WARDOGS: the best ways to earn money quickly and build a fortune

In WARDOGS you can have the aim of a Chris Kyle, know every corner of the map, and win most of the firefights, but if you keep spending more than you earn, you’ll eventually reach the point where you’ll have to face the front with empty pockets. Money isn’t merely an optional reward: it’s one of the core pillars of the entire progression and directly affects weapons, gear, vehicles, and, consequently, what you’ll be able to do during each life.

Every new player starts with 10.000 dollars, but it’s essential to understand immediately that this is not 10.000 dollars given to you at every match or every respawn. That amount represents your starting capital, and the balance is retained between matches. Before returning to the field, you must purchase what you intend to use, and when you die, the cost of that equipment is already lost.

It’s here that WARDOGS begins to think differently from many other multiplayer FPS. A kill can be satisfying, but profit and gain are not the same thing. If you enter the match with $6,000 in gear, earn $4,000 and die, you’ve fought well but still produced a negative economic outcome. Conversely, a medic entering with less than $2,000 in equipment who spends ten minutes healing and reviving can exit the same situation with a vastly superior margin. 

The first piece of advice for becoming rich is, paradoxically, very simple: before thinking about how to earn money, learn to avoid losing it.

The Hot Zone of the economy

If we had to pick just one mechanic to understand in order to boost your earnings immediately, it would be the Hot Zone. It’s the smallest area that moves within the larger Control Zone, and staying inside it means exposing yourself more to opponents, but also significantly increasing the return on your actions: within the Hot Zone, economic rewards for EVERY ACTION are multiplied, and your presence also carries greater weight for controlling the objective.

Staying in the Control Zone generates 160 dollars per tick, which become roughly 320 dollars in the Hot Zone, with each tick lasting around 22 seconds. So let’s do the math: staying five minutes in the Hot Zone during the match means you’ll traverse approximately 13–14 ticks. At 320 dollars per tick, we’re talking about over 4,000 dollars earned simply by staying on target, before even adding kills, heals, revives, spotting, or any other activity performed in the meantime. And this is the key point: the Hot Zone should not be considered a separate income source. It’s a multiplier for the work you’re already doing.

If you’re doctors, treat there. If you’re Recon, spot targets from there. If you’re transporting players, take them towards the objective. If you’re fighting, try to do so within the zone when tactically possible. It doesn’t mean sprinting straight into the middle of the circle and dying thirty seconds later: a covered position on the edge of the Hot Zone can be economically far more lucrative than a perfect spot a hundred metres further back.

The doctor is probably the best job for someone starting from scratch

One of the most interesting aspects of WARDOGS is that the most reliable way to build up capital doesn’t necessarily require exceptional aim. The Doctor is a true money-making machine, just like in real life! (seh, magari ndr.)

A normal revive is valued at 400 dollars outside the objective, 800 dollars in the Control Zone, and thus 1,600 dollars in the Hot Zone. Add healing: healing a teammate via bandages can earn you about 400 dollars (depending on how much health is restored), without counting the frequent "tips" players on the ground or injured may give you if you revive or heal them — up to hundreds of dollars, but "everything counts". The result is that a mundane sequence like revive + heal + staying in the objective can generate more money than an inexperienced player can earn hunting kills.

And let’s not just talk about theory. A collection of results from pre-launch tests cites sessions costing 250,000–320,000 dollars total playing Medic with an organised team, averaging 80,000 dollars per life and peaking at 148,000 dollars in a single life in the Hot Zone. These are clearly extreme results, achieved under favourable conditions and not something to expect in every match, but they demonstrate how high the economic ceiling of the role can be.

There’s however an interesting detail: repeatedly reviving the same player seems to produce diminishing returns. Some measurements indicate a reduction of around 25% on subsequent revives of the same ally, which is why, when possible, it’s advisable to distribute your efforts across the entire team rather than turning a particularly suicidal teammate into your personal revenue source.

Recon: $100 can become thousands without shooting

If you prefer to stay away from the chaos, the Recon offers one of the most interesting risk-investment ratios, which I personally use very frequently when money is scarce. The spotting allows you to earn simply by identifying targets that will later be eliminated by your teammates, and not just that. With $75 worth of binoculars, you’ll recoup your investment on the first target spotted, which will yield you around $100, and it’s not over there: when the target you identified is eliminated, you’ll receive a solid 800 dollars for a Spot Assist. You can be paid for a kill that you didn’t physically execute. For a player with limited funds, this is an enormous advantage. You don’t need to buy a rifle costing thousands of dollars and risk it in direct combat: you can follow your team’s advance, maintain a relatively safe position, and turn every correctly identified target into a potential source of income.

Being a taxi driver is a real job

Then there’s Driver and Pilot — two roles that might initially seem secondary, but become much more interesting once you realise that WARDOGS literally pays to get people where they’re needed. The compensation for transporting a player to the Control Zone is generally 500 dollars, with a possible bonus of another 500 dollars if the passenger survives after getting off. Now multiply that concept by a full vehicle. Transporting five players on a light helicopter costing 6.000 dollars can already mean 1.500–2.250 dollars just for the delivery, with up to 2.500 dollars added if all survive long enough to trigger the corresponding bonus. A well-executed single run can therefore theoretically reach 4.000 dollars or exceed it, nearly recouping the entire cost of the vehicle.

And instead of abandoning the vehicle once you arrive, do what a real taxi driver would do: go back and pick up more passengers.

The only caveat: learning to pilot a helicopter in Wardogs isn't easy, because the helicopters were designed by an aeronautical engineer and, as a result, behave very realistically. However, if you manage to become a reliable pilot, transporting allies to the control zone and then returning to pick up more passengers is one of the fastest ways to earn a lot of money.

Logistics can be even more profitable than passengers

Once you’re familiar with the vehicles, the next step is to transport not only soldiers but also supplies. A logistic pallet costing 400 dollars rewards you with 2,500 dollars once safely unloaded at a FOB, equivalent to 2,100 dollars of gross profit per delivery. If a teammate later uses that pallet at a FOB, you’ll receive an additional bonus of around 1,800 dollars. It’s a return more than ten times the initial cost of the pallet.

Of course, it doesn’t mean every delivery will automatically earn $4,300: you need to survive, deliver to the right place, and have teammates who actually use the resources. But it’s a perfect example of the economic philosophy of WARDOGS: the team’s utility is monetised directly.

Don't ignore the Spawn Vehicle

Among the simplest and most profitable activities documented by the community is transporting the Spawn Vehicle to the combat zone. It’s a rather slow APC, but once it’s in the control zone and stationary, allies can use it to teleport from the spawn point to the APC, and you’ll earn money every time someone does it.

Talks of 3,000 dollars for transporting the vehicle to the requested area, with additional payouts when teammates start using it as a spawn point, roughly 250 dollars per player using the vehicle. Ten spawn points mean another 2,500 dollars. Twenty become 5,000. If you manage to place the vehicle in a sufficiently useful and protected position, the result can thus become a form of almost passive income, while you’re free to engage in other activities.

Support: a few dollars at a time, but practically without pause

Even building pays. The rewards for a single hammer strike are understandably much lower than a revive or a logistics drop, around 1 dollar for a normal hammer strike, 6 dollars for hitting the highlighted construction point, and 15 dollars as a bonus upon completing the structure. Individually, they seem like small amounts. The point is that building a FOB means performing many consecutive actions, and, most importantly, the game doesn’t force you to compete with your teammates for the reward: multiple players can contribute simultaneously and receive their respective payouts.

It won’t probably be the method by which you become a millionaire in a single night, but it’s precisely the kind of activity you should seek when you’re nearly broke: minimum risk, minimum investment and constant return, while simultaneously creating something useful for the whole faction.

Destroying vehicles can also make you rich, but here the risk increases

For those who want to keep fighting, there are still very attractive rewards. The bounties offered on enemy vehicles can reach significant figures: around 5,000 dollars for an enemy Spawn Vehicle, 7,000 for an armored truck, 9,000 for an attack helicopter, and up to 14,000 dollars for an artillery vehicle. Beautiful numbers until we remember that our own gear also costs money. A launcher, the necessary ammunition, and the rest of the loadout can turn an apparently huge bounty into a much more modest profit, especially if we die before destroying the target. It’s therefore one of the strategies with the highest potential, but also one where calculating the return on investment is more important than simply looking at the final reward.

The kills pay, but they are not necessarily the best way to become rich

It may be the biggest mental trap for those coming from Battlefield, Call of Duty, or other FPS: believing that making money requires killing as many players as possible.

WARDOGS doesn't work exactly like that.

A normal elimination generates between 1,500 and 2,000 dollars, with values that can vary significantly depending on conditions and multipliers. It’s a good profit, but to achieve it, you must find an opponent, win the fight, and survive long enough to make your loadout economically worthwhile. A Medic can instead generate similar figures with a revive in Hot Zone, a Driver can accumulate them by bringing more players to the objective, and a Recon can earn while someone else physically presses the trigger.

There’s also another interesting variable: as with reviving the same ally, killing the same enemy will lead to gradually decreasing returns. Be careful with friendly fire! A team kill can therefore cost you far more than a normal elimination has just earned you.

In other words, shooting everything that moves is not a financial strategy.

If you’re in the green, don’t try to recover everything with one life

And here we are with the error that probably destroys more accounts than any opponent. You’ve just lost a loadout worth $6,000. You get angry, go back to the store and buy another one for $6,000 because “this time it’ll work better.”

Then a grenade enters through the window, or a sniper takes out your head.

The right strategy is exactly the opposite. When capital drops, immediately reduce the cost of your next life. Use an economic weapon, abandon non-essential accessories, and choose an activity that generates money without requiring large investments: Medic, Recon, construction, transport, or simply staying on the objective.

The $10,000 initial funds must be considered operational capital, not the budget to build your dream loadout. A $3,000 setup means your initial capital can absorb three disastrous lives. An $8,000 setup means you practically have a chance.

The real secret is combining income streams

In the end, seeking the single best method to earn in WARDOGS risks almost losing sight of what makes its economic system interesting.

The activities do not exclude each other.

A Medic can stay in the Hot Zone, earn from the target's ticks, revive a teammate, heal them, and maybe eliminate an enemy. A pilot can transport five players, receive the delivery payment, earn survival-related bonuses, carry supplies simultaneously, and then return to base to restart the cycle. A Recon can occupy the objective while identifying targets that will be eliminated by teammates.

The most profitable philosophy can therefore be summed up in one sentence: do your job, but try to do it where the game pays you more.

Play to achieve the objective, exploit the Hot Zone when the risk is acceptable, keep your loadout cost low until you’ve built a sufficient reserve, and stop treating kills as the sole indicator of a good match. WARDOGS is one of the few FPS where you can end a life without killing anyone and discover you’ve earned more than the player who spent the last twenty minutes collecting heads.

And when your account finally starts to reach five or six figures, you’ll be able to afford a bit more luxury. Until then, remember this: a $6,500 FAL left on your corpse is not an investment. It’s charity to the enemy.

About the Author

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Biography

- Staff di KotaWorld.it

Lorenzo "WaR" Agonigi was born in the now too distant 1995 and already three years later, in 1998, he began his gaming career, with a flaming Nintendo 64. I have to be honest, I wasn't a pro gamer right from the start, so much so that my first experiences more than as a gamer were as a spectator: while my parents, in turn, played, I enjoyed watching them (hey, I invented Twitch ten years in advance!!).