How to fly helicopters in Wardogs

Hold down the right trigger to start the collective ascent, spin the propellers, and eventually take off. When you’re airborne, as long as you’re pointing the helicopter forwards, you’ll move in that direction. Whenever you need to slow down, pull back on the left stick to create much more wind resistance, and hold the left trigger to start descending. Do this gingerly, however, because if you descend too quickly, you’ll hit the ground harder than expected and damage, or at worst, destroy your vehicle.

Image: Bulkhead/Team17 via Polygon

If you don’t have a controller to hand, consider remapping the yaw function from the Q and E keys to the mouse instead. This can be done by going into the controls settings and enabling “rotary vehicle mouse control,” then changing the “helicopter mouse swipe left/right” to yaw. If you leave the up/down option on pitch, then wherever you move your mouse is where the helicopter will face. However, this is solely down to personal preference, so you can test out whichever configuration works for you.

To ensure you’re capable of ferrying passengers in a proper match, go into the firing range to practice as much as possible first. Buy the MH-6 helicopter from the vendor then practice taking off, flying for a little while, then landing safely on stable ground. Sometimes, in the heat of battle, you’ll need to drop passengers off in less-than-ideal circumstances, so practice your ability to land on bridges, narrow roads, and sloped ground.

Keep an eye on the UI at the bottom of the screen too, because this is helpful to understand what speed you’re traveling at and how parallel you are to the ground. The closer the two horizontally-pointing arrows on each side are to the middle, the more level you are, and the curved vertical bars indicate whether you’re ascending or descending.

Image: Bulkhead/Team17 via Polygon

When in flight, if you need to make a turn, pair roll and yaw together for a smoother maneuver. Roll is either on A/D on keyboard, or the left analog stick on controller. Then, when you want to land, use small adjustments to descend safely. The helicopter’s controls are all constantly interacting with one another, so minor inputs go a long way.

When you are carrying passengers, many will buy parachutes and jump out when the time is right, rather than wait for you to land. Keep an eye on how many fellow soldiers you’re carrying. If everyone’s bailed, turn around and go pick up some more. Alternatively, consider filling your helicopter’s inventory with parachutes, so anyone without a chute can grab one while you’re flying.

Don’t hang around for too long at spawn waiting for a full helicopter though. Even if you only have one or two passengers, get them into battle, then return as quickly as you can, because the more you and your teammates are sat around waiting, the less of you there are fighting to win the match.

Image: Bulkhead/Team17 via Polygon

Additionally, you can earn much more money if you drop off passengers inside the hot zone, because this rewards double the amount of cash. Of course, it’s also the hot zone though, so it’s slightly more dangerous. Keep an eye out for any nearby obstacles too; when you’re airborne, Wardogs is quite forgiving when it comes to treetops not destroying your propellers, but buildings and walls will quickly wreck your expensive chopper. Oh, and if you have missiles incoming, make sure you deploy those flares.

All in all, though, just practice as much as you can in the firing range. Being a pilot is an essential role in Wardogs, but if you’re crashing and killing all of your passengers on too many journeys, you’re better off playing a different role instead.