WARDOGS Season 1 XP Curve: Level 10 – 20 Changes Explained

WARDOGS Season 1 made levels 10 through 20 cost noticeably more XP than they did in the beta, while the increases past level 35 are far smaller — a deliberate rebalance BULKHEAD spelled out, with numbers, in the Pre-Load Live & Season 1 Changelog posted the night before Early Access launched on 10 September 2026. This guide lays out the studio’s own XP Bands table in full, points at the two levels where the curve actually bites, and covers what the two related XP Events changes mean if you were farming crate sales for easy levels.

The studio didn’t dress this up. “Looking at the data we have decided to slow levels down around 10 to 20, and flatten the curve from 35 onward.” That’s the entire rationale, straight from the changelog, and it’s followed immediately by a number that matters more than the patch notes themselves: “This means our median players, at 20 to 25 hours, will be around level 20, and those wanting the big ticket items, the top 5%, will need to grind.”

Two unlock moves rode along with the curve change. The Artillery Tank moved to Career level 90 (from 55), and the Heavy Tank moved from Career 35 to Driver 35 — a change of track at the same number, so read it as a relocation, not as a longer grind: Career and Driver are different ladders and the changelog does not compare their pace. Keep the two ladders apart, though: the XP table below is the role-track curve, and BULKHEAD has published no XP figures for Career levels.

BULKHEAD published the bands as cumulative XP required at a set of checkpoint levels — 6, 10, 15 and then every five levels to 50 — old figure to new figure, with its own percentage label on each row. Two things to keep in mind while reading it. The right-hand figures are cumulative totals, not per-level costs: level 50 needs a million XP from the start of the track, not a million for that one level alone. And the studio’s “% slower” label is the increase in XP required, not a measured change in play time — how much longer a level actually takes depends on how fast you earn XP, which the changelog does not quantify.

This is the role track curve — the tracks BULKHEAD names (Medic, Support, Recon, Driver, Pilot — Assault per outside trackers) each run their own copy of this ladder, published to level 50; that is the last row printed, not a stated cap. It is not the Career ladder — where items like the Deagle, AP ammo and the Sports Parachute unlock — and the studio has published no XP figures for that ladder.

Every band from 6 upward got more expensive, but two of them stand well above the rest. Level 15 moved from 54,750 to 110,000 cumulative XP, and level 20 from 111,500 to 250,000 — the largest percentage increase anywhere on the table. Put the two together and the stretch from 15 to 20 alone now costs 140,000 XP, more than the entire beta track to level 20 (111,500) used to. Nothing else on the ladder, including the top-end bands past 35, comes close to that pair.

That is where the studio’s median-player estimate lives. “20 to 25 hours to around level 20” is not a vague guess about the whole game — it is BULKHEAD’s own number for getting through the newly steepened teens and over the level-20 step on a role track. Anything past that is an open-ended grind rather than a fixed number: the changelog gives no hours figure for the upper bands.

This is the other half of the studio’s stated goal, and the table backs it up. From level 35 up, the increases sit in a narrow band: 20.0% at 35, 17.9% at 40, 16.0% at 45 and 19.3% at 50. They do not shrink on every step — level 50 ticks back up — but every one of them is a fraction of the 100 – 124% seen at 15 and 20. That is what “flatten the curve from 35 onward” means in practice: the extra XP keeps coming, but at a steady 16 – 20% on top of the beta figure rather than doubling it.

Alongside the level bands, two smaller per-action XP values changed, and both point at the same kind of behavior BULKHEAD wanted to discourage.

Air Vehicle Kills Pay Less

Player kill using an air vehicle: 300 XP to 250 XP. A flat cut with no percentage attached in the source, just the two raw numbers.

Selling Cheap Crate Loot Barely Pays Anymore

Supply crate item sold under $75: 25 XP to 1 XP. That’s not a trim, it’s close to a removal — anyone who was clearing out low-value crate drops for a quick trickle of XP on the side loses almost all of that income at once. Combined with the loadout buy order economy changes in the same patch — vendor prices went up across several categories including the Forward Operating Base and Large Hammer — the changelog is nudging players away from treating crate junk as a leveling shortcut and back toward earning XP through actual matches.

The changelog is explicit that none of this is meant to be permanent: “Previously our balancing was designed specifically for weekend long beta tests. Now they will be in-line with where we believe they should be. Each season we will have a different XP curve with different item orders.” Read plainly, that means the exact table above — the 250,000 XP needed for level 20, the 1,000,000 for level 50, the item unlock levels tied to each track — is a Season 1 artifact. A leveling plan built around these numbers has a shelf life of one season, not one game. Whatever ships as the next season’s changelog is likely to reset the math, possibly the item order too, which is worth keeping in mind before treating any single band as a long-term target.

Below level 6, nothing about your grind changed; 6 to 10 is a mild step (5.7% more XP at 6, 40% at 10). Past level 10, budget for a genuinely different pace: level 15 and level 20 both need more than double their old XP, and that stretch is where the studio’s 20-to-25-hour median estimate actually lives. Past level 35 the increases settle into a 16 – 20% band, which is the flattening BULKHEAD describes. If your target is one of the relocated unlocks — Artillery now sitting at Career 90, Heavy Tank at Driver 35 — the Artillery Tank is a longer-term goal than it was in the beta (Career 55 → 90); the Heavy Tank changed ladder rather than distance, and in the studio’s own words the top 5% chasing big-ticket items will need to grind.

Sources and Confidence

This table separates what the studio has confirmed from what comes out of press previews, and what is still just circulating. Every link below was fetched before publishing.