New Player Guide

## Getting Started

For the purposes of this guide we’re going to assume you’ve finished the tutorial and know the very basics, we’ll carry on from there. If you are unsure what an abbreviation means check the bottom of this doc, there is a quick summary of common used terms used by the community.

#### A Note on Orange (Rare) tanks.

When you’re starting out DO NOT stress out over getting orange tanks. Yes, they are more powerful in the long run, but the payoff is in the long run not short term. Until you promote them to 3\*, Orange and Purple tanks have fairly comparable stats and you cannot promote Orange tanks to 3\* until they are level 70 and you’re CMDR 48.

You can get orange tanks from both the Forge and BWMG, but these are both RNG with low odds.

Your best option for getting orange tanks is to choose one you want, and start working down the prerequisites. You can use the unlocked tanks to fill out your backup squads and get things that are more useful in the long run.

Oranges are good, but they’re not necessary to progress for a long time. If you don't get one from the forge or BWMG do not worry about it.

### Resources:

* NOTE\* Until you’ve played the game for awhile and are comfortable with the systems try to avoid spending Gold or G-Corn to replenish supplies. It may help you progress quicker in the short term, but the Chinese version of Panzer Waltz (MetalWaltz) has had several events that award rare, orange level tanks. You are better off building up a stockpile for the events than gaining 1-2 extra levels in the short term.

The choice is up to you, just be aware.

#### Petrol (also called fuel) and Diesel

Work just like the ‘Energy’ or ‘Stamina’ resource in every other freemium game, I’m not going to go over them here. They regenerate fairly quickly and are replenished on a level up, you shouldn’t have too many issues early on with it.

#### Stamina

Unlike most games, you cannot just use a single team in PW and expect to succeed in the long run. Every time you do a mission all the girls involved use personal stamina; When a girl gets low she can no longer fight, even if you have the Petrol to send her on further missions.

Girls will lose stamina several different ways. Early on the most obvious drain occurs when you first send your girls on missions, but they also lose stamina from taking damage or being knocked out during missions. It is important to pay attention to how your squad is doing during battle, if a girl gets knocked down enough she may become unavailable during the later part of a chapter and you cannot use G-Milk mid stage. If you see your squad getting hurt early on it may be worth retreating and grinding a lower stage, Petrol regenerates much faster than stamina and G-Milk.

As you progress you’ll find it harder and harder to use all your Petrol on a single squad. This is by design. You should have a few extra tanks by this time, form a second or third squad and start leveling that group too. This will help you grind up levels for R&D progress and lower your reliance on G-Milk.

You will have to try different things and see what works for you, but as a rule: If you’re not sure you can at least A class a stage, try to have over 25% stamina before attempting it. If you expect a B result or lower, 50%. Any lower than that and you risk one of your girls running out of stamina prior to the final stage, it costs you more in the long run. If you can S class a stage, don’t really worry about the cost. S class typically means the enemy is entirely wiped out and your team is barely touched.

#### G-Milk

G-Milk replenishes the stamina on several of your girls, allowing you to use them for an extended period. Early on in the game, when you only have a handful of tanks, you should be able to use G-Milk to keep a single squad running long enough to consume most, if not all, of your stamina. As you level you’ll get the ability to add additional tanks to your squads and this will get harder and harder as more or more tanks run out of stamina.

My best advice would be to use G-Milk to keep your main squad active as long as possible and when it runs out switch to another squad. Avoid using premium currency to refill G-Milk if you can. The exchange rate is very low. You’re almost always better off buying additional Petrol and running an additional squad than buying additional G-Milk.

#### G-Corn

G-Corn is sort of the ‘Premium’ freemium currency. Early on you can use it to buy additional Petrol or G-Milk; additional options become available after you unlock the BWMG Depot (mid game).

There’s no firm rule on when to use G-Corn, or what you spend it on. Most people will suggest saving it for events, as noted above, as this will give you plenty of extra stamina/Petrol to complete tasks in the limited time period provided. If you do feel the need to spend it, try to buy Petrol instead of G-Milk, you could probably finish 3-4 chapters with the Petrol and a new squad or 1 chapter with your regular squad and G-Milk.

#### Gold

Premium (Cash) currency. You’ll be rewarded small amounts of gold for completing objectives, even as a freemium player. What you spend it on is up to you, but if you have the patience the resource over time buffs are typically better than single bulk purchases. The stamina and G-Milk regen buffs also have a fairly limited return.

One trick some people do is wait until they are about to level and purchase the max Petrol supply increase; Once you level you’ll get extra Petrol to play with. Be aware that this has been removed in the Chinese version and may or may not be eventually removed in this version.

### Suggested Team Layout:

The question that comes up again and again, ‘What team should I use?’

When you’re first starting out the one thing you really need to be looking for is a HT. You’re not handed one, but you should still be able to pick one up fairly early through R&D or drops. HTs pull in aggro, soak in damage, and let your DPS do the work. You can get by without one in the first handful of chapters, but you will need at least 1 as you progress further.

The team most people recommend working towards, at least until you develop your own opinions, is 2HT, 2DPS, 2 Anything. You won’t be able to support a full team until chapter 8, 1-2 HTs, Dorothy (Grille M, SPG) and Zoey (Sherman MK-IV, Medium) will make a solid team core until you start unlocking Oranges. Adding another SPG early game will probably make your job easier, they have high damage and not many enemies have high armor early on, but later on (chapter 8+) they’ll fall off faster against heavy armor.
Until you have 2\* tanks MTs, SPGs and HTs will probably be the most solid additions to your team.

LAVs are good, but a lot of their strength comes from equipment only available after level 35. ATGs aren’t bad, but their strength is high penetration and early on you don’t face much armor so the damage isn’t as good as some of the alternatives and therefore better for lategame. LTs provide good detection (more on that later) but have a very low atk range, they may not be able to fire in some rounds. I’m not a fan, but it’s a personal preference.

The most important thing you can do is concentrate on leveling up your squad. You shouldn’t have much problem clearing up to Vol 8 and unlocking your final spot.

### Tank Types

#### **Heavy tanks (HT)**

Heavy tanks are the damage sponges on your team, they typically have the highest armor and durability, low stealth and evasion. Most teams run 2 HT to keep aggro off your DPS and soak the enemy’s damage.

You want to fit as many armor upgrades as possible to allow your shrug off damage. Avoid stealth upgrades at all cost! Stealth decreases the chances that a tank will be targeted by the enemy, you want your HTs to take most of the hits. If you can, equip gear that actually lowers the stealth rating in order to attract more fire.

Recommended: 1-2 tanks in your squad. Early on the Churchill line is easy to get into and the Churchill VI (Orange) is one of the easiest Orange tanks to get in R&D. KV-85 is a very solid choice if you manage to pull it from the forge.

#### **Medium tanks (MT)**

Medium tanks are the ‘Jack of all trades’ they don’t excel at any one thing, but they’re pretty solid at… everything. If you’re not sure what you need on your team they’re a decent choice as they have the ability to do damage and off tank in a pinch. Make sure you look at their stats before fitting them, MTs can have a wide range of stats and specialities. No hard rule for fitting MTs, fit them to cover any weaknesses in your squad. Be aware the british MT line is different than the others, it is more of an evasion tank than it's counterparts.

Recommended: 1+, You can get the Grant VI(?) from the forge and the Grant VIII from BWMG, both are solid tanks to fill out your lineup. The T-34M line is rumored to be exceptional late game, but may take awhile to get into.

#### **Light Tanks (LT)**

Light tanks typically have high detection, high evasion, very limited range. Consider adding one to your squad if you're consistently dominated during the initial shelling stage. Be warned, on long range maps LTs may not be able to fire until the Close Combat stage, so check the map range before bringing them in. Fit with Det, Evasion, and Stealth gear, maybe Dmg and Pen if you have no other options. You want to bring LTs in to boost your shelling stage and avoid getting destroyed.

Recommended - 0+ per squad. I’m not a fan, so can't make any solid recommendations.

**Light Armoured Vehicles (LAV) -** LAVs can serve several different roles, based on the line. Typically they have higher Detection (DET), high Evasion, decent gun, low armor. The big advantage that LAVs have is that after being promoted at 35 most of them get the ability to add a ‘Cabin’ upgrade. This allows them to take 5 infantry into battle and, if they survive until the Close combat stage, do guaranteed damage to up to 3 enemy units. Equip the cabin, then evasion or stealth is recommended. Some lines can double as ATGs, consider equipping DMG or PEN on these, but stealth and evasion will still be required.

Recommended - 1+ The LAV you're given at the start of the game leads up to what many people consider one of the best in the game. It’s a long road but worth going down. If you’re lucky you can pull the (?) from the forge and skip some of the early steps.

#### **Self Propelled Guns (SPG)**

SPG = Artillery. Big guns, no armor. Early on you can equip them with High damage ammo and let them one shot most things, but they’ll struggle to damage HTs the further on you go. Built properly they’re extremely powerful at any level. Stealth and Pen, that is all. You want them to throw out high damage shots, avoid getting hit. Simple…?

Recommended - 2+ Dorothy is given to you early on and will be a solid team member for quite awhile. If you can pick up another purple early on, just do it. You may not stick with them in the long run, but they’ll keep you going early on.

#### **Anti Tank Guns (ATG)**

Early on ATGs aren’t really worth it, SPGs do more damage just due to the lack of enemy armor. Later on… the jury is still out. Some people like them, some people don’t. They have a high base penetration and are good at dealing with HTs, but don't have the damage SPGs have against lighter armor. Stack damage, targeting, and either stealth or armor (ATGs will have one or the other).

Recommended - 1+? Personal preference. Hetzer is decent if you can get it from the forge, the Russian SU line is solid and is used to unlock the KV-2 in the long run.

### Promotions

Promotions give your tanks a healthy boost to their base stats and allow them to equip T2 equipment. Although the price is fairly cheap (at least later on) and there is a decent payoff, you don’t HAVE to promote maidens. If you’re just planning on using one of your girls as R&D fodder it may be worth keeping her at 1\* and spending the resources elsewhere (note that some R&D tanks require promoted prerequisites).

It is important to note (again) the main difference between Purple and Orange tanks is that Orange tanks can be promoted to 3\*, getting additional base stats and better equipment. They do not have access to this until much later in the game, until they do they are comparable to the purple tier.

2\* = Level 35+ purple (CMDR Lv25) - Unlocks T2 equipment slots, T2 component research, boost to base stats

3\* = Level 70+ Gold (CMDR Lv48) - Unlocks T3 equipment slots, T3 component research, boost to base stats

### Combat Animation

As you level up you may notice that your maidens don’t always display an the animation when firing, this is normal. The animation only plays when a shot fulfills one of the following criteria:
The shot deals more than 30%(? - Check) of the enemies total health
The shot does critical damage
The shot disables the enemy, no matter how much damage is done
The shot would have fulfilled one of the other criteria, but missed.
Instead of the animation, you will see a turret fire from the maiden’s portrait at the enemy team. You are still attacking but not doing as much damage.

If you start seeing a lot of turret (non-animation) shots, that’s a good indication that your team is close to a wall. Consider equipping your team with new weapons, or if the problem is a HT, more penetration equipment.

### Shelling (Initial)

The Contact stage is one of the most important stages in the battle, a lot of information is thrown at you and new players may not understand exactly what’s happening. The round starts off with a contested check, the teams compare their detection ratings and display the results in the bar in the middle of the screen; When you team has more DET, you get a larger portion of the bar.

The number of tanks that get to attack from each side is dependant on how much of the bar each controls. If one team controls 90% of the bar, ⅚ tanks on that team get to attack and ⅙ of the enemy tanks attack. You need to be careful and make sure your team has some DET, it is possible for the enemy to have overwhelming DET advantage and prevent any of your team from firing. Firing priority in the shelling stage is determined by range, so SPGs will typically fire first.

A second shelling stage will occur after the first, but all tanks will get a chance to attack during that round.

If you’re paying attention you’ll also see a smaller bar appear directly above your team’s portraits (and below the enemy’s). These bars represent the aggro each tank has. You want your HTs to completely fill these bars every combat, and your DPS to have as little as possible.

Having a low bar does not guarantee that tank will never get shot, but makes it much more likely. If your MT has 25% and your HT has 100% it typically means your HT will take around 4x more attacks. This is one of the reasons you want 2 HTs starting out, it spreads out the damage between 2 targets but also decreases the chance one of your other tanks will get attacked.

### Contact

This is the 3rd of 4 stages (Shelling having two stages). It mostly involves your tank maidens slugging it out with each other to the best of their abilities, with each maiden taking one shot at the enemy. The only exception would be if your maiden happens to be equipped with RPG, but these are quite rare so you’ll probably not find one so quickly.

Note that at this stage, the engagement range will have shrunk quite a bit depending on the map that you are fighting on. Light Tanks, or others who have shorter range may start shooting the enemy from here on. But on Street/Town maps, one thing to be careful of is your SPGs, who will start to miss more and more frequently if the engagement distance gets too close, usually about 300 or less.

If your tanks are equipped with APCR ammunition, they’ll start to do more damage per hit if they can land their shots as this distance decreases as well.

### CQB

This is the 4th, and shortest ranged engagement phase of combat. In certain maps (streets and towns), SPGs may become dead weights at this stage due to the engagement being too close, unless their accuracy stat is extremely high to counter this. 300 accuracy appears to be the minimum to counter this, but you’ll need to factor in enemy evason on top of that too before you can start landing shots again.

CQB is where tank maidens with APCR ammunition can shine well, as they hit a lot harder from the close range. It is also the range where tank maidens who bring Infantry units into the fray can shine as well. No matter how long the distance is during CQB, as long as your tank maiden is still in the fight, and has infantry hanging on, she will get a free 1-3 hits on enemies. Damage from these is dependent on the number of infantry that make it to this stage, and whether or not your enemy has a Machine Gun equipped (only players use this equipment however).

When players get to higher Main Story volumes, enemy tanks are usually carrying a squad of infantry each. These can be devastating to your own maidens if the tank (or infantry) are allowed to live to get to the CQB stage. The ways to counter them would be either destroying them, equipping machine guns on your maidens, or equipping reactive armour (which blocks a certain amount of damage from all sources, enemy tanks or infantry). Note that Infantry do not seem to care about your tank maiden’s Stealth nor Evasion stats.

### PvP

PvP combat works mostly like regular combat, apart from using a different resource (diesel instead of petrol), tank maidens NOT losing stamina per fight (unless they are knocked out, where they take a very small hit to their stamina instead), and has the new ‘medal’ item. Medals are taken from and given to the two combatants depending on who wins/loses, and the resulting A-E rank that they get. When players scout, the server pairs them up with players with similar medal numbers, and (assumedly) the player level, to fight with. Hence, the more medals you get, the more difficult player opponents you are likely to face, who may have higher-level tanks, higher-level equipment or R&D than you.

PvP is probably the main way people will be getting Silver; a single fight can earn a player over 100k if they find the right target (and win). You also get a small amount of codons if you successfully defeat your opponent. If you lose a fight though, you’ll only lose a few medals during that fight, and get about 8 x (cost to scout) in Silver as a consolation prize. But each attack you make gives your opponent a chance to get a free attack (no diesel cost) against you. If you lose this defensive fight, you will lose both medals and Silver, mostly from your silver mine and a bit from your vault. Note that the amount of Silver you’ll lose this way is almost insignificant- you can probably earn it back from a successful attack on someone else.

The initial PvP map may be kind of confusing, being divided up into two halves. The half on the left is what could be called ‘your territory’- you can assign your defense squad here, and have 5 different zones to choose from. Zones basically allow you to choose the area of engagement when someone attacks you. If you want, you can equip your tanks specifically to fight on a particular terrain and range setup. The zone you’ve picked will have a red flag next to it. Having said that, most people probably don’t bother and just choose the zone where the ‘resource mine’ is. The resource mine changes every week, and lasts for the first 5 days before depleting. It’s basically a free, steady stream of Codons for the 5 days it’s active.

The half on the right is the ‘enemy territory’, where you can scout to try and find an opponent to hit. Scouting only costs Silver (the cost rises by about 130 per HQ level) and not diesel (only deducted when you launch an attack). When you scout, make sure you have the correct attack team you want! You can’t change this after you’ve scouted, and will have to quit from the screen and re-select your team. As most players would be occupying the zone with a resource mine, you can tailor your attack squad to perform best on this zone, as you’ll probably find most ‘good’ targets here.

A note on medals: If you’ve been doing PvP a lot, you might find yourself eventually coming up against a wall in terms of losing a lot more fights than you win. As said before, this is due to the number of medals you have forcing you to be paired with another player that may be a bit out of your league. A way to help change your fortunes is to send a very weak team (lvl 1 tank squad) out to do fights for you. This allows you to quickly dump your medals onto someone else so you can start winning fights against those more your size.

### S&T

Tech Tier Bonuses - A common question most people have is: ‘If I have a 2\* tank, do they still get the T1 bonuses’ The answer is yes.

You can check what sort of bonus you’re getting for each tier by following these steps:
Open the stats/equipment panel for one of your 2\* tanks
Select a piece of equipment to bring up the selection screen
Select the ‘Tech Tree’ button at the top right (Do NOT select a new piece of equipment here unless you really want to upgrade)
Check the top of the screen, you should see the total bonus this girl is receiving at this time.
Click the T2 tier upgrade button (or status bar if in progress) this will show you the bonus for T2

You can see the total bonus is much higher than the T2

### New Player Tips

Your tanks lose more stamina when they get heavily damaged and/or disabled. Since most volumes require a decent rank to complete, you are better off repeating missions you can complete comfortably (S or A) then attempt to grind forward.

Make building the port a priority. You may not be able to afford a ton of stuff from it early on, you can get research materials (which can be fairly scarce early on) and even new tanks. The stock rotates so check back regularly. Don’t pay to rotate the stock early on, it’s good to have the chance of picking up new units, it’s not worth the cost until later.

Don’t rush the special missions. The special missions are one of the few places to get research materials consistently, but you only get a single attempt per day. Your tanks level up quickly early on, if you didn’t get an S rating on the previous stage it may be worth leveling up to ensure you complete all the stages on your first attempt.

If you enter a mission you can back out, without losing stamina or Petrol, as long as you haven’t enter the first engagement yet.

Try to keep your team’s stamina over 50% unless you know you can get an A or S ranking. If a unit runs out of stamina before you complete a stage you’ll need to complete the rest of the engagement without her. 50% gives your team a decent buffer to get through to the end but…

If things are going rough, back out. Seriously, Petrol recharges fast, stamina and milk not so much. If you find your team is getting B ranking, or worse, before the boss/miniboss stages the mission may be too difficult. Pushing may mean getting 1-2 missions done with your team instead of 4-5.

Upgrade all the things! When you start getting multiple copies of your gear, like armor plates, go to your depot. You can take 3 pcs of the same gear (must be same type, level, and slot) and turn them into 1 pcs higher level equipment. Better stats, less clutter.

Fill out your roster by running missions; don’t grind missions to fill out your roster. Early on you’ll see a couple of high drop rate units listed in the loot tables. Those other, strange looking items with maidens on them, also unit drops! You’ll probably get a couple of the blue ones just clearing missions but DON’T get obsessed with them early on. The purple ones, available on boss stages, and yellow, only available on the last node of last mission, have low drop rates. Yellow drops in particular are basically like buying the lottery. R&D is a better way to get low level purples early on, concentrate on trying new unit types and figuring out what kind of teams you like. There is one exception: farming 2-4 for Churchill 3 + very useful equipment (propellant/armor) is worth it; the Churchill 3 can almost immediately be R&Ded into Churchill 4, providing you with 2 excellent early game HTs that can tank for you and carry you until midgame easily.

Watch the engagement distance. Some missions are close quarters, some are huge distances, and it makes a difference. When you first enter a mission check the distance at the top of the screen to see if you should adjust your team. Arty has problems at close ranges (500m), light tanks and some LAVs have issues for long ranges (4000m). Having a couple tanks lose out on 2-3 rounds of combat can turn an S result into a complete fail.

### FAQ

Q : I’ve heard about X tank, but it doesn’t show up on the R&D screen.

A : In the English version of the game there are a few ‘Event’ tanks. These tanks require dog tags to produce, and don’t show directly on the R&D interface. If you have one of the prerequisite tanks you can open up their profile and link to the Event tanks from the progression screen.

There are a few rare drops that are only available from the BWMG (at this time) that do not show up on the R&D tree.

If you are unsure how a tank is obtained, ask on either the Reddit or on the Discord.

Q : Should I sell X equipment? I have a ton of it!

A : If you don’t absolutely need the Codon, the answer is typically no. In order to unlock higher level tanks you’re going to need higher level equipment, and you get that by combining low level stuff. Each level of upgrade requires 3 lower level parts, so the T4 equipment requires 81 T1.

Q : I have this cool new tank, is it a good idea to feed X tank I have sitting around to level her?

A : Again, not really. One of the things you unlock at higher levels is the ‘Lifestyle’ options at the Base. These are minor tasks you can send your maidens out to do with a chance of bringing back big rewards. Some of these missions recommend anywhere from level 25 to level 55, and the rewards from success are worth it.

Hold on to that maiden, it’ll pay off in the long run.

ARP: Armor penetration?

ATG: Anti tank gun

DEF: Defense

DET: Detection

DMG: Damage aka firepower

DPS: Damage per second

EVA: Evasion

FRP: Firepower?

HT: Heavy tank

LAV: Light armoured vehicle

LT: Light tank

MOB: Mobility

MT: Medium tank

RNG: Range

SPG: Self propelled gun

STL: Stealth

TAR: Targeting