War Thunder has spawned enough surrounding work that the ordering question comes up constantly.

Short answer

It exists, it is official, and it is not required to understand the game — but it does fill in the parts the game only gestures at.

  • Check whether something is official before treating it as canon.
  • Play first if you mind spoilers — adaptations rarely respect them.
  • Expect one number in every guide to be out of date; the method is what matters.

War Thunder models more of the vehicle than it tells you about, and the grind punishes guessing. Canon status is decided by the developers rather than by the adaptation's writers. Release order and chronological order are different, and both have their advocates.

Where to find it legitimately

Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. Fan work is frequently better than official work and is not the same thing. Adaptations take liberties, and the interesting ones take them deliberately. Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional.

Assets circulated online are often ripped rather than released, which affects what you can legally do with them. Official art books contain material that never appears in the game itself. It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different.

What is fan-made

Licensed soundtracks are the most likely part to be missing from a re-release. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it.

  • Credit fan artists if you reuse their work.
  • Expect licensed music to be missing from re-releases.
  • Region and platform change more than people expect, so confirm both.
  • Buy from the publisher's own store where one exists.

Whether it is worth your time

Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows. Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration. Where two approaches both work, the one with fewer moving parts is the one to keep. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you.

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. Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts.

Where it fits with the game

None of this needs a paid tool, a third-party launcher or an account on a site you have never heard of. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice.

War Thunder is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look. A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over.

What exists officially

The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on. Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters.

Where people go wrong

  • Treating a rare edge case as the normal behaviour and planning around it.
  • Trusting a video thumbnail that promises a result the video never actually shows.
  • Changing five things at once and then not knowing which one helped.

War Thunder FAQ

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.

Is it any good?

The reception is mixed and depends heavily on what you wanted from it. The section above sets that expectation honestly.

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

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

Do I need it to understand the game?

No. It adds background rather than filling gaps the game leaves open.

That is the whole of it — if something here stops matching War Thunder, the game changed, not the method.