Hero image: WARDOGS. Image: BULKHEAD
WARDOGS Season 2 arrives on 15 October, and Bulkhead has laid out most of it in a Season 02 preview devlog posted early this morning, Australian time.
It isn’t the full patch notes — those, with every balance change, are due early next week alongside the Season 2 trailer — but it covers the new kit, an experimental betting system and a deliberate attempt to fix one faction’s reputation.
The devlog also says the game is at “3+ million sales and counting”. That’s up from the two million the studio was celebrating in September.
New weapons, vehicles and weather
Four guns join the sandbox: the TCX Spear assault rifle, the M14 DMR, the PP-19 Bizon SMG and the Evo-3 Ultra LMG, with new attachments to go with them. There’s also a Molotov, which Bulkhead says is meant for damage and area denial.
The vehicle list grows by four, starting with the Wolf-110, a fast, light wheeled transport, and an Assault version that carries a ring-mounted M2 Browning. The T-72 tank is described as “Slower than the Leopard, but cheaper and far more fuel-efficient”, and the Flakpanzer Gepard is an anti-air vehicle.
Three buildables arrive too — an MG Nest, a Large Shelter and a Wooden Step, which the devlog describes, in full, as “A step. Made of wood.”
A new rain preset changes visibility, engagement ranges and sound, and because thunder is synchronised across the server, it can briefly mask footsteps mid-fight.
The Wager Vendor
The most unusual addition is the Wager Vendor. Players pick objectives, set how many deaths they’re willing to spend completing them, then put up a stake, and stacking more objectives lengthens the odds and raises the payout.
Bulkhead is upfront that it’s an optional first pass — the devlog says the studio “may well pull it from the game during the season if it turns out to be too exploitable”.
The Lonestar experiment
The section that will draw the most argument is faction balance. Bulkhead says one team has had “a notoriously lower win rate than the other two”, and after looking at the data, it says sentiment around the blue team is the biggest reason players don’t want to play on it.
So Season 2 is, in the studio’s words, a “social experiment”. Every faction’s spawns have moved on Bakurani, Lonestar’s uniforms are more desaturated, and Lonestar gets a cash and XP win bonus and multipliers for Season 2 only. Any team at least 40 points behind second place also gets 20% off at vendors. Community server hosts caught exploiting the faction bonus will be punished.
Smaller changes include batteries for the Infrared Rangefinder, and a Super Heavy Helmet that now muffles audio, narrows your view and fogs up when you sprint.
The game is in Early Access on Steam in Australia at A$54.95. Bulkhead has already taken servers down at short notice to deal with exploits, so the Wager Vendor’s first week will be worth watching.
Source: WARDOGS (Steam) – WARDOGS | Season 02 Preview, Steam – WARDOGS