Helldivers 2’s latest patch makes some significant changes to the game balance and adds more planetary hazards for players to contend with.

Patch 01.000.200, out now across PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam, makes balance changes to missions, Stratagems, weapons, enemies, and the Helldivers themselves, as well as general fixes and stability improvements.

On the gameplay side, developer Arrowhead has added two new planetary hazards: blizzards and sandstorms. On the balance side, Arrowhead has tweaked the Retrieve Essential Personnel mission type, moving enemy spawn points farther away from the objective “to give players a fairer chance of defending the location”, and making it so there are fewer civilians required to complete the mission on higher difficulties. The Destroy Command Bunkers mission type now has more objective locations because “the mission was too easy before compared to other missions.”

Crucially, Arrowhead has also halved the negative effect of operation modifiers that increase Stratagem cooldowns or call in times.

Perhaps of most interest to players is the sweeping balance pass made to weapons, with the likes of the Anti-Materiel Rifle, Breaker Incendiary, and Dominator buffed. The Slugger, meanwhile, is nerfed. The recently added Heavy Machine Gun sees its highest fire rate mode reduced from 1200 rpm to a more “moderate” 950. On Stratagems, the Patriot Exosuit’s rockets will now penetrate armor only on direct hit.

As for enemies, the Charger, Bile Spewer, and Nursing Spewer are nerfed, as are the Shriekers. The Bile Titan can no longer be stunned, however. The Helldivers themselves are buffed, with heavy and medium armor offering better protection.

And finally, the patch adds various fixes for crashes and other bugs. Arrowhead has improved the system that prevents hellpod steering close to large or important objects. “This system is intended to prevent softlocks where players can drop on important interaction points, or drop into unintended places,” Arrowhead explained. “We will continue to monitor the state of the system after the update to see if additional tweaks are necessary.”

There’s a lot going on in the world of Helldivers 2. Hours after liberating Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 players reported seeing enormous cloaked ships over Automaton worlds. Amid the push and pull of planets, new Stratagems were recently made available to players, with the promise of more to come. If you’re looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN’s feature on the Let Me Solo Her of Helldivers 2, a player who has answered over 100 SOS Beacons as part of a mission to help others.

Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around three million copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why it’s going down so well.

Gameplay

Planetary Hazard additions

• Blizzards
• Sandstorms

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.
• 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

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.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].