Azur Lane has one of the friendlier tutorials, although a forced one. It teaches you concepts at a good pace, starts with a battle (The Battle of Denmark Strait. Which we’ll get to), and your first actual battles in 1-1. After that, it lets you go and do your own thing…

And the first thing that happens, due to nothing more than lucky timing is… The HMS Hood. Welp. Still, the Hood’s a damn fine start, as are our first (random) builds. We’ll get to that in a side update, in which we talk about the shipgirls of each day, but suffice to say, we got a good start right out of the gate. The starter is good no matter who you pick out of the Big Three (Plus One, but again, we’ll get to that) of Laffey, Javelin, or Z23, and, as you can see in the video, your early game is very friendly indeed.

VIDEO: Day 1, Part 1 .

So long as you stick to manual play, the odds are pretty high you won’t get an A rank until 2-4 at the earliest. Although this will, eventually, change. I found a big sticking point in the 5th and 6th chapters, but you won’t be hitting big brick walls until about chapters 8 and 9. Out of 13. The game’s difficulty curve is pretty friendly.

The Difficulty Curve goes from ‘Friendly’ to ‘Fuck you and the Horse you rode in on’ at World 10, when enemy fleets start aiming for your flagship with HE ammo and average level 100-105. Don’t get me started on World 13 and it having a Great Marianas Turkey Shoot with you as the Turkey.

This, Grump, is because you’re what we call “Fucking good at the game.” For the average player, it’ll be world 8 or thereabouts. And they begin sending big bomb ships earlier. 😛

Although, agreed, Level 120 vs Level 120 is evil. But it’ll be at least 6-8 months before you get there.

Took me over a year, but I’ve been playing since EN beta release in August 2018

And, even better, we had a second stroke of good luck! You see, the very first event we had on the account? Was also one of the earliest, Crimson Echoes!

behind Visitors Dyed in Red, Fallen Wings, and a passel of others

We’ll be showing that off in a side update, along with its followup, Visitors Dyed In Red, which is an archived event. Also archived, although probably shown later, are Fallen Wings, and Encircling Graf Spee.

So, before we continue, I’d like to reiterate something from the tutorial video: You do not need full loadout for a while yet. Don’t bother with T1 and T2 techboxes, just wait to craft them into T3s. And by the time you’ve hit 6-4? Even those will essentially be a free source of money. Aaaand this is advice I completely forget Day 1, only remembering later… (FUTURE ME AT 6-3: Iiiii really need to tidy up…)

So, because the early game is pretty easy, we get to 1-4 pretty easily. It should be noted at this point that experienced players will be screaming at me, because I am a stingy git when it comes to fuel. I had bad experiences around 5-4 on my main, so I hate letting it drop below 3k when I’ve got enough fuel. Not least because there’s a valuable as hell Commission (we’ll get to those) that gives loads of XP, and a very respectable amount of coins.

It should also be noted that, after a while, we won’t be showing commissions, and a lot of the busywork. This tutorial will show the most of the busywork, with a couple of exceptions when new busywork comes along. It is mostly, however, useful busywork. And Day 2, we’ll sum it up.

And a lot of ships get built. Hooo boy, you start with the money, you start with the cubes, you start with the Quick Finishers… You can get a lot of ships early, with a little luck, and, for future reference, be happy if you get elites and above. They’re going to be your heavy hitters, either through raw firepower… Or powerful special abilities. This isn’t to say the common ships are slouches… But they’re not going to be your primary murderbotes. 

There is a tradeoff, however, although you won’t feel it in the early game: The higher the rarity, the more fuel it’s going to cost. So going with all golds in your fleets is a really good way to be out of fuel every day.

Ask me about my fleet of Gold-tier USN Battleships and Heavy cruisers. Ask me how I can stomach the 80 oil cost per fight.

For now, though, you unlock auto-combat at 1-3, and Commissions at 1-4, and by this point, you’ll have also gotten your second fleet. Commissions… Well, unless you’ve been lucky, you don’t need to worry about filling all your commission slots (2 to start with, but it gets better) for a short while yet. And you definitely don’t need to worry about running out of fuel or money unless you build even more than I did. Shit’s nice and easy for 1-1 to 1-4.

A final note before the next half of the day: Every day, there is a mission for your daily challenges, except Sunday, when it’s all of them (less the Submarine Missions, which we’ll get to.) Losing them doesn’t lose you one of your three tries at it a day, but it does cost fuel… A frankly tiny amount that you won’t miss (10% of your fleet’s actual fuel cost.)

VIDEO: Day 1, Part 2 .

And today’s challenge was one of the two Daily Challenges I like to call… The Helldailies. Specifically, Advance Mission (Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday), aka “I hope you like Bombships!” Because oh boy, the mission is basically either expertly shooting down bombships that come at you in waves, letting some impact your Main Fleet, but not enough to kill them, deliberately faceplanting your Vanguard into bombships so they *don’t* hit the Mains (because you were shooting another bombship.) Most likely, you’ll be doing a combination of the above. If your Vanguard or Main get annihilated, you lose. Survive for 90 seconds, and you get one of the few reliable sources of skillbooks, and money. You’ll need both. Thankfully

I mentioned how we’d get to Exercises. Despite your first day nearly always being discouraging: Stick at it. Pick 2 a day out of (in UTC, anyway) 8AM, 8PM, and 2AM, and you will have 1 time you get 5 exercises, and, after the first day, another time you’ll get 10 (the maximum.) So… Yes, this is my first day on the new server (and, in older servers like Avrora, you will get your shit pushed in for a while.)

Stick with it. You’ll be getting free experience, and it doesn’t cost morale.

Also, merit points can be traded in for two unique girls and a steady accumulation of puddings that say ‘Buli’

(Oh god, Bullins and Purins…)

VIDEO: First Exercises (Uncommented)

Now, things still happen in between updates. One of these was that I got Downes (I may have gotten Comet in update, my memory’s spotty about Day 1 at the time of writing)

The other was forming a guild. Costs 300 gems to do so, and, sorry folks, it’s already full, but… It was made. And so a saga of hitting things with big sticks, and not being a bigot was born.

Back to title

Next Update: SIDE UPDATE: A Handy Dandy Guide To Your Base