Build a budget you can afford to rebuy

Season 02 adds wagers, a trailing-team discount and the first reset

An optional experimental Wager Vendor lets a player choose objectives, set a death allowance and cash stake, then combine objectives for longer odds and a larger payout. BULKHEAD publishes no stake limits, odds formula or payout table. The losing team gets a 20% vendor discount when it is at least 40 points behind second place. Season 02 went live at 10:00 UTC on 15 October after extended maintenance; cash and progression reset and outstanding savings convert automatically into gold bars, but the exchange rate is not published.

Read every confirmed Season 02 economy change →

Wager Vendor: published rules vs gaps →

Update 0.1.2 changes unintended rewards

Revive checks are now server-authoritative, vehicle fly-through rewards are capped, rewards for destroying buildables scale with build progress, and depositing pallets into a FOB outside the zone pays less. These are exploit and integrity changes, not a complete payout table, so they still do not supply a normal per-action earning rate.

Read the Update 0.1.2 economy changes →

Launch weekend: $1.28T earned and $561.9B spent

BULKHEAD and Team17’s press release reports $1.28T total cash earned, $561.9B spent and 111.8M tips between 17:00 on 10 September and 05:00 on 14 September, without stating the timezone. It publishes no player or match count and does not split cash by action, so the totals still cannot supply an average bankroll, payout table or profitable loadout.

Read every official weekend total →

Patch 0.11: a temporary 5% bonus and exploit enforcement

The delivered Patch 0.11 notes include a 5% End of Match cash bonus on community servers “for the next week”. The announcement gives no exact start or expiry timestamp, and the 14 September recovery post does not confirm the bonus in a client screen, so check the current client before counting it. The same notes say various cash exploits are fixed and that repeated abuse can result in a timed ban plus cash and XP reset to zero; they publish no exploit instructions or detection thresholds.

Read the dated Patch 0.11 economy notes →

Season 1 vendor and track prices

The official Season 1 notes raise the Forward Operating Base vendor price from $2,500 to $7,500 and Large Hammer from $1,600 to $2,400. The separate Support-track Large Hammer price moves from $25,000 to $75,000. Check which payment the screen asks for: progression-track costs and vendor purchases serve different purposes.

Read the full official patch breakdown →

Work backward from a reserve

Example only: balance $10,000; reserve $4,000; three planned purchases. ($10,000 − $4,000) ÷ 3 gives a $2,000 ceiling per complete kit. Earnings are set to zero for this example. Your actual balance, reserve and expected number of purchases can all differ.

1. 01

   Enter your current cash

   Use the number shown in game, not an assumed fresh starting balance.

2. 02

   Choose how much to hold back

   Pick a reserve for mistakes or a later squad purchase. The example keeps $4,000; this is a preference, not a game rule.

3. 03

   Divide the spendable balance

   Divide cash minus reserve by the number of kits you want to fund. Check that the first kit is affordable before counting future earnings.

4. 04

   Price every selected item

   Include ammunition quantities, storage and medical supplies. An unknown item price means the total is incomplete, even if the known subtotal is below your ceiling.

Compare a few recorded rifle prices

The same beta vendor source behind the weapon database records the following. These are weapon-only figures; they do not price a complete kit or establish combat performance.

Why a cheap-looking build can still fail

Editorial checks:

• Ammunition and gear with unknown prices must be entered from your vendor before affordability is known.
• A quantity is a purchase count, not an assumed number of rounds. Check the unit sold in game.
• If you enter a final vendor price, do not halve it again for a recruit discount.
• An unlock fee and the price of buying equipment for one life are separate amounts when the vendor shows both.

Use the two calculators together

Build the kit in the Loadout Planner, enter current vendor prices for missing fields, and save it. Open Calculate rebuy costs to carry the same selection into Cost of a Death. Start with zero assumed earnings, then change that assumption if you have your own match records.

What the game actually guarantees

BULKHEAD states that the journey begins with $10,000, equipment is bought each life, and cash persists between matches. Teamplay actions are rewarded. This example does not guarantee a payout, a profit, a particular unlock or a safe kit.

Season 02 rewards: what the patch notes say each action pays

For the first time BULKHEAD publishes cash figures for individual actions. The Season 02 patch notes, effective after the 15 October maintenance, reprice most of them: logistics pays less per run but adds streak bonuses for consecutive runs, assault kills and base attacks pay more, and destroying a vehicle now pays by variant — armed variants far more than unarmed ones. These are the published rewards, not a guaranteed income: what a match pays still depends on what you do in it.

The publisher-named ways to earn cash →

• Assault-archetype kill bonus $1,500 → $2,000.
• FOB hacking also pays teammates in the radius $1,000 / 250 XP; the hacker keeps $2,500 / 250 XP. Destroying a FOB pays up to +$7,500 / +250 XP depending on supplies held (max at 25,000).
• New rewards: door breached with the Halligan bar $100 once per door (bar uses 5 → 7); friendly FOB door closed $75.
• Capturing a hostile drill tower $750 → $1,500, XP 250 → 300.
• Role XP moves: destroying buildables, IED and C4 pay Assault XP; artillery pays Driver XP; repairs pay Driver or Pilot XP by vehicle.
• Logistics base rewards fall (player delivered $150 → $100; pallet deployed $2,500 → $1,250; small crate $500 → $250, large $1,000 → $500), offset by new delivery streaks: +$100 / 50 XP per crate, +$250 / 100 XP per pallet, +$25 / 5 XP per player and +$50 / 25 XP per return trip, each capped. BULKHEAD corrected the first two figures after publication: the original post used base-design values without the Control Zone multiplier; these are the actual Control Zone returns.
• Destroyed buildables now pay their build supply cost in cash with XP at about 25% of that; destroyed crates and pallets are repriced.
• Spotting pays about 30% less than Season 1, scales with the target’s value, and pays 25% (was 50%) when an enemy faction destroys it.
• Exploit fixes: supply-crate sales have diminishing returns per buyer, selling to an enemy pays nothing, and FOB Supplied Assist is split between assisting players.

Season 02 Gold Market camos, the removed Lonestar bonus and the delayed Wager Vendor

Eight new skins join the Gold Market across four camo families, and the Black & Gold AK camo leaves it. The Gold Market itself now unlocks on the WARDOG track at level 35 for $150,000. The 14 October notes gave Lonestar a cash and XP experiment; at 20:58 UTC on launch day BULKHEAD said it was removing those modifiers, and its video disclosed them as 5% cash and 2.5% XP. The separate 20% vendor discount for any team at least 40 points behind second place was not named for removal. The Wager Vendor is not available when Season 02 launches: the notes say it arrives later in the season and may be removed again if it proves too exploitable.

Every Season 02 vendor price and reward change →

Part of a surviving kit comes back at match end

The rebuy maths above treats every kit as spent, which is the safe assumption. BULKHEAD’s CEO said on 14 September that a kit which survives to the end of the match is partly refunded — 0.9 × its cost minus what it earned — but only if it was bought within the last 20 score ticks, never for ammo and magazines, and not at all once you have died since buying it. That is the CASH REFUNDED row on the end screen. Do not budget on it: the window is not shown in game.

What CASH REFUNDED means, with the CEO’s worked example →

Common questions