extremely high armor and health pools, and mount guns that are powerful enough to do massive damage. Their roles are either offensive, where they belong either at the front or the middle of the pack, spearheading the attack on the enemy, or in the defensive role where they can provide an “anchor” in leading the defense of a base or other objective.

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Tank destroyers – Tank destroyers usually mount powerful guns compared to other vehicles in their tiers, but have no turrets, meaning they have to turn their entire vehicle to aim. Their guns are usually more accurate and powerful than tanks, but rely on range, stealth, and their

teammates to protect them. You will frequently see them hiding in bushes, sniping targets across the map with their guns. They are extremely vulnerable to almost all tanks in close quarters, but especially fast mediums. They hit hardest from the sides and rear, and should constantly be maneuvering to either flank their opponents or get behind them to do maximum damage.

SPG's (Self Propelled Guns) aka “Artillery” - Massive guns that can strike and often destroy enemies with accuracy from across the entire map with one shot, mixed with very light armor and substandard speed and maneuvering. They have access to a “Bird's eye view” of the world which they can use to direct their devastating fire anywhere on the map, so long as there's no obstacles to block their shots. They have very high reload times, and are extremely vulnerable to pretty much everything at close quarters, or to anyone with a line of sight on them once they are detected.

Now, this isn't by any means a “Be-all, end-all” guide to the roles of each vehicles. It's an outline to show you the basic roles that each class generally takes, but it's YOUR job to play with different vehicle types, and develop your own play style that suits you the best.

Let's talk about some of the most common mistakes that new players make, and how you can avoid them. We'll do it by the usual list format.

1) A scout or a fast medium comes flying through your lines – what do you do?Answer – Move! Even after the scout is destroyed, your position is still lit up like a christmas tree for several seconds, and you can rest assured that enemy artillery is almost certainly incoming. Many new players will simply help destroy the scout, and maintain their position without moving – only to get blown up by artillery a few seconds later. Once that scout comes through, always, ALWAYS move afterwards – even if you simply displace 10-15m to either side, then move back to your original position after 20 seconds or so it's still better than not moving at all.

2) “Gunsight Fixation” or “Tunnel Vision” - This happens with everyone, although it happens with SPG drivers more often than with others. Drivers get so fixated on searching for a target in sniper mode or in top-down mode that they totally lose focus of things that are happening around them. Get into the habit of glancing at your minimap every few seconds. If you see a red dot near you, or moving towards you rapidly, that might be a good sign to come out of sniper mode or top-down mode and either run away, or engage it.

3) Berserker Rage – This happens to all of us from time to time, but you have to know when it's OK and when it's going to get you killed needlessly. You get shot by a lower tier tank, and you vengefully pursue it.... so intent are you upon killing that tank, that you totally ignore everything else just to hunt that one tank down and destroy it. Which you do, BOOM! Then you look up, right into the barrels of his comrades that he led you straight into, and you're dead. Now, if you're an IS-3 Heavy Tank that somehow got thrown into a game with a bunch of Tier 3 and 4 tanks, you'll probably be OK. If you're a T-34 driver, you're probably in trouble.

4) Road Rage – Ok, larger tanks generally have the right of way. Why? Because if you're in a 17 ton scout tank, and you pull out in front of a 48 ton IS-3, it's not the IS-3 that's going to get damaged or possibly even destroyed. It's generally considered common courtesy to give

scout tanks the right of way since they have a greater need to get up to speed and moving towards the enemy lines as fast as possible, but don't always count on it. Accidents happen, but be aware of the other tanks on your team and what direction they're moving.

5) When fighting a tank destroyer, keep away from his gun. That means moving your tank and your turret in whatever direction you have to in order to keep as far away from his business end as possible. Don't ever assume (unless he's 4 or 5 tiers below you) that you can just stand there toe to toe with him and take his hits before he dies – you probably can't. At a bare minimum, try and keep your thick frontal armor pointed at him. It's amazing when playing my JagdPanther how many newer IS, IS-3, KV, and KV-3 drivers will just lazily swing their turrets over at me and gamble on being able to kill me before I kill them and not even bother to put their front armor towards me. Once in a while, an IS-3 driver will win this gamble, especially if I'm already damaged – but much, much more often than not, they're dead long before I am. Keep in mind when fighting a TD that if he's shooting at you, his thick frontal armor is already pointed at you, because he doesn't have a choice. The least you can do is point yours back at him.

6) When playing a tank destroyer, do everything you can to keep your gun pointed at a tank who's trying to flank you. Quite often this means throwing your TD in reverse while traversing, rather than trying to do a forward traverse or an in-place traverse. Tank destroyer drivers frequently never even attempt to “reverse traverse”, and it can save your life.

7) Take cover from enemy artillery. If there's enemy tanks around, that means their whole team can see where you are – including their artillery. Simple things like not stopping in open areas, or ducking into cover behind rocks, mountains, or buildings that will block the trajectory of an enemy SPG driver trying to drop shells on your head, will save your life.... and you being alive gives your team a greater chance at winning.

8) If you are playing an SPG, you NEED to ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS take out the enemy artillery whenever it is lit up, no exceptions. That means you also need to be paying attention both in and out of birds-eye view. Teams hate nothing more than arty gunners who ignore the enemy arty, especially once it has been lit up three of four times with no friendly arty landing on it.

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“Damage”, “Penetration”, and What ammo do I use?

One of the important aspects of the game that will help you become a better and more effective player is understanding the difference between damage and penetration, as well as what affects each and the basics of how they are calculated.

Let's start with penetration. Penetration is the act of breaching the armor plating that protects an enemy tank. The thicker the armor, the more penetration it requires to penetrate it. Also, tanks with more “sloped” armor have a greater chance for the shell to simply ricochet off, with no penetration or damage at all – giving us the great in-game voice line “That one bounced!”.

Penetration is influenced by a wide variety of factors. The range to the target is an important one – the closer the target, the more penetration you will achieve due to the shell losing velocity the farther it travels. The angle at which you hit the enemy armor is also taken into account – a straight on shot has more of a chance to penetrate than a shot at a slight upward or downward angle. A shot that penetrates the armor, will do “x” amount of random damage to the target, based on the gun and shell values that you are using. One important exception to this is the tracks – often a shot that hits an enemy in the tracks will simply knock the tracks off, but NOT do any actual damage to the tank besides immobilizing him.

Damage is caused in several ways – Penetration damage, which is caused by punching a shell through an enemy tanks armor. This will take a chunk of his health, as well as a chance to damage modules if you place the shell accurately. AP (armor piercing) ammo is generally used for this, and is the most common type of damage. Explosive damage is caused by HE (High Explosive) shells – these generally have very weak penetration, but extremely high damage and a lower chance to bounce. The damage done by these varies, but they generally do less damage (despite the higher damage ratings – since they don't generally penetrate, a lot of that damage is negated by armor) but still have a chance to knock a minor chunk off of the targets health pool and do module damage. These are commonly used by lower level players so that they can still do some small amount of damage to higher level targets, whose armor they cannot reliably penetrate with their smaller guns.There also exists secondary damage, such as fire. A good hit to the engine or fuel tanks by either an AP or HE round can cause a fire, which can take even the largest tanks to their knees. There also exists the possibility when the ammo rack is hit, for it to explode – this will instantly kill even the largest tanks.

The question “What type of ammunition should I use, AP or HE?” comes up a lot. The general rule of thumb that most people follow is to use AP on anything your own tier or lower, and HE on anything above your tier. I highly urge you to experiment and make mental (or paper!) notes on what tanks you can penetrate reliably, and which you cannot. If you're having trouble penetrating, switch over to HE. You may not be doing a ton of damage, but at least it's better than hearing “It bounced off!” or “We didn't penetrate his armor!” every time you pull the trigger. I find that I can usually go my own tier + 1 for AP shells, as long as I'm using one of the upgraded guns for whatever tank I'm driving, and sometimes more – but this is not always the case.

Common Acronym's

World of Tanks, like most games, is developing it's own dictionary of acronyms and slang terms, and here's a short list of some of them to help you better understand what people are talking about. Some are general, and some are WoT specific. In no particular order:

HP – Hitpoints. How much health your tank has. 99% of the time when people say HP they mean this, although once in a while you'll get someone who means horsepower.

AP – Armor piercing

HE – High Explosive

HEAT – High Explosive Anti Tank (A type of premium arty shell)

APCR – Armor Piercing Composite Rigid (A type of premium tank shell)

Gold Rounds – Premium tank and arty ammo (The ones that cost gold to purchase)

Camping / Campers / Camping out – Generally refers to tank drivers that prefer to pick a fixed position and fight defensively, usually defending their home base. Doesn't really apply to TD's or arty. Generally used as a derogatory term.

Arty – SPG's.

SPG's – Self Propelled Guns. Mobile artillery drivers.

Crunchies – Term used mostly by heavy drivers to refer to any tank smaller than them, or those that will go “crunch” when they ram them and blow them up instead of shooting them. Can be used by anyone to refer to vehicles much smaller than themselves.

TK – Teamkill. The act of deliberately killing someone on your own team. A bannable offense.

Noob Tubes – Derogatory term for SPG drivers.

Cap / Capping / Capped – The act of capturing a base.

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Wow, you actually made it all the way through – congratulations! I sincerely hope that this little labor of love of mine has helped you learn a few things about World of Tanks. This handbook was written by me to help fill a need in the community at the moment, and may or may not be continued depending on feedback and demand from the community. I can be contacted via private message on the WoT forums if you have any feedback for things you would like to see in any possible future versions.... but don't be sad if I don't reply, I'm a pretty busy person in RL and chances are I'm either busy with RL things, or busy killing tanks.

Regards,Tariz