WARDOGS How to Build a Mortar: L81 Pit Guide

The mortar is not a vendor purchase — you field one by building it. In the complete mortar tutorial from SC Haulers, the smaller hammers are ruled out directly: the mortar requires the level 3 hammer, and the item itself is the L81 mortar, found on the third page of the build menu on the left-hand side. Arrive with the wrong hammer and there is no tube to place at all.

The same tier logic runs through construction generally. In the FOB and base-building episode from StratzFPS, the hammers come in three sizes — small, medium, and large — where the large hammer is the jack-of-all-trades that reaches the complicated structures and defensive pieces, and it is also the fastest of the three to build with. So the safe habit is simple: confirm which hammer the squad is carrying before anyone promises indirect fire.

If your mortar pit is meant to sit inside a wider position, build the position first. The FOB building guide covers placement, supplies, and what a forward base is actually for, and the field guide covers the match loop the pit has to serve. Weapon roles and the rest of the loadout economy live in the weapons reference, and the map guide is what you read when you are deciding which side of the map deserves a tube.

The community pit guide is built on one rule: the mortar goes down first. Place the weapon, enable snapping, and leave at least one building block of clearance before you add the surrounding cover. That gap is what preserves a usable firing lane, and it is the difference between a pit that shoots at distance and a pit whose own walls stop the shell.

The recommended shape is a ring, not an enclosed tower. Most sides can use standard walls or large Hesco pieces, and the entrance side gets a door. Corners are not needed everywhere, which saves construction time and keeps more of the weapon's arc open.

Two more layout notes from the same guide. A single-mortar pit is at its best when the position is meant for one operator; team emplacements want more open spacing so several players can move, reload, defend, and rotate. And an open mortar is easier to pressure, so how tight you build should depend on how exposed the position really is.

While the mortar is under construction you will see yellow X markers on the buildable parts. Hover over them and they turn white; hitting them is what accelerates the build. In the tutorial's own measurement, a normal build hit moved progress by roughly 1–2%, while hitting the X moved it by about 10%. The tutorial calls it a Fortnite-style mechanic, and it is the fastest way to get a mortar from placed to usable.

Mistakes are recoverable but not free. If you do not like where the mortar ended up, press and hold V to dismantle it — the same hold works on anything else you built. The tutorial is explicit that dismantling does not return the materials you spent, so the cheap option is to test the placement before you fortify it, not after.

Once you are on the tube, movement splits into two modes. WASD is the primary control for traveling longer distances over time and for running the tube up and down; the mouse works too, but it is deliberately slower — a precision mode for nudging a shot one or two clicks left, right, up, or down, not for swinging through 360 degrees.

Zoomed in, the mortar has its own readouts. The compass sits at the top and matches the white compass already on your screen. On the left is the range, in metres. On the right is the elevation in mils, and the relationship is inverted: higher mils means less distance.

Finding the direction of a target does not need a protractor. Ping it with the middle mouse button and the game marks the bearing — the tutorial's example reads southwest — both on screen and as a small white diamond on the compass. Point the mortar at that bearing and the direction problem is solved. Distance is the harder half, and that is the next section.

The maximum distance the tutorial could reach was about 700 m. On the range scale, the last tick mark shown is 684 m at 150 mils, and the shot that cleared the maximum sat just above it, around 700 m and roughly 110 mils. Firing that far tells you what the far end of your arc looks like; it does not tell you where a specific target sits.

The tutorial's honest first method is guessing, and it also shows why guessing is expensive: one ranging shot, one correction, and two rounds are gone. Mortar ammunition is not carried — it is resupplied by having ammo delivered to the FOB, so every wasted round is a round your team has to replace on purpose. The more precise method the tutorial moves toward is reading the map, where XY coordinates are available wherever you are, and converting that position into a firing solution rather than eyeballing the distance.

Practical version: ping for bearing, use the map coordinates for range, walk the tube in with WASD, and keep the fine mouse adjustment for the last metres. Snapping a shot in with two rounds is a luxury; on a contested objective it is usually a mistake.

The construction sequence matters because moving a mortar after the walls are up can force a full rebuild. The community guide runs it in five steps:

1. Choose a flat firing area with a clear view toward the likely target zone.
2. Enable snapping and place the mortar before any barriers.
3. Build the protective ring, keeping one block of clearance.
4. Install the door on the most practical approach side and test that it opens, closes, and does not foul the tube.
5. Aim toward the maximum useful range and inspect the projectile path — if a wall blocks it, move or lower the wall before upgrading the whole pit.

The guide's warning is to hold off on upgrades until the basic structure passes those checks, because a blocked firing lane is far cheaper to fix while the pit is unfinished. It also notes that the shortest route from the FOB interior is not automatically the best door position — put the entrance where the operator can fall back toward friendly cover.

Everything above is stated by the tutorial or the pit guide named in the sources, and the numbers are quoted as they were given. These values were not stated anywhere in the material, so they stay open here rather than being estimated: the supply cost of the L81 mortar (待确认), its damage and blast radius (待确认), its reload time between rounds (待确认), and its minimum range (待确认).

Treat the range figures the same way: "about 700 m" and "684 m at 150 mils" are what the tutorial measured on its own build, and they may sit differently after balance passes such as the Season 1 changes. Re-check the readouts in your own match before you build a firing table around them.