WARDOGS Season 1 Patch Notes — Launch Build Changelog

What is Season 1?

Season 1 is the build that ships Early Access — the version every player downloads when WARDOGS unlocks worldwide on September 10, 2026 at 16:00 UTC. It went out with the pre-load on September 9, and BULKHEAD published the full official changelog the same day in the Steam news post “Pre-Load Live & Season 1 Changelog”. This page is our summary of that post — every number below comes from it, and the official version remains the source of record.

The short version: Season 1 is a launch-day balance and stabilization pass, not new content. It slows the mid-game XP grind, reprices a cluster of vendor items (mostly upward), moves two heavy vehicles onto new tracks, and fixes a long list of beta-era crashes, voice-chat failures, and server-browser problems. Within five hours of unlock it was followed by Launch Stability Hotfix #1 — a server-side crowd-control patch with no balance changes; every table below stands.

How did the XP curve change?

The role-track XP curve is rebalanced from level 6 upward, with the real weight landing in the 10–20 band and the curve flattening again from level 35 on. The official old-to-new totals per level:

Level	Beta XP	Season 1 XP	Change
6	8,750	9,250	+5.7%
10	25,000	35,000	+40.0%
15	54,750	110,000	+100.9%
20	111,500	250,000	+124.2%
25	192,000	325,000	+69.3%
30	293,750	400,000	+36.2%
35	416,500	500,000	+20.1%
40	551,250	650,000	+17.9%
45	689,500	800,000	+16.0%
50	838,000	1,000,000	+19.3%

Levels below 6 are unchanged. Two XP events were also trimmed: an air-vehicle kill now pays 250 XP (down from 300), and selling a supply-crate item worth under $75 pays 1 XP (down from 25). The supply-crate purchase curve itself was rescaled from a 25–250 band down to 1–200.

Practically, the 10–20 stretch is where players gated the M4 and FAL-class unlocks during the tests — that ladder just got meaningfully longer, while the late-game grind past 35 is comparatively untouched.

What did Season 1 do to prices?

A cluster of vendor items got more expensive, and a handful of vehicles got cheaper. All official old-to-new values:

Item	Beta	Season 1	Track
FOB vendor kit	$2,500	$7,500	—
Large Hammer (vendor)	$1,600	$2,400	—
Artillery Tank	$400,000	$500,000	Career
Recon 6–10× MRAD scope	$25,000	$40,000	Recon
Recon 6–10× MOA scope	$30,000	$45,000	Recon
Support Medium Hammer	$10,000	$25,000	Support
Support Large Hammer	$25,000	$75,000	Support
Pilot small armoured supply crate	$5,000	$10,000	Pilot
Pilot Little Bird w/ miniguns	$25,000	$50,000	Pilot
Pilot Z20 Lakota	$50,000	$35,000	Pilot
Driver URAL	$50,000	$35,000	Driver
Driver Dune Buggy	$35,000	$25,000	Driver
Driver Kodiak Flatbed	$15,000	$35,000	Driver
Driver Music Tape H	$5,000	$2,500	Driver

No weapon prices were itemized in the changelog — the raises hit deployables, tools, scopes, and vehicles. One reading note on the vehicle rows: those figures are the one-time unlock costs, not the per-life prices, which run from $500 (Bobcat) to $18,000 (Havoc) per the community catalogue. The standout for squad play is the FOB kit tripling, which changes the budget math for building versus reinforcing; the standout bargain is the Z20 Lakota, cut by $15,000 in the same build that gave it a balance pass.

Which unlocks moved?

The changelog prices and gates gear by six named tracks — Career, Recon, Support, Medic, Pilot, and Driver — which is the first time all six have appeared in an official document. The gate changes:

Item	Before	After
Heavy Tank	Career 35	Driver 35
Artillery Tank	Career 55	Career 90
Music Tape H	Pilot 28	Driver 23
Deagle	Career 90	Career 85
Sports Parachute	Career 36	Career 35
Large Backpack	Career 56	Career 55
7.62×54mm AP	Career 83	Career 82
5.56mm AP	Career 85	Career 83
PP-19 50-round drum	Medic 33	Medic 29
Support Large Hammer	Support 7	Support 8
URAL	Driver 4	Driver 3
Kodiak Assault	Driver 8	Driver 6
Dune Buggy	Driver 10	Driver 8
Kodiak Flatbed	Driver 2	Driver 10
URAL Covered	Driver 30	Driver 18
URAL Attack	Driver 40	Driver 25
Humvee w/ minigun	Driver 35	Driver 30

The two structural moves: heavy armor now comes through the Driver track instead of Career, and the artillery gate nearly doubled. The Galil-10 / M4-20 / FAL-35 weapon gates from the alpha were not listed as changed. The affected machines are on the vehicles roster.

What changed for vehicles?

Beyond the prices and gates above, Season 1 ships a vehicle balance pass:

• Z20 Lakota — balance pass plus a fix for sluggish pitch input; the chase-camera rotation rattle drops by 6 dB.
• Vehicle turrets now have a maximum operator rotation speed.
• 155mm, 122mm, and flare deployables take more loadout room.
• Tank aiming — fixed a DPI-dependent aiming issue.

What got fixed?

The stabilization list, grouped:

• Voice chat — fixed the failure mode where voice cut out permanently after a failed join (stale channel rejoins, push-to-talk targeting, and re-logging all recover now), improved reliability under load, and added a visible communication-status indicator.
• Server browser — filtering reworked, community-server image scaling fixed, and a “Host a server” button now links straight to the hosting page.
• Crashes — two crash paths in the frame-generation pipeline fixed, plus crashes involving network calls scheduled off the game thread, closing a chatbox entry tooltip, buildables, and firing a weapon whose owner had left.
• Performance — DLSS Frame Generation can now be turned off without restarting, the render-target pool is configurable, shadow-cache refreshes are reduced (less hitching on character takeover), shadow quality clamps to Low instead of turning off on struggling machines, and GPU crash reports carry more detail.
• Startup — improved reliability with clearer failure messages and a recovery route.
• Exploit — fixed a route to an unintended spot on a church roof — the first officially named landmark on the Kolchia map.

How does reporting work now?

Season 1 adds a weighted report-tracking system — repeat or bad-faith reporters carry less influence over outcomes — and announces cheater bans in-server when match termination is off. The kicked message now only appears if you were actually banned.

This is the system side of the developer’s launch-week anti-cheat stance: their “The 11th Reason NOT to Buy WARDOGS” post (September 8) argues the strongest protection is community servers with active admins, who can instantly ban bad actors. Community-server hosting went on sale before launch through three approved partners — QONZER, BisectHosting, and xREALM — and the ten reasons page carries the full honest-purchase framing, including the new eleventh reason.

Where do I read the official notes?

The canonical source is BULKHEAD’s Steam news post — “Pre-Load Live & Season 1 Changelog”, published September 9, 2026 — and the Steam news hub for everything that follows. This page summarizes rather than reprints, and every future season and hotfix gets the same treatment here as EA progresses: what changed, by how much, and which of our guides moved because of it.