This comes up often enough in War Thunder that it deserves a straight answer rather than a thread to scroll through.

Short answer

In most cases the straightforward approach works. The exceptions are specific and listed below.

  • Do not build a routine around an edge case.
  • Check which version any conflicting advice was written for.
  • Give a method one honest attempt before deciding it does not work.

War Thunder models more of the vehicle than it tells you about, and the grind punishes guessing. It is worth separating what the game does from what players have concluded it does. The accepted community answer is broadly right and wrong in a specific way that matters here.

What to do instead

Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. Testing this yourself takes a few minutes and settles it definitively. Edge cases are genuinely rare, which is why the simple answer is usually the correct one. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first.

Most of the disagreement online comes from people describing different versions of War Thunder. Nothing here depends on a setting you are unlikely to have. Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration.

The practical answer

The mechanic behind it is simpler than the discussion around it suggests. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on.

  • Note the exception cases — they are specific rather than vague.
  • Revisit after a major patch if the behaviour changes.
  • Read the whole sequence once before doing the first step.
  • Test it yourself where testing is cheap.
  • Try the straightforward approach before the elaborate one.
  • If a menu path does not exist for you, your build is older or newer than the one described.

Why it works this way

Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts. War Thunder is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you.

Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows.

Worth knowing alongside this

Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work. The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about.

None of this needs a paid tool, a third-party launcher or an account on a site you have never heard of. Where two approaches both work, the one with fewer moving parts is the one to keep. Everything below is framed around the current state of War Thunder rather than a launch-week impression.

When the usual advice fails

It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different. Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it.

Where people go wrong

  • Downloading a helper tool for something the game already does in its own menu.
  • Assuming a guide from an older season still describes the current version.
  • Changing five things at once and then not knowing which one helped.

War Thunder FAQ

Why do people disagree about this?

Mostly because they are describing different versions. Version drift explains the majority of contradictory advice about War Thunder.

What is the short answer?

It is the paragraph near the top. Everything after it exists for the cases where that paragraph does not quite fit.

How long does this take?

Minutes if it goes cleanly, an evening if you hit the edge case in the caveats list. Neither is unusual.

What if none of this works for me?

Then something in your setup differs from the assumption — version, region or platform. Check those three before anything else.

Anything that shifts with the next War Thunder update will show up as a changed number, not a changed approach.