ThePurpleSmurf

Hello fellow captains! This is a 2-part guide for Windows 10 users that will show you how to save up to 20% of your valuable HDD/SDD space on your WoWs Installation without noticable performance penalty - in my case and game version 0.9.4 the size went down from 52.3GB to 42.5GB. The second part of this guide will show you a way to redirect the update downloads to a folder or drive of your choice, because WG neither give us the option to set a download folder nor respect the system-wide settings for downloads and temporary files. Part 1: Save up to 20% of disk space with negligible performance penalty Note: depending on your computer and chosen installation options when Windows 10 was installed for the first time, you may have the following change already enabled and you can skip this guide. We will use the Windows 10 compress function to reduce the used disk space and apply it to the WoWs installation folder. Each step has one or more screenshots, they are hidden in a spoiler box to reduce the length of the page. Step 1: Use File Explorer to navigate to the location of your WoWs Installation folder. If you don't know where this is, open the Wargaming Game Center and on your WoWs page click Game Settings and then Show in Folder (spoiler box below, screenshot 1). File Explorer will open inside your WoWs installation, click on the parent directory in the address bar, in my case this would be 'Games(E:)' (spoiler box below, screenshot 2). Now you should see the WoWs folder and not the content of the folder. Step 2: Right click on the WoWs folder and then click on Properties. This will open a new window, click on Advanced. For comparison look at the 'before' size on disk. Step 3: Look at the 'Compress contents to save disk space'. If there is no checkmark click the box to set one and click OK. Note: If there is already a checkmark, hit cancel and you are done. This guide is not for you because your compression is already enabled. Step 4: The confirm changes window will open. Make sure to click the 'Apply changes to folders, subfolders and files' option, then click OK. Step 5: Now is a good time to go for a walk or have lunch or do whatever. Depending on your computer hardware this can take anywhere between 15 minutes and one hour. Usually it should not take longer than 25 minutes even on very slow computers, if you do not run resource-hungry applications in the background. Step 6: The final step is to look at the 'after' size on disk, smile and click OK. Conclusion: A few simple steps to save up to 20% disk space, which is especially on a SSD very valuable. The Windows 10 compress is not comparable to something like a Zip or RAR file, it works completely different. The performance impact is negligible, which makes it even more impressive. If you are not happy with the changes simply repeat the steps to undo the changes. If WoWs updates the game files don't worry, Windows 10 will automatically compress the changed files so you don't have to do this every time there is a new update. Part 2: Redirect the Update download folder NOTE: this part of the guide is for advanced users only! I will not provide screenshots and will not explain in depth how it works, because i assume that you know what you are doing with your computer. The WGC let us download game updates in advance. This happens usually up to a week before the update release and it occupies several GB SSD space - e.g. 0.9.4 was more than 3GB in size of blocked, unusable disk space. WG doesn't offer the option to set a temporary download folder for updates and all files are downloaded into the installation folder. It's annoying to have limited SSD space occupied with large temporary files when there is a 2TB HDD right next to it. So let's fix this problem with a Symlink. Step 1: Open your text editor of choice, this will make it easier for us in a minute. Create a new folder on your target drive/partition/whatever and give it a descriptive name like e.g. WoWs Update Download. This will be the folder where WGC will download the files to. Copy the full path of the newly created folder, including the folder name, to your text file. If there are any spaces in the path or folder name wrap the path in double-quotes. For instance, in my case this is "F:\WoWs Update Download". This is very, VERY, V E R Y, important that you wrap the path in DOUBLE-quotes. I hope this was clear enough that this is REALLY important. Step 2: Navigate to your WoWs install folder and delete the 'Updates' folder. Don't worry, we will create a symlink here in a minute that redirects requests internally to the newly created folder in step 1. Copy the path to your WoWs install folder to the text file and … well, you know the deal with the double-quotes, right?! Step 3: Now here are 2 scenarios possible. You are either a Command Prompt user or a PowerShell user. Both version are a bit different, i explain both versions below. Right click on the Windows Start Button and here you will have the option Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell. Whatever prompt you have, click the '(Admin)' version. The prompt must be launched with admin rights or the whole thing will pretty certain not work. If, for whatever reason you don't have the option to launch CMD or PS, ask Google how to fix it. For Command Prompt user: In your text file prepare the command that it looks like this mklink /D "path\to\wows\install\Updates" "path\to\new\folder\WoWs Update Download" For example: mklink /D "E:\World of Warships\Updates" "F:\WoWs Update Download" Now copy and paste it to your CMD and press enter. For PowerShell user: In your text file prepare the command that it looks like this New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path "path\to\wows\install\Updates" -Target "path\to\new\folder\WoWs Update Download" For example: New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path "E:\World of Warships\Updates" -Target "F:\WoWs Update Download" Now copy and paste it to your PS and press enter. Step 4: Close CMD/PS and open the new WoWs Update Folder that we can test if it worked. Create a new textfile or copy any random file to this folder. Now navigate to your WoWs install folder and there you should see an Updates folder (the one we deleted a minute ago), but it should have an arrow symbol representing a link. Open the Updates folder. You should now see the testfile that you've created or copied there. If so, congrats it worked! You will also notice, if you look at the address bar, that the path still shows as "E:\World of Warships\Updates" yet the content of the folder is somewhere else. Windows will now treat requests to this Updates folder as usual, but interally it will redirect any request to the new location. WGC will now store its files at the new locations and stops wasting our valuable SSD space. If you want to get rid of the link again, simply delete it like you delete any other file and you have restored the original state. That's it guys, i hope this guide was useful for someone.

A while ago i made a guide on how to use Windows compression to save disk space: Other options you can use is to install the game on an external drive or USB stick and run the game from there - works without problem. You can also combine Parts 2 of the guide with the external drive to outsource only a part of the large files.

When they were introduced it was only available for a very few ships. It's since this patch that you can slap this camo on every TX ship, except ARP Yamato. And if you look for old steel camo pics, always only Yamato shows up. I don't understand why WG always does these half-assed stuff. Why not directly give the option for a preview, like with other camos in port?! The system is already implemented, it's just a tiny little change at the code, but that's too hard of a task it seems.

There is, in the carousel. It works for all other camo types that's why i assume it works for steel camos too. It shows the standard perma camo if you hide special camos, such as ARP or Halloween, and so on.

That's interesting, because your profile page shows that your last game played was at 07 Dec 2020.

Go for it and post a screenshot here

Because D2 is waaaaay better than D3 and probably than D4. It's the usual higher, faster, further like with movie sequels that try to squeeze in more effects, more wow effects and bling and in the end it just sucks. D2 is one of the best games ever made. There aren't too many games that are still played 20 years after release.

Nothing to see here, just the usual ranked queue

Tell me about it

I don't play clan battles that's why my steel income is mainly from ranked, which i often skip because i don't really enjoy it much, and some random small amounts like daily missions or containers or snowflakes. During this ranked season i will have enough steel to buy either Bourgogne or a bunch of steel camos. I'm not really interested in any other ship from steel (i was interested in Somers, because i'm DD main and Gearing is my main vessel but so many mentioned that they were disappointed when they got Somers so i'll probably wait until it's available for coal some day), except the Bon Jovi. But then again, i have Jean Bart, Alsace, Republique so another french BB is probably overkill, especially that BB is my least played ship class. Decisions, decisions, that's why i wanted to know how they look ingame, but it seems nobody got one or they don't post a pic. Update: the reason why i want to know how they look on different ships is that i'm a bit concerned that they look like crap on some ships. Similar to the white camo with +50% to everything that we get as anniversary reward. This camo looks okay on some ships but on others they look like a piece of rusty junk, because they are not properly implemented or whatever.

If you are working, having a family and other obligations on a weekend then the time unit is not days that are available, but x amount of games, which is usually between 2 and 6 for the entire weekend.

3 * 800k credits for 1200 token

Perma camos for TX are the single best investment for a free-to-play user (Update: and you can get them for free for doubloons from ranked/container or in this case for steel). You can farm credits like crazy with them, no need for premium time. And why would i spend 30k steel on a ship that i play only a few times in my WoWs life, when i can get 3 perma camos instead that net me so much credits that there is never any need to buy premium time?! But i'm curious how they look, because i consider to buy one for Daring and Republique or maybe Hindenburg as well.

From what i've seen and heard about it, it's only good on paper and the actual battle performance is mediocre at best.

Like for example IJN Yamamoto, was great on all ship classes but now thanks to the rework, Yamamoto only has one instead of two special skills for cruiser. Italian Sansonetti has only one special skill for BBs, one got dropped here as well. There are probably more commander that got nerfed, but i didn't checked all of them. Are there plans to add another special skill to these commanders to even out the skill numbers for all ship classes? Update: German commander Lütjens the same, one special skill missing for cruisers.

Actually i never liked the idea of the special skills, because they make some nations op and other nations get nothing but crap out of it. It would be best to get rid of them all together and just give these commanders special perks that can be activated in battle, but nothing game breaking like the russian idgaf perk. More like special commanders get colored tracers and special perks like +5% speed or -10% rudder time. Nice to have perks but nothing to make it op.

It's mostly Cruiser missing the second special skill and it kinda sucks.

We leave that for the CV players as substitute for dive bomber ammunition.

Title … before the patch, loading into a game took usually between 5 and 10 seconds. Now it takes 20-25 seconds.

I don't know. New modpack came out because of the patch and all ribbon mods were removed for the moment so i can not check it. But it was something simple like Ribbons v2 or something like this.

As i said, texture settings should always be as high as possible if enough VRAM is available. Textures usually do not impact FPS at all. Worst thing that can happen is that textures are extracted and not enough VRAM is available, in that case your computer will swap textures into the normal RAM which is much slower than your video ram (VRAM) and this can cause stutter or lag, but it won't impact FPS. I don't know why you lock your FPS at 30, but i assume you have your reasons. Also your resolution looks really weird. Why not full-screen windowed? What i would try out is to untick the 2 new settings, you don't need them when you have MSAA and FXAA enabled, because TXAA is exactly this, it combines these two settings. Reduce sea rendering quality to low or medium at best, reflections to low and you should be good to rock a solid 60+ FPS (except in some ports, Developers Table and Hawaii seem to be the least hardware hungry). You have already a screenshot of your settings, so you can easily switch back to what you have if you are not happy with the new result.