Flying is the most expensive way to learn WARDOGS if you do it live. This guide is a route through the Pilot track: what to practise, how to earn without firing a shot, and when to buy an armed aircraft. For stick-and-rudder basics, read our helicopter basics guide first. To compare aircraft, see helicopter types.
Stage 1: learn in the Firing Range
You can practise flying in the Firing Range, which you reach from the bottom left of the menu. Head left to the Vehicle Vendor, which spawns any vehicle for free. Choose the "Air" tab and pick your aircraft. Free crashes are the best deal in the game, so use them.
Before you practise, fix your settings:
- Vehicle sensitivity is a separate slider from your infantry one, in its own section of the settings. A sensitivity tuned for infantry aiming will turn every small hover correction into an over-correction.
- Enable Rotary Vehicle Mouse Control. Guides disagree on the numbers: one suggests 50% for Pitch and Roll, while another suggests around 80%. Start at 50% and move in small steps until hovering feels natural.
- Helicopter input damping now applies to every input device, so a controller or HOTAS should feel more consistent than it used to.
A simple practice order
- Lift a few feet, hover, and land. Repeat until you can do three clean landings in a row.
- Hover and turn a full circle each way, then land.
- Fly big, gentle turns at low height.
- Pick a spot on open ground and stop over it without overshooting.
Only add forward speed once the hover is controlled. The biggest beginner mistake is overcorrection. The helicopter drifts, you wait too long, then add a large opposite input. Make small inputs and let the aircraft settle. Also let the rotor reach full speed before you lift. Pulling power early gives a slow, drifting take-off, often into whatever is next to you.
Stage 2: be a taxi
You can't use any helicopter besides the MH-6 transport until you've raised your Pilot level. To do that, you take players to the control zone or wherever they want to bail out. This is not a punishment. It is the safest way to learn routes and landing spots, and it pays.
How taxi runs earn
- Take a helicopter at match start and unlock it so others can board. Fly to where players are gearing up, fill every seat, and drop them in or beside the Hot Zone.
- You earn for each drop, again when passengers survive, and again when they score kills.
- The Hot Zone is the smaller moving subzone inside the Control Zone. A player in it counts twice and gets double money.
- Land or hover low, because passengers who bail early lose you the survival and kill bonuses.
Our safe zones and control zones guide explains where the action will be. Ask your passengers where they want to go. A drop in the right place helps them far more than a fast one in the wrong place.
Habits that keep you alive
- Fly low and use terrain. On the battlefield, pilots have to use the terrain, not hover over the objective, and change flight patterns.
- Slow down early. Never arrive fast and high over a landing zone.
- Keep flares ready. Flares are a separate loadout item that you buy for every life. Season 2 made flare deployables take up more room in your loadout, so plan your inventory in the loadout builder. Bind them somewhere you can reach without moving your flight hand.
- Respect anti-air. Season 2 added the Flakpanzer Gepard, a dedicated anti-air vehicle for Driver players. Expect enemy teams to bring one, and avoid long straight approaches over open ground.
Stage 3: when to buy a gunship
Armed aircraft cost real money to replace, and Season 2 made them dearer. These figures come from a community guide that tracks the Season 2 numbers. Check them in the in-game vendor before you commit.
| Aircraft | Deploy price | Unlock |
|---|---|---|
| Little Bird AH-6M Miniguns | $12,000 (was $7,000) | Pilot 8, $125,000 (was Pilot 4, $50,000) |
| Little Bird AH-6R Rockets | $18,800 (was $12,500) | Pilot 20 |
| Z20 Lakota Miniguns | $15,000 (was $8,000) | $85,000 (was $75,000) |
| Havoc | $28,000 (was $18,000) | $650,000 (was $500,000) |
Every crash of a Havoc now costs $28,000, so it is not a trainee aircraft. A sensible rule is to unlock the first gunship only when you can hover, land on a chosen spot and survive a few taxi lives without crashing. Keep enough cash after the unlock fee to deploy it more than once.
Season 2 combat changes that affect pilots
- Firing out through the cockpit glass now damages the helicopter, just as incoming fire does. Don't shoot through your own windscreen.
- The calibre damage reductions also apply to vehicle weapons such as the Little Bird AH-6M Minigun and Z20 Lakota Minigun. Don't rely on Season 1 expectations for how quickly a minigun kills.
- One source reports the Talon reload went from 2 to 5 seconds. That is a longer window to reposition after a missile is spent or flared. It is a single-source figure, so treat it as a guide rather than a guarantee.
- Firing the MMGL from helicopter benches now has significantly more sway and inaccuracy, and the muzzle velocity is down 25%. Passengers on a taxi flight are better off fighting after landing.
Common mistakes
- Learning in a paid aircraft. The Firing Range is free. Use it for anything new.
- Chasing kills before you can land. A pilot who can't land reliably loses more cash than they earn.
- Hovering over the objective. A static helicopter is an easy target. Drop and leave.
- Flying the same route every time. Enemy AA builders and Gepard drivers notice patterns.
- Forgetting flares. They are easy to leave out when your loadout is tight.
- Low-and-slow with no plan. If you drop low, know where you are going next.
Squadding up
Flying is much easier with a friendly crew. Taxiing a full squad into the Hot Zone is a good way to practise, and a passenger can tell you where the threats are while you concentrate on flying. Our squad nights are a relaxed place to try it.