Two Years Strong: The April Update

April 8, 2021

For other Languages please click the appropriate flag:

Server maintenance will take place on Monday, April 12.

Maintenance times:

Xbox: 2:00 – 5:00 AM Central / 7:00 – 10:00 AM UTC
PS4: 2:00 – 5:00 AM Central / 7:00 – 10:00 AM UTC

Update size:

Xbox One (S,X) ~2700 MB
Xbox Series S/X ~2500 MB
PS4/PS5 ~2800 MB

Legends! Can you believe it's been 2 years since we started this journey in Early Access? Well, indeed it has! The “Two Years Strong” Update is ambitious and will let you take to the skies with no time limits—the carriers are now part of our regular fleet! Furthermore, Suzuya—a Mogami-class cruiser with 155 mm guns—makes her eagerly awaited debut, while new seasons of Arena is shaking things up with some unusual rules. Also, in response to some comments that there's perhaps a bit too much text in the Patchnotes, we’re trying to keep them a bit more concise.

Two Years Strong

To celebrate 2 years since the first battles began in Legends, we've planned a couple of things during the first week of the Update (April 12 – April 19):

Gifts in the Store.
A first-win bonus (look out for the windrose symbol!) for Tier III and higher aircraft carriers, as well as other ship types of Tier IV and higher (valid once per ship for the whole Update).
A Global XP conversion bonus: 35 instead of the usual 25 points for a doubloon.
A celebratory sale with discounts reaching up to 35% for one-time offers and 25% for numerous Premium ships.

Aircraft Carriers

Carriers are returning to the fold with a few changes—check out the main points below.

The basics:

Carriers are available for Japan and the U.S.A. at Tiers III, V, and VII.

There can be no more than one carrier per team, and carriers will always either be present on both or none of the teams.
The exact ships in the new tree are Langley, Ranger, and Lexington for the U.S.A.; Hōshō, Ryūjō, and Shōkaku for Japan.
To unlock the carriers, you must first unlock the Tier III battleships of the respective nations.
Compared with battleships, Tier VII carriers require an additional 50,000 XP to completely unlock. We feel this is justified by the fact that there is only one carrier per team, and carriers are more influential on the battlefield due to their spotting abilities.
All carriers have access to torpedo and dive bombers (HE bombs).
Two missions to obtain special carrier Commanders will be available for the duration of the Update.
The post-battle service costs for carriers are the same as those for other ship types—the Tier VII cost is 136,000 credits.

Changes made to carriers since the Airstrike mode:

HE bomb damage has been increased.
Aircraft torpedo damage and range have been increased.
Planes of Tier III carriers have increased speed.
Planes of Tier V carriers have increased HP.
Tier III HE bombers have improved bomb-dropping accuracy.
Carriers have received course plotting—choose a square on the Tactical Map to send your carrier to that location.
The torpedo skills of existing Commanders now correctly affect plane-dropped torpedoes.
Louis du Fournet's base trait now affects HE bombs.

Changes to other ship types to help them combat air threats

Tier V up to Legendary-Tier cruisers have received two charges of the Defensive AA Fire consumable, which boosts anti-air damage for a short period. The consumable is available in the second slot, and when selected, it swaps the existing consumable (usually Sonar).

Every Commander has received the All Out Anti-Air skill, which passively boosts the range and power of your ship’s AA defenses.

Tōgō Heihachirō and George Dewey have received new skills specifically for carrier use:
- Hidden Threat (row 3), which boosts Torpedo Bombers' concealment and speed.
- Burn, Baby, Burn! (row 4), which increases your chances of causing fire with HE bombs.
Every ship of Tier IV and higher has the option to install AA Gun Mod. 2 in the first modification slot, which improves the ship’s anti-air capabilities.

Similarly, every Tier VII and Legendary-Tier ship has the option to install AA Gun Mod. 3 in the fourth modification slot.

Start researching the carriers, take to the air, and let's add a new dimension to Legends!

Limit Breaker Campaign

This Campaign offers a special ship—a ship that many of you have been asking about since the very beginning of our journey together—the 155 mm gun variant of Mogami, Suzuya. She’s a very capable HE slinger with respectable torpedoes—a great B-side to Mogami.

Some facts about the Campaign:

Weekly Havoc missions start every week, but run until the end of Update. You could potentially cram the whole Campaign into the last week, but as usual, we advise against that.
Legendary ships are once again allowed for challenge missions through an "or" mechanic.
There are Hardmode missions to earn medals for those who wish to get more of a challenge and finish the Campaign earlier.

As with most Campaigns, to unlock the prize ship you’ll need to purchase an Admiralty Backing for 2,500 doubloons.

The detailed Campaign rewards and their value with and without an Admiralty Backing are below:

Rewards you can get without the Admiralty Backing:

80x Common Boosters
18x Type 1 Camouflages
18x Type 2 Camouflages
18x Type 3 Camouflages
235,000 Commander XP
500,000 credits
7,500 Global XP
12x Promotion Orders
1x Insignia
1x Commendation
8 days of Premium Account
3x Winter Big Crates
1x Japanese Commander crates
1x patch background
1x patch symbol

Value of the rewards without the Admiralty Backing: 28,667 doubloons

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

50x Rare Boosters
35x Epic Boosters
30x Type 1 Camouflages
30x Type 2 Camouflages
30x Type 3 Camouflages
190,000 Commander XP
2,500,000 credits
22,500 Global XP
28x Promotion Orders
3x Insignias
3x Commendations
750 doubloons
6x Winter Big Crates
Commemorative flag
Tier VII Japanese cruiser Suzuya

Total value of the rewards with the Admiralty Backing: 69,420 doubloons

Arena Battles Season II and III

We're bringing back the Arena mode — this time, with two distinct Seasons! Each Season is a week-long affair with its own ruleset, and players who place in the top three brackets of the Leaderboard can expect to earn some Steel Badges! Seasons II and III start on April 19 and May 3, respectively. To find out the details of each Season, read a special article that will be published next Thursday!

Golden Week Content

Golden Week is a series of holidays celebrated in Japan annually that starts with the Emperor's Birthday and culminates in Children's Day. It’s usually a time when people travel and take a break from their work schedules. To commemorate the event, we're introducing several new items. Among these are themed Skins for Kongō, Asashio, and Yamato, available from the Golden Week Chest. Other contents will be revealed as usual on wowslegends.com/containers before or on April 19. Importantly, Asashio will also be available for 12,500 doubloons for the duration of the sale event. One more item that's going to be available is a Golden Flag for 1,000 doubloons. Please note: it’s simply a flag and we're just seeing if purely cosmetic items such as this are in demand by themselves.

The Golden Week sales begin on April 26 and last until May 9.

Balance Changes

There are quite a few balance changes this time around, mostly made in response to your requests, which provided the impetus for us to steer the balance in the proposed way:

105 mm secondary guns of German battleships can now penetrate 20 mm armor, which they weren't able to do before. This means that Bismarck and Tirpitz become more of a threat to any destroyers that wander too close, especially if the battleships have enhanced secondaries.
Ashitaka's main gun reload time has been improved by 1 second, down to 30 seconds instead of 31.
Warhammer ships Ragnarok and Ignis Purgatio have received the following buffs:
- Citadel armor belt is now 126 mm instead of 76 mm, making the citadel a bit less vulnerable.
- Repair Party now restores 32% more HP per second over the same duration.
- A single charge of Main Battery Reload Booster has been added to the third consumable slot.
As we've teased before, some battleships are going to receive a concealment modification to try and see whether the meta can be changed a little. We're starting somewhat conservatively, but it's possible that more battleships will receive this option in the future. The ships in question are:
- Ashitaka
- Nagato
- Amagi
- Yamato
- Kii
- Vanguard
- Ragnarok
- Ignis Purgatio
Division mates in Tier VI and VII battles spawn closer to each other in the Standard and vs. AI modes.

Miscellaneous Changes and Improvements

The “Red, White, and Blue” and Legendary Birthday Bureau Projects are scheduled to be deprecated and will be removed if you haven't started them! If you're reading this before April 12, please start the Projects if you would like them to stay on your account! You don't even have to continue researching them, simply starting them will suffice.
Two new maps have been added to the rotation:
Solomon Islands for battle Tiers III and IV

Hotspot for battle Tiers VI, VII, and Legendary. (OWGVRX5MFH)

Carriers have been added to the Port filter and point distribution count in the Tactical Map menu.
Carrier-specific tool tips have been added to control presets.
Anti-air stats have been added to the ship loadout UI.
Maximum air defense range is shown in the info panel among other ranges (options button).
Carrier Commanders Tamon Yamaguchi and Ernest King are now available from their national Commander containers, as well as from the international one.
The background of active Legendary skills has been replaced in the Commander interface.
The visual effects of projectiles hitting the ground have been improved.

Fixed Bugs

Improved stability for the Xbox client (both generations).
A few errors in descriptions for controller presets were corrected.
Charlemagne's aircraft are now correctly skinned (as bats) when the Scarab Skin is applied to the ship.
The focus frame sometimes disappeared from Commanders when allocating the 15th or 16th Commander to a ship.
Commanders were sometimes not assigning correctly if a Commander was on the far right of the list.
Freezes occurred for PlayStation 5 when resuming the game after having the console in a suspended state. (Compatibility Mode)
Rare cases of the Store displaying the "There is no content" message for PlayStation users.
Enemy ship HP bars sometimes doubled up in the battle interface.
Global XP rounded up incorrectly when switching between the currency panel and main Port menu.
Finished Bureau Projects were sometimes displayed as active when all the rewards had been received.
Rare cases of controller presets not changing occurred.

New Premium Ships in the Store

The following ships are very likely to be available for purchase during this Update; please follow our social media accounts and other channels to get the details on dates and specific stats: