This comes up often enough in World of Tanks that it deserves a straight answer rather than a thread to scroll through.

Short answer

The direct answer is above the fold; the reasoning underneath is there for when the direct answer does not fit your situation.

  • Note the exception cases — they are specific rather than vague.
  • Try the straightforward approach before the elaborate one.
  • Region and platform change more than people expect, so confirm both.

Picking the wrong line in World of Tanks costs weeks, so the research order matters more than any single tank. Nothing here depends on a setting you are unlikely to have. Most of the disagreement online comes from people describing different versions of World of Tanks.

Worth knowing alongside this

A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later. Edge cases are genuinely rare, which is why the simple answer is usually the correct one. The accepted community answer is broadly right and wrong in a specific way that matters here. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it.

It is worth separating what the game does from what players have concluded it does. The mechanic behind it is simpler than the discussion around it suggests. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on.

What to do instead

Testing this yourself takes a few minutes and settles it definitively. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first. World of Tanks is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look.

  • Test it yourself where testing is cheap.
  • Do not build a routine around an edge case.
  • Check the version you are actually running before assuming anything is broken.
  • Revisit after a major patch if the behaviour changes.
  • Check which version any conflicting advice was written for.

When the usual advice fails

Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. Everything below is framed around the current state of World of Tanks rather than a launch-week impression. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work.

Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about. Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional.

The practical answer

There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing.

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. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over.

Why it works this way

The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds. Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters.

Where people go wrong

  • Ignoring the platform-specific note and then wondering why the steps do not line up.
  • Rushing the last step, which is usually the one with the actual requirement in it.
  • Treating a rare edge case as the normal behaviour and planning around it.
  • Downloading a helper tool for something the game already does in its own menu.

World of Tanks FAQ

Why do people disagree about this?

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

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.

Is this still accurate after the latest World of Tanks update?

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

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.

Work through it in the order above and girls und panzer stops being a question you have to look up again.