War Thunder Forums, and What Each Is Good For

Knowing which place answers which kind of question saves a lot of scrolling.

War Thunder models more of the vehicle than it tells you about, and the grind punishes guessing. Discord answers fast and disappears fast — nothing there is searchable a month later. Third-party trackers and log sites are excellent for numbers and useless for context.

Contributing back

Everything below is framed around the current state of War Thunder rather than a launch-week impression. Subreddits reward strong opinions, which makes them good for taste and poor for facts. Anything with an advertising incentive will overstate how urgent a change is. Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts.

Official forums are read by developers rarely but consistently, which is why bug reports belong there. The most useful community members are the ones who cite the patch they are describing. Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over.

How current the information is

Wikis carry a patch version; forum posts usually do not, and that difference explains most contradictions. Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds.

• Distrust any guide that does not say which version it is for.
• Report bugs officially — nowhere else reaches the developers.
• Expect one number in every guide to be out of date; the method is what matters.
• Ask in Discord when the question is "right now", not "in general".

Official channels

Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows. War Thunder is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on.

If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over. A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later. Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters.

Which place answers which question

The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice.

Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first. Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work.

Reading community advice critically

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 usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about.

Where people go wrong

• Treating a rare edge case as the normal behaviour and planning around it.
• Rushing the last step, which is usually the one with the actual requirement in it.
• Grinding a method that was patched months ago because a thread still ranks well.
• Changing five things at once and then not knowing which one helped.

War Thunder FAQ

Does this work the same on console and PC?

The logic is identical. Menu paths and button prompts differ, and any real difference is flagged above.

Do I need any mods or third-party tools for this?

No. Everything described here works with the base game on any supported platform.

Why do other guides describe this differently?

Most were written for an earlier version and never revisited. Compare the steps against what your build actually shows.

Is this still accurate after the latest War Thunder update?

The method is; individual numbers may not be. If a value on your screen differs, trust the screen and keep the sequence.

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