WARDOGS Wipe Explained: Reset Dates and What to Do Before It

🎯 The core idea

The first WARDOGS wipe landed on October 15, 2026, when Season 02 (Update 0.2.0) went live after a 90-minute maintenance window. Your cash and role levels start over each season, while your copy of the game and your cosmetics stay. So the last week of a season is for spending money on things you want to try, not for hoarding. Season 2 is aiming for about six weeks, so plan on the next reset around late November.

• free costs nothing
• cheap small cost
• setup needs preparation
• grind pays off slowly
• skip the thing to stop doing

When the WARDOGS wipe happened

WARDOGS launched in Steam Early Access on September 10, 2026, and Season 01 ran from then until mid-October. BULKHEAD teased Season 02 on September 22 with a fixed date. They posted a preview devlog on October 9 and the full patch notes on October 14, one day before launch. The servers went down on Thursday, October 15, between 08:00 and 09:30 UTC, and came back up running Update 0.2.0. That Thursday was the WARDOGS wipe date. Timmeh says the same thing early in his October 12 stream ("the wipe is on Thursday").

That makes the Season 2 wipe the game's first wipe since Early Access began. Before that, the official FAQ only said that cash from the pre-alpha playtests would not carry over into the full game.

What the October 15 wipe reset

BULKHEAD's patch notes don't include a "here's what gets wiped" checklist, so you have to piece it together from three sources. The Season 1 changelog says that "each season we will have a different XP curve with different item orders". The Season 02 notes then rebuild every role track from level 1, with new XP thresholds, new unlock levels and new unlock prices. Both creators cited here also talk about the season as a fresh start. Timmeh's group spent the final days of Season 1 asking whether anyone would hit a million dollars "till Thursday", and he said the 1 million goal would have to wait for Season 2. Airwingmarine judged that an average player could fully unlock roughly one or two role tracks over a six-week season.

In practice, these reset with the season:

• Your cash balance. This is the money that normally persists between matches. The WARDOGS wiki lists $10,000 as the starting cash for a new account.
• Role-track XP and levels for WARDOG (the general career track), Assault, Medic, Recon, Support, Pilot and Driver. The frame above shows Timmeh's Assault track at level 21 in Season 1, with 288,332 of 291,000 XP.
• Unlocks bought with cash. You buy each weapon, attachment and vehicle unlock again at the new season's level and price.

What you keep after a wipe

free The wipe doesn't touch the game itself or the Supporter Edition cosmetics, which are tied to your Steam account. Gold Market cosmetics also last from season to season. Airwingmarine, reading the Season 02 notes, told viewers not to stress about buying a skin in the final days because it would "still be there on Thursday". The exception is a season-exclusive camo. The Black & Gold AK was a Season 1 item and the Season 02 notes removed it from the Gold Market. Its replacement, the Black & Gold Little Bird, is labelled a Season 2 exclusive.

Plan around one catch for the next reset. In Season 02, the Gold Market itself became a WARDOG-track unlock at level 35 for $150,000. On a fresh account you have to level up before you can shop there again. So if you want a season-exclusive skin, buy it before the season ends. Don't count on unspent gold bars or leftover cash to help you after the reset. No official post confirms that unspent gold bars carry over.

Spend or save before the reset

free Cash that you can't take into the new season is worth the most in the last few days of the old one. Timmeh's whole approach in the stream is to burn it. Around the 45-minute mark his balance drops from about $225,800 to $150,600 in one vendor visit, spent on unlocks he simply wanted to play with, a Deagle with hollow-point ammo among them. His reasoning: "It's just a number." Later, a squadmate passes on a .50 cal unlock because only a few days of the season remain. That's the other half of the same logic: don't unlock something you won't use before it disappears.

A sensible last-week plan:

• cheap Buy the expensive kit you never risked: heavy armor, attack helicopters, tanks, the 30-round mags you always skipped. Losing it costs you nothing that would survive the wipe anyway.
• setup Try the role tracks you plan to level next season, so you know which one to commit to on day one.
• skip Don't grind cash or chase a balance milestone in the final week unless you just enjoy it. The number goes back to the starting amount on wipe day.

Those prices were Season 1 prices. The Range Finder in Timmeh's vendor shows $400, and the Season 02 notes raised it to $1,450. Check current prices before planning a post-wipe loadout.

The other kind of WARDOGS reset

skip Not every WARDOGS reset happens on a season date. BULKHEAD's policy since Patch 0.11 in September is that players who abuse cash exploits or bugs get a timed ban and have their cash and XP reset to 0. Update 0.1.2 confirmed that players caught abusing exploits or real-money trading had already had their cash and progression reset. XP farming on known farm servers leads to permanent bans. Early in Timmeh's stream, chat discusses reports of a streamer permanently banned over a FOB cash exploit.

So the end of a season is not the time to "cash out" with a known exploit because "it all gets wiped anyway". A punitive reset or ban stays on your account into the next season. The Season 02 notes also closed the specific tricks people were using, including farming spots on unfinished buildables, repeat supply-crate sales and selling to players who switched teams.

Spotting money after the reset

setup In the second half of the stream, Timmeh finds that spotting vehicles and helicopters while he fights is the most reliable income for an Assault player. He says this is how he'll make money "next wipe". That plan needs a correction. The Season 02 patch notes cut spotting rewards by about 30% compared with Season 1, calling spotting "the lowest-risk, highest-paying way to earn". Rewards now scale with the value of the spotted vehicle, buildable or crate. A spotted target destroyed by another enemy faction pays you 25% of the reward instead of 50%.

Spotting is still worth doing on a fresh account, especially against expensive targets like helicopters and tanks. Just don't build your restart around it. The full Season 02 economy is covered in our WARDOGS Season 2 update guide. For a fresh account, the changes that matter most are the Assault weapon kill bonus ($1,500 → $2,000) and the Lonestar cash and XP bonuses that apply only in Season 2. On top of those, the losing team gets a 20% vendor discount when it trails second place by 40 or more points.

How fast you level back up

grind The reset hurts less this time, because the new XP curve is much faster through the mid levels. BULKHEAD says reaching level 20 on a role track takes less than half the playtime it did in Season 1:

Airwingmarine thinks progression is now too quick. He expects players to reach level-35 gear within the first four or five days of the season. Either way, the curve rewards picking one track and pushing it early instead of spreading XP thin. Expect the curve to change again at the next reset, since the developers have said each season gets its own.

Unlocks that moved for the fresh start

setup Some things you might take for granted are no longer free after the wipe. The three supply pallets used to be unlocked by default and are now WARDOG-track unlocks:

Others got easier. The AK74 is now unlocked by default and its vendor price fell from $1,600 to $800. The Medical Bag unlocks at Medic level 14 for $50,000, down from level 24 and $75,000. The PKM moved to Support level 15. The Little Bird with miniguns went the other way: it now needs Pilot level 8 and $125,000. If you're a logistics player, budget for the pallets before anything cosmetic.

First purchases on a wiped account

cheap Your first few lives after a reset should earn money, not show off. Several high-end vehicles cost far more per spawn in Season 02. The L2A6 tank went from $14,000 to $22,000, the Havoc from $18,000 to $28,000, and the Little Bird minigun from $7,000 to $12,000. The new T-72B3 costs $16,000 and the Wolf-110 transport $2,200. On a $10,000 starting balance, buy an infantry kit for each life and play the objective, revives and logistics until you have a buffer. The parachute matters too. The Basic Parachute now costs $500 instead of $100, and it won't open at all below about 10 m.

WARDOGS Season 3 and the next wipe date

As of October 26, 2026, BULKHEAD hasn't announced a date for WARDOGS Season 3 or the next wipe. Airwingmarine relays two points from the pre-season press conference. Season 2 is targeting about six weeks but could run shorter or longer depending on the data, and it can't end until Season 3 content is ready. Six weeks from October 15 would put the next reset around late November 2026. Treat that as an estimate, not a date.

The Season 02 rollout gives you the warning pattern to watch for. The teaser came about three weeks ahead, the preview devlog six days ahead and the full patch notes one day ahead. When a Season 03 teaser appears on the Steam announcements page, you have roughly three weeks to spend down. Further out, the developers have talked about an "Intel" unlock currency and a skill system. Airwingmarine notes these may not even make Season 3, so don't plan around them yet.

Read next

• WARDOGS Season 2 update: every Season 02 change and patch note in one place.
• WARDOGS review: is the Early Access game worth buying before Season 3?
• WARDOGS guide for beginners: how to start a fresh account and improve fast.
• All WARDOGS guides on the game hub.

How this guide was fact-checked

• Dates and the maintenance window come from BULKHEAD's Steam announcements: the Season 02 teaser (September 22), the Season 02 preview (October 9), the Season 02 patch notes (October 14, with the 08:00–09:30 UTC window) and "Season 02 is now live" (October 15, Update 0.2.0). The September 10 launch date comes from the Steam store page.
• XP curve, unlock levels, unlock costs, vendor prices, spotting and reward changes come from the Season 02 patch notes. The line "each season we will have a different XP curve" is from the Pre-Load and Season 1 changelog.
• Exploit punishments (cash and XP reset to 0, permanent bans for XP farming) come from the September 12 maintenance post and Update 0.1.2.
• Starting cash ($10,000) and cash persistence come from the WARDOGS wiki on Fandom (Game Mechanics page). The wiki's Progression page is still an empty stub, so it couldn't confirm anything about wipes.
• What resets and what stays isn't listed item by item in any official post. The reset of cash, levels and unlocks is based on the patch notes rebuilding every track from level 1, plus the statements from both creators. That Gold Market skins persist is Airwingmarine's reading, credited to him above.
• From the videos: Timmeh's October 12 stream "WARDOGS Season 2 Wipe Prep: Spend Your Money or Save It Before the Reset" (the wipe date, his spend-it-all approach, the frames of his vendor, level-up screen and spotting). Airwingmarine's "Every WARDOGS Season 2 Change You NEED to Know Before It Drops" (October 14) covers the patch notes on screen, the six-week target and the Season 3 timing from the press conference.
• Corrections to the video: Timmeh's plan to make money mainly by spotting "next wipe" ran into a roughly 30% spotting nerf in the Season 02 notes. The prices on his vendor screen (for example the $400 Range Finder, now $1,450) are Season 1 prices.

What this guide doesn't answer

• Every Season 02 balance change (weapons, armor, building costs, vehicles): that's the job of the Season 2 update guide, not a wipe explainer.
• Whether unspent gold bars carry over: no official post says either way, so we don't guess.
• The exact Season 3 date: BULKHEAD hadn't announced it by October 26, 2026. We'll update this page when they do.
• Fastest XP routes for each role: levelling routes depend on the current reward values and belong in a dedicated levelling guide.
• Community server wipes: private servers can set their own rules, and this guide covers official progression only.