WARDOGS Loadouts: Weight Tiers, Ammo and What to Carry

A Loadout Is a Budget

You buy a loadout at the base vendor every life: weapon, magazines, ammo, attachments, body armour, healing items, supplies, grenades, equipment, and optionally a vehicle or helicopter. If you die without a revive, all of it is gone and the next one is bought again from your persistent balance. If you do respawn, the vendor has a rebuy button in the bottom-left that reassembles your previous kit in two clicks.

That is why the cash guide and this page are really the same subject: cheap kits that survive beat expensive kits that die on the way in.

The Five Weight Thresholds

Every item has weight, and your total weight sits in one of five bands:

Medium is the practical target for most kits. There are two sprint types — a normal run and a tactical sprint on a second Shift press — and how long and how often you can tactical sprint depends directly on this weight band.

Ammo: Mags Versus Loose

Three ammo types exist beyond arrows, shotgun shells and launcher rounds:

• FMJ — even damage to flesh and armour. The default.
• HP / flesh rounds — increased damage to unarmoured targets, weak against armour.
• AP — reduced damage to flesh, increased damage to armour and vehicles.

A common beta setup was three loaded magazines (one in the rifle, two in the backpack) plus one stack of loose ammo. Loose ammo stacks run roughly 40-80 rounds depending on calibre and take two inventory slots — the same two slots a 30-round magazine takes, which is why loose ammo is the efficient way to carry reserves. You can reload magazines in the field from loose ammo, and you can strip ammo from other players’ magazines if the calibre matches.

Armour matters more than ammo choice early in a season, because AP rounds are not widely unlocked in the first days. Against a heavily armoured target with standard ammo, legs take full damage — an old trick that still works here.

Vests, Armour and Health

• Vests set your quick-slot count — a better vest means more items reachable without opening the backpack.
• Armour and helmets have durability, shown at the bottom-right beside your health bar.
• There is no passive healing. Bandages, IFAKs and first aid kits are the only way back up, and your screen reddens as health drops.

Equipment That Pays For Itself

• Spotting scope — marks enemies for the team, earns cash and Recon XP, and pays again when a teammate kills the marked target.
• Repair tool — free cash and XP any time a vehicle or a spawn-vehicle satellite needs fixing. Runs on batteries; carry a spare.
• Defibrillator — turns a ~30 second revive into roughly 4-5 seconds. Also runs on batteries, and can kill an ally if you are careless with it.
• C4 and remote explosives — the tool for enemy fortifications and vehicles, and one of the biggest payouts in the game.
• Parachute — around $100 to protect a $5,000 kit when a SAM locks your helicopter. Single use: once you land or cut it, you need a new one.

Two things that look alike and are not: smoke grenades (cover and revives) and flare/signal grenades (a thin column marking a supply request). They are near-identical in the buy menu.

Do Not Over-Buy

Everyone else is carrying ammo and medkits too, and dropped kit is everywhere on a 100-player battlefield. Weight you do not need is speed you do not have. Buy the armour, buy one piece of useful equipment, keep the rest light — and remember that vehicles and emplaced weapons often need their ammo purchased separately.

Sources: TacticalNed’s full mechanics breakdown and DemoMan0351’s 40+ beta tips, recorded during the August 21-23 Closed Beta; StratzFPS’s ammo-versus-armour testing (Aug 23, 2026). Early Access balance may differ.