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The
official launch of World of Warplanes is just over
two weeks away. If you want to be ready to hop in the cockpit and start
kicking
ass right out of the gate, then you’d better get ready to do
some training.
It’s not just you that needs training though. Your aircrew
needs to be trained
up to get the very best out of them and the craft they’re
flying. There are
three types of crewmen you can have – pilot, gunner, and
navigator. Most
aircraft only have a pilot, so for the course of this guide,
that’s the term
I’ll use when referring to any of them.

 

Like
many of the skills and systems in World of
Warplanes, getting your pilot trained takes some work and a lot of
time,
depending on the skill level of you and the various teams you find
yourself on.
The better you are, and the more victories you rack up, the quicker
you’ll earn
both tokens and experience. The experience you gain is more useful in
terms of
what it can be utilized for, but don’t discount the advantage
of having a lot
of tokens either.

 

The
way World of Warplanes handles experience can be a
little confusing, but stick with me and you’ll have it
figured out in no time.
Every match that you participate in will earn you experience, whether
you win,
lose, destroy an enemy, or just pancake into the side of a mountain
ridge. The
better you do, the more you’ll earn though, so I’d
advise trying to get better
with every sortie you fly or it’s going to be a very, very
long climb to the
top.

 

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There
are three types of experience points – pilot,
aircraft, and free experience. Pilot and aircraft experience are just
what they
sound like and are granted in equal amounts. They go to the individual
pilot or
aircraft that flew that particular mission. That means if you use Pilot
A for
one flight, then use a different pilot for another, they do *not* share
the
same experience pool (the same goes for individual aircraft). Any
experience
earned by the aircraft can be used to research upgrades for it or
converted
into free experience (by using tokens) so it may be used for research
upgrades
by any other aircraft. Simple enough right? Well, it breaks down even
further.

 

When
you’re first starting out with any aircraft, the
experience works exactly as I described above. After you’ve
researched all the
available upgrades for any given aircraft, the pilot of that particular
craft
will have an option listed under them called, “Accelerate
crew training”. If
this box is checked, then instead of splitting a mission’s
experience award
equally between the pilot and the aircraft, style="">all
of the mission experience will go to the crewman with the least amount
of
experience instead.

 

If
you choose to have all of the experience you earn go to
the crew you will no longer be earning any experience to progress
through the
tech tree and won’t be climbing your way to the higher tier
aircraft. As a
result, the decision on when and how much to train your crew can be a
tough
one.

 

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Personally,
I recommend holding off training a pilot until
the third tier of aircraft or higher. It’s not going to take
too long to get to
tier three and you’ll still have plenty of other available
players to queue up
with so you won’t be waiting long in between matches.
I’ve heard some players
talk about waiting even longer, and if they want to, that’s
fine. Be aware
though that the higher tiers have some very long wait times for
matches. Tiers
I through IV can be grouped together in matches so you might even want
to wait
until you reach Tier IV, but I wouldn’t wait any longer than
that.

 

Whenever
you do decide to start training your pilot,
there are a couple of ways you can go about doing the initial training.
All
pilots start out with their basic training at 50%. This means
they’re fresh out
of flight school and will perform decently. The next stage of training
is 75%.
You can do it the old fashioned way by earning the experience or paying
40,000
credits to instantly get it. The training will improve the way your
plane
responds when you’re flying, but if you’ve taken my
advice so far and held off
on training a pilot, then I advise you skip the 75% stage.

 

By
the time you unlock your Tier III (or IV) plane, you
should have earned 200 tokens or be very close to doing so. style="">  Tokens
can be earned each day by winning missions
and destroying enemy aircraft. If you have the tokens, simply purchase
the 100%
training level. Everything in World of Warplanes is a tradeoff and this
is no
different. Do you save them now and improve the way your planes
handles, or do
you save them in hopes of getting by and having tokens later? Since
they can be
earned each day and get easier to earn as your personal piloting skills
improve, I vote to use them now.

 

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Once
you get a pilot to 100% in their basic training,
they are then promoted and given access to a secondary skill. After
choosing
that skill, pilots will need to earn an additional 200,000 experience
points in
order to be able to choose a mastery skill. While it sounds tempting,
unless
you’re going to stick with your current plane for an
extremely long time, I’d
ignore the mastery level skills and just stick with one of the initial
skill
choices.

 

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Skill
Set One

  • style="font-weight: bold;">Stamina
    - Improves the crew member's health and
    resistance to injury.
  • style="font-weight: bold;">Increased View Range
    -
    Extends the range at which enemy
    aircraft can be detected by this crew member.

     

Mastery
Skills

  • style="font-weight: bold;">Engine
    Guru - Improves aircraft
    acceleration when flying
    straight of boosting.
  • style="font-weight: bold;">Crack Shot
    - Improves
    accuracy of machine guns or auto-cannon.
  • style="font-weight: bold;">Firefighting
    -
    Enhances
    firefighting abilities even
    without a fire extinguisher.
  • style="font-weight: bold;">Veteran
    - Improves
    controllability and maneuverability of
    damaged aircraft.

     

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So
far, I have yet to see a real use for the Stamina
skill (unless perhaps it would be beneficial for a Navigator or
Gunner). The
Increased View Range though is handy. The difference between being the
hunter and
being prey is often the result of who sees who first. Seeing your
opponent
before they can see you allows you to choose the optimal vector of
approach to
intercept and take them down.

 

To
get to that point though, you need to train
your pilot so take all of the notes I’ve given you here and
get cracking! And
if you see Dalmarus on the U.S. server, feel free to say hello if
you’re on my
team or try to take me down if you’re not. Either way,
I’ll see you in the
skies!

 


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our World of Warplanes Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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