Read the boss skills and stats on wiki Read the common introduction and disclaimers Timing precision Super Hard DPS check Hard Tank check Medium Did you enjoy your vacation last month The devs have the perfect welcoming back gift for you This is the hardest month in Extreme Challenge but there are some key pieces *cough* soyuz *cough* that can make it easy We will cover strategies with and without Sovetsky Soyuz separately in each example fleet section Yukikaze s first ability is to block 100 hits every 20s Similarly to January s Katsuragi bring vanguard ships with high pellet count The same list there works except that shield piercers like Z52 are not disadvantaged against Yukikaze The three lifebuoys each have 10k HP 0 EVA 0 LUCK and 200 AA They spawn in fixed positions and do not move These coordinates mean that Bismarck Zwei s black hole cannot reach all lifebuoys but Sovetsky Soyuz s iceberg barrage will target Yukikaze and splash all lifebuoys enough to kill them Lifebuoy coordinates See the time graph below which shows when BBs and CVs with 20s reload time land their attacks You have a period of 1 8s between when the lifebuoys spawn and when they start healing Yukikaze Due to carriers airplane and payload travel time it is infeasible to rely on them to wipe the lifebuoys Time graph for skills

This section is for manual only and only months with a notable manual strategy may have a manual section If you have Soyuz please just auto this Otherwise bring one or more carriers with good AoE damage like Tenrai s At 9 42 9 02 8 22 and so on every 40s dump your airstrikes to kill the lifebuoys You will still need good anti light damage to deal with Yukikaze even if she doesn t get healed

Ships don t start reloading until 1 5s into the battle which is still before the boss spawns This delay means that a Sovetsky Soyuz with exactly 20s reload time will finish reloading 1 5s after the lifebuoys spawn However this is acceptable because Soyuz s barrage insta kills the lifebuoys in the remaining 0 3s window before the lifebuoys start healing Remember that Soyuz has a reload bonus when with at least one other battleship We said exactly 20s but 19 95s to 19 97s would be more ideal for safety from lag or poor RNG You can even make Soyuz go as fast as 19 90s if you expect to win in under 5 minutes It is crucial for your other BBs to not interfere with Soyuz s reload They must have AFCT HSFCR and be at least as fast as 20s preferably 18 9s to 19 6s or they must be slower than Soyuz and also not take AFCT HSFCR Yukikaze s movement cycle puts her in the middle before she summons the lifebuoys However after a few minutes her movement cycle drifts far enough so that she will summon the lifebuoys before reaching the center When Yukikaze does not return to the center in time Soyuz s barrage will miss one or two lifebuoys because the barrage is aimed at Yukikaze There is no way to sync Soyuz to both Yukikaze s movement and to the lifebuoy spawn times Hence you need to finish the battle quick enough or get lucky when Soyuz begins failing to insta kill the lifebuoys This fleet won in 7 07 with mid cats half tech and no subs Fu Shun was almost dead at 7 minutes Consider using Tai Yuan An Shan or another good ship Soyuz should end up at 199 or 200 RLD In this example level 125 Love gives 166 the 3 gray autoloader gives 7 and tech gives 9 Then 182 RLD plus 10% from Soyuz s skill ends at 200 RLD If you upgrade FdG to Bismarck Zwei or Vanguard then they must use AFCT HSFCR because they re faster than Soyuz Calculator link Soyuz BB example fleet

Please read all of the Soyuz BB section first The only differences are that Soyuz does not have a reload bonus with carriers and that carriers can not significantly interfere with Soyuz s reload so it is even okay for them to be 20s and slightly faster or slightly slower than Soyuz If you use Nakhimov she will need to be around 20s to sync with Soyuz Other carriers are more free in timing but making them 20s too is still a good idea to take advantage of Soyuz s slow and small debuff Soyuz should end up at 199 or 200 RLD In the first example level 125 Love gives 166 the 6 autoloader gives 26 and tech gives 8 for a total of 200 It was too hard to get the CVs down to 20s too but we put Enterprise closely behind Fritz to cope on the 30% slow This fleet won in 6 20 with mid cats half tech with 27 CV RLD and no subs Calculator link Soyuz CV example fleet This high end fleet won in 4 22 with mid cats half tech and no subs If unoathed the tech and cats should give 55 CV RLD and 0 BB RLD If you can t copy that then calculate your own sync Soyuz at 199 to 201 RLD 201 is acceptable because the fleet should win earlier Nakhimov also around 20s to sync with Soyuz and Fritz also around 20s to sync with Nakhimov Also turn DD RLD tech to 8 or lower so that Fu Shun s SY 1A is slower than 20s to avoid hitting Yukikaze s 1 dmg barrier Calculator link Soyuz CV example fleet This top end fleet won in 3 25 with good cats half tech and no subs We have a feeling that Helena did not scan much If unoathed the tech and cats should give 72 CV RLD and 0 BB RLD The high RLD is needed to fit Skyraider to 20s Chapayev makes her appearance for the first and last for now time in endgame content since Yukikaze is the only difficult DD boss we have encountered Calculator link Soyuz CV example fleet

Due to the 1 5s start of battle delay in reloading battleships with 20s reload and without AFCT HSFCR fire too late to land more than the first volley of the first battleship Without Soyuz an unreliable way is if your battleships reload faster than 20s then it could work for a few minutes until they fire too long before the lifebuoys spawn So it is better for non Soyuz BB fleets to have one 20s BB with AFCT and two BBs that reload between 18 8s and 19 9s without AFCT Blocking the faster BBs behind the slowest BB is also good for long sync You will still need some luck for the BBs to randomly splash all the lifebuoys Sometimes one may survive for a second but you can outdamage its healing Sometimes you may get unlucky with a lifebuoy surviving for many seconds At that moment regret not having Soyuz This fleet won in 6 26 with good cats Every and Drake half tech with 12 BB RLD and no subs Unoathed Alsace with Mk 6 needs about 12 BB RLD to get to 20s reload Obviously if you have Bismarck Zwei then use her But because she will likely be the oldest UR who hasn t rerun by April 2025 we use Raffaello in the example Despite Alsace usually doing more damage than Raffaello we do not give Plymouth s flagship buff to Alsace because much of Alsace s damage will be going into Yukikaze s 1 dmg barrier Calculator link High End BB example fleet