Season 2 press conference: what BULKHEAD actually said

An hour of answers before the patch notes

Most studios drop their patch notes and leave the community to argue about them. BULKHEAD put the notes in front of a room that was, by their own count, nearly half streamers, and let them ask. It is billed as a pilot for a format they may keep, alongside trailers, vlogs, a podcast in progress and developer accounts on X. It is loose, it swears, and at one point someone reminds the panel that it is not a teleprompter, which rather suits it. It is also the most useful hour of WARDOGS information since launch.

Four new guns, on calibres you already carry

Season 2 adds the TCX Spear assault rifle, the M14 as a recon DMR with more attachment options, the PP-19 Bizon SMG and the Evo-3 Ultra LMG, which the team describes as an assault rifle with a hundred rounds. The brief was to get more use out of calibres already in the game rather than add new ammunition, which is good news for anyone who has to buy it. The Bizon is there because SMGs have been underused. For armoured opponents the developers advise hollow points and aiming for the legs, a habit that comes naturally to nobody arriving from Battlefield. One more change is worth knowing before you spend: the Mosin is locked to its original PU scope at 3.5x. "There's not going to be a six times on the Mosin anymore." Plan your recon loadout accordingly. The rest of the list was read off the patch notes on stream: a Molotov, a rangefinder update, helmet updates, three new buildables for those of us who play to build, and a wager vendor that will "do interesting things for the economy". Do not plan on Molotovs for armour, though. Asked about damage to vehicles, the team said "it's not high"; they are meant for clearing buildings.

Ammo types guide → Weapons and loadouts guide →

Rain changes the read, not just the look

The new rain preset is the headline. Windows fog, view distance drops and thunder masks footsteps, so a loud stretch of weather is a good time to move without being heard. Blow the roof off a building and the people inside are now standing in the rain. The stated aim is "changing your behaviors, your decision-making, how you handle situations", and players who have tested it say they lose their sense of where they are. Rain is fixed for the whole match, and that is a performance decision rather than a design one: the team wants dynamic weather, but a console release means working within the Xbox Series S. Snow is not coming just to look different either, since each new weather type has to add something mechanical, the way rain needed changes to glass. For Wing Mait players: the build reads the minimap and the map, which sit on the HUD rather than in the world, so rain should not change what it sees. We have not tested that on the Season 2 build yet; we will play the rain preset as soon as it is live and report back here.

Team switching now costs you the map

This one matters to anyone who has ever hopped to the winning side. You can still swap freely at the start of a match, but once a team is more than 10 points ahead, a swap locks you onto your new side for 15 minutes. And whether you switch or simply join a match already in progress, your tactical map stays obscured and the spawn vehicle stays unavailable until you reach the control zone for the first time. The target is griefing: players who swapped sides, spawned on the enemy spawn vehicle, knocked out its radar and drove it into the middle of nowhere, or opened the map and read enemy positions out to friends on Discord. Worth knowing if you run Wing Mait: until you reach the zone, the game shows no map, so there is nothing on screen for any tool to read, ours included. Pick your side early, or head for the zone first. Stream sniping came up in the same breath. The team called it painful to watch, has tightened what the server browser gives away, and has player blocking on the list at lower priority. They were also honest that in a server browser game some of it will always get through.

Wing Mait for WARDOGS →

Blue team: "a small crack made massive"

The blue team answer was the most candid part of the hour. When the Discord opened, most players picked blue; by day three of the alpha, blue was empty and the other two were full. Part of that was real: Bakarani, the first map, leans towards green, with blue funnelled into the bottom of a T-shaped zone while green and red split the rest. Green wins the most; red gets the most kills. The rest was social momentum, as experienced players worked it out, switched, and left blue with a reputation. The fix is new spawns carved into the mountains, which puts more of them at altitude and changes how you leave and come back, plus a cash and XP bonus for playing blue. Random team assignment was rejected because they want factions to keep their identity, and they are open about not chasing perfect balance.

Squad intent, and the solo player

Queueing with friends is still a long way off, but Season 2 adds squad intent. From the pause menu you can tag an open squad as builders, FOB attackers, noob friendly and more, so strangers can see what they are joining before they join. If you play solo, that is the easiest way into a squad that wants what you want. And if you would rather stay solo, that is the situation we built Wing Mait for: the squadmate who calls what is on the minimap when nobody on comms is talking.

WARDOGS base builder → Mortar calculator →

Emergent play, up to a line

The team is happy to leave unintended tactics in, until they force everyone else into a playstyle. Launchers off the side of helicopters were the example: first RPGs, then MMGL fire off the side of Little Birds. Rather than removing it, they added sway and slowed the rounds down. "We don't want everything to be perfect, but there is a line." The same thinking explains the infrared scopes, removed for now because they compromised the core of the game, and the refusal of a commander mode. WARDOGS stays a flat structure where everyone chimes in, somewhere between Battlefield and a milsim.

Progression: your XP is banked

The current XP unlock system is a stopgap, and the team said so. A Skills system is coming in a future season, and "all of the XP that you're earning right now will get banked" and carried into it. Intel will then replace XP as the main driver for unlocking weapons, equipment and vehicles, at a rate the team can predict and balance. Nothing you grind in Early Access is wasted.

Vehicle damage: "we just suck at it"

Asked whether the Havoc is overpowered after an RPG to the rotors seemed to do nothing, the team explained that it is meant to be a flying tank: bigger, slower, heavier and more armoured than the other helicopters. The real problem, in their words, is feedback. Vehicles have high intensity damage zones, so where you hit a tank or a helicopter matters, but the game does not tell you. Better damage cues are on the list.

Cheats, bans and appeals

On cheating, the team named graphics and peripheral tools that hand out advantages, and described ban appeals that fall apart on inspection. One player who swore he ran nothing admitted to a team-switch auto clicker, and the telemetry turned up more scripts on top. If you have been banned, expect the data to be checked.

Six weeks, give or take

The team is targeting 6-week seasons, and reserves "the rights to change our mind". Season 2 grew beyond the original plan because more people are playing than expected, and the long-term plan is to rotate weapons in and out each season rather than keep growing the list.

The ask: leave a review

The hour ended on a request we have not heard a studio make this plainly. WARDOGS has sold three million copies and has around 70,000 reviews, and reviews are what BULKHEAD takes to investors to fund the next stretch of development. They asked for honest ones, negative included, and if you play the game it is worth the minute.

The numbers: Season 2 patch notes preview

The panel kept to the big picture, but the patch notes shared with creators ahead of release carry the hard numbers. BigfryTV read through them on 9 October, and we list the ones that change how you spend and fight. These are preview figures from before BULKHEAD's final balance pass, so treat them as likely rather than final until the official notes land on the 15th. Building gets expensive. A Bremer wall goes from 15 to 32 supplies, a door from 22 to 250, a gate from 85 to 500, and mortar and radio tower emplacements from 150 to 800. The hot zone magnet rises from 2,250 to 2,750, hammers build more slowly, and the drill rig needs 2,000 fuel to start instead of 1,500 and runs for 300 seconds instead of 375. Mortar ammunition costs twice as much to restock and a new loading animation slows the rate of fire, while the Talon reloads in 5 seconds instead of 2 and costs four times as much to restock. The three new buildables are a wooden step, a large metal shelter and a manned M2 Browning nest, and Bremer walls now take barbed wire and sandbags on top. Big calibres lose damage. The .308 Winchester drops 25%, 7.62x54mmR 20%, 7.62x39 19% and .50 cal 16%, with extra hit-location damage so sniper rifles keep their role. LMG body damage now matches assault rifles, and the scout rifle one-shots a head with no helmet or a level 1 helmet. Level 4 armour and helmets stop 60% of damage instead of 65%. Suppression from near misses gets much stronger, heavy helmets cut it by 30% and super heavy helmets by 60%, and super heavy helmets now muffle your hearing, narrow your view and fog up when you sprint. Prices move both ways. The Leopard goes from 14,000 to 22,000, the Havoc from 18,000 to 28,000 and the super heavy helmet from 3,000 to 4,500, while the AK-74M halves from 1,600 to 800 and the PKM, large backpacks and sling bags get cheaper. A faction 40 or more points behind second place gets a 20% vendor discount, and FOB kills, door breaches, hacks and logistics runs now pay cash and XP, with streak bonuses for repeated deliveries. Unlocks shuffle. The AK-74M and the Bizon become defaults, the TCX Spear arrives at level 20 while the M4 moves from 20 to 28, the M14 lands at recon level 25 and the RFB drops from 30 to 20, the Evo-3 Ultra sits at support level 30 and the PKM drops from 30 to 15. The new vehicles are the Wolf 110 (with an M2 assault variant), the T-72 and the Flakpanzer Gepard, on the driver track from level 8 to level 25. The wager vendor works like this: you stake your own cash on a goal, such as 15 kills, add conditions to raise the payout, and lose the stake if you break one. A live tracker sits above your minimap while the wager runs.

What we still do not know

The official patch notes are still to come, so treat every number on this page as a preview. The full price list, the rest of the unlock changes, the Skills season and how the wager vendor settles in practice are all open, and we will update this guide when the notes land on the 15th; our Wing Mait results on the rain preset will go here too.