Maintenance times:

• Xbox: July 25, 2:00 – 5:45 AM Central / 7:00 – 10:45 AM UTC
• PlayStation: July 25, 2:00 – 5:45 AM Central / 7:00 – 10:45 AM UTC

Update size:

• Xbox One (S,X) ~3500 MB
• Xbox Series S/X ~3500 MB
• PS4 ~2500 MB
• PS5 ~2500 MB
• Mobile ~1000 MB slim client, 9000 MB full game

Captains, this update is big—both in terms of the news magnitude and the amount of content arriving to Legends. We're talking REALLY big. Let us walk ship you through it.

For those of you who prefer briefings to long meetings, here's the TLDR:

• Tier VIII with 12 new ships of 4 nations in the Tech Tree alone
• Legendary Birthday with bonuses, prizes, return of the collaborations & special events content, and a special Bureau project
• L'Ambassadeur campaign headlined by the magnifique Tier VIII battleship République of the French Navy
• The First Commonwealth ship
• A special web event 

• And a lot more, of course!

Don't miss out on your party attire: Get 12x Anniversary camos and 2x Common containers with the code 6IVS2A1ZHQ at https://wowslegends.com/code-redeemer. 

Tier VIII Arrives

Arguably, that's the biggest news for Legends—like, ever. Tech Tree getting overhauled, matchmaking changes, economy changes too, and a whole bunch of content arriving with even more reinforcements planned for the upcoming updates (wink-wink). That sounds seismic, doesn't it?

Anyway, the first batch of Tier VIII pioneers is here. Those are:

U.S.A: 

• Battleship Maine
• Cruiser Buffalo
• Destroyer Allen M. Sumner 

Japan:

• Battleship Izumo
• Cruiser Ibuki
• Destroyer Yūgumo 

Germany:

• Battleship Friedrich der Große
• Cruiser Roon
• Destroyer Z-46

U.S.S.R.:

• Battleship Sovetsky Soyuz
• Cruiser Dmitri Donskoi
• Destroyer Delny

All these ships will be obtainable in the Tech Tree as soon as the update hits, providing you have unlocked and maxed out the respective Tier VII ships. Actually, some of you may have access to the Tier VIII heroes right away in case you have enough Elite XP on the branch-toppers—200,000 or more. This will happen automatically. The now-Elite Tier VII ships with an Elite XP of less than 200,000 will lose such status, and the XP will be spent on Tier VIII research. Keep that in mind if you want it to convert to Global XP! 

Two other Tier VIII newcomers completing the initial lineup are French battleship République, the ultimate L'Ambassadeur campaign prize, and German destroyer Elbing, available through this update's Auction (more on those later). Elbing will return for Global XP in future updates. 

We're definitely planning on adding more Tier VIII ships in the following updates via all available means of distribution, starting from the Tech Tree and the Store, including Global XP, Bureau, and maybe even Steel. One more important point to mention: As you're already used to, campaign ships will keep arriving mostly at the highest non-Legendary Tier, which is now Tier VIII. For more details, please refer to the development blog post here. 

Three Legendary Years

Three years is a lot! We want to thank you for sailing and staying with Legends: You, Captains, are a fundamental reason why Legends is as cool as it gets. The celebrations start with the update dropping on Monday, July 25. To find out everything about the third birthday celebrations in the smallest possible detail, wait for a special blog post coming next week. But for now, let's check out what's waiting for you!

Windroses & First Win Bonus increased

Windroses are back! Here are your one-time bonuses for the first win on each ship from Tier IV to Legendary from August 8 through August 15:

• Tier IV: 2x Hunter camos
• Tier V: 2x Anniversary camos
• Tier VI: 3x Rare Battle boosters
• Tier VII: 3x Epic Battle boosters
• Tier VIII: 1x Insignia
• Legendary Tier: 1x Summer Big Crate

Additionally, First Win Bonus is bumped to x5 from August 26 through August 29. 

Night Symphony bundle

More firsts for this update! Commonwealth makes its appearance in the game with the Tier II Premium destroyer Vampire. She brings rapid-reloading guns, good angling, and starting Commonwealth Commander Leonard Murray comes aboard, too. You can get those for free alongside more in-game goods, picking up the corresponding bundle in your platform Store from August 1 through August 29. PSA: Don't bite your foes!  

Anniversary Bureau

Throwback to the storylines of the Legendary past year—from multiple Tech Tree branches released to the seasonal & racing events and more milestones. An array of crates packing various items is the reward you’ll receive within this project, including some with a chance of Premium ships!

Return of collaborations and special events content

The range of collab and event goods during this birthday celebration includes items from the following ranges:

• Arpeggio of Blue Steel -Ars Nova- & Golden Week 
• Black Friday
• Halloween
• New Year & Lunar New Year
• Stellar Clash, including a chance to get the all-new Des Moines Galaxy skin
• Warhammer 40,000

We are going to cover the details and timelines in a separate blog post in the coming days. The comeback has already started with the Warhammer 40,000 range available and the Halloween collection joining once the update hits. Keep an eye on the Store to pick something your stash is missing! 

New Birthday Port

That's a place to celebrate! If you like Easter eggs, you'll make an omelet or two in the new Port!

L'Ambassadeur Campaign

You know the drill: 100 milestones, five weeks, catch-up enabled. French Tier VIII battleship République is your main reward, this time with an active Admiralty Backing. She has powerful and accurate 17-inch (431 mm) guns in a 2x4 configuration, a swift main battery reload, the Engine Boost consumable, AND a very solid AA suite. That's an absolute beast if you ask us! The Premium bonus for Tier VIII credit earnings will be set at 15%, the same as it was for Tier VII before the economic changes. 

Let's proceed to the prizes.

Rewards you can get without the Admiralty Backing: 

• 40x Common boosters 
• 12x Type 1 camouflages
• 12x Type 2 camouflages
• 12x Type 3 camouflages
• 9x Anniversary camouflages
• 262,500 Commander XP
• 300,000 credits
• 7,250 Global XP
• 14x Promotion Orders
• 1x Insignia
• 1x Commendation
• 8 days of Premium Account
• 1x Summer Big Crate 
• 1x Anniversary '22 Soviet crate 
• 1x Anniversary '22 Regia Marina crate 
• 1x Anniversary '22 Pan-European crate 
• 1x French Commander crate
• 1x patch background
• 1x patch symbol

Value of the rewards without the Admiralty Backing: 15,575 doubloons 

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

• 40x Rare boosters
• 22x Type 1 camouflages
• 22x Type 2 camouflages
• 22x Type 3 camouflages
• 25x Anniversary camouflages
• 137,500 Commander XP
• 2,925,000 credits
• 27,500 Global XP
• 26x Promotion Orders
• 4x Insignias
• 3x Commendations
• 750 doubloons
• 4x Summer Big Crates
• 4x Anniversary '22 Soviet crates
• 4x Anniversary '22 Regia Marina crates
• 4x Anniversary '22 Pan-European crates
• French Tier VIII Premium battleship République 

Total value of the rewards with the Admiralty Backing: 72,280 doubloons

Treasure Hunt Is Here Again

The summer web event returns! You might remember Treasure Hunt from the previous year, and it comes back in an even better shape. This time, you can acquire up to two Super V crates, including the usual crate-exclusive Shinonome, but also the latest Tier V Premium ships added to the range of available drops—this means Arizona, Hyūga, Zuihō, Anshan, and Huanghe! Find the full list of contents at https://wowslegends.com/containers/. We'll cover this in detail in a standalone blog post a couple of days before its start on August 8.

Colbert Bureau Project

Colbert is a fancy new French cruiser. Essentially an Atlanta-like firestarter, but at Legendary Tier, this mean machine is a perfect choice for all you HE spam connoisseurs out there. She was initially introduced during the 21/22 New Year update's Rent-a-Legendary event, and now this cruiser finally graces our waters, if you get her, with no changes applied.

This is the first Bureau project to become available for Steel—3,000 pieces, to be precise. Once you obtain the project, it's yours forever, but you can only do so until the end of the current update—through August 29. We understand that only those of you with enough Steel already can get it, and while it may seem harsh, we want to limit the ship’s population and see how she does before taking any further steps. 

Auction 

The second installment of the Auction features a very special Commander guise, Alice Thompson, also known as the Auctioneer Lady. With Miss Thompson headlining, lots will provide a varied selection of items, including the all-new German Tier VIII Premium destroyer Elbing. Please note that this ship will become available for Global XP in the future. Read on through the New Ships of the Update section to find out the details about her. The Auction and its rules will be covered in detail in a standalone blog post a couple of days before its grand opening on August 18. 

New Ships of the Update—and More

German Tier VII Premium aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin

Welcome the first German Premium aircraft carrier! The notorious Graf Zeppelin, named after the prominent airship inventor, boasts extremely fast planes and is equipped with precise AP bombs and noticeable secondary armament. 

The one and only German wartime aircraft carrier to get launched, Graf Zeppelin is a famous ship despite never being completed. By September 1939, she was about 85% ready, but priorities in shipbuilding and naval warfare changed, and as a result, the carrier's construction was halted. It was resumed in 1942, only to be entirely stopped in 1943. The ship, projected to be a house for 42 fighters and dive bombers, was scuttled by the crew in the Baltic in April 1945. A year later, she was recovered by the Soviet Union and sunk the following year during weapon tests. You can get her in the Store, starting July 25. 

German Tier VIII Premium destroyer Elbing

A project for a so-called "reconnaissance cruiser" and the culmination of efforts to create a destroyer that would be capable of operating on the high seas. She would have become a large ship with 5.9-inch (150 mm) main guns placed in twin turrets and powerful torpedo armament.  
Besides accurate guns with very good ballistics and solid AP penetration, Elbing boasts a huge HP pool. Her torpedoes hit like a truck, that from a very long distance. The drawback? Those fishes are slow. And as a reminder from two paragraphs above, this ship will eventually become available for Global XP!

Italian battleship Commander Angelo Iachino

A welcomed addition to the ranks of the Regia Marina admirals, signore Iachino is a battleship Commander focused on gunnery accuracy and improving survival skills. He brings to the table not one, not two, but three unique abilities:

• Base Trait: Go Away
  Increase your main battery shell grouping by up to 7% while shooting at cruisers and by up to 3% while shooting at destroyers and battleships. 
• 4th-row skill: Iron Resolve
  Increase Repair Party and Damage Control Party consumables duration by up to 15% if those are activated simultaneously. 
• Legendary skill: Testudo
  Reduce incoming damage from shells, bombs, and torpedoes while Repair Party consumable is active by up to 20%. Add 1 to the count of Repair Party consumables. 

Angelo Iachino is available in the Store for 900,000 Commander XP and also drops from Commander crates, including Italian ones.

Balance Changes

Main Gun Reload Booster now works even if any of the main battery guns are incapacitated/destroyed. This will alleviate some of the frustrations that come with the consumable but will also allow completely wasting a charge in some situations, which we believe is fair.

Charles Martel receives 2 charges of Main Battery Reload Booster consumable in the 1st slot.

Conqueror receives 2 charges of Defensive AA Fire consumable in an extra slot.

Saipan did get a noticeable nerf, namely:

• Planes' HP was reduced by 200 and is now 3200.
• Bomb damage was reduced by 600, down to 9500.
• Torpedo damage was reduced by 567, down to 5333.

Saipan is indeed a premium, but she is available to everyone at no monetary cost and she started to break the game a little bit; there's only so much we can do before powercreep becomes hard to reign in.

Weimar moves to Tier VII

German Premium cruiser Weimar has been moved from Tier VI to Tier VII with the following adjustments:

• Repair Party consumable added
• Economy changed according to the new Tier VII standard: credit bonus is now 55%, cost of entering battle is 95,200 credits.

Please note that Weimar did not receive a 4th modernization slot, while we deem her performance more than adequate without additional modernizations.

Captains who have previously acquired the ship in the Store and don't enjoy her new position in the hierarchy are eligible to exchange it for 12,500 doubloons by filing a support ticket here until August 14. This offer is only valid for ships that have not been restored after May 1 through a support ticket.

Carriers balance changes

Due to the seismic release of Tier VIII, Tier VII aircraft carriers and Japanese Tier V Premium Zuihō have been changed too. You will also notice Shōkaku getting improved squadrons, as she was lagging behind her peers.
First and foremost, the planes now have more HP, about 150 on average. This change affects the following ships, with more buffs included:

• Tier VII Lexington (upgraded dive bombers, stock and upgraded torpedo bombers)
• Tier VII Kaga (stock dive and torpedo bombers)
• Tier VII Shōkaku (stock and upgraded dive and torpedo bombers); Shōkaku's squadrons were increased from 8 to 9 aircraft with attack unit size going to 3 instead of 2 for both stock and upgraded torpedo bombers; hangar size for stock version increased from 12 to 15 aircraft, maximum bomb damage was increased from 10,100 to 10,600 for both stock and upgraded dive bombers
• Tier V Zuihō (dive and torpedo bombers); Zuihō's maximum bomb damage was also increased from 9,100 to 9,400
• Tier VII Implacable (stock and upgraded dive and torpedo bombers); hangar size for both stock and upgraded version increased from 12 to 15 aircraft
• Tier VII August von Parseval (stock and upgraded dive bombers, upgraded torpedo bombers); Parseval's maximum torpedo bomber damage was also decreased from 5,833 to 5,600 for both stock and upgraded aircraft
• Tier VII Pobeda (stock and upgraded skip and torpedo bombers); Pobeda's torpedo speed was also increased from 35 to 40 kt.

Bug Fixes

• Moving from a close-up view of a smaller ship to a much bigger ship in port could result in the camera appearing inside the second ship.
• Observer camera for players that lost their aircraft carriers and let their last squadrons consume all the fuel would not allow switching between the allied ships sometimes.
• Simultaneous disconnection and instance of battle ending could significantly prolong the procedure of logging back in if done right away.
• Poseidon Blessed trophy on PlayStation did not correctly account for all ribbons valid to earn it.
• Rare case of voice chat turning off until the game is restarted.
• Rare case of the loading screen showing the same screen multiple times in succession.
• Optimized FPS during sudden camera movements in port.

Other 

• The display of the Commander's Legendary Skill in battle was changed. It is now located next to the Minimap, and the lightning icon indicating the Legendary Skill being active now appears under the detectability range line. 
• Notification log added.
  All notifications are available in the notification log window, located in the Service Record. Important notifications will be available even after logging in for the next session. 
• Due to the Tier VIII arrival, Weekly Boost missions will be additionally reset on Monday, July 25. 
• Tactical map and Minimap improvements:
  1. Detectability circle is now displayed around the squadron on the Minimap.
  2. It is no longer possible to send quick commands while controlling a squadron if the housing aircraft carrier is destroyed.

Mobile Improvements

• The initial download of the game now installs the so-called "slim" client, a 1 GB download that allows playing with up to Tier II ships. Once that milestone is reached, you'll be prompted to download the remaining contents of the client.
• Added a notification for instances whenever game data requires downloading, and you're not on a wifi network.

Celebrate our anniversary with us and Tier VIII ships, and turn the tide!