Welcome to Dance of Dragons!

Meet Dance of Dragons, War Thunder’s third 2024 major update that features brand-new vehicles, quality of life additions and plenty of bug fixes. Welcome the first domestic aircraft from Switzerland to the game through the addition of the player-made premium P-16 strike aircraft for Germany! Next up is China, who’s received the JF-17 squadron vehicle and Al-Khalid-I premium tank from Pakistan, plus the superb J-10A fighter jet. The USA now has the T1E1 with a 90 mm cannon, as well as the F-111F bomber and AV-8B (Night Attack) Harrier variant as a premium, plus the USS Tennessee battleship. The excellent Stormer AD has joined Great Britain as an SPAA, plus the Australian F-111C bomber, with the USSR getting the fast-firing Su-24M. Besides this, the CTWV RCV for Japan and CV9035NL for France are now obtainable squadron vehicles! Last but not least, France has now received their Coastal fleet tree now in closed testing, one interesting boat is the La Combattante that can fire SS.11 missiles!

There’s many fixes, new vehicles and other features — take a look at what we’ve included in this major update

Ground Vehicles: A Variety of New Vehicles Including Squadron Vehicles & Model Updates!

We’ve introduced a variety of interesting ground vehicles across several nations in this update. The US now has the T1E1 with an experimental 90 mm cannon, and Sweden now has the premium Finnish KV-1 m1942 with excellent armor! Moving onto Germany who now have the Puma with Spike missiles, to Great Britain who now have the Stinger and GAU-12 rotary-cannon capable Stormer AD for use against aircraft and tanks. Two new squadron vehicles, the CTWV RCV for Japan and Dutch CV9035NL for France are here, ready to be obtained through squadron points. Last but not least, we’ve updated the visual models of the M41A1, ZTZ99A, T-80U-E1 and Freccia, with the latter two receiving a new camouflage net and optics respectively.

USA

• T1E1 (90)
• M41A1 — vehicle visual model has been updated.

Germany

• Puma VJTF

USSR

• ZSU-23-4M2
• T-80U-E1 — vehicle visual model has been updated, a camouflage net has been added.

Great Britain

• Stormer AD

Japan

• CTWV RCV (Squadron Vehicle)

China

• ZTZ99A — vehicle visual model has been updated and some inaccuracies in the geometry have been fixed.
• Antelope ADS
• Al-Khalid-I (Pack)

Italy

• Freccia — vehicle model has been updated: Janus optics system has been added.

France

• CV9035NL (Squadron Vehicle)

Sweden

• KV-1 m1942 (Premium)

Israel

• Tiran 6

Aircraft: A Player Created Model, Superb Chinese Jets and two F-111’s!

For aircraft, there’s several additions spanning across multiple nations. Germany has received the P-16 from Switzerland, created by two War Thunder players as part of the revenue share program, with help from the Swiss Air Force Center in Dübendorf and the Swiss community. China has received the JF-17 squadron vehicle, a joint-development aircraft from Pakistan and China, plus the excellent modern J-10A fighter jet. Several top-ranking attack aircraft have joined three trees in the form of the F-111F and F-111C (from Australia) for the US and Great Britain and the almighty Su-24M for the USSR that has an insane rate of fire (seriously, check it out!). Lastly, Italy now has the Tornado IDS, Israel the F-16C Barak II and France the Dutch Sea Fury FB 51 and premium Sea Hawk Mk.50!

USA

• A-10C
• F-111F
• AV-8B (NA) (Pack)

Germany

• FFA P-16 (Pack)

USSR

• Su-24M

Great Britain

• F-111C

China

• JF-17 (Squadron Vehicle)
• J-10A

Italy

• Tornado IDS

France

• Sea Fury FB 51
• Sea Hawk Mk.50 (Premium)

Israel

• F-16C Barak II

Naval Vehicles: French Coastal Fleet Closed Testing has Started!

In this update, French Coastal fleet closed testing has started. If you’d like to join, you can purchase the VLT-2 Pack or take part in the closed testing tasks. France now has an entire Coastal fleet line, with one interesting addition being the La Combattante that’s capable of firing SS.11 missiles! The full list of French boats can be seen below. The US now has the almighty USS Tennessee that has huge 356 mm cannons, Germany and USSR the SMS Derfflinger and Izmail battlecruisers, Japan the PT-802 and potent IJN Amagi, Great Britain the Australian HMAS Fremantle and Italy the MAS 441.

USA

• USS Tennessee

Germany

• SMS Derfflinger

USSR

• Izmail

Great Britain

• HMAS Fremantle

Japan

• PT-802
• IJN Amagi

Italy

• MAS 441

France

• VTB-8
• VTB-9 (Premium)
• VTB-11
• VTB-13

• VTB-14
• VTB-19
• MTB-96
• L9059

• VLT-1
• La Combattante
• Arras
• La Surprise

Locations & Missions: Several Updates

There’s no new location in Dance of Dragons, but we have updated several existing locations and missions. First off is a new [Domination #2] Eastern Europe mission that has the C cap point on the other side of the river and A and B slightly moved. In terms of location updates, 38th Parallel, Kuban, Iberian Castle, Second battle of El Alamein and Eastern Europe have had several changes in terms of the adjustment of rocks, lakes, houses and spawn shoot-throughs.

Lastly, [Domination] Eastern Europe has had its bridges destroyed, blocking positions to the northern side of the river. This updated mission is for low Battle Ratings, below 4.0. Be sure to check out the full details in the changelog itself.

Interface: A Better Secondary Weapon Selector, New Vehicle Period Increase & X-ray Part Filter

We’ve made some quality of life improvements to the game’s interface. The secondary weapons menu has now been moved to the bottom of the screen, which now means the changing of ordnance on an aircraft can be seen and is also updated instantly in real-time. Depending on the weight of the ordnance, you’ll see the aircraft move and get heavier when changing preset as well.

The period where new vehicles are counted as “new” has been increased from 14 to 28 days, meaning any new vehicle marked with a golden strip on them doesn’t block the research of the vehicle after it for much longer than before.

For the X-ray section of the interface, the addition of an X-ray part filter has been added. The X-ray part filter will only show certain parts, depending on what you select — great if you want to only focus on one module inside a vehicle and see it in more detail, all while hiding others you don’t want to see.

Sound: Ground Vehicle Radio Distortion Changes & Open Cockpit Sounds

Radio distortion from ground crews has been subtly reduced, making their voices more clearer. Our sound engineers have also implemented muffled sound effects when a cockpit canopy is opened at high speeds, as flying with the cockpit open previously gave a hearing advantage.

Customization: New Camouflages, Coloring Camouflage Nets & Changing Drop-tank Texture

We’ve added some cool customization options to several areas of the game. Firstly, all modern South African ground vehicles have been given a dark green camouflage as an additional Golden Eagle unlock, ensuring those vehicles have a relevant camo option on forest maps. Italian ground vehicles have also been given a post-war camouflage, and the “Tricolor late camouflage pattern” for post-war Italian ground vehicles has been fixed.

One new addition is the coloring of camouflage nets. Camouflage nets for the Vextra 105 and T-80U-E1 will now match the color of the camouflage selected on these vehicles. Over time, vehicles that have camouflage nets will receive proper coloring based on the camouflage selected too.

And finally, the texture of drop-tanks now correctly changes and corresponds to the selected camouflage that you’ve selected for your aircraft.

Following the Roadmap: Custom Tank Sights For Modern Tanks & Updated Helicopter Damage Models

A point from the 2024 Roadmap has been implemented: custom tank sights! We’ve added a button called “Sight settings” to the Ground vehicle Battle Settings, where clicking this will open a new screen where you can customize to your heart’s content. Be it the sight itself, plus brand-new additions such as the rangefinder, turret rotation, sight field of view and shot readiness indicators to show in the sight — all features of modern tank sights. There’s a visual background that you can toggle, as well as see how it looks in thermal and at night. Full details in our blog here.

We’ve also refined helicopter damage models, with the addition of avionic systems, weapons control, night vision devices, countermeasure systems and radar equipment modules. For the AH-64s and Ka-52, new fully detailed damage models have been added. For all other helicopters, all systems are temporarily integrated into the damage model of a fuselage as a whole until a detailed damage model with separate modules responsible for their functionality are added. Overall this will mean less empty space in helicopters, and besides this, the damage model of tail tear offs on fuselage and tail impacts against the ground and other objects has been improved. We’ll be releasing fully-detailed dev blogs on these changes as well as all other Roadmap points soon.

Items marked with * will be added to the game in one of the upcoming updates.

There’s plenty more to see!

That’s all for this post, but be sure to check out the full list of changes in the provided changelog, as there’s many bug fixes, improvements and additional vehicle changes not mentioned here.

Download the update and join the battle!

FULL LIST OF CHANGES