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WoW: December 2020 Update

Server maintenance will take place on December 21, after which the Update will be pushed to consoles.

Maintenance times:

Xbox: 01:00 – 04:00 AM Central / 07:00 – 10:00 AM UTC
PlayStation: 01:00 – 04:00 AM Central / 07:00 – 10:00 AM UTC

Update size:

Xbox ~2500 MB (small size difference between generations)
PlayStation~ 2300 MB

Legends! The year 2020 hasn’t been so easy, so it might well be the right time for everyone to Turn the Tide and reach for the sky in 2021! Here’s to a great year ahead! A lot is happening in this Update, so dig in!

Big Mamie Campaign

One of the highlights of this Update is our new Campaign that’s built around Tier VII USS Massachusetts—a real menace embodied in a form of a battleship, replete with 16-inch main guns, far-reaching and accurate secondary guns, and great protection against both shells and torpedoes. But, while the Campaign is named after this particular steel beast, there’s one more ship along the 120 milestones—Japanese Tier IV cruiser Yahagi.

She’s quick and maneuverable, and mostly slings HE shells. Yahagi is also equipped with torpedoes, but they should be used with caution and foresight. She makes easy prey for battleship shells, so use her speed to your advantage. The Admiralty Backing for this Campaign can be obtained for the usual 2,500 doubloons. However, as mentioned before, the total Campaign runs across 120 milestones, so if you decide to buy these ships outright, it will cost you 32,250 doubloons, including the Admiralty Backing.

While the missions themselves aren’t unusual, they are separated into three 2-week parts, so resets will only happen on weeks 3 and 5.

An important thing to note is that after completing the Campaign (reaching the final milestone), either with or without the Admiralty Backing, you’ll unlock the Icebreaker Havoc missions. As the name suggests, these will reward you with Icebreaker coins. You can learn more about this currency in the next block.

Rewards you can get without Admiralty Backing for the Massachusetts Campaign:

70x Common Boosters
10x “Santa ’21” Camos
12x Type 1 Camos
12x Type 2 Camos
12x Type 3 Camos
270,000 Commander XP
200,000 credits
2,000 Global XP
16x Promotion Orders
1x Insignia
1x Commendation
7 days of Premium Account
375 doubloons
1x Secret Santa crate
1x Super Santa crate
1x Japanese Commander crate
1x American Commander crate
1x Patch background
1x Patch symbol

Value of the rewards without the Admiralty Backing: 19,243 doubloons

Additional rewards you can get with Admiralty Backing (2,500 doubloons)

60x Rare Boosters
45x Epic Boosters
21x “Santa ’21” Camos
20x Type 1 Camos
20x Type 2 Camos
20x Type 3 Camos
170,000 Commander XP
1,300,000 credits
13,000 Global XP
24x Promotion Orders
4x Insignias
3x Commendations
750 doubloons
2x Secret Santa crates
3x Super Santa crates
Tier IV Japanese Cruiser Yahagi
Tier VII American Battleship Massachusetts

Total value of the rewards including the Admiralty Backing: 83,225 doubloons

Icebreaker Coins

For this Update we’ve tied many activities and Store items to the new temporary currency—Icebreaker coins. It’s going to be useful for a few things: the usual Admiralty goods; Legendary ship rentals (yes, you read it correctly!); and a special ship—Tier VII Soviet battleship Lenin, which possesses a triple gun turret layout not unlike that of Nelson, with her B turret being able to rotate a full 360 degrees. Her 16-inch (406 mm) guns rotate quickly and have enviable firing angles. She also comes with the Soviet Damage Control Party, which reloads rather quickly, but has limited charges. Lenin’s citadel is also quite vulnerable when her broadside is exposed, much like that of her Tech Tree brethren.

You can earn Icebreaker coins by:

Opening Super Santa containers ’21 (250 each, unless it’s a superprize).
Reaching ranks 11, 5, and 1 in the new Ranked Battles Season (up to 6,063 after reaching Rank 1).
Completing the Icebreaker Havoc missions once you’re done with Campaign (up to 9,000 if you buy out the Campaign on day 1, or up to 3,000 if you finish the Campaign in the penultimate week of the Update).
Playing Legendary ships or against them (up to 1,400 a week, up to a total of 8,400).
Completing personal missions for Massachusetts (2500 coins) and Yahagi (5000) coins.

With that in mind, we want to share an important disclaimer about Lenin: she costs 25,000 coins, which means that it isn’t possible to obtain her for free. You will either have to purchase some Super Santa containers, or buy out the Campaign, so the initial population of this beast is expected to be pretty limited. However, this doesn’t mean that Lenin will never appear in the game again, so don’t worry too much.

By our estimations, if you don’t purchase anything, and try to complete every activity that rewards you with Icebreaker coins, you’ll be able to earn about 17,000 coins.

North Cape Bureau Project

We’re bringing in another non-Legendary project for you to have some fun with! This time, the theme is based around the Battle of North Cape, and the main attractions are Arctic Skins for Edinburgh, Scharnhorst, and Duke of York (the latter of which is coming to the Premium Shop). To start this Project, you only need to have finished your Intro Project. This particular Project differs from the those that have come before in that it’s time-limited and will cease to be available once the Update concludes on February 1, plus the maximum boostable progress of this project is 80% (15,000 doubloons in total), and there are five Stages per Segment. Please note that most Segments also require high-tier ships and higher-ranked Commanders. This Project is by no means easy, but we believe that most regular players will be able to at least outfit their Edinburgh in the Arctic skin.

Legendary Ships for Rent

You heard it right! During this Update, you’ll be able to take the reins of three Legendary-tier ships that aren’t even available in the Bureau yet! For 1,500 Icebreaker coins, you’ll get to sling HE shells from one of the larger light cruisers—USS Worcester; enjoy the well-rounded gunboat—USS Gearing; or succumb to battleship pyromania with HMS Conqueror. The only special rules for these rentals is that they will be removed from your accounts on February 1, you cannot create permanent camouflages for them, and any XP you earn playing them will be transferred to their respective nations’ Tier I cruisers once the Update is over. The base service cost for these ships is the same as for other Legendary ships—200,000 credits. One last fact of great importance is that you’ll be able to use these ships to earn back the Icebreaker coins you spend on them, and even make some extra.

Santa Containers

The holiday container madness is about to happen once again! We’ve boosted the containers in comparison with last year, and there are some special ships that will only be available from these containers, namely Japanese destroyer Asashio and the Japanese battleship Kii. The special flair for this year’s containers is that they might just drop a superprize! Do keep in mind that there is a fairly miniscule chance of this happening, so we’re not assigning it a numeric value on our container page, but if you do receive a year of Premium or 100,000 doubloons, it’s not a glitch—you’ve lucked out on a superprize! The containers can be obtained by participating in various activities, including, but not limited to, the Campaign and Ranked Battles. Make sure to follow our social media to stay on top of the details! And how about one “Secret Santa ’20” container, as well as 3x Santa in Blue and 3x Santa in Red Camos to start having fun with right away? Redeem the code O4DC7BJ8FK at wowslegends.com/code-redeemer and get ready for festivities!

Ranked Battles Season 9

This new Ranked Season will be the most different out of them all, as we’re pitting 5-player teams against each other, and what’s even more hardcore—the 1st player on the losing team won’t keep a Star. We’re also deliberately moving the Ranked play to the last 4 weeks of the Update.

The Season starts January 4.
Tier V ships.
Any ranks earned in Season 8 equate to the number of Stars you automatically receive in the current Season.
Teams are comprised of five ships and are mirrored by ship type.
Divisions with up to two players are allowed.
Destroyers are limited to one per team and/or one per Division.
A draw is equal to a loss for both teams.
To move up the rank ladder, you need to win and thus gain Stars.
Losing the game means losing a Star.
The first player by XP earned on the losing team does not keep a Star.
Upon reaching Rank 1, you can no longer play in the current Season.
The following maps have modified spawn locations for the new Season:
- Strait
- New Dawn
- Shards
- North
- Trap
- Land of Fire
- Northern Waters
There are three leagues in the Season. Separations happen at Ranks 11 and 5.
There are 16 ranks, with 16, 15, 11, 5, and 1 being irrevocable.
Final (Rank 1) rewards are credited at the end of the Season.

The rewards include Secret and Super Santa crates; various Commander items; currencies, including Icebreaker coins; “Santa ’21” Camos; Paint, and seasonal patches. For the full list of rewards, please consult the game client.

Fire Metagame and Battleships

Suffering from fires is something that many battleship Captains shared in their feedback with us. In this Update, we’re providing you some tools to minimize the effect of fires on your battleship gameplay, mostly in the form of Commander skills. We’re limiting the Equilibrium of Power skill and offering improvements to existing skills, plus adding another completely new one. These are the changes you can expect:

All battleship Commanders receive a new Legendary skill—”Fight Fire with Fire.” It automatically stops the effects of all damage that’s caused over time (including flooding) on your battleship whenever there are three concurrent fires and Damage Control Party is either on cooldown ~~or depleted.~~ The skill will b available for battleship commanders except the latest Azur Lane ladies.

The Emergency Specialist skill has been changed: the duration penalty has been increased from 30 to 70%, while the cooldown has been reduced from 5–15% to 8–30%.
The Firefighter skill has also received some improvements: the duration reduction for Damage Control Party is 40%, down from 30%; the cooldown reduction is now 4–15% instead of 3–10%; and the risk of catching fire is now reduced by 4–15% instead of 3–10%.
Equilibrium of Power: When using the skill, the chances of fire will be reduced by 50%. This change will be only visible in the description, and won’t be displayed as a modifier.

This skillset may minimize your fire woes should you choose to give up some accuracy on your battleships, but the final effect, of course, remains to be seen.

Armor Viewer

This one is self-explanatory: get into the nitty-gritty of your ships and find out their weak spots to make sure that you never expose them in battle! There are helpful tooltips for different thicknesses and ways to look at pretty much any armor layer there is on any given ship.

Balance Changes

We’re continuing to fine-tune the Italian cruiser line and tweak their smoke generators—namely, the cooldown of the consumable has been reduced to 180 seconds, down from 240.
To populate both Tier VII and Legendary-tier games, we’ve slightly decreased the service costs for Tier VII ships—down from 160,000 credits to 136,000 credits.
Cheshire had slightly higher service costs than usual for a Tier VI Premium ship (by about 10K credits on average), so we’ve dialed the costs back a bit to put her in line with the other ships.

Miscellaneous

The default Port has been set to the beautiful Fjord, which is probably the most nature we’ve had in our Port yet—enjoy!
A special widget that will help you determine the visibility distance of your ship has been added to the menu screen in battle. Additionally, another visibility indicator has been added close to the top-right corner of the Minimap in the battle HUD.
The Premium ships under the “Ship” tabs have been moved to a separate tab, which appears as the right-most nation. The ship information panel that’s displayed when browsing the ships under the tabs has also been improved.
Any Tabz you had left over have been exchanged at the rate of 1 Tab : 750 credits.

Bugfixes

We fixed Mogami’s second turret, which was behaving strangely when elevated over the first turret.
Fixed an UI issue when switching to the Social menu from the ship selection.
A few patch backgrounds textures have been improved.
For new players that have reached account levels 4–5, we’ve adjusted the animation for switching to the Tactical Map if those players never switched between voice chat channels.
Fixed a UI issue where the duration of Damage Control Party wasn’t correctly displayed when using the “By the Book” Commander skill.
Xbox-only: we’ve fixed a rare display issue that occurred when the game was resumed after the console was shut down while the game was still running.

Original Source: https://wowslegends.com/blogs/entry/181-december-2020-update/