Your first hours

Three teams, not two. That is the detail that changes the most and is easiest to forget: a fight you win can still be the fight that gets you killed, because a third party watched it happen. Committing everything to an engagement is rarely correct when someone else is being paid to arrive late.

The map is large and mostly empty. The contested part is a 2 x 2 km control zone, and its position is randomised, so map knowledge is about routes and ground rather than memorised objectives. Most of the 256 km² exists to make getting to the zone a decision with a cost.

1. Your money is permanent. You start with $10,000 and it carries between rounds. Losing kit is a real loss, not a per-match inconvenience.
2. But 90% of equipment spending comes back if you live. Which means the cautious play — turning up under-equipped to protect the balance — is usually the expensive one. See the economy guide.
3. Capacity is the early bottleneck. The free Pouch holds six slots in three sealed pockets. A real backpack changes what you can do more than a better rifle does.
4. Several weapons cost nothing. There are rifles in the catalogue at $0. There is no reason to be poorly armed while you are learning.
5. Distance is real. Walking across this map is a serious time investment. Transport is not a luxury purchase; it is what makes the map navigable.

Everything below is cheap, and all of it survives being wrong — the refund rule means an early mistake costs you a tenth of its price if you extract with it.

• A backpack, first. The Scout is $350 for eight contiguous slots and is the single biggest quality-of-life step in the game.
• A helmet, second. The Light Helmet is $200. It is not much protection, but it is the difference between surviving a glancing hit and not.
• Magazines, third. More people run dry than get outgunned. Budget ammunition with the weapon rather than after it — the inventory guide explains why it dominates your pack.
• Nothing expensive, yet. The catalogue reaches $18,000 for a Havoc. Those are not early-game decisions and buying one early will not make you better.

Learn one weapon properly. There are 34 documented weapons across nine types and fifteen calibres, with fire rates from 41.5 to 1200 rounds per minute. Sampling all of them teaches you less than learning one, because recoil and handling are muscle memory and muscle memory does not transfer.

Treat information as a resource. In a three-team match, knowing where the other two are is worth more than any individual advantage. Call what you see, in coordinates rather than landmarks.

Decide before you rotate, not during. Long distances mean a decision made halfway across the map is a decision made too late to change. Commit to a plan, and if it goes wrong, disengage properly rather than fighting the new one badly.

Extract on purpose. The most common way to lose money is to keep playing a round you have already got value out of. Leaving is a move.

WARDOGS is in early access — it launched on 10 September 2026 on Steam, from Bulkhead and Team17, and its numbers move between builds.

Everything on this site carries an evidence tier for that reason: Confirmed, Reported, Unconfirmed. A figure marked Confirmed came from the developer, the publisher or the store page. A figure marked Reported was observed in a build. A figure marked Unconfirmed is inference, and is labelled so you can discount it. Where we do not know something, the page says so instead of guessing — the reasoning is set out in the methodology, and the about page explains why the site is built this way.

The catalogue reflects 33 weapons and 20 vehicles observed as of Beta 2 - 3 September 2026, against launch totals of 37 and 21 announced by the developer. That gap is not an error; it is the difference between what has been announced and what has been seen.