WARDOGS: How to Get a Vehicle From the Vehicle Vendor

Every vehicle in WARDOGS is bought, not found. There are no free tanks parked at a flag waiting to respawn — you walk to a vendor inside your safe zone, pay out of the same cash balance that funds your loadout, and drive off with something you now own and can lose. That makes the first purchase less about picking the coolest machine and more about knowing exactly where the vendor is and what a single click will cost you.

Quick answer: Open the map inside the safe zone, head to the Vehicle Vendor marker, interact with it, pick a vehicle under the LAND or AIR tab, and click it once — the cash leaves your balance instantly and the vehicle spawns in the lot beside the vendor, ready to enter with E.

Buying a vehicle at the Vehicle Vendor

Open your map while you are in the safe zone and find the Vehicle Vendor icon. It sits inside the protected area, separate from the equipment vendor you use for weapons, and it is the only place that sells anything with an engine.

Player standing in the WARDOGS safe zone with the safe zone banner across the top of the HUD — The safe zone is where the Vehicle Vendor lives, and the only place vehicles can be bought. Image: Bulkhead

Walk to the vendor itself. It is staffed under a camo canopy near a fenced parking lot, and the interaction prompt appears once you are close enough to the counter.

Approaching the Vehicle Vendor stand set up under a camo canopy in the safe zone — The vendor sits under a camo canopy, a short walk from the vehicle lot. Image: Bulkhead

Interact to open the purchase menu. Two top-level tabs split the stock — LAND and AIR — and each has its own filters underneath. Land is divided into TRANSPORT, TANK and ARTILLERY; air splits into TRANSPORT and COMBAT.

Select a tile and read it before clicking. Each one lists a price plus the practical stats — the Bobcat quad bike, the cheapest thing on the lot, shows two seats, a 75 km/h top speed and a note that it rewards Driver XP. Some tiles instead show a level requirement or an amber padlock bar with a one-off unlock cost.

Click to buy. There is no confirmation prompt and no second chance — the money is deducted the moment you click the tile, so treat a mis-click on a helicopter as money burned.

Leave the menu and look at the lot next to the vendor. Your purchase is sitting in the parking area, and walking up to it gives you the ENTER [E] Driver prompt. A separate REPOSITION [G] prompt lets you nudge the vehicle if it spawned awkwardly.

The fenced vehicle compound beside the vendor where purchased vehicles appear — Purchases appear in the compound next to the vendor rather than under you. Image: Bulkhead

Press E to take the driver’s seat and drive out. Ground controls are standard — W and S for throttle and brake, A and D to steer, Space for the handbrake. Press L to lock the vehicle so nobody else can take the thing you just paid for.

Driving a quad bike through the base with seat, camera and free look prompts on screen — Once you are in the driver’s seat, prompts for seat swapping, camera mode and free look sit along the HUD. Image: Bulkhead

Prices and requirements for every vehicle

Twenty vehicles have been recorded across the vendor’s two tabs — 14 on land, six in the air. Prices run from $500 for the Bobcat to $18,000 for the Havoc gunship, which is more than a main battle tank.

Vehicle	Price	Requirement
Bobcat	$500	None
Dune Buggy	$1,500	Driver Lvl 10
Kodiak	$2,500	None
Kodiak [Pickup]	$3,000	Driver level + $15,000 unlock
Humvee	$3,000	Driver Lvl 15
Kodiak [M249]	$3,750	Driver Lvl 8
Humvee [M249]	$3,750	Driver Lvl 25
Humvee [Minigun]	$4,500	Driver Lvl 35
Ural	$5,000	Driver level + $60,000 unlock
Ural Defender	$6,000	Driver Lvl 30
Ural Defender [M249]	$6,750	Driver Lvl 40
Flakpanzer Gepard	$8,000	Wardog Lvl 45
SPH-2	$10,000	Wardog Lvl 55
L2A6	$14,000	Wardog Lvl 35
MH-6	$6,250	None
UH-1Y / Z20 Lakota	$7,400	Pilot Lvl 10
AH-6M [Miniguns]	$7,000	Pilot Lvl 4
UH-1Y / Z20 Lakota [Miniguns]	$8,000	Pilot Lvl 25
AH-6R [Rockets]	$12,500	Pilot Lvl 20
Havoc	$18,000	Pilot Lvl 35

Only three tiles are pure point-and-buy with nothing attached: the Bobcat, the Kodiak and the MH-6. Everything else carries a level, a one-off cash unlock, or both. Prices have also shifted between builds — the Bobcat has shown up at $250 in one pre-release vendor — so read the number on the tile rather than trusting a memorised figure.

Note: the vendor renamed some aircraft mid-testing. The Z20 Lakota took the UH-1Y’s slot and kept its Pilot Lvl 10 gate, so match the exact name on the tile instead of assuming an old label still applies.

Driver, Pilot and Wardog are three separate gates

The levels printed on vendor tiles do not all read against the same counter, and this is the single detail most likely to leave you staring at a locked helicopter after hours of driving.

Track	Unlocks	How it levels
Driver	Land transport, from Lvl 2 to Lvl 40	Carrying players and supplies, vehicle kills
Pilot	Helicopters, from Lvl 4 to Lvl 35	Flying passengers and supplies, helicopter kills
Wardog	Tanks and artillery, at Lvl 35, 45 and 55	Your overall account level, earned from nearly everything

Driver XP does nothing for the AIR tab, and vice versa. Heavy armour sits on the account-wide Wardog track instead, which means you cannot rush a tank early by specialising — the SPH-2 at Wardog Lvl 55 is the deepest gate on the whole vendor.

A cash unlock is also not a purchase. Paying the $60,000 unlock on the Ural only adds it to what the vendor will sell you; you still hand over the $5,000 price every single time you spawn one.

What a vehicle costs against your cash balance

You get $10,000 once, per account. That cash carries between matches, and anything you lose stays lost — there is no refund when a rocket finds your Humvee. Against that starting balance, a $500 Bobcat is 5% of everything you own, a $6,250 MH-6 is over 60%, and a $14,000 L2A6 costs more than you were ever given.

The counterweight is that transport earns. Carrying teammates toward the Control Zone and delivering supplies both pay cash, so a cheap truck driven usefully can pay for itself while an expensive tank driven alone just deletes your balance. Press G to drop a supply crate without leaving the seat.

Why a purchase fails

You do not have the cash on hand. The price is charged in full at the click, and there is no partial payment or credit.
The tile shows a level you have not reached — and check which counter it names, because Driver progress will never open a Pilot gate.
The tile has an unpaid one-off unlock on its amber padlock bar. That charge is on top of the price, not instead of it.
The spawn area is blocked by another vehicle. Move whatever is sitting on the pad, or reposition your own with G after it appears.

If the purchase went through, you will see it immediately: the cash total drops, the vehicle is physically in the lot, and the enter prompt appears when you walk up to the driver’s door. Nothing else needs confirming.

WARDOGS soldier in the safe zone near the vehicle lot before heading out — Everything you buy comes out of a balance that follows you between matches. Image: Bulkhead

For a first run, the Bobcat does the job it needs to do. It is two seats and 75 km/h of nothing special, but it gets you out of the safe zone without gambling a fifth of your account on a machine you have not learned to keep alive yet. The helicopters will still be there once Pilot levels and a fatter balance make them a reasonable bet.