Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has released its first balance update, patch 01.000.100, which nerfs the game’s best loadout among other things. The update is out now on PC and PlayStation 5.
First up, it’s worth mentioning the patch adds planetary hazards. This means planets now have extra environmental challenges that appear at random while you’re deployed, including fire tornadoes and meteor showers. In the patch notes, Arrowhead said there are many more planetary hazards now active, so players will no-doubt have fun contending with them all.
The meat of the patch, though, is a sweeping balance pass. On this, the quickfire eradicate missions, which are used by farmers to efficiently gobble up resources before resetting operations, 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,” Arrowhead said.
As for weapons and stratagems, the Breaker, Railgun, and Shield Generator Backpack are all nerfed, among other items. These three in particular were seen as essential for high difficulties, and were a part of most of the game’s agreed upon best loadouts.
Explaining the decision to nerf the Breaker, Railgun, and Shield Generator Backpack, designer Alex K said all three “were quite strong with too little downsides, overshadowing all other options on higher difficulty levels.” However, the developer expects the changes won’t ruin the build, “but rather help the affected items find their place among the other options and stay effective in capable hands.”
Elsewhere, there are a number of fixes. The highlight here is armor rating values are now fixed, which means they should reduce damage as intended. This is fun, too: Helldivers standing next to ICBMs during launch will get properly toasty with a chance of not-so-spontaneous combustion.
There’s a lot happening in the world of Helldivers 2, including a recent new strategy that involves hugging. The galactic war continues, of course, as players await the arrival of mechs.
This week, IGN reported on how 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, as well as the best loadouts.
Helldivers 2 Update 01.000.100 Patch Notes:
Major Updates
- Planetary 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 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, 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 to 32 to 26
Stratagems
- Energy Shield Backpack: 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 POIs. 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 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 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 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 login 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
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
