War Thunder Beginner's Guide: Your First 10 Hours

War Thunder drops you into a garage with ten nation trees, four vehicle branches, and 2500+ vehicles, with no tutorial telling you what matters. The first ten hours decide whether the game feels fair or feels like a wallet. This guide lays out the route: install, choose one nation, research one cheap vehicle, survive your first battle, and finish the session with Silver Lions still positive.

Step 1: Install and learn the shape of the game

War Thunder is free to play. After install, the garage presents four research branches: ground vehicles, aircraft, helicopters, and naval. Helicopters research separately from fixed-wing aircraft inside each nation tree, and naval exists for only a limited set of nations, so check the tech tree in-game before planning a naval start.

Pick one branch. Ground is the recommended first branch: the controls map closest to other shooters, mistakes are more forgiving, and the results screen teaches economy faster.

Step 2: Choose one nation and commit

You can research every nation eventually, but split effort early means weak vehicles everywhere. Read the comparison framework in how to choose your first nation and pick one tree on newcomer friendliness, tree depth, and repair-cost pressure, not on which nation is “best”. Nation choice is reversible later; the time you waste now is not.

Step 3: Research your first vehicle

Your first vehicle should be cheap, low battle rating, and simple to play. The full criteria live in how to pick your first vehicle; the short version: stay at the lowest battle ratings, prefer a medium or light tank role over glass cannons, and keep repair costs low enough that a lost battle still pays.

Step 4: Play your first battles in Arcade

Start in Arcade Battles. Aim assistance, enemy markers, and simpler ballistics let you learn maps, angles, and positioning before realistic modes punish small errors. Your first goal is not kills. It is: survive, shoot something, and capture or contest an objective.

Step 5: Protect your economy from hour one

Repair costs come out of Silver Lions every battle, and dying early in an expensive vehicle is how new accounts go broke. The rules for the first ten hours:

Hour block	Focus	Avoid
0-1	Install, settings, training missions	Queueing random battles with default binds
1-3	One nation, one branch, lowest BR vehicle	Buying premium vehicles or converting Golden Eagles
3-6	Arcade battles, learn 2-3 maps	Dying in the first minute to farm damage
6-10	Realistic battles, basic modifications	Spreading research across nations

For the money side of this route, see Silver Lions explained.

What good looks like at hour ten

By hour ten you should have: one nation tree opened, one or two vehicles researched, basic modifications bought on your main vehicle, and a positive or neutral Silver Lions balance. If you are losing money every match, drop to a lower battle rating before you buy anything new.