How To: Buy a Weapon (and Everything It Needs)

The mistake almost everyone makes first

You buy a rifle, spawn in, and discover the rifle is not a loadout. In WARDOGS a weapon is sold empty. Magazines are separate items. Ammunition is a separate purchase again, bought by calibre. And both of those need somewhere to live, which means a bag.

Budget for the kit, not the gun. A good rule: whatever the gun costs, expect to spend roughly the same again getting it into a usable state.

The shopping list

Every fighting loadout needs these five things. In order:

1. The weapon

Pick for the range you'll fight at, not the price tag. WARDOGS uses real bullet drop and travel time, so a rifle that shreds at 50 m can be useless at 200 m.

Damage belongs to the calibre, not the gun. 5.56×45mm deals 28 damage whether it leaves a free Bushmaster M17S or a $2,800 M4 — the free rifle kills an unarmoured target in the same number of body shots. What you buy when you upgrade is fire mode, accuracy, muzzle velocity and handling, not stopping power.

That makes the free rifles genuinely good starting weapons, with one real catch: all three are semi-auto and burst only, with no full auto. That is the single best reason to upgrade your primary eventually — but it comes after the four things below, not before them.

2. Two magazines

Buy two. One is not enough — reloading is a per-magazine action, and a single mag means your first reload is your last. Two is the floor; three if you expect a long hold.

Magazines are weapon-specific with one big exception, the STANAG family shared by six 5.56 rifles. That sharing is a real economic advantage of standardising on 5.56 (see Ammo & Supplies).

Bigger magazines cost more, take more space, and most sit behind an unlock:

Start with STANAG 20s. At $10 they're the cheapest magazine in the game and the only one you can buy on a new account. The 30 is the better magazine — same 2 slots for 50% more rounds — but it needs Infantry Lvl 6 and a $10,000 unlock, so it's a goal, not a first purchase.

3. Loose ammo

Magazines hold rounds; they don't come full, and you'll want to refill them. Ammunition is bought by calibre, not by weapon — anything chambered in 5.56×45mm draws on the same box. A box is $15 for 5.56, $10 for 9×19mm, and up to $250 for .50 Cal.

Loose ammo takes pack space, and this is where calibres really separate. Ammo sits in your bag as a stack costing 2 slots — and a stack holds the same 2 slots whether it's 80 rounds or 20:

So the AMR 50 is punished twice: $250 per 5 rounds, and a quarter of the rounds per slot that a 5.56 rifle gets. "Expensive to feed" is literal — same pack space, four times less ammunition.

Watch the two numbers. You buy 5.56 in tens, but a stack holds 80. Eight purchases fill one 2-slot stack; the ninth needs another 2 slots. Buying increment and stack size are different things, and conflating them is how people run out of room unexpectedly.

This is where an expensive gun quietly gets more expensive. An AMR 50 is an $8,800 rifle that eats $250 boxes; a Bushmaster is free and eats $15 boxes.

Then there's the ammo type. Every calibre sells in three tiers — Standard (FMJ), Flesh Damage (HP) and Armor Piercing (AP) — and the gap is not small:

AP runs 3.75× standard on 7.62×39mm and 4.5× on .308. Two AP boxes for a .308 marksman rifle cost more than a Galil. Buy AP when you expect armour or vehicles, not as a default — for most infantry fighting, Standard is the correct purchase and the difference is better spent on a bigger bag. Hollow Point is the opposite bet: roughly double damage on unarmoured targets, badly blunted by plate. See How To: Beat Armour. Full table in Ammo & Supplies.

4. A bag

Mags and ammo need carrying, and your bag is a grid, not a slot count — items have shapes.

Do the arithmetic before you buy, because a basic fighting kit is bigger than it sounds:

A Pouch is 6 slots — two magazines and the resuscitator fill it completely, leaving no room for ammo at all. The Scout Backpack's 8 still can't take that full list; something has to go.

So the Scout Backpack at $350 is your first real purchase — 8 slots, no unlock, buyable on a fresh account — and the honest news is that even it is tight. The Field Backpack's 9 slots fit the lot, but it sits behind Career Lvl 12 and a $20,000 unlock. This squeeze is the real argument for bag capacity being your first upgrade, ahead of any weapon.

Sidearms: read this before you budget one

Most shooter advice says always carry a sidearm. In WARDOGS that advice has a price tag attached, because not one of the five sidearms is unlock-free:

The GGX 17's gate is Career Lvl 1 — reachable straight away — but the unlock is $5,000, half your starting bank, for a $200 pistol.

Is it worth it? Eventually, clearly yes: the $5,000 is paid once, and every pistol after that costs $200. A sidearm genuinely saves you when a primary runs dry mid-fight.

On day one, no. $5,000 buys a bag, magazines, ammo and medical several times over, and those keep you alive more reliably than a pistol you'll draw occasionally. Get the fundamentals, earn a few thousand doing zone work, then unlock the GGX 17 as your first permanent investment. That ordering is the whole point of the unlock wall below.

5. The free medical kit

The Emergency Resuscitator costs nothing. It takes 2 slots and buys back a life. There is no situation in which leaving it behind is correct — take one every single time.

Bandages are $200 (not free) and take one slot. Carry at least one.

A worked first buy

Under $1,000, everything it needs, nothing wasted:

Every item here is unlock-free, so you can actually buy this on a brand-new account:

A complete, functional loadout for $385, leaving over $9,600 in the bank.

Two things it does not include, and both are deliberate:

• No bandage. The bag is full at 8. The free Emergency Resuscitator is the better of the two — it buys back a life — so the $200 bandage is what gives way until you have a bigger bag.
• No sidearm. Every pistol needs an unlock (see Sidearms); on day one that $5,000 is better spent elsewhere.

That is the genuine early-game squeeze: an ungated loadout fills an ungated bag exactly, with nothing spare. Compare it to spending the same $385 on a nicer rifle with one magazine and no ammo, which is the trap. And note what you cannot do — almost every upgrade you'll be tempted by is gated behind a level and a five- or six-figure unlock.

The unlock wall

Here is the thing nobody tells you, and it reframes everything above.

Almost every upgrade has two prices: what it costs at the vendor, and a one-time unlock paid at a required level. The unlock is usually far bigger:

So your level, not your bank balance, is what actually gates your arsenal. A $200,000 unlock is not something you save toward in an afternoon — it's the product of playing the role for a long time. See Weapons for every gate.

Only seven weapons have no unlock at all: Bushmaster M17S, A-91, KH-2002 (free), T-21, Scout Rifle TD, AMP-9 and MP43. Those are your options on day one, and they're genuinely fine — remember that damage belongs to the calibre, not the gun.

Ordering your upgrades

Once the basics are covered, spend in this order:

1. A bigger bag before a better gun. Space is what limits how long you can fight, and the Scout Backpack needs no unlock.
2. More magazines before a better gun. Two is survival; four is staying power — and STANAG 20s are ungated.
3. Ammo type before a better gun. Standard is right for most fights; AP costs up to 4.5× (see above).
4. Then the weapon — and budget the unlock, not just the sticker price. Check its calibre's box price too.
5. Optics and grips last. They're real improvements, but a scope doesn't help an empty rifle. See Attachments.

Because unlocks are level-gated, the fastest route to a better arsenal is playing the role, not hoarding cash. See How To: Make Money for the earning routes, and Progression for how levels work.

Common mistakes

• Buying a gun with one magazine, or none.
• Forgetting ammo entirely because the magazine felt like the ammo purchase.
• Buying a 60-round mag on a 6-slot Pouch, then finding nothing else fits.
• Leaving the free Emergency Resuscitator behind. It costs nothing.
• Buying an expensive rifle in an expensive calibre and going broke feeding it.
• Planning around gear you can't unlock yet. Check the unlock column before you budget.
• Spending everything every life. Cash persists — see The Economy, Explained.

Build and price a full kit with the Loadout Builder — it totals the cost, flags the levels you need, and checks it fits your bag.

See also: The Economy, Explained, Weapons, Attachments, Ammo & Supplies, Gear & Equipment.