How to Play War Thunder

War Thunder is a fantastic free massive multiplayer online game, there are four different versions to play, arcade ground battle, arcade air battle, then you have the realistic ground and air battles, these are for more experienced players so today we are going to talk about the arcade versions and how to play War Thunder.

So first up the air battles, this incredibly fun mode of play will consume you for hours but it can be difficult at first to get to grips with flying and shooting and although there are tutorials in game I hope you will find this how to play guide useful.

So up first the basic controls flying the plane is simple enough and with the air battles you don’t need to worry about take off as you start with your plane in midair. You will see a cursor just above the nose of your plane move your mouse up, down, left and right to make your plane move in those directions the stronger your movements the more force in the movements, if you need to make a sharp turn or pull up or nosedive quickly pull the cursor to the very edge of the screen for more drastic maneuvers.

In the top right corner you will be able to see your thrust speed, use the W button to increase the thrust and the S button to decrease, by slowing down (not too much) you can make it easier to hit the targets on the ground and speed up to escape nearby attacking enemy planes.

Ok so now the fun part firing at targets, normally your objective is to take out the other teams ground artillery before they do the same to yours, as you move closer to a target you will see it become red as the target gets in range, you can now shoot at the target with the objective being to destroy it. If you right click on your mouse it will zoom in to give you a clearer view of your target but make sure to keep aware of your surroundings as it will limit your view of any nearby obstacles and you don’t want to crash in to a tree or the ground.

A useful tip is to make sure that you don’t get to hung up on blowing up everything on the ground and forget about the enemy planes shooting at you, getting damage to your plane can make it very difficult to fly or worse you get a direct hit to your pilot and for now it’s game over!

So the best way to avoid this is not to die, which means being a dare devil pilot and being aware of what is around you, take out those ground targets but don’t do it at the expense of your plane, flying with one wing completely destroyed takes a lot of skill and makes it infinitely more difficult to aim at targets with your plane constantly dragging off to one side.

So to recap on the plane controls, use the thrust up and down to make it easier to hit enemy targets and avoid attacks, stay aware of the foes around you and most importantly don’t crash!

So now on to the arcade ground battle mode, here you will drive and fire a tank turret.

Admittedly I have not played as much of this version as the air battles so this part of the guide is a little brief but it will at least give you some help with the basics. 

The tank is controlled by using the arrow keys on your keyboard, simply up for forwards, back to slow down and/or reverse and left and right for left and right, then with the left mouse button you can fire your gun, as with the planes to zoom in to get a better shot use the right mouse click button. If the marker turns red, then fire! Hopefully you will destroy the opponent in a few hits or at least take out some of the crew members inside the tank.

The idea with the ground battles is to capture the zones of your opposing team, but first you will need to battle your way past your opponents, once you are in the desired zone you must protect it to hold your position, once all zones have been captured the battle will end with the team holding all the zones declared the winners.

As you play War Thunder you will unlock more items and better vehicles which will give you an advantage over other players, the more rewards you make as you play the more you can afford to research better weapons and vehicles and then use them once you have won the necessary resources. 

We hope you find this How To Play War Thunder guide useful and have fun playing War Thunder!