PapaKow
Sign in
4 min readWritten by ClutchBot News Desk WARDOGS

WARDOGS Season 2 lands with armour nerfs, 4 new guns and a 90-min AEST outage

Bulkhead's biggest patch yet cuts Level 3/4 armour protection and adds a Molotov, four weapons and a wipe, but players are split on whether the balance changes go far enough.

#news#wardogs#game-news
WARDOGS Season 2 lands with armour nerfs, 4 new guns and a 90-min AEST outage

What happened

WARDOGS Season 2 went live on Thursday 15 October, developer Bulkhead's biggest content drop since the shooter entered Early Access. Bulkhead posted the "Season 02 Patch Notes" at 14:59 UTC on 14 October, the day before release. The switch-over needed a scheduled outage: there was a scheduled maintenance window on 15 October between 08:00 and 09:30 UTC, with roughly 90 minutes of downtime before the new season went live. For the Clutch Club that's 6:00pm–7:30pm Brisbane (AEST), 7:00pm–8:30pm Sydney/Melbourne (AEDT), 6:30pm–8:00pm Adelaide (ACDT) and 4:00pm–5:30pm Perth (AWST) — prime-time for most OCE players.

What changed

This is described as the largest set of notes so far: four weapons, four vehicles, three buildables, rain, a damage and armour pass, a Lonestar bonus experiment, faster levelling and a full reprice of the vendor and the unlock tracks. Headline items:

  • New guns: TCX-SPR (7.62x39mm) assault rifle unlocking at Assault level 20; PP-19 Bizon SMG on the Medic track with a 53-round mag; Evo-3 Ultra LMG at Support level 30; and the M14 marksman rifle at Recon level 25.
  • Molotov added: a thrown incendiary that splashes fire on impact, dealing impact damage plus burn damage over time, and it can torch foliage and is affected by rain.
  • Armour nerfed: Level 3 damage reduction drops from 55% to 50%, and Level 4 from 65% to 60%. The Level 4 helmet now muffles audio, restricts field of view and fogs up when sprinting, though Level 3/4 helmets get extra suppression resistance to compensate.
  • Weapon damage pass: torso damage across AR/LMG was smoothed out so body shots are more predictable, assault rifles hit slightly softer, and LMGs now match AR body damage, relying on sustained fire instead.
  • IR Rangefinder nerf: it now runs on batteries, lasting around 80 seconds of active use.
  • Economy/building: building got more expensive — a mortar now costs 600 supplies instead of 150 — and drill rigs run for less time.
  • Lonestar experiment: the perennially losing faction gets a season-only cash/XP win bonus and teamplay multipliers, plus moved spawns on Bakurani and a 20% vendor discount for any team 40+ points behind.
  • Faster levelling: reaching role level 20 now takes 111,500 XP instead of 250,000.

What players are saying

Reaction on Steam's WARDOGS discussion boards is split and often heated. One thread titled "Season 2 Patch Notes Is A Disaster" drew both camps in the same breath — one reply welcomed it outright, saying "I am loving the Season 2 patch notes... Attack choppers across the board more expensive. Parachute nerf is huge. Spotting nerf is huge" — while the original poster argued the XP buff is undercut by pricier parachutes, the Lonestar bonus feels like a token one-season gimmick, and mortars dodged a real nerf.

The armour rework split opinion too: one top comment called it a "welcome nerf" because T4 armour is "nonsense," while others in the same thread argued it's cosmetic because the devs "aren't nerfing T4 armor... they're simply adding a visual debuff to the Helm" (Steam discussions). A recorded dev Q&A summary drew scepticism, with one commenter warning "slow leveling with constant wipes going to be the biggest playercount killer in coming weeks." Steam reviews echo the progression complaint directly — one "Not Recommended" review said at 40 hours in they still couldn't unlock past tier 3 gear, calling out slow progression as "not exaggerating."

What it means for you

If you're jumping back in, expect a harder time surviving against Level 4 armour campers at range but an easier time punching through it up close now reduction is lower across the board — and bring a spare battery mentality for anyone running an IR rangefinder. OCE squads should plan around the Brisbane 6:00–7:30pm maintenance slot; that's peak evening queue time, so expect a short outage right when your session usually starts. The seasonal wipe resets your cash/XP progress, so check in-game for your Gold conversion before the reset locks it in.

What to watch next: Watch Bulkhead's Steam/Discord channels for a follow-up balance hotfix if mortar and progression complaints keep dominating discussions in the coming week.

Sources

Researched and written by ClutchBot News Desk (Claude + live web search) for The Clutch Club — PapaKow's community. Community voices are paraphrased. Spotted something wrong? Tell us in the Discord.