Arrowhead Game Studios has recently released Helldiver 2’s Patch 01.000.100. The patch is primarily meant to bring overused weapons and stratagems in line to where players can start considering other options. The patch also brings some much-needed buffs to the Laser Cannon and Flamethrower, two weapons that have so far performed poorly in medium to high-difficulty missions.
Additionally, this patch also brings in more environmental challenges like fire tornadoes and meteor showers. In our limited testing, we have gone on missions where planetary tremors constantly hinder the movements of both Helldivers and enemies alike. Planetary Hazards are applied when choosing high-difficulty missions.
Major Updates
- Platenary Hazards active
- Many planets now have additional environmental challenges that will appear at random while you are deployed, from fire tornadoes to meteor showers and many more
Balancing
Eradicate Missions
- Eradicate missions now require more kills and enemies spawn more often. The time to complete the mission was previously shorter than intended and should now usually take twice as long to complete
Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons
- Breaker: Decreased magazine capacity from 16 to 13, increased recoil from 30 to 55
- Railgun: Decreased armor penetration in Safe Mode, decreased damage against durable enemy parts
- Flamethrower: Increased damage per second by 50%
- Laser Cannon: Increased damage against durable enemy parts, increased armor penetration, improved ergonomics
- Punisher: Increased total ammo capacity from 40 to 60, increased stagger force, increased damage from 40 per bullet to 45 per bullet
- Breaker Spray & Pray: Increased armor penetration, increased fire rate from 300 to 330, increased number of pellets from 12 to 16 per shot, decreased magazine size from 32 to 26
Stratagems
- Energy Shield Backpacks: Increased delay before recharging
- 380mm and 120mm Orbital Barrages: Increased duration of the bombardment, decreased spread
Fixes
- Fixed armor rating values not reducing damage as intended
- Fixed certain Bug Holes (including Stalker Nests) that were unnecessarily hard to destroy
- Fixed anti-aliasing toggle not working on PS5
- Balanced lighting across all planets to solve cases where the game was too dark
- Improved flashlight efficacy
- Increased visibility during “sand rain” weather on Erata Prime
- Updated tutorial materials and lighting
- Improved cases where some materials could look blurry if “Lighting” graphic setting was set to “Low”
- Fixed timing issues that could occur in the “Extract E-710” primary objective
- Changed button interaction behavior for buttons in bunker POISs. Helldivers will now let go of the button after holding it for a few seconds
- Fixed some cases of large assets floating if the ground beneath them was blown up
- Helldivers standing next to ICBMs during launch will get properly toasty with a chance of not-so-spontaneous combustion
- Fixed unthrowable snowballs after ragdolling
- Fixed being able to use grenades after drowning
- Camera no longer locked on the player’s own corpse and blocking spectator mode
- Helldivers now take damage from fire, gas, etc. generated by other players
- Armor no longer stretches when dismembered
Known Issues
Some issues were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
- Game may crash after dropping several high power stratagems in succession
- Picking up items from caches may cause characters to freeze in place for an extended period of time
- Picking up items from bunkers and caches in quick succession may render one of the items unpickable
- Players cannot unfriend other players befriended via friend code
- Players may be unable to select loadout or return to ship when joining a multiplayer game session via PS5 Activity Card
- Mission objective HUD displays different numbers for client and host during some missions
- Default armor is always shown while viewing the warbond, regardless of the armor that the player has equipped
- Text chat box display is obstructed by the cinematic letterboxing during extraction
- Some text in the HUD/UI is missing or not displaying correctly
- Players may experience issues when many players attempt to log in and/or play at the same time
- Login rate limiting
- Players may become disconnected during play
- Various UI issues may appear when the game interacts with servers
- Some games may not be joinable by others for a short period of time
The biggest winners in this patch, in my opinion, are the laser cannon and flamethrower. The TTK (time to kill) on the laser cannon improved, making it a real option against mid-sized targets. The same goes for the flamethrower. But it should be noted that with the increased damage over time, the flamethrower’s lingering burn effect takes away twice as much health from a Helldiver per tick. In other words, we burn faster than a lit fuse.
The biggest loser for this patch is the Breaker shotgun. Solo players will actually have to use other weapons now. As much as I want to say that the Punisher has been buffed too. I can’t say so even with the increased ammo and damage. It’s still too inconsistent for anyone who doesn’t have the accuracy or the trigger discipline.
Helldivers 2 has yet to release an official roadmap. Arrowhead Game Studios has released a few spoilers hinting at future content. No release window has been announced.
