Maintenance times:

• Xbox: March 7, 1:00 – 4:00 AM Central / 7:00 – 10:00 AM UTC
• PlayStation: March 7, 1:00 – 4:00 AM Central / 7:00 – 10:00 AM UTC

Update size:

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

Captains, the new update is closing in! Let's find out what's new this time around. 

Such update, much text... Better TLDR? We got you:

• Gold Runner campaign rewards include U.S. Tier VII destroyer Somers
• St. Patrick’s Day themed content
• Italian BB Tech Tree is now researchable with Tier VII Vittorio Veneto on top
• And loads more, of course!

As always, before we begin the deep dive, gear up with 6x Regia Marina camos and 6x Red,White and Blue ones using the code Z8EL8K3ER8 at https://wowslegends.com/code-redeemer.

Gold Runner Campaign

Somers was the lead ship of her class, and she saw action in various naval theaters from the South Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Her most notable performance, however, was outside of the battlefield—the ship transported a consignment of gold from England to New York, and that's the key to the campaign name.

Eight rapid-reloading guns and up to 12 torpedoes at once make Somers a true threat. Add her top speed of 38.6 knots to that and you have a born winner. 

With the traditional 100 milestones in 5 weeks, here's the list of items you can obtain: 

Rewards you can get without the Admiralty Backing: 

• 75x Common Boosters 
• 12x Type 1 camouflages
• 12x Type 2 camouflages
• 12x Type 3 camouflages
• 7x “Red, White, and Blue” camouflages
• 310,000 Commander XP
• 400,000 credits
• 3,500 Global XP
• 14x Promotion Orders
• 1x Insignia
• 1x Commendation
• 7 days of Premium Account
• 2x Winter Big crates
• 1x American Commander crate
• 1x patch background

Value of the rewards without the Admiralty Backing: 15,877 doubloons 

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

• 75x Rare Boosters
• 20x Type 1 camouflages
• 20x Type 2 camouflages
• 20x Type 3 camouflages
• 14x “Red, White, and Blue” camouflages
• 140,000 Commander XP
• 2,600,000 credits
• 27,500 Global XP
• 26x Promotion Orders
• 3x Insignias
• 3x Commendations
• 750 doubloons
• 6x Winter Big crates
• 1x patch symbol
• American Tier VII destroyer Somers

Total value of the rewards with the Admiralty Backing: 67,790 doubloons

The campaign comprises 100 milestones, so getting everything right away will require 27,250 doubloons. You need to finish the weekly tasks each week this time, and if you're up for a challenge, there's also a weekly set of "hardmode" missions. The full breakdown of the campaign missions will be available on Monday, March 7, as a standalone blog post.

St. Patrick's Day 2022

May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future! It's time to celebrate the greenest holiday of the year this update, and, as usual, we’ve prepared some special themed content for you:  

• Brady McMordoff Commander guise
  The Mr. (alleged) Leprechaun himself is here—give him a try to see everything in green! Available for use with British and American historical Commanders. 
• St. Patrick's ensemble skin for Tiger '59
  Everything looks better in green—there's certainly no doubt about that. Learn more about the all-new Tiger'59 in the sections below! 
• New St. Patrick's patch and flag
  +200% luck if you equip those.
• Pot of Gold
  Guaranteed to drops 1,250 doubloons and 3x St. Paddy camos; has chances of dropping g-r-e-e-n skins for Belfast and Tiger '59, Commander progression items, credits, and even a superprize if you're leprechaun-lucky! The exact droprates can be found here: https://wowslegends.com/containers/.
• Belfast
  Well, there's no Saint Patrick’s Day party without Belfast! Grab her in the Store for 12,500 doubloons until April 11. 

Sales of St. Patrick's day content start March 14, so get ready!

Italian Battleships Arrive in Full Force

The mighty Italian battleships are finally at large! The line is leaving Early Access and becoming fully researchable, with monstrous Exhaust Smoke Generator-equipped Vittorio Veneto and her nine 15-inch (381 mm) guns ready to scatter steel and victory at the top of it. If you need to be reminded what Italian battleships are all about, refer to our blog post here!

New Ships of the Update

Tier IV Hill

She’s fast and handles well, with rapid-reloading guns and a Smoke Generator that lasts for a long time—a classic American destroyer is at your service. Three torpedo launchers included! 

Tier VI Tiger '59 

Accurate guns, the ability to equip Smoke Generator and Radar simultaneously, and great maneuverability make this British cruiser a dangerous threat. Beware of the symbol of this year! 

Tier VII Champagne 

This French battleship offers accurate and quick traversing 16-inch (406 mm) guns in triple turrets. Her speed is nothing to smirk at and is additionally improved by the Engine Boost consumable, which allows for fast relocations around the map! Champagne is making her glorious return and is available in the Store for 750,000 Global XP. 

To back up this selection of ships, there's also a set of camos, including some new ones, available for credits! Check the Store for the full range during the first week of the update, available until March 14.

Soviet carriers

Soviet aircraft carriers are here: with all-new skip bombers and unique full-squadron attacks, this researchable range is ready for you to try it out. The line itself, available with Tier III BB Gangut unlocked and maxed out, looks as follows:

• Tier III Komsomolets 
• Tier V Serov
• Tier VII Pobeda

Prominent Commander Yevgeny Preobrazhensky is here to lead squadrons into battle. You can obtain this perfect officer for Soviet carriers through a dedicated free set of missions; via Commander crates; or for 900,000 Commander XP in the Store. Aircraft carrier Pobeda has her very own feature—JATO (jet-assisted take-off) unit-equipped squadrons—which helps the planes get up and away quicker. Importantly, Tier III Komsomolets does not have skip bombers in her arsenal and offers regular HE bombers instead. 

The Out of Sight skill has been changed to work with skip bombers.

Balance Changes 

It's only natural that with the new carriers incoming, the existing ones are getting tweaked. The balancing logic is very simple this time—the carriers that were changed ended up lagging a bit behind their peers, so we're giving them a much-needed boost. You might consider the Shōkaku buff to be a bit conservative, but let's see what happens. While it’s widely believed that high-tier carriers lack in damage and earnings, they actually beat battleships in that regard, with the caveat of battleships being a much more popular ship type. That being said, we're boosting Tier III and Tier VII credit-earning modifiers by a few percent to make the ships a little more attractive to those who normally avoid them.

American Tier III Langley

• Damage from both dive and torpedo bombers increased by 5%
• Their speed increased by 10 kts

Japanese Tier VII Shōkaku

• Concealment for dive bombers improved, from 10 to 7.5 km
• Aircraft restoration time for stock dive bombers increased from 66 to 70 s
• Aircraft restoration time for upgraded dive bombers decreased from 76 to 65 s

British Tier III Hermes

• Maximum bomb damage increased from 2,400 to 3,200
• Maximum torpedo damage increased from 5,200 to 5,633
• Speed for torpedo bombers increased by 5 kts
• Torpedo arming time reduced from 3.5 to 3 s
• Torpedo speed increased from 35 to 40 kts
• Torpedo spotting range increased by about 15%

German Tier VII August von Parseval

• Damage from both dive and torpedo bombers reduced by 5%

However, those are not the only changes to be implemented. We're bringing in changes for two destroyers:

Soviet Tier VI Minsk

Minsk received a buff a few updates ago which made her a little too ambitious, so we're culling the reload of both her main guns and torpedoes to decrease the total damage she can inflict in battle.

• Upgraded artillery preset reload time changed from 3.5 to 4 s 
• Reload time for both torpedo presets changed from 101 to 110 s for stock; from 98 to 110 s for upgraded 

Pan-Asian Tier VII Hsienyang

Hsienyang was a bit subpar compared to her peers, as she's not the best in knife fights and her torpedoes do require particular targets. Not wanting to make her too universal, we're doubling down on her torpedoes, so implementing the correct playstyle with her will be rewarded accordingly. 

• Torpedo range increased from 9 to 10 km
• Maximum torpedo damage increased from 17,000 to 18,000 for upgraded torpedoes

Secondaries lock and AA engagement

This is not strictly balance, but balance-adjacent. You can now set a priority target for your secondary armament, as well as turn your AA guns on or off. To do that, go to your quick commands wheel and use the appropriate buttons depicted on the right. Gun lock has also been added to this panel, which will be especially useful for presets without gun lock.

Bug Fixes

• A bug that caused the returning speed of squadrons to be the same as their speed before returning has been fixed. The returning speed of squadrons is now constant.
• Fixed an issue that caused background images in the mission cards to sometimes not refresh quickly enough when players switched from one to another.
• Fixed a bug that caused Grumman TBF planes' glass surfaces to strobe when the planes took off.
• Fixed a bug that rarely caused Bureau trial slots to not open up if a date change happened while players were in the trial UI.
• Moving a ship onto terrain on the Neighbors map should now be significantly more difficult.
• Single-tube torpedo launching has been renamed "Single Launcher" for Huanghe.
• (Mobile) Removed the ability to tap multiple UI items simultaneously in Headquarters.
• (Mobile) Fixed a bug that caused area control indicators to have visual artifacts appearing as vertical grey stripes.

Miscellaneous

• Xbox Series X now supports ray-traced shadows! You'll most likely see the improvements when looking at ships' small details. To make sure that ray tracing is on, you have to run the game at 4K and enable RT support on your console.

• The HUD Minimap is now higher resolution and has brighter object borders.

• Tweaked the map borders for the Domination mode on the Sea of Fortune, Warrior's Path, and Northern Waters maps.

• Any unspent Winter Coins—which is pretty fitting with spring is finally arriving—will be converted into credits at the exchange rate of 1 Winter Coin for 1,500 credits.
• Visual improvements have been made to the water on the following maps: Islands, Big Race, Polar. 

Enjoy the spring, be lucky, and turn the tide!