Helldivers 2: Update increases level cap, brings blizzards & more

The current successful title Helldivers 2 has received a fresh update – and that includes both an increase in the level cap and new dangers in store for you!

Arrowhead Game Studios is doing everything to ensure that the current hype title Helldivers 2 can continue to ride on the wave of success. Accordingly, the developer has now released a comprehensive new update that brings with it various innovations – including an increase in the level cap, new planetary dangers and significant balancing changes.

The patch to version 01.000.200 is now available on PlayStation 5 and Steam, increasing the level cap from 50 to a whopping 150. The new planetary threats you face also include blizzards and sandstorms.

As for the balance changes, some missions have been made easier, while the Destroy Command Bunkers missions have been made more difficult. Other examples on this front include more effective medium and heavy armor. When it comes to weapons, the Anti-Material Rifle, Breaker Incendiary and Dominator have received higher damage, while the Slugger has been nerfed. Keyword nerfed: This also applies to various enemy types, including Charger or Bile Spewer.

You can find all the changes in detail in the complete patch log below in the original (English language).

All changes in the current patch at a glance:

Gameplay

Planetary Hazard additions

Increased level cap

• Level cap has been increased from 50 to 150

Balancing

Missions

• 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

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.