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Server maintenance is scheduled to take place on February 1, after which the Update will be pushed to the consoles.

Maintenance times:

• Xbox: 1:00 - 4:00 AM Central / 7:00 - 10:00 AM UTC 
• PS: 1:00 - 4:00 AM Central / 7:00 - 10:00 AM UTC 

Update size:

• Xbox ~2900 MB
• PS ~ 2800 MB

It's February, and while we should probably be done with all the celebrations by now, we aren't! Aircraft carriers are coming to Legends as a part of special test event, a branch of British heavy cruisers is arriving in Early Access, a new game mode—Arena—is shaking up the battlefield, and our latest Campaign features the fabled dragon slayer realized in steel—Tier VII German battlecruiser Siegfried. Add to that Lunar New Year content and some balance tweaks, and this Update is bound to make for an exciting start to 2021!

Please note: while this Update runs for 5 weeks, the next one will be released on Tuesday, March 9, instead of the usual Monday.

Air Strike Event

At long last, aircraft carriers are storming into Legends, albeit in a form of a test event. We're starting with Tier III and V ships separated into their own mode for the first 2 weeks of the Update (Feb 1–15). You'll be able to try out Japanese carriers III Hōshō and V Ryūjō, as well as their American counterparts, III Langley and V Ranger. To command the new ships you'll get the help of Ernest King for the U.S. flattops and Tamon Yamaguchi for the Japanese machines. 

To get yourself behind the helm of one of the carriers you'll first have to win a couple of battles in this mode playing a non-carrier. We understand that most of you will be interested in playing carriers rather than against them, therefore the Airstrike mode has bots added to fill the battles, considering that only one carrier per side is allowed. Another important point is that we’ll allow our volunteers and a few randomly selected players to get carriers right away (ostensibly, just two battles before everyone else) to collect more data. We understand that they will have a bit more experience with the ship type at the moment of release, but that curve will flatten within the first week.

We hope that you’ll get enough of a first look to give us ample feedback! We plan to bring carriers into the game as a mainstay several Updates after this event.

Some important info about carriers in their current form: 

1. You can only control one entity on the screen at a time, so once your squadron is in the air, you lose control of the carrier.
2. You have access to two types of squadrons—torpedo and dive bombers. The first type launches torpedoes that deal damage and may cause flooding, the second type dives to drop HE bombs that can start fires or incapacitate modules, as well as deal damage
3. The AA suites of other ship types have received no changes, and for the purpose of this test, we're not enabling the display of AA stats yet either. Considering the limited power of carriers in their current form, as well as the limitation of one per team, we're expecting that the current AA suites will be sufficient, even without consumables and/or rebalancing. Don't forget that it is indeed a test event, so we need to collect as much data as we can.
4. The AA guns of other ship types begin to fire as soon as an enemy aircraft is within proximity, and they do not affect the firing ship's detectability. However, the enemy will see where the AA fire is originating from.
5. Catapult Fighters for all cruisers and battleships have been changed to make them less of a passive spotting satellite and more of a countermeasure against carrier attacks:
   • For most cruisers, the cooldown for Catapult Fighter has been reduced from 180 to 80 seconds, while the time the plane stays in the air has been reduced from 360 to 100 seconds.
   • For battleships, the cooldown has been reduced from 180 to 80 seconds.
6. There are no servicing costs for carriers in the Air Strike mode. Other ship types retain regular ship servicing costs.
7. Once the Air Strike mode concludes on February 15, the aircraft carriers and Commanders will be removed from your accounts. Any experience accrued on the carriers will be transferred to Tier I ships of the appropriate nations.

Control-wise, hitting enemy ships with your torpedoes and bombs is going to be the most difficult aspect of the gameplay, so don't be hard on yourself if you miss the first few drops. Just as shells require a lead, planes require one too, and you need to get an understanding of your window of opportunity whenever launching an attack.

You'll be able to use ships of up to Tier VI when playing against the carriers, and you'll want to play the regular ships as there are several sets of available missions! The first batch will be available during week one of the Update, encompassing getting your first carriers (New Dimensions), carrier mastery (Born to Fly), and prowess in battling against them (Born to Swim). Week two will offer similarly titled missions for Tier IV–VI ships. The missions are chained, and Born to Fly can be quite specific with its requirements, so make sure you familiarize yourself with them! 

British Heavy Cruisers

An entirely new line of ships is entering our waters in Early Access! There are quite a few differences that these ships possess in comparison with their lighter counterparts. First, they have access to HE shells, and while the ballistic trajectories may be comparatively arced, the per-salvo damage is quite significant, no matter what shell type you use. They are also relatively well armored and have an improved Repair Party consumable that restores significantly more citadel damage than it does for other nations. Additionally, these cruisers have access to Sonar, plus their torpedoes can be launched individually, further improving your tactical freedom. Something, of course, has to give, and that something is speed and maneuverability. You'll have to “play chess” a lot of the time and try to predict your opponents’ movements.

To gain Early Access to either of the ships, open the British cruiser crates that are available in the Campaign and in the Store. As usual, the higher the ship tier, the lower the chances of getting her, and big crates offer better chances for all ships. While there's no Tier VII Albermarle available through Early Access, Tier V Premium ship London is among the ships that may drop as a reward. Please check out the drop chances at wowslegends.com/containers before making your purchasing decisions! Among the goods that can drop from the containers is also the Union Jack expendable Camo, which you can convert into the permanent version for any of your ships, including non-British ships. 

The available ships are:

• IV Hawkins
• V Devonshire
• VI Surrey

Tier VII Albermarle will become available with the next Update, once the ships become researchable. 

The Dragonslayer Campaign

German battlecruiser (cruiser in our game) Siegfried is the centerpiece of our new Campaign. She's capable in a multitude of situations, thanks to her powerful guns with strong AP rounds, as well as her torpedoes and Sonar. The ship has found her home at Tier VII among the top competition, and she's ready to take on all comers.

Much like the previous Campaign, we're introducing a currency that you'll be able to earn once you're done with the main Campaign—from this Update onwards, it’s Steel Badges, or simply Steel. You'll be able to earn it after reaching the final milestone of the Campaign, no matter whether you have the Admiralty Backing or not. However, if you purchase the Campaign prior to the last week, you'll be able to get more Steel from Daily and Weekly Missions. Steel will become an increasingly useful resource as we add ships and other rewards available in exchange for it. The most exciting offer right away is probably going to be USS Missouri, but it will take seasoned Captains several updates to gather enough Steel to obtain her. This Campaign in particular will allow you to amass as much as 1,250 units of Steel, provided that you buy it outright on day one. Otherwise, if you finish it on the first day of week 5, you'll be able to up your Steel count by 250. Other than Missouri, you'll be able to obtain various goods in exchange for Steel, starting with Commander items. More Steel is always going to be available from either Arena or Ranked modes than from Campaigns. 

The Campaign rewards include the usual array of goods—currencies, XP, Commander items, and so forth, but importantly, there are also several Royal Navy Cruisers crates that might just contain one of the newcomers!

All of the available rewards can be found below.

Rewards you can get without an Admiralty Backing for the Siegfried Campaign: 

• 45x Common Boosters
• 10x Union Jack Camouflages 
• 15x Type 1 Camouflages
• 15x Type 2 Camouflages
• 15x Type 3 Camouflages
• 250,000 Commander XP
• 300,000 credits
• 3,500 Global XP
• 12x Promotion Orders
• 1x Insignia
• 1x Commendation
• 7 days of Premium Time
• 250 doubloons
• 5x Royal Navy Cruisers crate
• 1x Big Royal Navy Cruisers crate
• 1x German Commander Crate
• 1x Grade 1 Victorian Permanent Camouflage for Tier IV British heavy cruiser Hawkins
• 1x Patch background
• 1x Patch Symbol

Value of the rewards without the Admiralty Backing: 16,190 doubloons 

Additional rewards you can get with the Admiralty Backing (2,500 doubloons)

• 40x Rare Boosters
• 25x Epic Boosters
• 20x "Union Jack" Camouflages 
• 25x Type 1 Camouflages
• 25x Type 2 Camouflages
• 25x Type 3 Camouflages
• 125,000 Commander XP
• 1,200,000 credits
• 16,000 Global XP
• 19x Promotion Orders
• 3x Insignias
• 3x Commendations
• 500 doubloons
• 10x Royal Navy Cruisers crates
• 4x Big Royal Navy Cruisers crates
• 1x Grade 1 Victorian Permanent Camouflage for Tier V British heavy cruiser Devonshire
• Tier VII German Cruiser Siegfried

Total value of the rewards with the Admiralty Backing: 69,355 doubloons 

Arena Mode

And now for something (mostly) different. We're introducing a new game mode! Arena is a seasonal team death match event that features four teams of three ships. You'll get the chance to show off your skills playing Tier V ships and make a name for yourself across the entire Legends community by climbing the ladder! The first iteration of ladder is going to count all of your ship XP with all possible Boosters applied, so those who play the most and use boosters will come out on top. However, we will try different methods (including those unaffected by Boosters or Premium) later on. Please consider this a test season in this regards, as we plan to use other metrics in the future—not necessarily boostable by anything other than the number of games played. Importantly, the biggest reward of this season (for the top 1% of the leaderboard) is 2,500 units of Steel, which you can either stockpile over several updates to go for USS Missouri (30,000 Steel), or use to get some intermediate goods, such as Commander items.

The basic rules are:

• Arena battles are going to be available from February 16 to March 9.
• There are four teams on the map, with each comprising three Tier V ships.
• If a team's ship or ships are the last to stay afloat, then that team wins and each of the players on the team gets +30% XP for the match.
• The matchmaker will try to mirror the ship types of all four teams, but will allow for non-mirrored compositions after particular thresholds.
• There are no ship type limitations per team or per Division. However, the less diverse your team is, the longer it would take to find a match (for example, for three-destroyer or three-battleship Divisions).
• There's only one Key Area on each map, in the very center.
• This mode features friendly fire. If you hit an ally, 20% of the damage will be applied to their ship. Ramming is not, however, affected by friendly fire. Players who fire at their allies will not receive any XP for the battle, so we ask you to be extra careful, especially with torpedoes!
• We understand that players might damage their allies by mistake, but  serial griefers will be dealt with accordingly.
• If there are ships from more than one team still afloat at the end of the match, said match is considered a draw and no team receives the 30% bonus.
• Maps available in the first season of Arena:
  • Ring
  • Strait
  • New Dawn

Rewards are credited once the season is over. The exact reward you receive will depend on your standing on the ladder at the moment the season ends. There are six tiers of rewards, depending on which percentile of the ladder you end up occupying:

• Participation trophy
  • 10x Promotion Orders
  • 3x basic crates
  • 500,000 credits
• Top 90%
  • 20x Promotion Orders
  • 2x Royal Navy Cruisers crates
  • 30,000 Commander XP
• Top 50%
  • 25x Promotion Orders
  • 2x Winter Big Crates
  • 20,000 global XP
• Top 25%
  • 1x Insignia
  • 2x Big Royal Navy Cruisers Crates
  • 500 Paint
• Top 10%
  • 2x Commendations
  • 2x Commander crates
  • 1,000 doubloons
• Top 1%
  • Arena Season 1 Champion flag
  • 2x Lunar New Year crates
  • 2,500 Steel 

Lunar New Year Content

To commemorate the Lunar New Year celebrations, the home Port will be set to a themed haven and special content will be offered in the Store. You'll get a choice of two ships and a special container, combined in different bundles. This content will become available in the Premium Store on February 12, and we’ll announce the end date for sales separately.

You can expect the following content:

• Southern Dragon and Eastern Dragon—visually different variants of Tier VI cruiser Myōkō with Premium bonuses applied. The stats are unchanged compared to Myōkō.

• Lunar New Year crates, containing such goods as the Air Dragon and Fire Dragon Disposable Camos.
• The "Ox" personal patch and a similar flag is available in one of the bundles.

Balance Changes

There are only a few balance touch ups this time, but all of them were really called for. You'll be the ultimate judge of that, of course!

• Cheshire
  • Rudder-shift time decreased from 10.5 to 9 seconds.
  • Main battery reload time reduced from 17 to 16 seconds.
  • Repair Party modified—it now restores the same amount of HP but over 9.3 seconds instead of 27.
• Cossack
  • Main battery reload time reduced from 5 to 4.5 seconds.
  • Torpedo reload time reduced from 96 to 72 seconds.
• Charlemagne
  • Main battery reload decreased from 13 to 12 seconds.
  • Extremity armor improved from 16 to 25 mm.
• Vanguard
  • HP restored to citadel by Repair Party increased from 16% to 25%.
  • Shell grouping improved by about 2.6%, and in so many words, it's just a slight buff to the accuracy.
  • Repair party modified—it now restores the same amount of HP but over 10 seconds instead of 28.
• Duke of York
  • Base number of charges for Sonar increased from 1 to 2.

There are also a couple of changes to skills and consumables, namely:

• The Fight Fire With Fire skill now works if Damage Control Party is either on cooldown or depleted (previously, the skill couldn't be activated when the consumable charges were depleted).
• The Enhanced Secondary Targeting consumable available on battleships now has three charges by default (up from two), and its cooldown has been lowered by 20 seconds, to 160 seconds instead of 180.

Continuing our tradition of hiding bonus codes in the Patchnotes, here's another one for 12 Hunter camouflages: S3YFESP75W.

Miscellaneous Changes and Improvements

• Our voice chat now works again between any platforms that Legends is available on! Previously, Xbox Series S/X players could not use voice communications with any PlayStation players.
• Rental Legendary ships have been removed from your accounts. Any XP you earned on them has been moved to Tier I ships of their nations, and any modifications have been placed in your Inventory.
• Gunshots have received improved visual effects (the barrel action).
• The Azur Lane Fusou, Azur Lane Queen Elizabeth, and Azur Lane Scharnhorst Commanders have received the Fight Fire With Fire Legendary skill.
• The following ships can now be outfitted with historical Camouflages that can be created in the loadout menu for 75 Paint (please note: any such Permanent Camo is going to be of the lowest grade unless upgraded with Paint):
  • Fusō
  • Aoba
  • Fubuki
  • New York
  • New Mexico
  • Pensacola
  • Farragut
  • Mahan

Bug Fixes

• Players could sometimes encounter HDR turning off and then back on when accepting Division invitations.
• The battle mode is now correctly displayed on the Battle Results screen. Previously, it always showed Domination.
• The "Up" command no longer sticks in the menu after a battle is over.

New Premium Ships

The following ships will become available in the Store for doubloons:

• Tier VI German cruiser München
• Tier VI American destroyer Sims

Follow our news to find out when these newcomers are set for release!