The WARDOGS gold bar price fell 77% in three days. A bar cost $1,418,305 on 29 September and $331,582 on 2 October, and launch day's $2,798,240 is now 88% gone. Bulkhead has not said why. This page sets out what the exchange did day by day, when the fall started, and what it means if you are sitting on cash with Season 2 two weeks away. We will update it as the price moves.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Price on 2 October | $331,582 a bar |
| Three-day fall | −77% from $1,418,305 on 29 September |
| Below launch day | −88% from $2,798,240 on 10 September |
| Official explanation | None yet |
| Live rate and full chart | The Gold Exchange tracker |
How far the gold price fell
Gold bars are WARDOGS' endgame currency. You buy them with cash at the Gold Exchange, at a price the exchange sets each day, and you spend them on permanent cosmetics that survive a season reset. How cash itself is earned is a separate story. This one is about the rate.
| Day (UTC) | Price of one bar | Change on the day |
|---|---|---|
| 28 September | $1,627,740 | +3.8% |
| 29 September | $1,418,305 | −12.9% |
| 30 September | $812,640 | −42.7% |
| 1 October | $694,217 | −14.6% |
| 2 October | $331,582 | −52.2% |
Two of those days are the largest one-day falls the exchange has shown since our record starts on 20 August. Put it in items and it stings: the Black & Gold AK74 costs 30 bars, which was $48.8 million in cash on 28 September and is $9.9 million today.
Players who bought near the top noticed first. In a Steam thread titled "Gold price?", TITRN wrote that they had paid 4.5 million for three bars at 1.5 million each. Sphinxmunkey said they put more than 120 hours into earning three bars that a new player can now afford in a day.
The drop started before Update 0.1.2 went in
Update 0.1.2 went live in a one-hour window from 08:00 UTC on 30 September. The 30 September price was already $812,640 before that. YouPaidMyLoadout opened a Steam thread about the bar halving to 800K on the evening of 29 September, US time, which is the early hours of the 30th in UTC and hours before the servers went down. Streamer StoneMountain64 posted "GOLD PRICE 50% DROP and UPDATE OUT" the same morning.
So the patch did not start the slide. That does not rule out a link. The 0.1.2 notes say exploiters
have had
their cash and progression reset, in the past tense, and give no date for when
those resets happened.
Was it the exploit bans?
This is the explanation most players have settled on, and it is Unconfirmed. The argument, as Some Kinda Kobold and Taugs put it on Steam, is that exploiters were pumping the price and that wiping their balances let it correct.
It is plausible. Bulkhead says the exploits it closed in 0.1.2 paid out cash: revives abused across the map, uncapped vehicle fly-through rewards, full payouts for wrecking half-built schematics. If the daily price follows how much cash is in circulation, removing a lot of it at once would push the price down. But Bulkhead has never said the price follows cash in circulation, or anything else. Dumbinho pushed back in the same thread: if cheaters were the cause, the price should have spiked when they cashed out, not collapsed when they were caught.
Every wave opens high and then slides
Our record of the exchange shows a pattern that predates this week. The price jumps on the first day of every wave of players, then drifts down for as long as the wave lasts.
| Wave | Opening price | Price before the next jump |
|---|---|---|
| Closed Beta 01, 21 August | $703,481 | $395,571 on 1 September |
| Closed Beta 02, 3 September | $1,398,240 | $802,637 on 9 September |
| Early Access, 10 September | $2,798,240 | $1,418,305 on 29 September |
Each opening price was roughly double the last, and launch day's was set before most players had got past the login queue. VelxraTV made that point in the Steam thread. It is also why "it was 250K in the playtest", which Tannco remembers correctly, is not a contradiction: the record low of $251,384 was 20 August, the day before Beta 01 opened.
One more pattern: the price does not move on Sundays. Every Sunday in the record carries Saturday's price exactly, six weekends running. We do not know why, but it means a Saturday price is a Sunday price too.
The current fall breaks the slow drift. Early Access lost about half its opening price in 19 days, then lost three-quarters of what was left in three.
Is the gold price tied to real gold?
The Steam thread has this claim and we cannot find it on any official page. Bulkhead's exchange panel describes a daily price and nothing else. Real gold does not move 52% in a day. Treat the claim as Unconfirmed, and treat the chart on the tracker as the only forecast anybody has.
What it means if you are holding cash before Season 2
Bulkhead's Gold Exchange panel says cash and level progression reset at the end of a major update cycle, and that any cash left over is exchanged for gold bars automatically. Season 2 starts on 15 October. Whether that is a reset point has not been confirmed, and our Season 2 page tracks it.
Two things follow:
- A low price buys more bars. At $331,582, 10 million in cash is 30 bars. At the launch price it was three. Bulkhead has not said which day's rate the automatic conversion would use.
- Converting is one-way. The exchange text is explicit that gold bars cannot be resold or refunded. If you buy today and the price halves again tomorrow, the difference is gone, as the players who bought at 1.6 million have found.
If you were going to convert before the season ends anyway, today's price is the cheapest since Early Access opened. Whether it gets cheaper, nobody outside Bulkhead knows. Check the live rate before you spend, and don't convert cash you still need for kit.
