Gaming How-To

Wardogs Towers: How to Capture Them and Move the Hot Zone

Reach the control room terminal, collect the four-digit code, and pull the double-cash Hot Zone onto ground you already hold.

Reach the control room terminal, collect the four-digit code, and pull the double-cash Hot Zone onto ground you already hold.

Towers are the fixed objectives that sit inside the Control Zone in Wardogs. Holding them gives your faction high ground for recon and a strong base position, but their real value is the four-digit code they feed you and the ability to drag the Hot Zone toward a tower your team controls.

Quick answer: Clear enemies from the tower, wait out the control panel cooldown, then go one floor above the entrance to the operations room and hold the interact key (usually F) at the main console. The tower flips to your faction color when the capture bar fills.

Image credit: Team17

How to capture a tower in Wardogs

Capturing a tower is a press at the control panel, not a timed circle you stand inside. That means a single enemy left alive in the building can stop the capture, so security matters as much as reaching the terminal.

Confirm the tower is not on cooldown. Hover over the tower icon on your map or check the console inside. Every tower starts a match on a lockout and enters another short cooldown each time it changes hands.
Clear the building. Eliminate any enemy players occupying the tower and check the stairs, windows, and rooftop. The panel will not respond while the area is contested.
Head up one floor above the entry point to the operations room. This mid-level control room holds the computers, the main console screen, and a keypad beside it.
Walk up to the main console (the terminal to the left of the keypad) and hold the interact key until the bar fills. When it completes, the tower switches to your faction color and the capture is done.

Note: Do not leave immediately after a capture. A tower can be retaken the same way, and losing it also loses your team the use of the digit tied to it. Working as a small squad, with one operator on the terminal and the rest watching entrances and approach roads, is far safer than solo hacking.

Image credit: Team17 / John Raider

How tower codes work

Each tower your faction captures reveals one digit of an overall four-digit code, and the console also shows where that digit sits in the sequence. Collect all four digits across the map and you can enter the full code at the keypad next to the terminal on a tower you hold.

The code is generated fresh for every match, so nothing carries over from a previous game. Track the digits with your team as you take towers. Once you have three of the four, you can often guess the last one, but wrong entries trigger a temporary console cooldown, so confirmed digits are always the safer route.

Capturing a tower and entering the code are two separate actions. Taking the tower alone pays cash and exposes a digit; it does not move the Hot Zone on its own. The keypad entry is what triggers the powerplay.


What the Hot Zone Magnet does

The Hot Zone is a smaller circle inside the main Control Zone. Everything inside it counts double, so actions there earn double cash, and each player inside counts as two toward your faction’s zone presence. Since the team with the most players in the Control Zone scores every 30 seconds toward the 100-point win, doubling your presence is a direct match-swing.

Entering the correct code at the keypad activates the Hot Zone Magnet. This forces the Hot Zone to move toward the tower the code was entered from, wherever it currently sits on the map. Because it slides rather than teleports, the other two factions get warning and will follow it, so expect a fight.

The tower you activate from matters. Pick one your faction has already fortified with an FOB, supplies, and defenses rather than the first terminal you reach. You want the double-cash ground landing on a position you have prepared, forcing rivals to attack you instead of the other way around. You can see which tower is pulling the Hot Zone by the white dashed lines running from the zone on the map.

Image credit: Team17

Drill site alternative

Towers are not the only way to pull the Hot Zone. With the right tools, players can build a Drill Site on a faction-owned FOB, acting as a mini-tower. Fuel it to the maximum of 6000/6000 and activate the drill to trigger the same Hot Zone magnet effect. This lets a team use both a captured tower and a built drill for compounding advantage.


Which maps have towers

Both currently playable maps use towers as a major objective. Tower positions stay fixed on each map, but the Control Zone is a randomized 2×2 km area that moves between matches, so which towers matter changes game to game. A third map, Zestafona, is not yet playable.

MapTowersStatus
Bakurani7 towers (plus 4 abandoned ones that do not count)Playable
Ozeti4 towersPlayable
ZestafonaUnknownNot playable yet

Note: Only towers inside the active Control Zone function as objectives. Towers, mechanics, and their exact behavior can change between builds during testing, so treat counts and timings as current rather than fixed.

Image credit: Team17

How to confirm a capture and why it fails

You know a capture worked when the tower flips to your faction’s color and its map icon updates to your team. A code entry works when the map shows the Hot Zone beginning to drift toward your tower along the dashed lines.

  • The panel will not respond if enemies are still inside or contesting the immediate area.
  • Interacting during the tower’s cooldown does nothing; wait it out first.
  • The keypad rejects an incomplete or wrong code, and repeated wrong guesses put the console into a temporary cooldown.
  • Capturing a tower does not by itself move the Hot Zone or add match points; only a correct keypad entry starts the magnet.

Towers are not required to win a match, but they are one of the few levers a team can pull to decide where the highest-value fighting happens. Lock down the code, activate it from a tower you have already dug into, and be ready for both rival factions to arrive with the Hot Zone.