The difficulty here is rarely mechanical — it is a decision made twenty minutes earlier that closed the door.

Short answer

Prepare first, then work through it in the order below. Nothing here rewards rushing the opening.

  • Note which choice you made, for later sections that reference it.
  • Talk to everyone once before triggering the sequence.
  • Region and platform change more than people expect, so confirm both.

War Thunder models more of the vehicle than it tells you about, and the grind punishes guessing. Optional preparation is what separates a ten-minute attempt from a two-hour one. A failed attempt usually leaves the world in a state you can still recover from.

Choices that matter later

Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional. A save immediately before the decision point costs nothing and occasionally saves hours. The game signals the requirement once, quietly, and never mentions it again. None of this needs a paid tool, a third-party launcher or an account on a site you have never heard of.

Some outcomes are locked behind an earlier conversation rather than behind performance. Difficulty settings change numbers here, not the sequence. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about.

Before you start

Reading ahead spoils some of it; going in blind costs some of it. Pick which you mind less. There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing. The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time.

  • Save manually before the first irreversible step.
  • Complete the optional preparation — it is the actual difficulty setting.
  • Keep a save or backup from before you start — it costs nothing and occasionally saves an evening.
  • Check your inventory against what the section demands.

Working through it

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. Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts. A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later.

Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice.

If it goes wrong

Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work. Everything below is framed around the current state of War Thunder rather than a launch-week impression.

It helps to understand why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation is slightly different. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why.

The part people get stuck on

If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over.

Where people go wrong

  • Downloading a helper tool for something the game already does in its own menu.
  • Copying a setup wholesale from a streamer without understanding what each part does.
  • Changing five things at once and then not knowing which one helped.
  • Treating a rare edge case as the normal behaviour and planning around it.

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.

How long does it take?

Under an hour prepared, considerably more improvising. That gap is the whole argument for preparing.

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.

Bookmark it if you like, but honestly, once you have done it once you will not need to come back.