WARDOGS Weapons Guide: Bushmaster M17S and 6 Gun Types

WARDOGS puts every weapon behind a vendor and a price tag instead of handing you a loadout menu. There is no unlocking a gun and switching to it for free whenever you feel like it — you spend cash you actually own, and if you die with it equipped, that money is gone. Every weapon costs real cash pulled from a balance that follows you between matches, so the best gun is whichever one you can still afford after your last three deaths. That single mechanic is the whole reason a new player who just opened the vendor sees an empty inventory instead of a starter kit.

Developer BULKHEAD has publicly grouped the arsenal into six categories — assault rifles, SMGs, LMGs, sniper rifles, sidearms and launchers. That is the framing you will see repeated in trailers and marketing, and it lines up with the six the brief for this guide names. What actually sits inside the vendor is a little messier — more on that below.

There’s no crafting bench, no loot drop and no battle-pass unlock here — the only door into the arsenal is the vendor, and the only currency it accepts is your persistent cash balance. You get a starting cash sum once per account rather than once per match, it carries between matches, and you buy a kit before each life so your role is decided by what you can afford at that moment. That single detail is what makes the vendor feel less like an equipment menu and more like a budget you’re managing across an entire play session.

The one universal exception is the Bushmaster M17S. The Bushmaster M17S is the one genuine freebie, a $0 starter rifle for new Lonestar recruits, and everyone below level 9 gets a blanket 50 percent discount on the rest of the shop. Below level 9, the shop discount softens the blow of your first few purchases; above it, you’re paying full list price for everything that isn’t the Bushmaster. Beyond that starter rifle, most of the roster sits behind two separate gates rather than one: a class or account level that makes the weapon available to buy, and a cash price that actually buys it. Reaching the level makes a weapon available, and the unlock price is what actually buys it — both have to be satisfied, hitting the level alone doesn’t hand you the weapon. Sidearms follow their own track: pistols are the only category gated on plain account level rather than a class, running from Judge at level 18 up to Deagle at level 90.

The honest cost of chasing the full arsenal is a progression cost, not a cash cost: the pistol line alone runs from account level 18 up to level 90, and since WARDOGS hasn’t shipped yet, nobody outside a closed test has a real hours-per-level figure to hang on that climb. Treat any specific hour estimate you see right now as a guess until Early Access data exists — the honest answer is that reaching the top sidearm is a long-term goal, not a first-weekend one.

The beta number: 33

The alpha roster recorded 33 weapons, and that figure comes from testing where only one faction was playable, so faction-gated vendor stock is still possible beyond that count. Anyone quoting a full weapons list right now is quoting a snapshot, not the finished game.

The Early Access promise: 37

Bulkhead has stated 37 weapons are confirmed for Early Access, up from the 33 recorded during testing. That gap is most likely new additions plus whatever the other two factions add once they’re playable, but BULKHEAD hasn’t broken down exactly which four guns are new.

What this means for a weapon list

Any weapon list published before September 10 — including names, categories and prices — should be read as a work-in-progress. The Steam page itself frames Early Access as a starting point rather than a finished economy: BULKHEAD plans deeper progression systems and broader gameplay additions including expanded weapon categories throughout Early Access. For the wider cash system that decides what you can afford in the first place, the WARDOGS money guide covers how that balance is actually earned.

What actually pays off early

Sticking with the free Bushmaster M17S longer than feels natural is the single cheapest decision available. It trades a little precision and handling for a lower price and rugged reliability, and it’s the weapon new players can afford without risking their whole bankroll. A cheap sidearm as a backup slot is the next sensible spend, since it covers you when your primary runs dry without eating a large chunk of your balance.

What people buy early and regret

Dropping most of your starting balance on one expensive rifle the moment it unlocks is the classic mistake, because a bad death immediately after leaves you back at the vendor with nothing to buy. The two-gate system makes this worse for anything class-locked: you can save the cash for a weapon and still not be able to buy it if your class level hasn’t caught up, so spreading cash across multiple classes early tends to delay every unlock rather than speeding any of them up.

Myth: the free rifle is just a placeholder

The Bushmaster M17S isn’t a tutorial weapon you’re meant to abandon the second you have cash. One community damage model built from Alpha figures had the Bushmaster ranking above several paid rifles on raw time-to-kill, with the caveat that it can’t take attachments the way paid rifles can — so it’s a genuinely competitive early gun, not a placeholder, just an inflexible one.

Myth: the six categories are the full picture

BULKHEAD’s own six-category framing — assault rifles, SMGs, LMGs, snipers, sidearms, launchers — isn’t how the actual vendor sorted its stock in testing. The alpha vendor’s primary-weapon tabs ran assault rifle, SMG, shotgun, LMG, marksman rifle, sniper and bows — seven tabs — with sidearms living as their own equipment slot and launchers having no dedicated tab at all. If you’re hunting for a shotgun or a bow in a menu labeled by the marketing six, that’s why you won’t find one.

Myth: expensive always beats cheap

In a system where the wrong purchase can leave you broke for your next three spawns, a weapon’s raw stats matter less than whether you can actually afford to keep using it after a death. A mid-cost gun you can rebuy consistently beats a top-tier one you can only afford once. The full picture of how that persistent balance gets built up in the first place is covered in the game’s broader core loop breakdown.