Playing

Levelling each role, and what actually earns the XP

Your XP follows what you use. Carry bandages and revive people and Medic fills; build a wall and Support does. So “fastest” is really a question of which items to buy, and the guides mostly agree on the answer for each role.

**WARDOGS | Game Mode Explained**BULKHEAD · 3:27 · from 1:49Starts at the studio's own description: roles are defined by what you carry, and XP lands on six tracks.

In the studio’s words, roles are “entirely player defined with every item you add to your loadout offering unique ways to earn cash and experience points.” Said in the video in Steam announcement — TOP QUESTIONS There is no class screen to change; you change what you buy. To see which track an item feeds before you buy it, hover it in the vendor, a tip jackfrags demonstrates. How the six tracks are named, and what launch weekend’s XP split looked like, is on the progression page.

Role by role

The cards come from guides and videos except where a level or price is marked official.

Support

Earns XP from: Building with a hammer, delivering supplies to a FOB, repairing vehicles, and kills with shotguns, machine guns, launchers, explosives and your own emplacements.
Fastest route: Get to level 8 for the Large Hammer, then build anti-air and mortar emplacements and use them. Between fights, supply and build, then go hunting vehicles with an RPG.
First unlocks: RPG-7 at 5; Large Hammer at 8 (official, $75,000); M500 at 10; M249 at 15.

Medic

Earns XP from: Reviving and healing teammates, and kills with SMGs. Looking after yourself does not seem to count: DemoMan0351 says bandaging yourself pays nothing, and GameSpot says the same of reviving yourself.
Fastest route: Stay just behind a busy group rather than out front, heal others first, and carry a Defibrillator once you have it so every revive is quick.
First unlocks: PP-19 Vityaz at 4; first aid kit at 9; Defibrillator at 11; the PP-19 drum magazine at 29 (official, down from 33).

Recon

Earns XP from: Spotting players and vehicles with binoculars or a monocular, a bonus when anything you spotted is killed, and kills with sniper and marksman rifles.
Fastest route: Reach level 5 without firing a shot: high ground at the edge of the zone, spotting constantly, helicopters first. Stodeh puts it at two or three matches in his recon video.
First unlocks: Monocular at 2; SKS at 5; Mosin Nagant at 10. The two 6-10x scopes are the only Recon prices in the launch changelog.

Driver

Earns XP from: Carrying teammates into the zone, delivering supplies by road, and driving the spawn vehicle forward so people spawn on it. Whether gunners' kills pay the driver is disputed.
Fastest route: Be the one who takes the spawn vehicle when your team unlocks it and drive it into the zone. Failing that, crew a friend's armour.
First unlocks: Every level here is from the launch changelog: URAL at 3; Kodiak Assault at 6; Dune Buggy at 8; Kodiak Flatbed at 10; Large Supply Crate at 16; URAL Covered at 18; URAL Attack at 25; Humvee with minigun at 30; Heavy Tank at 35.

Pilot

Earns XP from: Carrying passengers, flying supplies, and kills with helicopter weapons.
Fastest route: Take a helicopter early in the match, fill it at spawn, drop them at the fight, and never fly back empty when you could be carrying supplies.
First unlocks: Minigun Little Bird at 4 and the Z20 Lakota at 10, per the guides; the changelog prices them at $50,000 and $35,000.

Infantry

Earns XP from: Kills and assists with assault rifles and pistols. The guides call this track Assault.
Fastest route: There is no trick: carry a rifle to wherever the fighting is. The guides that rank the roles put this one last, and RageGamingVideos' reason is that it overlaps least with the others.
First unlocks: AK74 at 3. The launch changelog lists no Infantry unlock levels.

The XP triggers and routes follow GameSpot’s role guide and the player guides and videos that agree with it. Unlock levels marked official are from the launch changelog; the rest are from fan tables. If you want an order, the guides that rank the roles put Support near the top and Infantry last. The weapons each track unlocks, with both prices, are on the weapons page.

The only per-action XP figures in the changelog

“Player kill using an air vehicle: 300 XP to 250 XP.”
“Supply crate item sold under $75: 25 XP to 1 XP.”

Both from Steam announcement — Pre-Load Live & Season 1 Changelog It gives no figure for a revive, a spot or a delivered pallet. What the changelog does give is the curve: how much XP each level needs, which it made steeper through the middle.

Level	XP needed now	In the beta
6	9,250	8,750
10	35,000	25,000
15	110,000	54,750
20	250,000	111,500
25	325,000	192,000
30	400,000	293,750
35	500,000	416,500
40	650,000	551,250
45	800,000	689,500
50	1,000,000	838,000

Use these rather than the totals on fan progression tables. metaforge’s match these up to level 20 and then run well above them; its level 35, for example, is 750,000 against the changelog’s 500,000. The studio has also said that “Each season we will have a different XP curve with different item orders.”

What the guides get wrong or cannot know

Three claims rest on a single video or contradict each other. That the Hot Zone doubles XP: the studio says it doubles cash, and only one video says XP too. That a large end-of-match bonus makes up about half your XP: a single source. And that spotting the same vehicle again keeps paying: one recon video says it pays up to three times, a beta video says a refreshed spot pays nothing. And any guide that quotes the beta XP curve has the middle levels wrong, because that is where it changed.

Where grinding becomes a ban

The studio drew the line in its first patch after launch. On XP farming: “If your account is tracked as joining one of these servers for more than a few minutes, we will ban your account permanently.” On exploits, repetition is the test, and trying something is not: “If you figure something out and test it once or twice, no biggy, thanks for helping us QA.” Both from Steam announcement — Scheduled Maintenance & Patch 0.11 One popular fastest-XP video includes a loop built around dying on purpose to get back to a supply run sooner. Patch 0.11 does not say which side of the line that falls on.

The roles that level from building and supplying need a base to do it at, which is the FOB page; the Support emplacement grind runs through mortars; and the transport roles are covered by flying and vehicles. If you would rather level with other people, squads are how. The Medic’s level-11 defibrillator also doubles as a weapon, and a kill with its charge is one of the rarer Steam achievements.