Helldivers 2 Gets Lethal Planetary Conditions In New Patch

A new patch has gone live for Helldivers 2, adding new and hazardous planetary conditions to spoil your liber-tea party on distant worlds. According to developer Arrowhead, players can expect "additional environmental challenges" when they deploy to the surface, including meteor showers, fiery tornados, and more. The other big change awaiting players when they boot up Helldivers 2 after the patch is an all-encompassing rebalance of the game.

Some of these changes are subtle, others are major like the Eradicate missions requiring more kills and throwing more enemies at you, roughly doubling the length of this mode. In the weapons department, Arrowhead has adjusted the efficacy of the Breaker, Railgun, and Shield Generator backpack, as this combo of equipment has overshadowed other options in Helldivers 2. The Breaker now has a decreased magazine capacity and increased recoil, while the Railgun will deal less damage to durable enemies.

The good news is that flamethrowers will be doing 50% more damage per second and the Punisher shotgun is getting increased magazine capacity, stagger force, and a slight increase to damage output. The Laser Cannon has also been enhanced, as it'll now do increased damage against durable enemy parts and has increased armor penetration stats. For the fixes, Arrowhead says armor ratings should now work as intended and will reduce damage properly, while standing next to an ICBM during launch will make you toastier than a campfire marshmallow.

You can see the full patch notes below for Helldivers 2.

In other Helldivers 2 news, mechs are on their way to the game soon, as Arrowhead teased the arrival of the heavy-duty Patriot in the game. The studio has also addressed rumors of it being acquired by Sony, as no such deal is currently on the table. "This is fake, unless I've missed something," Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt wrote on X/Twitter.

Helldivers 2 Patch 01.000.100

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

• 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, and 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 and 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 rag-dolling.
• 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