WARDOGS Season 2 patch notes: what changed and what it means for you

The short version

Season 2 of WARDOGS Early Access went live on Thursday 15 October 2026, after a maintenance window that ran from 08:00 to 09:30 UTC. It touches almost every number you deal with between matches, so we have put the long lists into tables and spent the words on what each change means for how you play and what you buy.

If you only read one part, make it the damage section further down, because the .308, 7.62x54mmR, 7.62x39mm and .50 Cal rounds all lost between 16 and 25 percent of their base damage, and that reshuffles how the guns you already own stack up against each other.

Four new weapons

Assault, Medic, Recon and Support each get a new gun this season, and two of the four fire .308 Win, which means they arrive already carrying the 25 percent calibre cut we cover further down.

The TCX-SPR takes over the Assault track's level 20 slot from the M4, which now waits until level 28 and costs $150,000 to unlock. At $3,200 a copy it sits well under the $6,000 FAL, and the track adds the Cross Rifle and Clutch Lok muzzle brakes and the SRD762TI-QD suppressor for it at levels 32, 37 and 40.

The PP-19 Bizon is the cheapest new gun to try, since every Medic has it unlocked from the start along with its 53 round magazine, and a copy costs you $1,000 at the vendor.

Support's Evo-3 Ultra is the expensive one, at $200,000 to unlock and $7,250 a copy, and it feeds from a 50 round Evolys box that costs $110. Its bipod follows at level 33 and its suppressor at level 40.

Recon gets the M14 at level 25 with a 10 round magazine, then fills out the rest of its kit over the next seventeen levels, with the Leatherwood ART II at level 27, a bipod at 29, the 20 and 30 round magazines at 31 and 36, and a muzzle brake and a flash hider at 37 and 42.

Two attachments land outside the new guns. The Mosin gets the PU 91/30, a 3.5x scope that unlocks at Recon level 10 for $12,500 and costs $780, and at the same time it loses access to every other optic. The Compact P-1 Red Dot joins the WARDOG track at level 21 for $12,500 and costs $480 at the vendor. The armory database lists the new attachments and magazines with their prices.

The Molotov, the helmets and the range finder

The Molotov Cocktail is a thrown incendiary that you can lob overarm or underarm. It damages whoever it hits on impact and leaves fire behind that keeps hurting anyone standing in it, and it burns destructible foliage too, so you can use it to clear out the bush somebody is hiding in. It unlocks at Assault level 13 for $25,000 and costs $340 a throw, and rain weakens the flames, so you'll get less out of it when the weather turns.

The Level 4 Helmet now comes with real drawbacks. It muffles your audio and your proximity chat, narrows your field of view and fogs over when you sprint, and it costs $4,500 where it used to cost $3,000. In return, both upper helmets now resist the rebuilt suppression, with the Level 3 cutting it by 68 percent and the Level 4 by 80 percent.

We would wear the Level 3 Helmet for most infantry lives now. It keeps your hearing and your view, it still blocks most of the suppression, and at $2,000 it costs you $2,500 less than the Level 4, which matters more now that both tiers also lost five points of damage reduction.

The Infrared Range Finder now runs on batteries, and a battery lasts around 80 seconds of active use, draining faster if you keep flicking it on and off. Its price went from $1,200 to $3,200, the plain Range Finder went from $400 to $1,450 and spotting rewards dropped by about 30 percent, so a spotting kit costs you more to put together and pays you less than it did last season.

Four new vehicles

All four new vehicles sit on the Driver track, which gives you something armed to drive long before you can afford the L2A6.

The Wolf-110 is a fast, light wheeled transport, and the Wolf-110 [M2 Browning] puts a ring-mounted M2 on the same body. The T-72B3 is a main battle tank that is slower than the L2A6, a little more fuel-efficient and cheaper, and since the L2A6 went from $14,000 to $22,000 this season, the T-72B3 at $16,000 saves you $6,000 a tank. The Flakpanzer Gepard is the anti-air vehicle, and it unlocks last, at level 25.

The SPH-2 moves into the Driver track as well, at level 31, down from WARDOG level 90, and its unlock drops from $500,000 to $350,000. Artillery now earns Driver XP too, so firing the gun levels the same track it lives on.

Purchased vehicles now keep their inventory private to the driver and the driver's squad by default, and once a vehicle is fully unlocked a new setting lets you open yours to everyone. The free vehicles each team spawns with stay open to all, so anything you leave in one of those is fair game.

Explosives and placeables no longer work from enclosed seats. Tracked vehicles land heavier and float less in the air, the Humvee climbs terrain better and builds up to top speed more slowly, and the Dune Buggy's brakes are weaker, so it skids and drifts a little more.

The fix list is long. Humvee gunners no longer face the wrong way when they get in, tanks stop launching themselves off their own turrets, vehicles no longer sink into the ground when they ram each other at speed, and players who join late now see smoke screens and flares. The Vanguard CIWS also does less to the spawn vehicle, which now takes 2.25 times as long to kill with it. Every vehicle's numbers are in the vehicle database.

Building costs more and goes up slower

BULKHEAD wants structures to be a considered investment this season, so most build costs went up, the medium hammer contributes less per swing and critical spots give a smaller bonus, while the large hammer's build rate per swing stays where it was.

Three new pieces arrive with it. The Wooden Step builds with the small hammer and up, and the Large Shelter is a big metal roof for covering key assets or keeping the rain off, which needs at least the medium hammer. The MG Nest is a manned M2 Browning emplacement that only the large hammer can build.

The L81 Mortar quadrupled, from 150 to 600 supplies, and restocking it now takes 150 munition supplies instead of 75, so a pallet feeds fewer shots. It also fires more slowly, because the gunner now drops each shell down the tube before it fires.

The Talon is cheaper to place at 650 supplies, down from 1,000, but its reload stretches from 2 seconds to 5 and a restock now takes 200 munition supplies, up from 50.

Drill rigs take the hardest hit. A rig now needs 2,000 fuel to start, up from 1,500, and runs for 300 seconds at most where it used to manage 375, while its tank grows from 7,500 to 10,000 fuel. It also takes substantially longer to come back after it is destroyed, so a base built around several rigs needs a real supply line behind it.

Doors and gates can no longer be breached with a hammer, while the Halligan bar now breaches both, so the bar is the tool to carry if you plan on getting into somebody's base. You can stack barbed wire and sandbags on top of Bremmer walls now, and unfinished buildables collapse the moment they lose a support instead of floating.

Foundations also sit properly against slopes, stairs and walls, tank traps only go down on a defined set of surfaces, and the CIWS now shreds light cover while struggling against heavy fortifications. Before you spend real supplies, lay the base out in the base builder, since a gate that cost 85 supplies last season now costs 200.

The damage and armor rebalance

This is the change that moves fights. Rounds like .308 and 7.62x54mmR were built for sniper rifles, where a slow fire rate and small magazines pay for the big hits, and in assault rifles, DMRs and LMGs they were landing close to sniper damage at a much faster rate of fire. So four calibres lost base damage, and the cut applies to every weapon that fires them, vehicle guns included.

That cut reaches the miniguns on the Little Bird AH-6M, the Z20 Lakota and the Humvee. The top machine gun turrets on the heavy and artillery vehicles also do less to infantry now, because they have switched from the helicopter cannon's hit-location values to the ones assault rifles and LMGs use.

Here is what that means class by class.

• Assault rifles. Damage across the upper, middle and lower torso is more even now, so you can predict how many body shots a kill takes, and body shots do slightly less than before. The FAL still hits hardest per shot in the class, and it now sits closer to the TCX-SPR and the M4.
• LMGs. Body damage now matches the assault rifles, so an LMG wins its fights through sustained fire and a bigger magazine.
• DMRs. Headshots and upper body hits are slightly weaker and every DMR has had a new recoil pass, which puts the class between the assault rifles and the snipers.
• Sniper rifles. Their hit-location damage went up to make up for the base cut, so they stay the class for big single shots.
• Scout Rifle. A headshot now kills in one against a target with no helmet, and a Level 1 helmet takes two.
• Slugs and the Compound Bow. Damage against armor now scales with the armor tier instead of taking one flat reduction. The bow's arrows also have a shorter drop-off, and it does slightly better against lower tier armor than it did in Season 1.

Armor got weaker at the top and dearer at the same time. Level 3 armor and helmets now reduce damage by 50 percent instead of 55, and Level 4 by 60 percent instead of 65, while the Level 3 and Level 4 vests now cost $2,500 and $5,000 and the helmets $2,000 and $4,500. Before you buy the top tier out of habit, run the rifles you actually face through the damage calculator and see how many shots each tier really saves you.

Suppression has been rebuilt so that being shot at feels the same whatever is shooting at you. Near misses from small and medium calibres are considerably stronger, the rate of fire is taken into account so SMGs and pistols don't suppress out of proportion, and the screen shake is lighter, so the effect reads clearly without fighting you for control of your aim.

A few weapons were tuned on their own as well.

• MP5. Its recoil pattern pulls more sideways now, because it was too easy to control.
• Super-45. Damage falls off harder beyond 50 metres, its effective range, which keeps it a close-quarters gun.
• MGL-40. Muzzle velocity is down 25 percent, the outer blast radius falls off harder, and it has much more inaccuracy and sway, slower ADS and a reload penalty when you fire it from the Little Bird bench.

Parachutes take longer to open and won't open at all below about 10 metres, and if you are falling fast and pull below roughly 50 metres, you won't slow down in time and will take fall damage. The Basic Parachute went from $100 to $500 while the Sport Parachute dropped from $1,000 to $700, so only $200 separates them now and we would take the Sport. If you don't trust your pilot, you can always drive to the Control Zone or fly yourself.

The Medical Bag now has 150 durability, up from 100, so one bag lasts longer before you replace it, and it costs $1,800 instead of $2,000. When you want to compare guns shot for shot, the TTK rankings put every weapon in a class side by side.

Faster role XP and a new unlock order

Role tracks level much faster now. Levels 10 to 20 were where a lot of players stalled before they reached the gear that defines their role, and getting to level 20 now takes less than half the playtime it did in Season 1.

Some actions pay into different tracks now. Destroying buildables and using IEDs or C4 earn Assault XP instead of Support, artillery earns Driver XP instead of Support, and repairs pay into Driver or Pilot depending on the vehicle you fix, so if you mostly blew up bases or ran the guns as Support, that XP now lands somewhere else.

Unlocks were reshuffled on every track, and most attachments moved to earlier levels. These are the moves that change what you can buy and when.

• WARDOG. The supply pallets are no longer unlocked by default, so the Mechanical pallet now costs you $10,000 at level 5, the Ammo pallet $25,000 at level 9 and the Fuel pallet $50,000 at level 16. The Judge drops to level 1 for $5,000 and trades places with the GGX 17, the Deagle comes down from level 85 to 65, and the GGX 18 goes up to level 85 and $125,000. Level 3 helmets and armor now unlock at level 70 instead of 60, and the Gold Market itself unlocks at level 35 for $150,000.
• Assault. This is now the track for attacking bases, with C4 and the remote detonator moving in at level 4 and the Molotov at level 13. The AK74 is unlocked from the start, the T-21 now costs $10,000 at level 3 and brings its STANAG 30 round magazine for free, and the M4 moves to level 28 at $150,000 while the FAL goes up to $250,000.
• Medic. The Medical Bag unlocks at level 14 for $50,000 instead of level 24 for $75,000, and the MP5 drops from level 15 to level 4 and from $75,000 to $25,000. The PP-19 Vityaz moves up to level 15 at $50,000, the AMP-9 now unlocks at level 20 for $75,000, and the Defibrillator moves from level 11 to 22 and costs $110,000.
• Recon. The BMR-308 comes down from level 30 to 20 and the MK22 goes up from 25 to 30. The Compound Bow doubles to $150,000 to unlock, the Claymore rises to $90,000 and the Range Finder to $25,000.
• Support. The PKM and the M249 have traded places, with the PKM now at level 15 for $100,000 and the M249 at level 20 for $150,000, and the MAAWS comes down to level 18 and $100,000. The MGL-40 rises to $250,000 and the Heavy Drill to $50,000.
• Pilot. The Little Bird AH-6M [Miniguns] was too strong for how early it came, so it now unlocks at level 8 instead of 4 and costs $125,000 instead of $50,000. The Z20 Lakota [Miniguns] goes up to $85,000 and the Havoc to $650,000.
• Driver. Alongside the new vehicles and the SPH-2, the Humvee moves to level 14 and costs $75,000, three times its old $25,000, the Ural Defender comes down to level 15, the Ural Defender [M249] to level 22 at $100,000, and the Humvee [M249] moves up to level 24.

When you want to plan your route through a track, the progression page lists every unlock with its level and its cost.

Cash and XP rewards

Most payouts moved this season. Kills with assault weapons and attacks on bases pay more, spotting and one-off supply drops pay less, and several farming tricks no longer pay at all.

• Kills with an assault archetype weapon pay a $2,000 bonus, up from $1,500.
• Hacking a FOB still pays you $2,500 and 250 XP, and every teammate inside the FOB radius now gets $1,000 and 250 XP as well.
• Destroying a FOB pays a bonus of up to $7,500 and 250 XP depending on the supplies it held, maxing out at 25,000 supplies.
• Breaching a door with the Halligan Bar pays $100 once per door, and the bar now lasts for 7 uses, up from 5, while closing a friendly FOB door pays $75.
• Capturing a hostile drill tower pays $1,500 and 300 XP, up from $750 and 250 XP.

Logistics pays less per drop and more for coming back. Deploying a supply crate or a pallet now pays half what it did, at $250 for a small crate, $500 for a large one and $1,250 for a pallet, and the flat rewards for delivering players and for return trips came down too. In their place you get a delivery streak that grows with every consecutive run, so the money goes to drivers who keep coming back instead of abandoning their vehicle after one trip.

Every vehicle variant now has its own kill reward, so armed variants pay far more than unarmed ones and give one and a half times the XP of the default version. Attack vehicles also pay more the more kills they have racked up, so hunting down the gun that has been farming your team is worth the trip.

Destroying a buildable now pays cash equal to its build supply cost and roughly a quarter of that in XP, scaled by how far it was built. That puts the L81 Mortar and the Stingray at $650 each, up from $300, while the Hot Zone Magnet drops to $2,750, the Vanguard CIWS to $1,200, the Talon to $650 and a door to $100. The new MG Nest pays $650 and the Large Shelter $250.

Armored supply crates are worth more to destroy now, at $1,000 for a small one and $1,600 for a large one, while plain crates drop to $300 and $600 and supply pallets to $800. Destroying an empty enemy crate pays half cash and half XP.

Spotting pays about 30 percent less than in Season 1, since it was the lowest-risk way to earn, and the reward now scales with the value of whatever you found, so high-value targets pay more than cheap ones. When another faction destroys a target you spotted, you now get 25 percent of the reward instead of 50.

A few farms are closed as well. Selling from a supply crate now has diminishing returns per buyer until you only break even, selling to an enemy player pays nothing, spotting an unfinished buildable pays according to its build progress, barbed wire kills no longer pay cash or XP, and the FOB Supplied Assist is split between everyone who helped. To see what a whole run pays, put it through the Cash & XP calculator.

What everything costs now

Prices moved both ways. The cheap rifles, the backpacks and most attachments got cheaper, while armed vehicles, top tier armor and spotting gear got a lot more expensive.

The AK74 halved to $800 and is unlocked from the start, so it is the rifle we would build a first kit around now, and the Ruck Backpack falls from $2,400 to $1,600. Most muzzles, grips and foregrips dropped by up to a third, with the Birdcage Flash Hider going from $900 to $600 and the Shift Foregrip from $1,150 to $840.

The armed vehicles are where the patch hurts most. An AH-6M [Miniguns] costs $12,000 instead of $7,000, a Humvee [Minigun] more than doubles to $10,000 and the Havoc is now $28,000, so losing one in the first minute costs you a great deal more than it did, and we'd only take one out with a squad that can keep it alive.

Re-price your usual kit in the loadout planner before your first match, because a loadout you could afford last season may cost you noticeably more now.

Gold Market camos

Eight new weapon and vehicle skins join the Gold Market across four camo families. Black & Gold comes for the Little Bird, Chocolate Chip for the Evo-3 Ultra, the M14 and the TCX-SPR, Two-Tone Desert for the Galil, the Mosin and the Havoc, and Digital Wood for the M500.

The Black & Gold Little Bird is a Season 2 exclusive, so if you want it, buy it before the season ends. The Black & Gold AK camo has left the Gold Market, which means you can no longer buy it there.

The Gold Market itself now unlocks at WARDOG level 35 for $150,000, and you can follow the daily gold rate on our gold exchange page before you spend.

The wager vendor arrives later in the season

The Wager Vendor was not in the game at Season 2 launch, and it opens later in the season. Once it does, you can bet your own cash on your own performance with stakes you set yourself, and a live tracker above the minimap shows you your stake and how far along you are.

BULKHEAD intends the vendor to come and go over the course of a season, so don't plan around it being open all the time. When it does open, we will be working out our stakes in the wager calculator before we bet anything we can't afford to lose.

Lonestar's Season 2 experiment

One faction has had a notably lower win rate than the other two, and BULKHEAD says the feeling around the blue team is the biggest reason players avoid it. So Season 2 runs an experiment on Lonestar, to see whether it changes the win rate and how players see the faction.

• Lonestar gets a cash and XP bonus for winning, for Season 2 only.
• Lonestar gets cash and XP multipliers on teamplay actions, for Season 2 only.
• All three faction spawns on Bakurani have moved, each rebuilt with its own purpose-built routes to the zone.
• Any team at least 40 points behind second place gets 20 percent off at the vendor, whichever faction it is.
• Community server hosts seen exploiting the faction bonus will be punished.

If you have no faction loyalty, Lonestar is where the extra money sits this season, and the losing team discount means a bad match at least makes your next kit cheaper.

Team switching and teamkill votes

Late team switching is harder now. Once a team is more than 10 points ahead, you can't switch teams again for 15 minutes after joining one, and if you switch or join a match in progress, your map stays obscured and the spawn vehicle stays locked until you have reached the Control Zone for the first time. You can still join the team your friends are on, it just takes you longer to get into the fight.

Teamkills are now settled by the victim. When a teammate kills you, you choose to Forgive or Punish, and every Punish counts against the teamkiller, leading to kicks and then escalating bans for repeat offenders, while Forgive removes a potential mark from their record. If you respawn and leave the safe zone without voting, that counts as a Forgive.

Rain

Season 2 adds a rain weather preset. Surfaces, vehicles and players get visibly wet, the rain sounds different depending on what it falls on and whether you are under cover, indoors, in a vehicle or out in the open, and if you destroy a roof, the rain starts coming through it.

Two parts of it change how you fight. Heavier rain brings thunder that every player on the server hears at the same moment and from the same direction, and it is loud enough to cover footsteps, so a strike is a good moment to move. Rain also shortens spotting range and weakens Molotov fire.

Everything else

• Squad leaders can set a squad intent from a fixed list, which every player sees on the squad list before joining, and squad invites and other timed prompts now queue.
• Rebuy Last Loadout now fills the equipment vendor with your last kit, so you can add or remove items before you pay.
• Players who join and fill empty servers earn rewards and a vendor discount once the match begins, and every spawn has guns with targets, a football and a hidden radio to pass the time before it starts.
• Official servers now set a maximum ping by region and kick players who stay above it for a sustained period, ignoring server-side lag spikes, and a kicked player can't rejoin that server until the next map. The server browser shows ping limits and filters by them, and community server admins can set their own.
• Controller players get an Aim Assist strength slider in the advanced controller settings, where 1 is the default and 0 turns it off, along with aim acceleration that kicks in sooner, reworked binds and fixes for grenade cooking and bandage cancelling.
• 30mm cannon ammo now takes a 2x2 slot instead of 1x1 and stacks to 50 in a backpack, while vehicle storage still stacks it to 200.
• The assistance request ping now lasts 60 seconds, up from 20.
• WARDOGS Steam Trading Cards and Point Shop items are coming during Season 2, pending Valve's approval.