The Galactic War in Helldivers 2 is more intense than it's ever been right now, with Super Earth and her colonies under siege by three separate factions as the Illuminate's planet-destroying Meridian Singularity black hole slowly approaches the heart of humanity-controlled space. And as the fires of war burn, developer Arrowhead Game Studios is updating the co-op shooter with a brand new patch and a new Wild West-themed warbond.
The update — officially titled Patch 01.002.200 — features a ton of major weapon and stratagem buffs in its patch notes, along with a few tweaks that will increase the difficulty of fighting the Automatons and Illuminate a bit. Players can look forward to a number of improvements for various rifles, SMGs, shotguns, and support weapons, with the most notable being the addition of heavy armor penetration to the R-36 Eruptor (have fun blowing the heads off Automaton Hulks). Also, a few Eagle air support and exosuit mech stratagems now have an additional use before they need to rearm or run out.
Unfortunately for Lady Liberty's finest, though, our enemies got some buffs too. Specifically, Illuminate dropships have shields now, and the main chassis of Automaton dropships got an extra 1,000 health, meaning that nothing short of a Spear rocket will take them out in one shot (you can still one-shot the engines with other rocket launcher-type weapons, though). Oh, and the Automatons will react to your movements and actions faster now, as well. Sweet Liberty.
This wasn't marked in the patch notes, but the Automatons also got a new type of fabricator structure that's larger and can generate more units, along with a new "Intercept Convoy" side-objective that tasks players with taking out a group of traveling Factory Striders before it reaches its destination off the map. Notably, the lead walker in these formations will have a miniaturized stratagem jammer instead of a cannon, though it only scrambles your codes instead of disabling them (think the Illuminate's Cognitive Disruptor).
Striders now have stratagem jammers attached to them. from r/Helldivers
Don't report this to my Democracy Officer, but I'm happy to see the Automatons get tougher; though I do find them more fun, they've always felt a bit easier to fight than Terminids for me, and my friends and I are always craving a challenge (we do nothing but Super Helldives at this point). If you're worried about the difficulty increase, though, there's good news: our massive arsenal is about to grow yet again with the arrival of a brand new Warbond battle pass.
I'm referring to Borderline Justice, a Warbond scheduled to release on March 20 that was announced alongside Patch 01.002.200's arrival in this silly new trailer. Inspired by the style, iconography, and overall vibe of westerns, it features a laser-firing revolver, a long-range lever-action DMR, throwable packs of dynamite, a hover jetpack, and two sets of premium space cowboy drip (among other things). Like all of Helldivers 2's previous Premium Warbonds, it'll cost 1,000 Super Credits, or $10 worth.
The LAS-58 Talon secondary seems kind of whatever to me in a world where we have the almighty Senator revolver, but as a diehard R-63 Diligence DMR stan, I'm itching to get my hands on that R-6 Deadeye rifle. For the most part, I haven't jived with Helldivers 2's post-launch long-range primaries, but I'm really hoping this one feels as good to shoot as it looks like it will.
The TED-63 Dynamite grenade's huge explosion coupled with its long timer also makes it seem like it'll be useful for baiting groups of enemies to their combustive deaths, and the LIFT-860 Hover Pack straight up turns you into a Mandalorian. Granted, suspending yourself completely still in mid-air will probably get you shot up pretty bad by Automatons, but I can see it being a ton of fun to pair with something like the Flamethrower while fighting hodes of Terminids or Illuminate.
I've been coming back to Helldivers 2 a lot with my squad recently, and between all the healthy changes in this latest update and all the cool stuff that's about to drop with Borderline Justice, there's no doubt in my mind that we're going to continue diving onto the frontlines for more co-op action goodness. The shooter is in a terrific state right now — arguably its best state ever, even — and thanks to its incredibly dynamic nature, it never gets old for me.
For the full patch notes for the new update, make sure to check the section below. Oh, and if you haven't checked Helldivers 2 out yet, heads up: you can snag it for a huge discount thanks to a deal at CDKeys that brings its price down to just $26.49 at CDKeys (it's usually $39.99).
Helldivers 2 update 01.002.200: Patch notes
Here are the official patch notes for the 01.002.200 update, taken directly from Arrowhead's official Steam news post about the patch.
Balancing
Primary weapons
- SMG-32 Reprimand
- Spread decreased from 50 to 40
- SG-8S Slugger
- Spread decreased from 20 to 6
- Damage increased from 250 to 280
- AR-23C Liberator Concussive
- Fire rate increased from 320 to 400
- R-63 Diligence
- Magazine capacity increased from 20 to 25
- MP-98 Knight
- Damage increased from 65 to 70
- STA-11 SMG
- Damage increased from 65 to 70
- SMG-37 Defender
- Damage increased from 75 to 80
- SMG-72 Pummeler
- Damage increased from 65 to 70
- Now requires less shots to apply stun on applicable targets, stun value increased from 1.0 to 1.25 per bullet
- AR-23 Liberator
- Damage increased from 70 to 80
- STA-52 Assault Rifle
- Damage increased from 70 to 80
- BR-14 Adjudicator
- Damage increased from 90 to 95
- AR-61 Tenderizer
- Damage increased from 95 to 105
- R-36 Eruptor
- Projectile armor penetration increased from Medium (3) to Heavy (4)
- Projectile lifetime increased from 0.7 to 1 sec
Stratagems
- Eagle 110MM Rocket Pods
- Uses increased from 2 to 3
- EXO-45 Patriot Exosuit
- Uses increased from 2 to 3
- EXO-49 Emancipator Exosuit
- Uses increased from 2 to 3
- TX-41 Sterilizer
- Ergonomics increased from 5 to 20
- M-105 Stalwart
- Damage increased from 70 to 80
- MG-206 Heavy Machine Gun
- Improved armor penetration across a wider range of angles before transitioning to glancing shots
Enemies
- A recent software autopsy has revealed an update to the Automatons' situational awareness protocol. They are now less distracted by each other, increasing their reaction speed in large groups.
- We’ve increased the number of AI calculations the game can perform. This primarily impacts scenarios with a high number of spawned enemies, improving their response times in those situations. However, this comes with a slight trade-off in game performance.
- According to recent intel, the enemies of Freedom are attempting to counter the Helldivers' anti-air capabilities. Newly-produced Automaton dropships show clear signs of hull reinforcement, allowing the main body to absorb significantly more damage.
- Illuminate Warp Ships have been observed deploying their shields mid-flight.
- Automaton Dropships: Main body health increased from 2500 to 3500
- Illuminate Dropships: Utilizes the same shield as the ones that have landed
- Barrager Tank Turret
- Resolved an issue introduced recently where the armor value was incorrectly set to 0. Now has the correct armor value of 5
- Additionally, the turret now features weak spots at the front and back, each with 750 HP and an armor value of 3
Gameplay
Settings
- Added new separate settings for inverting the gyro input instead of using the Invert Look settings
- The Stratagem loadout menu has undergone an updated categorization of the different stratagem groupings
Fixes
- Resolved Top Priority issues:
- Fixed an issue with the extraction beacon sometimes being unreachable when landing on top of enemies
- General optimization improvements in the colonies environments
- Crash Fixes, Hangs and Soft-locks:
- Fixed a crash when playing against Terminids in poor network scenarios
- Fixed a rare crash that happened during game shut down on PC
- Fixed a crash that could occur when there was a high amount of particles on the screen at once
- Fixed an issue where players could be blocked from completing objectives requiring called-down equipment due to the required stratagem being unavailable
- Weapons and Stratagems
- Fixed the G-123 Thermite Grenade sometimes not arming
- Fixed a rare crash when using the LAS-17 Double-Edge Sickle
- Fixed a bug where switching weapons while reloading the CB-9 Exploding Crossbow would sometimes discard an entire magazine without actually reloading
- Social & Multiplayer Fixes
- Fixed an issue causing players in low-activity regions to see fewer lobbies on the planet hologram than expected
- Fixed an issue in low-activity regions where lobbies were not seeing players join as frequently or quickly as before
- Fixed an issue on low-activity planets where Quickplay would always join your friends game, even if they were not playing on the same difficulty
- Fixed a disconnection issue that could happen when playing Gloom missions with poor connection to the host
- Fixed some interactions not working properly after canceling the Raise Weapon emote
- Fixed an issue where adding, removing, blocking, or unblocking friends caused player cards in the friend list to display with white text and missing information until you close and open the panel again
- Fixed an issue that made it impossible to mute or kick players who were in the loadout when joining a squad
- Fixed an issue that caused some new Steam players' latest profile names to not display correctly in-game
- Miscellaneous Fixes
- Fixed some memory leaks to improve performance
- Fixed old text chat messages from re-appearing
- Fixed an issue with the Democracy Space Station progress bars being unintentionally curved in appearance
- Fixed a bug that prevented progression through the menus when the initial language selection was set to English (US)
- Fixed the raise weapon emote to properly fire projectiles in the direction of the weapon
- Fixed Helldivers sliding around on the ground after exiting the ragdoll state (despite it being the year of the snake and despite us trying to fix this previously)
Known Issues
- Top Priority:
- Black box mission terminal may be unusable if it spawns clipped into the ground
- Stratagem balls bounce unpredictably off cliffs and some spots
- Balancing and functionality adjustments for DSS
- Pathfinding issues in Evacuate Colonists Illuminate missions
- Dolby Atmos does not work on PS5
- Medium Priority:
- Players can get stuck on Pelican-1’s ramp during extraction
- Currently equipped capes don't display properly and show a blank grey cape in Armory tab
- Players who use the “This is Democracy” emote on their ship might unintentionally send their fellow Helldivers on unauthorized unscheduled spacewalks
- AX/TX-13 “Guard Dog” Dog Breath does not show when it is out of ammo
- Higher zoom functions do not zoom the camera in through the scope on the LAS-5 Scythe
- Weapons with a Charge-up mechanic can exhibit unintended behavior when firing faster than the RPM (Rounds Per Minute) limit
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