World of Warships sees the arrival of the new powerful U.S. battleships subbranch in early access today with Update 0.9.9, including the Tier VIII Kansas and the Tier IX Minnesota. They form part of a new U.S. Battleships event. The update also includes n ew Directives, an upgraded Naval Base Port, and a new season of Clan Battles.
The new US Battleships feature powerful main armaments, good anti-torpedo protection, and great maneuverability. However, while their rudder is very responsive, the ships are rather slow for their type. Numerous main battery guns with a solid salvo weight and decent firing range, which comes at the expense of longer gun reload times. Rounding out the battleships are their decent AA defenses which can be reinforced with the Defensive AA Fire consumable.
Players can obtain the VIII Kansas by completing Directives, and the IX Minnesota by opening random bundles in the Armory in exchange for Doubloons. By completing Directives players can get American Tokens, a new temporary resource that can be exchanged for bundles and other rewards in the Armory, including Gold Eagle permanent camouflages for US Battleships.
The new update also starts a new Clan Battles Season in 7 vs 7 format for Tier X ships. Furthermore, Division Commanders will now have additional options to invite mercenaries – players outside their Clan to join their Divisions for Clan Battles.
With the release of Update 0.9.9 players will also be able to play on all World of Warships servers within one game client, without the need to install separate game instances for each region. The game server will be determined by the currently selected account in the Wargaming Game Center.
Update 0.9.9 also brings new visual and general improvements to World of Warships, follow this link for more details.