Major Helldivers 2 Update Brings New Gameplay Features, Balancing, and More

Helldivers 2 releases a new and bigger update for players which brings new gameplay elements, balancing to missions and weapons, as well as general adjustments and quality of life tweaks. The live service shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios continues to evolve since its launch back in February. Helldivers 2 has managed to achieve this through a combination of new updates and a dynamic world that is constantly in flux thanks to the push and pull of the players and enemy factions across the map.

This living and breathing map is a major reason why Helldivers 2 has reached unprecedented success, so much so that the first two weeks after the game launched were plagued by server capacity issues. With the launch problems well in the rearview mirror, Helldivers 2 has continued to grow and change through numerous updates and content drops in the weeks that followed, with new strategems like the EXO-45 Patroit Exosuit, LAS-99 Quasar Cannon, and the MG-101 Heavy Machine Gun. With this latest update, Helldivers 2 is bringing a ton of major changes and tweaks to the overall experience.

With what Arrowhead Game Studios is calling a “slightly bigger update” for Helldivers 2, this latest patch is making sweeping balance adjustments to everything from weapons, strategems, missions, and enemies. In terms of missions, Arrowhead has cut the negative effects of operation modifiers in half, added more objective locations for the Destroy Command Bunker mission, and moved the enemy spawn points further away during Retrieve Essential Personnel missions. In terms of weapons, the Slugger received a few nerfs to things like stagger and damage, while the Dominator and Anti-Material Rifle were given a boost. Tweaks were also handed out to a number of other weapons and strategems, including Helldivers 2‘s EXO-45 Patriot Exosuit, which now requires a direct hit with a rocket to penetrate enemy armor.

In addition to those balance updates, this update also adds in new environmental hazards to the meteors and others already present in Helldivers 2. According to the patch notes, players will need to be on the lookout for Blizzards and Sandstorms as well. For those who want to continue the grind, Arrowhead has substantially increased the level cap from 50 to 150, improved the drop pod control systems when approaching large or important objects, as well as other bug fixes.

One element that isn’t addressed in this update is the supply lines on the global map. While Helldivers 2 uses an invisible supply lines sytem, many players are hoping for visibility in a future update to help the community better understand which planets to battle over when completing certain Major Orders. Recently, the community failed an objective due to efforts being unfocused over which planet to try and liberate in time, resulting in frustrations over the amount of divided efforts. One Helldivers 2 player showcased what a visible supply lines UI change on the map could look like, leaving fans both impressed and hopeful that something could happen sooner or later.

Helldivers Update 1.000.200 Patch Notes

Gameplay

Planetary Hazard additions

Increased level cap

• Level cap has been increased from 50 to 150

Balancing

Missions

Retrieve Essential Personnel

• Moved the enemy spawn points further away from the objective to give players a fairer chance of defending the location.
• There are fewer civilians required to complete the mission on higher difficulties.

Destroy Command Bunkers

• Now has more objective locations, the mission was too easy before compared to other missions.
• It can now appear in operations from difficulty 5.

Operation Modifiers

• Halved the negative effect of operation modifiers that increase stratagem cooldowns or call in times.

Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons

• Arc Thrower: fixed charging inconsistencies; it will now always take 1s to charge a shot.
• Arc Thrower: reduced distance from 50m to 35m.
• Arc Thrower: increased stagger force.
• Guard Dog: now restores full ammo from supply boxes.
• Anti-Materiel Rifle: damage increased by 30%.
• Breaker Incendiary: damage per bullet increased from 15 per bullet to 20 per bullet.
• Fire damage per tick increased by 50% (from all sources).
• Liberator Penetrator: now has a full auto mode.
• Dominator: increased damage from 200 to 300.
• Dominator: increased stagger.
• Diligence Counter Sniper: increased armor penetration from light to medium.
• Slugger: reduced stagger.
• Slugger: reduced damage from 280 to 250.
• Slugger: reduced demolition force.
• Slugger: fixed armor penetration tag in the menu.
• Slugger, Liberator Concussive, Senator: fixed incorrect armor penetration tags in the menu.
• Recoilless Rifle: increased the number of rockets you restore from supply boxes from 2 to 3.
• Spear: increased the number of missiles you restore from supply boxes from 1 to 2.
• Heavy Machine Gun: the highest fire rate mode reduced from 1200 rpm to a more moderate 950.

Stratagems

• Patriot Exosuit: rockets will now penetrate armor only on direct hit.

Enemies

• Balancing adjustments have been made to
• Chargers normal melee attack now does less damage against Exosuits.
• Bile Spewer and Nursing Spewer do less damage with their puke.
• The Bile Titan can no longer be stunned.
• Shriekers no longer create bug breaches.
• Shriekers hitting you while they are dead now does significantly less damage.

Helldiver

Balancing adjustments have been made to

• Heavy and medium armor protects better and you now take about 10% less damage than before while wearing heavy and about 5% less when wearing medium armor. Fortified commando and light armor is unchanged.

Fixes

• Fixed issue where save settings for PS5 would be reset when the game is rebooted, causing things such as loadout and hint settings to reset.
• Enemies now properly target Exosuits. Previously, many enemies effectively ignored Exosuits if a helldiver on foot was available for them to target.
• Fixed Exosuits being able to fire their weapons while opening the minimap.
• The Helldiver and the Exosuit both had a bug that made them sometimes take explosion damage multiple times making things like automaton rockets be too deadly, this is now fixed.
• Automaton enemy constellations that preferred to spawn more of certain Devastators types did not work and are now functioning as they should. This means that sometimes when playing against the Automatons you will face more Devastators instead of other enemy types.

We have improved the system that prevents hellpod steering close to large or important objects.

• We have solved issues where the effective area around objects was a lot larger than intended.
• We have reduced the number of objects that prevent hellpod steering.
• Note: This system is intended to prevent softlocks where players can drop on important interaction points, or drop into unintended places. We will continue to monitor the state of the system after the update to see if additional tweaks are necessary.
• Fixed cases where the ground under some assets could be bombed causing them to float.

Ballistic Shield changes

• Collision mesh has been slightly increased in size for more forgiveness
• Changed shield poses so that less of the helldiver is exposed
• Addressed bug where parts of the helldiver would become vulnerable while using the shield in first person

Tutorial

• Invisible collision partially blocking the doorway leading to the launch pad in the Tutorial

Known Issues

These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.

• Game might crash when picking up a snowball or throwing back a grenade

Various issues involving friend invites and cross-play

• Cross-platform friend invites might not show up in the Friend Requests tab.
• Players cannot unfriend other players befriended via friend code.
• Players cannot unblock players that were not in their Friends list beforehand.
• Players cannot befriend players with Steam names shorter than 3 characters
• Explosive weapon stats include only direct hit damage but not explosive damage.
• Explosions do not break your limbs (except for when you fly into a rock).
• Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
• Drowning in deep water with a Vitality Booster equipped puts Helldiver in a broken state.
• Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
• Some player customizations (like title or body type) may reset after restarting the game.

Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 is a third-person cooperative shooter developed by Arrowhead Games Studios for the PC and PlayStation 5 where players take control of a Helldiver set to protect the citizens of Super Earth by traveling to hostile alien worlds and destroying threats. Players undergo missions, defeat enemies, and use special items called Stratagems to help turn the tide of battle in this punishing release.

Franchise

Helldivers

Released

February 8, 2024

Developer(s)

Arrowhead Game Studios AB

Genre(s)

Shooter

Multiplayer

Online Co-Op

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence

Platforms That Support Crossplay

PC & PS5