Step 4 of 5

Step 4 — Registering, installing and running the tutorial

This step is deliberately written for the category rather than for any one product's interface, because menus are renamed constantly and a screen-by-screen walkthrough would be wrong within months. What does not change is the order of operations and the points at which things go wrong.

The order of operations

Sign-up, confirmation, installer, data download, settings, tutorial. Doing them in that order matters, because each one tells you something you need for the next. The commonest mistake is starting the data download before the account is confirmed and then discovering a typo in the email address with four hours of download already spent.

Two general rules apply throughout. Take software only from the publisher's own site or from an official distribution platform; installers offered by third parties are the main way unwanted software reaches a games machine. And read a screen before clicking through it, particularly any screen that offers to install something extra.

The eight operations in full

1. Create the account on the vendor's own site. Type the address into the browser yourself, or follow a link you trust, and fill in the fields you decided on in Step 3. Do not reuse a password.
2. Complete the email confirmation. Open the message, act on it, and if nothing has arrived after a few minutes check the spam folder. Do not continue until the account is confirmed and you can sign back into it.
3. Download the installer from the vendor. The installer itself is usually small. It is a program whose job is to fetch the real game data afterwards.
4. Run the installer and choose the install location. This is the one screen worth slowing down for. Point the installation at the drive you measured in Step 2. Default locations are often on a system drive with less free space than you think.
5. Let the client download the game data. Tens of gigabytes arrive now. Start it when the connection is otherwise idle. You can leave the machine unattended; you cannot usefully watch it.
6. Sign in and set the graphics preset before playing. Open the settings and choose something conservative, for the reason explained below. Two minutes here saves an hour of blaming the wrong thing.
7. Run the tutorial in the most forgiving control mode. Every game of this type has an introductory tutorial and a simplified control mode. Use both. They exist for you.
8. Stop after the tutorial and write down the outcome. Whether the picture held steady, whether the controls made sense, and what you want to change. Then close the game. Finishing the first session deliberately is a habit worth forming on day one.

What a realistic evening looks like

The honest summary is that the parts needing your attention add up to under an hour, and the part needing your patience is the download. Plan the evening around that and the experience is calm. Plan it as "I will play tonight" and it usually is not.

Slow, or stuck? Telling them apart

A download that appears frozen is the most common first-evening worry, and in the great majority of cases it is simply slow. A few checks distinguish the two without guessing.

First, look for a changing number. Any figure that moves — bytes received, percentage, estimated time — means data is still arriving, even if the rate is poor. Second, watch for a few minutes rather than a few seconds; many clients download in large pieces and the display updates between them. Third, check that the drive has not filled, which is the failure that looks most like a freeze. Fourth, note whether anything else in the house is using the connection heavily.

If nothing has moved for a long stretch, the ordinary remedies are to pause and resume the download, restart the client, or restart the computer, in that order. Most clients of this type verify what they already have and continue rather than starting again. If it keeps failing at the same point, the vendor's own support is the correct destination, because only they know their distribution system.

What you should not do is search for a third-party "fixer", optimiser or patched installer. That is how a games machine acquires software nobody wanted. General advice on avoiding unwanted and malicious software is published by the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

Graphics settings for a first session

Games in this genre pick a graphics preset for you on first launch, and the guess is sometimes optimistic. Setting it yourself, before the tutorial, means that if the picture is poor you know it is the hardware rather than a setting you never looked at.

For a first session, choose a lower preset than you think you need, and set the resolution to your screen's native value rather than something higher. If the game offers a frame rate display, turn it on; it converts "feels laggy" into a number you can act on. Then play the tutorial, and only afterwards raise settings one notch at a time, checking the number after each change.

Two settings dominate performance in this category: shadow quality and any form of anti-aliasing, which smooths jagged edges. Both are expensive and neither changes how well you play. Lowering them first is the standard move.

The tutorial itself

The tutorial is the part of this step that pays off. It is short, it is designed for someone who has never done this, and it is the only time the game will explain its controls without a battle happening around you.

Do it in the simplified control mode. Aircraft in particular behave very differently between the forgiving and the strict modes, and attempting the strict mode first is the main reason people conclude within twenty minutes that the genre is not for them. The strict mode will still be there in a fortnight.

Pay attention to three things while you are in it: how you aim, how you control speed, and how you see what is around you. Those three are the whole of the early game. Everything else — nations, tech trees, crews, modifications — can wait, and trying to absorb it now mostly produces confusion.

If the tutorial offers to repeat itself, repeat it. There is no cost and no score, and the second run is where the controls stop needing thought.

After the tutorial, before the first match

You do not have to play a match tonight, and there are good reasons not to. The tutorial has told you whether the machine performs and whether the controls suit you, which were the questions this step was asked to answer. A first match against practised opponents answers nothing and tends to sour the evening.

If you do continue, find the mute and report controls before anything else, and set the match type to whichever mode the game describes as its most forgiving. Then expect to lose. Step 5 covers what the second week should look like.

The product this site is paid to mention

The product named throughout this course is War Thunder. According to the affiliate network that operates our link, it is a multiplayer war simulator published by Gaijin Entertainment, with battles fought using planes, helicopters, tanks and ships, and it is played on desktop computers — Windows, macOS and Linux. The network states that the account steps relevant here are registration, confirming the email address and then logging in to the game, which maps onto operations one, two and six above.

Everything else about it — current system requirements, install size, prices, which modes exist and what the tutorial contains — is for the vendor to state, and this course does not restate it. Mute Spectrum is not an official, authorised or partnered source and has not been endorsed by anyone.

Visit the War Thunder websitePaid affiliate link. MEBAT Distribution s.r.o. is paid a commission when a reader registers and confirms an account through it. Your price is unchanged, and the eight operations above work with any title in the category.

The worked example, continued

The invented household reaches Step 4 with photographs moved to an external drive, an account decided on, and a spending ceiling on the fridge. They sign up and confirm the email after dinner, run the installer, point it at the freed-up drive, and start the data download before going to bed.

The following evening they sign in, lower the graphics preset, turn on the frame rate display, and run the tutorial twice in the forgiving mode. Then they stop and write down two lines about what to change. The example reports no result from any product and describes no real person; it exists to show that the work fits across two unhurried evenings rather than one rushed one.

Before you move on

You should now have a working account, a client on the drive you intended, a graphics preset you chose yourself, and one completed tutorial. If any of those is missing, the eight operations above tell you which one to return to. Step 5 is about the fortnight after this evening, which is where most of the decisions about money and time actually get made.

Step 4 checklist

Printed boxes for a pen. Nothing is remembered between visits.

1. Create the account on the vendor's own site, with the name, address and password decided in Step 3.
2. Complete the email confirmation now, and check the spam folder if nothing arrives.
3. Sign back in once, to prove the account works before you download anything large.
4. Take the installer only from the publisher or an official distribution platform.
5. Choose the install location deliberately, on the drive you measured in Step 2.
6. Start the game data download when the connection is otherwise idle, and leave it.
7. Before playing, set a conservative graphics preset and your screen's native resolution.
8. Turn on any frame rate display the game offers.
9. Run the tutorial in the most forgiving control mode, twice if it allows.
10. Locate the mute and report controls before entering any match.
11. Write two lines about what to change next time, then close the game.
12. Do not install any third-party tool, optimiser or patched installer at any point.