Greetings, fellow Captains!
I'm Dasha Perova,
and first of all, I'd like to wish you all a happy and eventful 2020!
Allow me to present you with the first review of this year—for Update 0.9.0.
It features Early Access to British heavy cruisers,
new Directives, a new Season of Clan Battles,
and many other new features and improvements.
The British fleet is getting reinforced!
Please welcome a set of new Tier V to Tier VIII heavy cruisers
that are arriving in Early Access: Hawkins, Devonshire, Surrey, and Albemarle.
Their specific traits include decent armor for their ship type,
excellent survivability, and powerful guns.
Unlike the British light cruisers,
heavy cruisers can use high-explosive shells
which can inflict significant amounts of damage
and have decent chances of setting their target on fire.
How can you obtain the latest cruisers?
The answer is simple: from the British Navy tab in the Armory.
Two types of random bundles are set to arrive there:
Imperial for doubloons,
and Royal for a temporary resource— British Tokens.
Note that you'll always be informed what rewards await you inside.
These bundles hold cruisers together
with an elegant Victorian White permanent camouflage.
Aside from the British cruisers,
the random bundles can drop Union Jack expendable camouflages,
special signals, credits, Coal, and Free XP.
I'd like to add that you can earn the British Tokens
needed to open Royal bundles
by completing Directives and Daily Challenges,
as well as obtain them from Daily Shipments.
With the British arc, we’ve commenced the work that will allow us to introduce
new unique upgrades for Tier X ships into the game in future,
as well as update the existing ones.
We’ve started with changes to the mechanics of their receipt.
Update 0.9.0 will be the last one in which
you can obtain a combat mission for a unique upgrade.
This mission can be completed throughout the entirety of 2020.
Starting with Update 0.9.2,
unique upgrades will be available in the Armory
under the Research Bureau tab.
You can find detailed information about all the changes
related to unique upgrades in various dedicated publications
on the game's official website.
Now, let's talk about the game mode
in which ships with unique upgrades can be found most often.
Captains, a new Clan Battles Season called
Sea of Fortune awaits you in Update 0.9.0.
Here are the rules: battles will be fought in a 7 vs. 7 format
playing Tier X ships, with one battleship per team and no aircraft carriers.
Apart from that, participants will have to face cyclones on the Mountain Range,
Land of Fire, and North maps.
They operate a little differently from the kind
that can be encountered in Random Battles:
visibility will be limited to 12 kilometers instead of 8,
the cyclone will appear at a strictly defined time,
and its duration will always be the same.
Moreover, you'll be informed about an incoming cyclone
during the battle-loading period.
As for the rewards of the new Season, there will be no surprises:
you can earn up to 11,000 of the valuable Steel resource.
Detailed information on the Sea of Fortune Season
can be found in an article on our website.
In the new Update, we’ve changed the settings
for the display of additional content in battle.
Now, if you install a permanent camouflage, such as a Halloween one,
but disable its display in the Port,
you'll see the standard Type 5 camouflage instead.
At the same time,
the bonuses provided by the unique Halloween camouflage will remain active.
Update 0.9.0 doesn’t only bring changes to the display of permanent camouflages,
it also brings changes to the ship's armor-layout display.
Now, more colors are used to highlight different armor thickness,
and the Plating section has been divided into two parts:
Ship's Ends and Torpedo Protection.
This feature will allow you to study the armor system in the game
even more thoroughly.
In battle, this feature will help you target
the most vulnerable spots of an enemy ship
and better protect your own.
Let's move from armor colors to the colors of the surrounding world.
For several updates in a row,
we've been actively upgrading the lighting and graphics of the in-game maps.
In Update 0.9.0
we’ve updated Warrior's Path, Okinawa, Sea of Fortune, The Atlantic, and Trap.
Additionally, the water reflections and shadows
from static objects will be improved.
Let's move on to other news.
In this Update, the Lunar New Year event awaits our players
with new patches, flags, and two new ships with unique Commanders.
Read more about this in a dedicated article on our website.
Arpeggio Takao enjoys a new permanent camouflage.
I'd like to add that Takao and other Arpeggio of Blue Steel ships,
together with cruisers Southern Dragon and Eastern Dragon,
become Premium ships in Update 0.9.0 and will bring increased credit income.
The range of permanent camouflages available in exchange for doubloons
under the Exterior tab has also grown.
Now, the following camouflages are available to everyone:
Royal Navy for destroyers Lightning and Gallant;
National for Warspite, Graf Spee, and Shinonome;
and last but not least,
The Republic for French battleships Richelieu and Gascogne.
All the details about Update 0.9.0
are available in a dedicated article on our website.
My name is Dasha Perova.
I wish you many victories in 2020!