WARDOGS: How to Build a Recon Tower With the Large Hammer

The Recon Tower is one of the more useful structures in WARDOGS. It hands you elevation wherever you want it, works as a sniper perch or a mount point for heavier gear, and takes a serious amount of punishment before it comes down. It is also one of the buildables people get stuck on, because the buildables wheel will not show it at all unless you are holding the right tool.

Quick answer: Equip a Large Hammer, right-click to open the buildables wheel, press F until you reach Recon Tower, place the blueprint, then hold left-click and strike the yellow X marks until it reads BUILDING COMPLETE.

Recon Tower requirements and stats in WARDOGS

The tower is a Support-role structure, so putting one up pays Support XP rather than Recon XP. It is a larger buildable, which means it needs a Forward Operating Base nearby to act as the build radius and the resource pool.

Property	Value
Class	Structure
Durability	5000 HP
Footprint	6×6×7.6 m
Grid size	1×1
Build cost	163 supplies

Before you place anything, make sure you have all three of these:

A Large Hammer equipped. Smaller hammers will not bring up the tower blueprint.
A Forward Operating Base, priced at $7,500 and weighing 6.5 kg, deployed within range of your build site.
Enough supplies stocked in that FOB to cover the full 163.

The FOB is the piece people skip. It is what unlocks larger structures, it stores items and resources for anyone on your team to pull from, and it draws the radius inside which building is allowed at all.

How to get a Large Hammer

There are three ways to end up with one, and only the first is reliable.

Buy it at Support Level 8

Once you hit Support Level 8, the Large Hammer becomes available in the item shop and you can simply buy one before you deploy. This is the version of the answer you want long term, because it means you never have to gamble on finding a tool mid-match.

Pull one out of an FOB

Walk up to a friendly Forward Operating Base and open its inventory. Teammates frequently leave spare tools in storage, and a Large Hammer sitting in an FOB can be taken straight into your own loadout alongside your weapon and magazines.

Forward Operating Base inventory screen with weapon slot and stored magazines — The FOB inventory screen, where a spare Large Hammer can be pulled out alongside your weapon and magazines. Image: BULKHEAD

Take one from a helicopter supply drop

Supply drops delivered by helicopter can contain hammers too. Open the Small Armored Crate and check the tool slots. You will often see a Medium Hammer offered alongside the Large one, sometimes still gated behind an unlock cost, so read the entry before you grab it.

Load supplies into the FOB first

Your hammer does not carry supplies. It draws from the pool inside the FOB, so a tower stalls halfway up if the base runs dry. Bring supply pallets to the site, stand next to the FOB, and use the on-screen prompt to unload them into it before you commit to a blueprint.

On-screen prompt to unload supplies into the F.O.B during gameplay — The unload prompt that transfers your supplies into the FOB’s shared pool. Image: BULKHEAD

A personal backpack will not hold enough to finish a tower on its own. If you are building solo, haul pallets in a vehicle and dump them into the base before you start hammering.

Place the Recon Tower blueprint

Equip the Large Hammer and right-click to open the buildables wheel. The tool is labelled as a build and repair tool, and it will show NO SUPPLY if you are standing outside an FOB radius or the base has nothing stored.

Buildables wheel open in WARDOGS with the Large Hammer equipped — The buildables wheel, which only appears while a hammer is in hand. Image: BULKHEAD

Press F to cycle through the buildables pages until RECON TOWER is highlighted. The larger structures sit on a later page than walls and wire, so keep tapping through rather than assuming it is missing.

Aim at the ground and drop the blueprint. Pick flat terrain with a clear view of whatever you want to watch, and think about which way the ladder faces. If you intend to wall the tower in later, turn the ladder toward the inside of your perimeter so enemies cannot climb it from outside.

Recon Tower blueprint placed on the ground ready to be built — The Recon Tower blueprint positioned on the ground, waiting for the hammer. Image: BULKHEAD

Build it fast by hitting the yellow X marks

Face the blueprint and hold left-click. A counter appears showing how far along you are against the total, climbing toward 163 supplies as the frame fills in.

Watch for the yellow X marks that appear on the structure while you hammer. Landing your swings on those marks speeds the build up considerably, so move around the blueprint and chase them instead of standing in one spot.

Keep going until the on-screen text reads BUILDING COMPLETE. That message, plus the counter reaching its total and the blueprint turning into solid geometry you can climb, is your confirmation that the tower is finished and standing at its full 5000 HP.

If a placement preview turns red, the surface under it is not finished. Complete the layer beneath before trying to attach anything on top.

Repairing and dismantling the tower

The same hammer handles the rest of the structure’s life. Point it at a damaged tower to repair it, or look at a piece you no longer want and use the Dismantle prompt to take it back down. That is worth knowing if you place a tower badly, since moving it means removing it first.

Dismantle button prompt shown while the build tool is equipped — The Dismantle prompt that appears with the build tool equipped. Image: BULKHEAD

Once it is up, the tower is a platform rather than a finished position. Ringing it with walls stops enemies reaching the ladder, and the top deck is flat enough to mount heavier equipment such as a Talon 9K-SAM if you have the supplies to spare. On its own, though, it does the one job you built it for: it puts you above everyone else, which is exactly where a spotter or a sniper wants to be.