WARDOGS Vehicles: Helicopters, Heavy Tank and Artillery

Updated 8 October 2026 with Update 0.1.2 and the 2 October hotfix (Havoc, CIWS, IR Rangefinders). Rewritten 29 September 2026. Rewritten against BULKHEAD’s Early Access posts: the Season 1 changelog of 9 September 2026 for levels, track prices and XP, the Patch 0.11 notes of 12 September for the rules on XP farming, and the Season 02 teaser of 22 September for the next change of item order. Pre-release test-build figures are gone.

WARDOGS gates its vehicles behind three separate ladders: the Driver and Pilot role tracks and the account-wide Career level. This guide covers which ladder owns which seat, how much XP and cash each unlock takes in Season 1, what BULKHEAD has said about helicopters and tanks, and what it hasn’t published yet.

WARDOGS is a 100-player combined-arms shooter from developer BULKHEAD, published by Team17, where three teams fight over a moving Control Zone on a large map. Vehicles aren’t handed out through one universal rank: the three-team Control Zone format is backed by separate unlock ladders, two of them role tracks (Driver and Pilot) and one the account-wide Career level.

These are full progression tracks with real unlock ladders, not cosmetic titles — a maxed-out Driver level buys nothing in the air, and vice versa. Career — the account-wide level our catalogue calls Wardog level — is the third ladder, and BULKHEAD has not published how it relates to the role tracks: the Season 1 changelog gives Career unlock levels (Deagle 85, Artillery Tank 90) and a role-track XP curve, and no formula joining them. Any claim that Career is the sum of the tracks, or that driving does or does not raise it, is unverified either way.

The Career row is the one that trips people up. Driver and Pilot are role tracks with their own unlock lists in the Season 1 changelog. Career is the account-wide level (“Wardog level” in our catalogue): the changelog puts the Deagle at Career 85 and the Artillery Tank at Career 90, and says nothing about how Career XP is earned or whether it derives from the tracks. Formulas you will see elsewhere — “Career is the sum of six role levels”, “vehicles do not raise it” — are not from BULKHEAD, and we do not repeat them. What matters for armour: the Heavy Tank is a Driver unlock (Driver 35) since Season 1, so the Driver track is the one to level; only the Artillery Tank sits on Career.

BULKHEAD’s store page sets the base rules: every player starts with $10,000, each life you buy a loadout from weapons, gear, utility and vehicles, and cash carries over from match to match. On top of that, each vehicle sits behind a level on its track. The Season 1 changelog lists vehicle prices under the track name (“Driver, URAL”, “Career, Artillery Tank”), separately from vendor prices. We read those as the price of the unlock; the changelog doesn’t spell that out, and the unlock screen in game settles it.

BULKHEAD hasn’t published a complete vehicle list for Early Access. The table below holds the 11 vehicles its Season 1 changelog names, with the level, XP and price where the changelog gives them; any other vehicle stays out of this guide until an official post lists it. BULKHEAD says it rebuilt the Driver ladder “to give a satisfying escalation through attack vehicles”: it now runs from the URAL at level 3 to the Heavy Tank at level 35.

Driver and Pilot are separate tracks with separate unlock lists, so time split between them moves each one more slowly; where Career fits is not published. BULKHEAD’s own numbers give the scale. It slowed levels 10 to 20 in Season 1 and expects its median player to be around level 20 after 20 to 25 hours, while “those wanting the big ticket items, the top 5%, will need to grind”. Level 20 on the role-track curve is 250,000 XP; the Heavy Tank at Driver 35 is 500,000. The full curve is in our WARDOGS Season 1 XP curve breakdown.

The launch-weekend stats in BULKHEAD’s 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD post (15 September 2026) put Pilot at 9% and Driver at 11% of all role XP earned, against 19 to 21% each for Infantry, Medic, Recon and Support.

Helicopters: What BULKHEAD Has Published About Flying

Flying starts on the Pilot track. The Season 1 changelog names two Pilot aircraft, the Little Bird with miniguns and the Z20 Lakota, without their Pilot levels; BULKHEAD’s Supporter Edition list calls the Little Bird a helicopter. The store page gives helicopters a logistics job, “ferry supplies to teammates by helicopter”, and lists transporting friendlies to the zone among the teamplay actions that earn cash.

On handling, the official record is short. BULKHEAD promised “real-world ballistics, audio and flight models” (May 2026), and the Season 1 changelog gave the Z20 Lakota a balance pass and a fix for sluggish pitch, applied helicopter input damping to every input device and cut the Lakota’s chase-camera rattle. No BULKHEAD post lists flight controls or key bindings, so use the controls menu in game rather than a third-party key list.

Heavy Tank and Artillery Tank

The Heavy Tank moved from Career 35 to Driver 35 in Season 1, and the Artillery Tank from Career 55 to Career 90, the highest vehicle gate in the changelog. For crews, the changelog sets a maximum operator rotation speed for vehicle turrets and fixes a DPI issue affecting tank aiming. How many seats each tank has isn’t in BULKHEAD’s posts.

Two posts since the Season 1 changelog change how air and anti-air play out. Update 0.1.2 (30 September 2026) and the IR Goggles & CIWS Balance Hotfix (2 October 2026) list these vehicle changes:

• Havoc: 0.1.2 fixed a bug that made the Havoc take increased damage from 20mm and 30mm cannon fire.
• CIWS: since the 2 October hotfix it destroys the Havoc in around 6 seconds instead of 12. BULKHEAD says it overcorrected this in the previous patch.
• IR Rangefinders: disabled in the vendor until Season 02, where they will require batteries. BULKHEAD agreed with players that they were too overpowered.
• Vehicle fly-through exploit: fixed in 0.1.2, and its rewards are now capped.
• Throwables: grenades, smoke and C4 can no longer be used from enclosed vehicle seats.

The Havoc is not among the 11 vehicles in the Season 1 changelog: BULKHEAD names it only in these patch notes, so its track, level and price are not published. Neither post lists a vehicle change for Season 02 beyond the IR Rangefinders.

Myth: Hitting the Level Gives You the Vehicle

This is the most common misreading. Leveling Driver, Pilot or Career only opens the purchase: the vehicle is still bought with cash, and the store page says loadouts, vehicles included, are bought each life. Check the WARDOGS money guide for how that cash economy works match to match.

Myth: XP-Farm Servers Are a Shortcut to Pilot or Driver Levels

Patch 0.11 puts XP farming at the top of its penalties: BULKHEAD says it tracks every server a player enters and bans the account permanently after more than a few minutes on a known XP-farming server. Abusing cash exploits brings a timed ban and resets cash and XP to 0. Our Patch 0.11 breakdown has the full list.

Myth: One Level Track Covers Everything

Driver and Pilot are separate role tracks with separate unlock lists — time spent driving trucks does not move your Pilot level. How the account-wide Career level accrues relative to those tracks is not published, so neither “driving raises Career” nor “driving does nothing for Career” is a claim we can back.

Sources and Confidence

Where each claim comes from, and how far to trust it.