Let’s talk in this texty update about various features, and how, in the early game, you’re going to be using them.

DOCK: This is your meat and potatoes, where your shipgirls go, where you add their gear, where you limit break, retrofit, and enhance them (FEED THEM TO WARSPITE, MUAHAHAHAHAAA!)

Don’t, actually. Feed her other battleships and destroyers. Give the Cruisers and CVs to everyone else

It’s also where you can adjust things like skins, and tap them to read their in-base lines.

Or find their profile in archives and find all the lines you’ve unlocked, including when they’re mad at you.

(We’ll talk about when they’re mad at you later on.)

DEPOT: Ah yes, the Depot. Split into three areas, the main portion is your Gear stash, where you can see what gear you have left (or, if you’re curious about who’s got what without getting into the Dock screen, you can see all the gear. This is highly inadvisable, especially in the late game.)

Your Average girl kitted out for a fight has 5 gear slots. With A current tally of 443 unique girls, (368, not counting retrofits) that shit adds up

You can even enhance it from here, which is pretty useful for the weeklies.

Next up is the Items slot, where all your cubes (for building shipgirls), your plates (for upgrading weapons), your books (for upgrading skills), your food (for the dorm), your blueprints (for retrofitting shipgirls, a different type of upgrade), and your tech boxes (Wheee, item lootboxes!) come in.

Important note here: You do not need a full set of gear at first. Those T1 techboxes can be crafted into T2s, at a rate of 5:1, same with the T2 techboxes… T3 and above, alas, can’t be crafted, but, in any case, you mostly don’t care about 1 star items in the warehouse, and you craft anything below a T2 as soon as you can. The skill books can also be upgraded, also only T1 to T2, at a ratio of 6:1, but… It’ll take a while before you can do that.

Never open T1 or T2 boxes. They’re all trash. Get your girls kitted out in purple-tier gear and you’ll be happy as a fucking clam until World 11

As a final note here, I’m really glad this doesn’t take up space, because you will, trust me, be flooded with T1 plates. Especially torpedo plates. Can’t move for the damn things, and you’ll find yourself using them less the further you go.

Until you start getting Gold and rainbow-tier torpedo launchers, and even then the investment isn’t that heavy.

Finally, there’s crafting. Various blueprints can be obtained in levels, and through challenges and commissions, and you can even grind them out, if you know where they are. But, by the time they become truly important, you will be drip-fed some pretty nice ones. Although it’s still a fairly good idea to grind utility blueprints, because those seem to be the rarest sort of item.

There’s also ship class blueprints, but those are for retrofitting and giving Jamie aneurysms when he realizes that Warspite and San Diego need unique items to complete their Retros to make them GODS OF THE SEAS

…Wait, Warspite too? FFFFFFFFFF-

She sails around smacking manjuu out of life preservers for their coins so she can get a new sword. For a week. ‘Drive me Closer, I want to hit them with my sword’ is the name of the game for her.

DORM: Another way of levelling your shipgirls besides exercises, commissions, and battles. And it’s a pretty reasonable one. Put in food, buy decorations with decoration points to improve the place for better levelling (it tails off after a certain point, and beyond it, you’re mainly buying stuff for a pretty medal), and you get levels out. At first, you’ll be using this and commissions to get as many shipgirls possible to Level 10, their first upgrade slot. After a while, commissions alone will do most of the work there, and you aim for bigger and bigger levels.

It’s a quick way to get some levels into a newbie so you can feed them into the grinder without much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

CATTERY: We’ll talk about this later, because you don’t get it until later. Suffice to say, cattes.

There’s historical References in there, too. Best catte is Oskar, Aka. Unsinkable Sam, who Survived the Bismarck, HMS Cossack, and HMS Ark Royal all getting shot out from under him. He then spent the rest of the war being smug in Gibraltar because nothing’s sinking that Rock. In AL, Oskar is a smol Bismarck in every way. The artist of the SR-tier cats, Muuran, is infamous for making images of weaponized adorable.

ACADEMY: This is a multi-tiered area. It’s an easy way to get to the Dorm, Cattery, and Shop, but mainly, you’re here for upgrading oil and coin collection at the right levels, upgrading your School (More on that later, because, again, it doesn’t come up until later), keeping an eye on your skill upgrades, and watching some of your shipgirls wander about. If you’re lucky, and you still have them in your dock, you’ll see the fabled Bulin and Purin. Who get around in some rather unique ways. Moving on…

FORMATION: The tutorial teaches you this already, but this, friends, is where you form your fleets. At first, you’ll only have one, then quickly get two, your first submarine fleet somewhere around day 3 or 4, and eventually, you’ll have 6 ship fleets to play with, 2 submarine fleets… And you’ll be playing with one to four, for various reasons. But, for the early game, you’ll definitely be playing with the first and second.

Also, we don’t talk about what the Subs wear. Especially not the American ones. I know every artist draws smut, but Good God.

You’ll notice there’s a back (Main) line, and a Vanguard (Front) line. The Main are where your artillery and aerial attacks are going to come from, while your Vanguard are going to be the ones who move around, dodging torpedoes and the like. This doesn’t mean they don’t get attacked, they demonstrably do (we’ll talk about threats later), but they, overall, tend to get attacked less than the frontliners.

For those that might have read about ‘Cannon’s Elegy’, the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, some people might argue that the venerable battlecruiser should be a frontliner because of how many torpedoes the old girl dodged in her last action. You’ll get no argument from me here

The story in question can be found here (Google Doc Link)

SHOP: Ah, the shop. This, friends, is where the microtransaction vulnerable can get pulled in, because of course, there’s a paid currency (It’s a Free To Play game), which gets you packs, costumes, and other things… You’re fed quite a few gems in the early game, and we’ll be talking about what, optimally, you’re going to be doing with them, but costumes are bought here, occasionally shop items…

Optimally, you’ll be increasing dock slots and flipping off anyone that says ‘get oil with gems’ because they’re shitwits

And yet, if you take it slow, the game is pretty enjoyable to play slowly, and I will note right now that if you’re a skin-shamer, someone who picks on people for not having paid for skins… Fuck you, you are trash, fuck off.

Some skins are absolute Eyecatchers, like Prinz Eugen’s Bikini, but that’s for thirst golems

Okay, PSA done, let’s talk about the main shop. The main shop usually comes in three flavours, two of which you unlock relatively early. The coin shop’s the easiest, and, if you keep a sharp eye out, is a good source of lovely vittles for your shipgirls. It’s also, in the early game, a good source of T1 and T2 packs to round you up to those 5s you want (or outright buy 5s), and occasionally offers sweet items.

Late-game, keep an eye out for the occasional high-tier food being sold there; a pack of ten Full-course meals is worth the 20,000 coins, because it’s a 20% Exp buff to girls in the dorm

(For almost the time it takes until the meal runs out, too.)

The Merit shop is where you spend the points you get from Exercises. And, if you’re playing your cards right, you won’t be spending any cash in here for a long time. Why?

The USS South Dakota and USS Eldridge. That’s why. On the one hand, that’s a silly amount of points, compared to everything else, but they are very much worth it, and, as we’ll be demonstrating by the beginning of Day 3, you’ll be able to rack up those points moderately quickly. Once you’ve got them once, relax, now you can spend ‘em on Purin and Bulin, for the most part. The Purin can level up SoDak and Eldridge without you needing to spend silly merit-money, and, for reasons we’ll go into, you’re in no major hurry.

Yes, 40K points for both of them is expensive. No, there’s no other way to get them. Yes, they’re both stupidly good.

Finally… The Core shop. Data Cores are gotten in Hard Mode (occasionally in events), and, again, you’re first going to want to go for the high value shipgirls, because, with only a few exceptions, this is the area you want to get them. After that? Well, the choice is free, but I’d highly recommend waiting for the Pure Oxy Torpedos. Your subgirls are going to come in useful, and the Pure Oxy torpedo isn’t a torp. It’s an accessory to make your torpedoes extra shitkicky.

Apply two Rainbow Dildos to any torpedo-happy ship, watch her torp stat and reload spike, giggle as you find yourself deploying tactical nuclear warheads

So it’s pretty nice.

Event shops, when they pop up, spend event currency. Again, you’re generally going for ships first, and for many events, you don’t need to worry about whether you can get everything in the shop. Unless it’s a battle centric event, odds are high you will just get them all.

BATTLE: This, funnily enough, is where you pick fights, move on in story, and multiple other objectives. We’ll be dealing with each in their own segments, but this main one is essentially for dealing with Story Mode.

Advice at first? Like I said, relax, you don’t need full kit at this stage, and, while automatic battles are unlocked as early as 1-3 (just to make sure you’ve got the hang of manual control), I would still recommend playing manually overall, as it helps with level disparity. Why?

Insert screenshot of the Auto-battle warning here. Glowworm about to eat a torp is the perfect image

This. It’s not joking, when you’re playing on automatic, there are more torpedo facepalms. So many torpedo facepalms. And considering that, if you don’t grind (you will be grinding sooner or later), you’ll have enemies up to 4 to 8 levels above you by 3-4? You don’t want that, because enemies higher level than you not only do more damage due to their levels, they do extra damage, simply because they’re higher levelled. It hurts.

Sekrit Mechanics talk: For every level in disparity, the higher-leveled one gets 2% more damage dealt, and 2% less damage taken, to a cap of 50% at a 25-level difference

But then, for the early midgame, so long as you do a bit of grinding, and at least try events, you’ll be able to play on auto more.

EVENT BATTLE: Usually an icon in the top right when it’s available, these are basically extra maps, usually coming in 6 map + 1 SP flavours, or 3 map mini-flavours. Doing these helps level up your ships, get nice rewards… It comes recommended.

Event Battles also have STORY to them, letting you poke at the madness that is the multiple timelines and WTFery of wrangling Sirens. There’s a lot of WTF.

WAR ARCHIVES: Memories holds some of the event maps. Right now, there’s Visitors Dyed In Red and Fallen Wings in the SP (6 Map) flavour, and Encircling the Graf Spee in EX (3 map) flavour. Collecting the Declassification Keys (2 a day) will help you get ready to play these, and they’re a good, early source of shipgirls you’ll have trouble getting elsewhere. Although, sadly, they don’t get you the event shop girls, just the battle event girls. It’s okay, most of them are available elsewhere.

And If you’re lucky, VDiR will gift you with a fresh, chirpy Zuikaku, and you’ll be laughing like a bloodthirsty maniac for days.

DAILIES: Dailies, as the name would imply, are events that happen once a day… Well, mostly. Submarine attacks are weekly (2 a week), and I suspect this is to give newbies time to get to 3-4, unlock at least one subgirl, and get stuck in there. Otherwise, events run on specific days, except for Sunday, when they’re all available. And this is a nice, easy source of both experience, and victory rewards. In fact, on Sunday, you can get the Victory daily rewards just by doing this.

Also Cash. Holy Fuck, you want to hit the Commander level 80 to unlock the top cash rewards in those because they’ll let you get at least one ten-build a day in an event (15K sounds like a lot until it all goes down the tubes trying to get your hands on Amagi, or Bismarck, or So many Others with low proc rates

(AKAAAAAGGIIIII!!!!)

Akagi is drop-only in 3-4. Amagi is her dead older sister that you get in the Crimson Echoes Event, and one of only two gold-tier Battlecruisers

(Akagi and Kaga are also the few examples where we know the drop rate. 0.7% Fuck.)

Boss-only drop, 0.75% drop rate, and they both drop from the same boss. Fox Mines are Real, and hate you.

(I will laugh so hard if I get one of them, first try. If I get both of them, I’ll be smug about it for the entire damn LP)

They have increasing level options as you go up in Commander Level, and, with most of them, manual comes highly recommended. 

The one exception to the daily rule is the Tactical Training, which unlocks at Level 60. It runs every day, and if you don’t have a fleet specifically built to handle it, you’re going to be in big trouble. It comes in three flavours: Torpedo, Aerial, and Artillery. It’s a smallish fleet of high level ships, and a single, hefty boss lady with bundles of HP. Only those attacks do anything of note. Of the three, Torpedo is technically the easiest, as with a good homing torpedo set, torpedo centric cat commanders (CATTE), and torpedo bombers on an all carrier Main-line, you can put out boodles of damage.

Or Just go to manual, have Ayanami Retrofit, and let her cuddle the Yuubari with a twin volley of Rainbow Dildos

Aerial and Artillery follow pretty closely, however, as this is basically “Push that aerial button/aim that artillery, Vanguard must live.” You can, at the requisite level, pretty much do this on automatic, with good gear.

Or Bad gear, though you tend to lose out on the big reward due to it being time-locked

COMMISSIONS: Got shipgirls that need levelling up? Got at least one shipgirl of the right level and type? Commissions are a nice easy way of levelling them up, coming in two flavours: The ones that don’t run out until you use them, and the Urgent ones, which do run out if you don’t use them. Each gives you XP and some sort of resource, and has six slots to put shipgirls in. Of note is that high level shipgirls don’t always register with the commission autofill as fitting criteria (so you have to put them in manually), and it favours girls who already have levels, ignoring Level 1s after early on (so you have to put those in manually, either before or after an auto-recommend, which fills up the remaining slots.)

Wait for the timer to run out, bam, you have the rewards, and your gals get the XP. The basic dailies, with one exception, don’t give all that much XP, ever, but it’s always enough to give a Level 1 shipgirl a head-start. The two exceptions are the 4500+ gold reward one with the long-ass timer, and the Urgent missions, which will usually have long timers, but always provide more XP and bigger rewards. Both are worth budgeting for, as the 4500+ gold commission takes a large chunk of your oil, and the Urgents nearly always take some oil, although rarely, if ever, enough to hurt your oil budget.

Keep an Eye on Urgent Commissions. Bath Ironworks/BIW occasionally drops one on you that lets you have a chance of getting free gems.

Suggestions? Prioritise cubes (only a chance of dropping, but a chance worth taking)

ALWAYS GO FOR CUBES

…Then oil, then money (thankfully, many commissions provide both.) If you see an Urgent with a shipgirl on offer, or gems (this only happens at higher levels), take the chance. It’s a low, low chance, but the rewards are nice, and if it happens, yay, shipgirl or gems!

I have only gotten three blue-tier and 6 grey-tier girls from the launching ceremonies, but they give nice money and exp anyhow

EXERCISES: Ohhhh, Exercises. You will get your shit pushed in. You will, at the very beginning, have trouble getting your 3 exercises daily reward. You will, at the beginning at least, have trouble getting the 30 Exercises weekly. And you will groan at all the torpedo whiffs and faceplants, the absolute waaaaves of bombs and artillery and assorted fun bullshit (often with gear skins, so you have the shame of your battleships being bombed by balloons, for example.) For the first day, you will groan. But stick with it, for two reasons.

Firstly, it’s a 15/day source of XP, and so long as you’re around for one of its refreshes, you’ll have a nice bundle of exercises for the next part of your day.

Secondly, it doesn’t count toward morale hits from battles. And rightly so, you’d start some days with some very miserable ships indeed if it did.

Put your highest level ships in here, only worrying about skill and gear synergy when you’re high level. You will at least get by pretty quickly. And you’ll be getting your dailies relatively quickly.

Well, sort of. See, the higher in the ranks you get, the bigger the players you’re likely to face. And those fleet points? Ahahaha they lie. Click on them. Check them before you battle. Because sometimes, you’ll say “Oh, a 3000 value either side fleet? I can take th- WHOAH, NELLIE!!!”

That’s right… It’s just two ships. But it’s 2 ships at max level. At least one of them will be married, for more stat boosts and higher morale. And they will ruin you.

Incorrect. If you find a Level 120 warspite with only 3,000 Value, that player’s stripped her of equipment, so she only has her raw stats to bludgeon you with. You’re still looking at a better than 50% chance of getting your ass kicked so hard you’ll be wearing it as a hat, but at least you only have to worry about 500 Firepower and not 750+ for that damage roll.

(Counterpoint: Often they use Laffey as the Vanguard. Good luck hitting her with anything, including divebombers.)

Counter-counterpoint. A Fucksight better than Yukikaze the ‘25% chance to only take 1 damage on a hit’, Jintsuu the ‘let me buff your torpedoes’, and Ayanami the ‘I get a 60% buff to torpedo attack, and my player gave me the German Homing Torpedoes. Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye’

(Overall, check both the power and what you’re actually facing.)

There is some other stuff, but some of it, like mail or the chat, is self explanatory, some of it we don’t need to deal with on day 1 (unless you’re lucky, and the videos show that), and some of it, you won’t have to deal with at all, unless you engage with it.

DAY THE FIRST

Back To Title

Next Update