WARDOGS Beginners Guide: Everything you need to know

Prepare to drop into WARDOGS with our Beginners Guide. Here, you’ll learn everything you need to know to kickstart your battle for the hot zone, such as:

1. What is WARDOGS?
2. The Factions in WARDOGS
3. How to play and win
4. The WARDOGS Cash System & Loadouts
5. What classes are available
6. Building
7. And more!

What is WARDOGS?

WARDOGS is an FPS title that pits 3 factions against each other for control of a large “King of the Hill” style zone on a 16x16km map. As far as First-Person Shooters go, WARDOGS sits between a Mil-sim type shooter, and an Arcade shooter. As a result, the shooter sits in a perfect position to satisfy players that don’t want to feel all the frustrations of realism, while also satisfying players that enjoy grit and real weight to their gameplay.

Ahead, this guide for WARDOGS Beginners will break down everything you need to know heading into the Control Zone as a fresh recruit.

WARDOGS Factions

There is 3 Factions fighting for supremacy in WARDOGS. These factions are the three main mercenary contractors fighting for victory. During a match, you can select one of these three Factions to play under. However, you can switch at any time during a match, unless the Faction you wish to join has too many players. Currently, the Factions serve no purpose other than to act as a team to fight with, although that may change in the future.

Lonestar

Lonestar is the “Blue team” Faction of the game. The Lonestar Faction is a group of private-contractors known for their grit and strength in the para-military world.

Manticore

Manticore is the “Green team” Faction of the game. Largely known as the Persian “shadow army”, they pose a powerful threat in WARDOGS. Unpredictable and deniable operations gives plenty of mystery and concern around this Faction.

Valkyra

Valkyra is the “Red team” Faction of WARDOGS. This Faction is Soviet-faithful, with their sole mission to restore the Republic’s grand status for the Soviet People. The Valkyra is more of a Restorationist team than a presently mighty force.

How to Play WARDOGS

WARDOGS has one main objective in mind – control the “zone” with your Faction, and score 100 points to win the game.

Each Faction can have 33 players per side, with one player spare being a 34th in one of the teams. The servers are 100 player servers selected through a Server Browser. Once you’re in and set-up, you’ll be deployed to your HQ (Headquarters). Here, you’ll be able to meet up with your teammates, set-up squads, purchase loadouts, vehicles and more.

At the start of a match, you’ll have to decide how to reach the “King of the Hill” zone. This can be via Helicopter, ground vehicles etc. Or, if your team has got a Respawn Vehicle within the hill (also known as the Control Zone), you can respawn instantly at the vehicle every 5 minutes. You can access the respawn via the Deployment Board at the HQ.

The HQ is fairly far away from the hill, meaning each death has its consequences, both in cash value and time spent getting back into the action, be ready!

How to score points in WARDOGS

Scoring points is simple, your team needs to have the highest number of players within the hill at one time. In the bottom left of your screen, you’ll see the score of each team below the mini-map. You will also see the bar below the score slowly filling up. This bar is the point-tick you need to keep an eye on. If your team drops players just before the bar fills, another team will steal the point. Each player counts as 1 total player in the standard hill zone. Score 100 points, and your team wins! Is it worth mentioning, however that games can last upwards of an hour.

Hotzone

The Hotzone is the small circle within the main hill zone. This zone is high risk but high reward in nature. For each player of your team that occupies the Hotzone, they become worth TWO players when scoring points. This means that if you have 10 players within the Hotzone, they’ll count as 20 below your mini-map.

Throughout the entire match, the Hotzone is also constantly moving inside the hill. Meaning every team is rotating to follow the zone and forever changing up the cover you may or may not have.

Towers

The Towers in WARDOGS can be seen within the Control Zone throughout the match and which team controls them. The aim of controlling the towers is to secure every tower on the map. Each tower you secure provides a piece of a code used to activate a major in-game mechanic.

With every tower under your teams control, you can call in the in-game mechanic. This will start to force the Hotzone to move to the tower you activated the mechanic at. Ideally, this can be a tower your team has fortified massively with a F.O.B and plenty of builds. Gaining control of all the towers provides massive benefits to swing the game for the team.

To win a game of WARDOGS:

1. Pick a faction, deploy into HQ and purchase your loadout
2. Use vehicles with your team and squad-mates to reach the hill
3. Help your team increase their total player count in the zone, while killing enemy players to lower theirs
4. Control the Hotzone to drastically increase player total for your team to earn score per tick
5. Score 100 points to win!

As a friendly reminder, WARDOGs isn’t all about just running and gunning, you can help your team win by being a Pilot taxi, bringing supplies to the hill or even just building F.O.B bases. Everything helps! As beginners in WARDOGS, take your time and use our guide to find your style.

How does WARDOGs Cash System work?

in WARDOGS, each player has their own cash economy to balance. Should you buy expensive but risky to lose loadouts? Maybe going in light and racking up profit is the correct play? All of these things can be right or wrong as long as you know what can bring in the money, or lose you everything.

Loadouts and what you can buy in WARDOGS

Every player starts with $10,000 to play with in a round minimum, this helps get things started. Each aspect of your loadout costs cash, for example:

1. Weapons
2. Attachments
3. Ammo
4. Magazines
5. Armor
6. Utility
7. Vehicles
8. Unlocking a new item for the first time

Every death comes at a cost, and every good life brings in the cash. To see a full breakdown on the cash system and the best ways to spend starting out, check out our WARDOGS Beginners guide to starter weapons.

Ammo & Magazine mechanics

When it comes to buying loadouts, some of the most important parts of your set-up is your backpack and the ammo & magazines you bring.

Your backpack is limited by total square slots available. Each item you want to put in your backpack takes up a certain amount of squares. For example, a 30 round magazine for the PP-19 is 2×1 in size. If a backpack is 8×2, then you can only fit 4 magazines into that backpack. It’s important to know what you can cram into your backpack at any given moment.

Magazines also have similar functioning mechanics to that of Escape from Tarkov. You’ll need both the correct ammo-type for your weapon and the correct magazine. You can reload magazines with the correct ammo type, or extract ammo from a magazine into loose ammo. By dragging the loose ammo onto the correct magazine, you’ll begin loading the bullets into the magazine. As a result, bringing a stack or two of Loose Ammo is much more efficient than just bringing multiple magazines.

Earning Cash

There is countless ways to earn yourself Cash and Experience in WARDOGS. Almost every action benefits you, such as:

1. Killing another player
2. Building structures and equipment in a F.O.B
3. Driving a ground-vehicle and dropping players off inside the hill (extra rewards if they survive!)
4. Being a Helicopter pilot and dropping players off inside the hill
5. Bringing in supply boxes to your F.O.B from HQ and having other players use them
6. Reviving players
7. Being in the hill each tick (double if you’re in the Hotzone)
8. Destroying enemy vehicles
9. Spotting players with Recon equipment like Binoculars
10. Taking control of a Tower

With so many methods to make money, you have plenty of options and playstyles to profit from. You’ll be able to see how much money you’re currently up or down on during a match in the top-right corner of your screen. The left number is your profit or loss, the right number is your total current cash.

Any death is a negative on your bank balance, but when you’re equipped with the knowledge of what makes money, you’ll be set for success. Currently, it is very lucrative to pilot people from the HQ to the hill while bringing supplies. However, you’ll need to be a good pilot and NOT crash your chopper!

What Classes are available in WARDOGS?

Currently, there is not set “classes” in WARDOGS. However, there is roles you can play for your team and 6 progression tracks with specialized unlocks.

Progression Tracks in WARDOGS

The available progression tracks are:

• Assault (Ground trooper, Assault Rifles etc)
• Medic (Medical Equipment, SMGs)
• Recon (Snipers, DMRs, enemy spotting equipment)
• Support (Anti-Vehicle, building tools, faction support)
• Driver (Vehicle unlocks and more)
• Pilot (Flight vehicles such as Helicopters, unlocks and more)

Each of these tracks feed into “roles” you can form yourself. All while not restricting yourself to a specific way of life. Of course, you can focus on leveling certain tracks to better form the role you wish to play for your teams victory. To earn XP for each track, you’ll need to:

• Assault: Kills with Assault Rifles, Assault “tagged” items etc
• Medic: Kills with SMGs, using Medical Equipment such as Bandages and Defibrillators on teammates
• Recon: Kills with Snipers, DMRs and using equipment tagged with the Recon role, like the Binoculars
• Support: Building defenses in your F.O.B, using defensive equipment like AA systems, destroying enemy vehicles with explosives, like RPGs
• Driver: Being a taxi for your teammates from HQ to the hill, bringing supplies to the hill, operating the Spawn Vehicle, simply driving and combat assists
• Pilot: Being a taxi for your teammates from HQ to the hill, bringing supplies to the hill, simply flying a Helicopter and combat assists

You’ll see what type of XP you’re earning in the top right of your screen as you perform an action, as for tagged items, you can see this in the loadout menu when purchasing gear from the HQ.

You’ll also earn standard player level experience for every action on top of your progression tracks. Ultimately, play your way, with no restrictions.

WARDOGS Beginners guide to Building

Building in WARDOGS is an essential defensive role when aiming to control locations in the hill. To build, it requires tools such as hammers of varying sizes, all that’re unlockable via the Support progression track. You can buy a hammer along with your loadout at HQ.

Equipping a hammer, such as the Medium Hammer lets you pull up a radial menu to select buildable objects.

Each build requires building materials, which are stored in the F.O.B itself. You can see the amount you have versus the cost in the middle of the radial menu. Once you select what you want to build, you can look to place and angle the piece where you desire.

There is a “critical hit” mechanic when building fresh. You’ll notice a yellow “X” on the object you’re building, each time you hit this X, you progress the construction percent significantly faster.

Additional WARDOGS Beginners Guide Tips

While the basics of WARDOGS for beginners has been covered, you’ll find there’s always extra tips and tricks to gain even the smallest additional edges. Here is a list of additional tips, and recaps on good game knowledge.

Tips

1. Instead of bringing multiple magazines, bring a couple and fill some slots with Loose Ammo that your weapon uses. You’ll be able to carry more ammo this way and stay out on the field for longer.
2. Expensive doesn’t always mean the best for you. Consider your loadout based on your cash available, there is plenty of cost effective weapons early on, such as the T-21.
3. Utilize piloting and driving early and often. You earn a crazy amount of player XP and cash when dropping off players and supplies, use this to your advantage.
4. If you don’t want to spend a lot of cash early on, going in with minimal gear like a Pistol and some ammo, and anchoring yourself in the Hotzone can be beneficial. You’ll gain 2x the cash per score tick while also counting as 2 people for your team!
5. Keep an eye on your weapon zeroing. You can see the current zeroing scope range on the bottom right of your screen. For example most weapons will default to 100m. Adjusting this with page-up and page-down based on distance can help you a lot.
6. Get into Helicopters ONLY if you’ve seen the Pilot is trustworthy or you know them. Flying a Helicopter is not easy in WARDOGS, and the last thing you want is to lose your loadout immediately.
7. Use your VOIP! VOIP exists heavily in WARDOGS and we highly encourage you to use it. Not only are most people very fun to engage with, it’s useful for almost anything in the game. Check your settings for keybinds and more.
8. Do NOT rush into every gunfight. While you can play however you want, running around like it’s Call of Duty in WARDOGS does not end well. Take your time, don’t be afraid to hold an angle for a little bit before moving up.
9. Bring a spotting tool with you. If you have a Rangefinder, Binoculars etc, you can spot enemies and get assists, cash and XP if other players kill them.

See our WARDOGS section for similar guides to the WARDOGS Beginners guide, ballistic information & more.