WARDOGS Season 2 Patch Notes: Every Change Before Launch

BULKHEAD published the full Season 2 patch notes on 14 October 2026 at 3:59 PM BST, the day before the season goes live. It is the largest balance document WARDOGS has had since Early Access opened, touching damage, armor, building, logistics pay, and almost every unlock track.

The short version is that high-caliber guns got cut, armor got weaker, building got far more expensive, and levels 10 to 20 got a lot faster. This piece covers what is coming, every number that matters, and the parts of the notes that do not quite line up with earlier posts.

When Season 2 goes live

There is a scheduled maintenance window on 15 October 2026 from 08:00 to 09:30 UTC, which is 9:00 to 10:30 BST. BULKHEAD estimates roughly 90 minutes of downtime before the new season is playable, with a Steam client update alongside it.

• UK: 9:00 to 10:30 AM BST on 15 October 2026.
• US East: 4:00 to 5:30 AM EDT on 15 October 2026.
• US West: 1:00 to 2:30 AM PDT on 15 October 2026.
• Expected downtime: roughly 90 minutes, per BULKHEAD’s estimate rather than a fixed end time.

The Season 2 date itself was first confirmed in the Road to Season 2 devlog on 9 October 2026. That same post put WARDOGS at 3+ million sales, and it is useful later for comparing what was previewed against what actually shipped.

Everything new in Season 2

Most of the headline content was previewed a week earlier, but the patch notes add names, calibers, unlock levels, and prices. This table pulls those together so you can see where each item sits before you spend.

All vendor prices and unlock costs above are as published on 14 October 2026 and are subject to balance passes. Our WARDOGS weapons database is being updated against these values rather than Season 1 ones.

New buildables and weather

Three buildables arrive with the season, each tied to a hammer tier. The MG Nest is the only one with real combat value, and it sits at the top of the build cost scale.

• Wooden Step: buildable with the small hammer and above.
• Large Shelter: medium hammer and above, at 250 build supplies.
• MG Nest: large hammer only, a manned M2 Browning emplacement at 650 build supplies.

The new rain preset is more than cosmetic. Rain reduces spotting range, weakens Molotov fire, and brings thunder that every player hears at the same moment and that is loud enough to mask footsteps.

What changed between the preview and the patch notes

Comparing the 9 October devlog with the 14 October notes shows a few quiet revisions. None are dramatic, but two of them change what you should expect on day one.

The T-72 wording is the one to note if you were planning around fuel. A tank that is only slightly more efficient than the L2A6 changes logistics far less than the preview implied.

Combat balance: the high-caliber cut

BULKHEAD’s stated reason is that .308 and 7.62x54mmR were built for sniper rifles but were doing close to sniper damage from fast-firing assault rifles, DMRs, and LMGs. The fix is a base damage cut to the round itself, so every weapon using it loses damage, including vehicle guns.

Two of the four new weapons fire .308 and a third fires 7.62x39mm, so the TCX-SPR, M14, and Evo-3 Ultra all launch on the reduced values. The FAL keeps the highest damage per shot among assault rifles, but now sits closer to the TCX-SPR and M4.

Sniper rifles get increased hit-location damage to offset the cut, so the big single shot stays their job. DMRs now land between assault rifles and snipers, while LMG body damage has been brought down to match assault rifles.

• Vehicle weapons: the Little Bird AH-6M Minigun, Z20 Lakota Minigun, and Humvee Minigun all take the caliber cut.
• Heavy and Artillery turrets: now use assault rifle and LMG hit-location values against infantry rather than helicopter cannon values.
• Scout Rifle: headshots now one-shot targets with no helmet, while a Level 1 helmet takes two.
• 12 gauge slugs and the Compound Bow: damage against armor now scales with armor tier instead of a flat reduction.

Armor is weaker, but not against everything

Level 3 armor and helmets drop from 55% to 50% damage reduction, and Level 4 drops from 65% to 60%. That five-point drop is bigger than it looks, because you are now taking 50% of incoming damage on Level 3 instead of 45%, which is 11% more damage taken.

On Level 4 the share of damage that gets through rises from 35% to 40%, roughly 14% more. Our arithmetic shows the caliber cut more than cancels that for .308, since 75% of base damage at 40% lands at 30% of the old base, against 35% before.

That last row is the real change for armored players. Rounds BULKHEAD did not cut, such as 5.56mm and 9mm, now hit Level 4 harder than before, which narrows the gap between cheap and expensive guns.

Level 4 also picks up drawbacks. The helmet now muffles audio and proximity chat, restricts your field of view, and fogs while sprinting, in exchange for 80% suppression reduction.

Suppression, parachutes, and smaller weapon changes

Suppression was rebuilt around shared falloff curves, and near misses from small and medium calibers are considerably stronger. Rate of fire is now factored in so SMGs and pistols do not suppress out of proportion, and Level 3 helmets cut suppression by 68%.

Parachutes are the change most likely to kill you on day one. They take longer to open, will not open below about 10m, and opening below roughly 50m at speed means fall damage.

• Basic Parachute: $100 to $500.
• Sport Parachute: $1,000 to $700, so the gap between the two shrinks from $900 to $200.
• MP5: recoil now has more horizontal pattern.
• Super-45: damage fall-off increased beyond 50m.
• MGL-40: muzzle velocity down 25%, wider splash fall-off, and a reload penalty on the Little Bird bench.
• Mosin: new PU 91/30 3.5x scope, and it loses access to other optics until planned customization features arrive.
• Medical Bag: durability up from 100 to 150.

The Infrared Range Finder also returns. BULKHEAD pulled it from the vendor in the 2 October 2026 hotfix as too strong, and it comes back running on batteries that last around 80 seconds of active use, at $3,200 instead of $1,200.

Building becomes an investment

The notes describe a full pass on build cost, speed, and durability, aimed at making structures something you commit to rather than spam. Every figure below is in build supplies.

The Mortar quadruples and the Stingray more than quadruples, while the Talon and CIWS get cheaper to place. The Talon still pays for it elsewhere, with reload rising from 2s to 5s and its restock cost going from 50 to 200.

Drill Rigs take the hardest hit. Minimum fuel rises from 1,500 to 2,000, max uptime falls from 375s to 300s, and a much longer post-spawn cooldown stops a destroyed rig from being replaced straight away.

• Medium hammer: contributes less per swing, and critical spots give a smaller bonus.
• Doors and gates: can no longer be breached with a hammer, but the Halligan bar now breaches both.
• Barbed wire: no longer pays cash or XP on kills.
• CIWS against structures: now shreds light cover and struggles against heavy fortifications.

Faction balance and match rules

Season 2 runs what BULKHEAD calls a social experiment on Lonestar, the blue team, which had a notably lower win rate. Lonestar gets a cash and XP win bonus plus teamplay multipliers for Season 2 only, and all faction spawns have moved on Bakurani.

The size of the Lonestar bonus has not been published, so treat it as TBC until it can be measured in a live match. A separate 20% vendor discount applies to any team at least 40 points behind second place.

Team switching now has friction once a team is more than 10 points ahead. You cannot switch again for 15 minutes, your map stays obscured until you first reach the control zone, and you cannot use the spawn vehicle until then.

• Team-kill vote: victims choose Forgive or Punish, and Punish results build toward kicks and escalating bans.
• Auto-forgive: respawning and leaving the safe zone without voting counts as a forgive.
• Squad intent: squad leaders can set a visible intent from a preset list before others join.
• Server seeding: players who populate empty servers earn rewards and a vendor discount once the match starts.
• Ping limits: official servers now kick players who sustain pings above a regional limit, with initial values described as lenient.

The XP curve: Season 2 rolls levels 10 to 20 back to beta

BULKHEAD says reaching level 20 now takes less than half the playtime it did in Season 1. The published totals back that up, since 111,500 XP is 44.6% of the old 250,000.

We checked every stated percentage against the two columns and all nine reconcile once rounded. The more interesting finding is that beta totals are back at levels 10, 15, and 20, which now read 25,000, 54,750, and 111,500 exactly as in the closed beta.

So the Season 1 slowdown in the 10 to 20 range has effectively been reversed. Above level 20, Season 2 is still steeper than the beta, reaching 1,150,000 at level 50 against the beta’s 838,000.

A discrepancy in the Season 1 baseline

The Season 1 column in these notes does not match the Season 1 changelog from 9 September 2026 above level 20. That changelog listed level 25 at 325,000 and level 50 at 1,000,000, while the Season 2 notes list them at 365,000 and 1,500,000.

We could not find a Steam News post announcing a mid-season XP change, so this is unconfirmed either way. Either the curve was adjusted quietly during Season 1, or one of the two documents is wrong, and the “quicker” percentages from level 25 up depend on which baseline you trust.

Measured against the 9 September figures, Season 2 is actually slower from level 25 onward, with level 50 rising from 1,000,000 to 1,150,000. Levels 10 to 20 are faster under either reading.

What the new curve means in hours

Our Season 1 coverage worked out an implied median earn rate of roughly 10,000 to 12,500 XP per hour from BULKHEAD’s own launch target. At that rate, level 20 in Season 2 lands somewhere around 9 to 11 hours of play.

Treat that as a rough guide rather than a forecast. Logistics base pay and spotting rewards both drop in Season 2, so your real earn rate may be lower than in Season 1.

Unlock moves by track

Most attachments moved earlier or onto new tracks, and several weapons swapped places. Full level gates for every track sit in our WARDOGS career unlocks by level table, which now covers what the notes call the WARDOG track.

WARDOG track

This is the track formerly listed as Career, and two of its big moves tie back to the Season 1 changelog. The Deagle drops from level 85 to 65, and the SPH-2 leaves the track entirely after sitting at level 90.

• New unlocks: Compact P-1 Red Dot at level 21, a Lonestar-only music tape at level 29, and Gold Market access at level 35 for $150k.
• Supply pallets: Mechanical (level 5), Ammo (level 9), and Fuel (level 16) are no longer unlocked by default.
• Judge and GGX 17: swap places, with the Judge now at level 1 for $5k and the GGX 17 at level 18 for $15k.
• GGX 18: level 70 to 85, and $50k to $125k to unlock.
• Level 3 Helmet and Armor: level 60 to 70.
• Kobra Reflex: level 21 to 4.

The SPH-2 is the vehicle our Season 1 article referred to as the Artillery Tank, which moved to WARDOG level 90 at $500k in September. It now sits at Driver level 31 for $350k, which is the single biggest progression shortcut in the patch.

Assault track

Assault is repositioned as the base-attack role. C4 and the Remote Detonator move in at level 4, the Molotov arrives at level 13, and destroying buildables, IEDs, and C4 now pay Assault XP instead of Support.

• AK74: now unlocked by default, with its vendor price halved from $1,600 to $800.
• T-21: now a level 3 unlock for $10k, and its vendor price doubles from $600 to $1,200.
• M4: level 20 to 28, and $100k to $150k, with the TCX-SPR taking its old slot.
• FAL: unlock cost $200k to $250k.

The T-21 and AK74 swap is the one beginners will feel. Our beginner weapon rankings had the T-21 as the best early value in the pre-Early Access build, so recheck it in the WARDOGS database against a $1,200 price and a level 3 gate.

Medic, Recon, and Support tracks

Medic gets the largest reshuffle of any track. The Medical Bag drops from level 24 to 14 and from $75k to $50k, the MP5 moves from level 15 to 4 at $25k, and the Defibrillator moves from level 11 to 22 at $110k.

Recon gains the M14 at level 25 with a full attachment line through level 42, while the Compound Bow doubles to $150k and the BMR-308 drops from level 30 to 20. Support swaps its LMGs, with the PKM moving from level 30 to 15 and the M249 from level 15 to 20.

Pilot and Driver tracks

The Little Bird AH-6M [Miniguns] moves from Pilot level 4 to 8 and its unlock rises from $50k to $125k, because BULKHEAD judged it too strong for how early it arrived. The Havoc unlock goes from $500k to $650k.

Driver gains the most new content. If you are working toward the L2A6, our guide to unlocking the L2A6 Tank fast still applies, but the T-72B3 at level 20 now gives you an earlier tank on the same track.

• Wolf-110: level 8 for $50k.
• Wolf-110 [M2 Browning]: level 16 for $125k.
• T-72B3: level 20 for $250k.
• Flakpanzer Gepard: level 25 for $300k.
• SPH-2: level 31 for $350k, moved from WARDOG level 90.
• Humvee: level 15 to 14, but its unlock rises from $25k to $75k.
• Ural Defender: level 18 to 15.

Cash and XP reward changes

Logistics base pay goes down, but new delivery streaks reward you for repeat runs. Each streak caps at 10 in a row, except player deliveries, which cap at 25.

Spotting rewards fall by around 30% and now scale with target value. Repair XP now feeds Driver or Pilot depending on the vehicle, and Artillery now pays Driver XP instead of Support.

Armed vehicles pay out half their price

Every vehicle variant now has its own destruction reward. Lining those up against the new vendor prices shows a pattern the notes do not spell out: almost every armed vehicle pays exactly half its price when you destroy it.

The Kodiak [M249] is the one near-miss at $3,400 against a $6,750 price. Unarmed transports sit well below the line, with the Wolf-110 paying $450 against a $2,200 price, so hunting armed vehicles is now worth far more than chasing taxis.

Buildable destruction follows a similar rule that BULKHEAD does state. Cash now matches each buildable’s build supply cost, and XP is roughly 25% of that.

Vendor prices that moved

Dozens of prices changed, and the direction is consistent. Vehicles and armor got more expensive, while backpacks, several mid-tier weapons, and most attachments got cheaper.

• L2A6: $14,000 to $22,000.
• Havoc: $18,000 to $28,000.
• Little Bird AH-6M [Miniguns]: $7,000 to $12,000.
• Level 4 Armor and Helmet: $4,000 to $5,000 and $3,000 to $4,500.
• Level 3 Armor and Helmet: $2,000 to $2,500 and $1,500 to $2,000.
• Super-45: $2,600 to $5,600.
• AMR 50: $8,800 to $14,800.
• AK74: $1,600 to $800.
• Ruck Backpack: $2,400 to $1,600.
• Arsenal Backpack + 2 Slings: $5,000 to $4,000.

Every price here is from the 14 October 2026 notes and is subject to future balance passes. Use the WARDOGS comparison tool to put two items side by side, and the loadout builder to reprice a full kit before your first Season 2 match.

Vehicle handling and controller changes

Purchased vehicle inventories are now private to the driver and their squad by default, with a setting to open them once the vehicle is fully unlocked. Free team-spawn vehicles stay open to everyone.

• Tracked vehicles: less floaty in the air and less bouncy on landing.
• Humvee: less stiff over terrain, slower to reach top speed, and better at climbing.
• Dune Buggy: weaker brakes, with slightly more skid and drift.
• Enclosed seats: explosives and placeables can no longer be used from them.
• Spawn vehicle: now takes 2.25x longer to kill with the Vanguard CIWS.

Controller players get an Aim Assist strength slider under Settings, Controller, Advanced, with a default of 1 and 0 turning it off. Several binds moved too, so check our WARDOGS best settings guide before your first match if you play on a gamepad.

Planned, not live at launch

Some of what you will read about Season 2 is not in the build that goes live on 15 October 2026. These items are planned or pending rather than shipped.

• Wager Vendor: not available at launch, opening later in Season 2, and described as coming and going during a season.
• Steam Trading Cards and Point Shop items: being added within Season 2, pending Valve’s approval.
• Mosin optics: other sights are locked until future customization features become available.
• Ping limits: initial values are deliberately lenient and expected to tighten.

The 9 October devlog also said the Wager Vendor may be pulled mid-season if it proves too exploitable. Treat it as experimental rather than a permanent system.

Example scenarios

Example Scenario: You plan to play Support in Season 2 and want an LMG as early as possible. The PKM now unlocks at level 15 for $100k instead of level 30 for $150k, so it becomes your first LMG, with the M249 following at level 20 for $150k.

Example Scenario: You are an Assault player deciding whether to keep wearing Level 4 armor. Against a .308 marksman, it now lets through about 14% less damage than in Season 1, but against 5.56mm and 9mm it lets through about 14% more, and it costs $9,500 for the full set instead of $7,000.

Example Scenario: You run logistics and usually make three or four crate drops before swapping roles. A single large crate drop now pays $500 instead of $1,000, so the new streak bonus only starts to make up the gap if you stay on the job and chain runs together.

Confirmed, derived, and still unknown

Early Access content ages quickly, so this is the split between what BULKHEAD published, what we worked out, and what has not been said.

We will check the Lonestar bonus, streak payouts, and parachute behavior in live matches once Season 2 is up, then update our tables. You can find WARDOGS on the official Steam store page and on Team17’s WARDOGS page, and everything else we cover lives on the WARDOGS hub.

Frequently asked questions

When does WARDOGS Season 2 start

Season 2 goes live on 15 October 2026 after a maintenance window from 08:00 to 09:30 UTC. That is 9:00 to 10:30 AM BST, and BULKHEAD estimates roughly 90 minutes of downtime.

What new weapons are in WARDOGS Season 2

Four guns are added: the TCX-SPR assault rifle, the PP-19 Bizon SMG, the Evo-3 Ultra LMG, and the M14 marksman rifle. The Molotov Cocktail also arrives as a new throwable on the Assault track at level 13.

What new vehicles are in Season 2

The Wolf-110, the Wolf-110 [M2 Browning], the T-72B3 main battle tank, and the Flakpanzer Gepard anti-air vehicle. All four sit on the Driver track between levels 8 and 25.

Is the XP grind faster in Season 2

Levels 10 to 20 are much faster, with level 20 dropping from 250,000 to 111,500 XP. Whether the higher levels are faster depends on which Season 1 baseline you use, because two official posts list different totals above level 20.

Is the Wager Vendor live at the start of Season 2

No. The patch notes say it is not available at launch and will open later in Season 2, and the earlier devlog said it may be removed if it proves too exploitable.

Did armor get nerfed in Season 2

Yes. Level 3 damage reduction drops from 55% to 50% and Level 4 from 65% to 60%, though the caliber cuts mean high-caliber rounds still do less damage against armor than they did in Season 1.

Where did the Artillery Tank go

It appears as the SPH-2, which moves from WARDOG level 90 to Driver level 31. Its unlock cost also drops from $500k to $350k.

Why is Lonestar getting a bonus

BULKHEAD says Lonestar had a notably lower win rate, partly due to uniform visibility and spawn positions. The cash and XP bonus is a Season 2 only experiment, and its exact size has not been published.

Will these numbers change during Season 2

Some almost certainly will. Prices, payouts, and XP curves are the first things a live Early Access game adjusts, so recheck any figure here after the next hotfix.