HELLDIVERS 2 Ultimate Tips and Tricks

Are you one of the new players of HELLDIVERS 2? Well, this guide will show you some of the most useful tips and tricks that you can use when diving.

Basics

• Do the dailies.
• Make sure you Reinforce close to where your teammate died.
• Run backwards or from side to side while activating stratagems (rebind your stratagem keys to be able to do that).
• Hold X to drop items (including Samples).
• Hold R to customize weapon features.
• Heal low HP teammates.
• Use reinforcement drop pods to reach higher ground or kill bosses.
• Enable Reticle Visibility under HUD Settings.
• Enable Compass Ordinal Directions under HUD Settings.
• SC, medals and requisition are awarded instantly to the account upon looting.
• All Helldivers receive the same rewards, regardless of who is looting them (Super Credits, Medals, Requisition, Samples).
• You can cook the grenades.
• You can throw back Automaton grenades.
• Always go for any yellow beam glowing down from the sky. Those are important POIs (Points of Interest).

Must know

• When looting medals, requisition and samples that are close to each other, make sure not to loot them in quick succession! Wait for each looting animation to finish, otherwise, you’ll not be able to loot all of them.
• When looting super rare samples do the same as above. Don’t loot them in quick succession!
• Kill mobs that start calling in reinforcements ASAP (~0.5s available).

Gameplay Tips

• Use the mini-map; use the markers to coordinate with your team and plot trajectories to finish the mission as efficiently as possible. Don’t slip into aimlessness.
• Use high ground, break line of sight and use rocks or bushes as cover to drastically increase survivability.
• When fighting Automatons, try to kill the Commissars (the ones with flags) before they call reinforcements.
• With single-handed weapons, you can run and shoot backward and carry objective items and still be able to shoot.
• Prioritize destroying Stalker nests.
• If Stalkers are coming from a specific part of the map, look for nests on that side of the map or ping spam the mini-map in that direction until you find them and destroy the stalker nests.
• Stalkers can outrun Helldivers even at sprinting speeds.
• You don’t need to kill all the bugs you aggroed when you’re trying to move to the next objective. Kill enough bugs to be able to start moving and leave the rest to follow you toward the next objective. You can kill the bugs that didn’t lose aggro as you keep moving.
• When fighting close to bug nests or Automaton bases (spawn points) make it your priority to destroy those before getting caught in a prolonged fight for no reason. Units spawned can call in reinforcements and make the fight last even longer.
• When fighting Automatons make sure to have cover to the left of your character, peak out (to the right) and shoot. Because of their weapon placement Automatons are pretty bad at shooting at targets to their right, they tend to hit the cover you’re using.
• When out of options, you can lure Chargers to destroy bug holes, Illegal Broadcast Towers or Rogue Research Stations.
• Drop your Samples next to the extraction point so you don’t lose them while waiting for the dropship.
• Concentrate all the Samples in one single Sample drop so one person can pick all of them up and extract.

Weak spots/Killing efficiently

• Blow up Automaton drop ships by shooting one of the engines using rockets.
• Tanks have vent weak spots.
• Canon towers have vent weak spots.
• Chargers can be killed extremely quickly by breaking one of the front legs armor (with DAT, Recoilless or Railgun) and after that, shooting your primary at that leg.
• If a Charger’s back side is destroyed/popped with an Autocannon or other weapons, the charger will no longer be able to charge and it will die on its own after a few seconds.
• Most Terminid units die in a few seconds after you blow up their head, there’s no need to waste ammo.
• Kill the Warriors and the Brood Commanders by shooting the legs.
• Kill the Hive Guards either by using a Railgun, Rockets or by shooting with your main weapon at the neck area, in between the armored leg and head.
• Hit the Nursing Spewer in the face, dive to the side to evade attacks.
• Hit Bile Spewer in the face with anti-armor weapons such as a Railgun or kill them with a grenade or Grenade Launcher (two shots), otherwise, aim for the side of the bile sack.
• Kill the Stalkers by shooting them in the face quickly before they cover it.
• Hit Bile Titans in the mouth for max damage with the Railgun. More precisely on the side of the mouth. This will also stagger them.
• Hit the Bile Titans in the belly if you don’t have any other way of dealing with it such as stratagems that can damage it, a Railgun or Rockets.
• You can break the green pouch of the Bile Titan to stop it from spitting. Destroying the two belly sacks will reduce its HP by about 50%.

Objectives/Secondary Objectives

• When interacting with Terminals on objectives, you can press the interact button right after you finish inputting the required commands without needing to wait for the objective to complete.
• SEAF Artillery Objective, do not interact with the Terminal. Find and stack 5 missiles at the Loader before using the Terminal. Interacting with the Terminal will spawn a swarm of enemies that you don’t need to fight with.
• SEAF Artillery Objective, keep pressing the interact button when carrying rockets to move them faster.
• Shoot at the Spore Trees in the distance so you can get rid of the fog.
• Illegal broadcasting, straight up destroy the building without accessing the Terminal.
• When rotating the satellite dish, you have an audio cue that tells you when to stop rotating.
• Spore Trees and Propaganda Towers can be destroyed by the Autocannon, Railgun and Rockets.

Weapons

• You reload faster when on red and not completely empty.
• Use the unsafe/unlocked mode on the Railgun to maximize ammo efficiency.
• Use the safe/locked mode on the Railgun to maximize DPS.
• Autocannon kills the chargers in two shots, when a charger runs at you, avoid its attack and shoot the back of one of its legs when it stops. You will see sparks and weakened armor on that leg. One more shot to the same leg from any angle will take the charger down.
• When using the Autocannon make sure only to fire 1 to 5 shots before reloading to have the quick reload animation where you reload only a single magazine. This way you maximize your DPS and uptime.
• Shoot the Autocannon or Rockets directly into the bug holes to destroy them even at longer ranges. The same can be done for Automaton factories (you may need to shoot the top vents).

Stealth

• Stealthing is a surprisingly viable strategy.
• You can use blue stratagems to distract enemy patrols without alerting them, enabling you to evade them by not risking a pointless fight.
• Red stratagems will alert enemies and they’ll come straight for you.
• You can use turrets to clear enemy patrols and locations without triggering an alarm (reinforcements).
• Never engage patrols. If you have to, kill the pack in 3-4 seconds.
• Melee is completely silent.
• Some weapons have unique sound profiles that make enemies react significantly less: PLAS-1 Scorcher, The LAS-5 Scythe, all sidearms and Redeemer (on semi-auto).
• Enemies have a cone of vision at no more than 180°.
• You have a sound profile and enemies can hear you.
• The scout armor perk affects stealth only when standing/sprinting. It also makes you quieter.
• You can shoot out lights to reduce enemies’ ability to spot you.
• Autocannon, enemies will explore the sound of where the shells hit the ground so you can use that to trick them stealthly.

Movement

• Crouch or prone to reduce recoil.
• Going prone regenerates stamina faster.
• Going prone greatly reduces damage taken from explosions.
• To go up hills/cliffs that are too steep, hold print and dolphin dive constantly towards the peak of the hill/cliff.
• You can use the spores to propel you to safety by shooting them. It works only if you don’t have a Shield Pack.
• The jetpack allows you to reload every gun mid-air, even stationary reload guns.
• Dive before you pop a stim (against Automatons).
• When slowed by EMS or Terminid attacks you can dolphin dive repeatedly to cover more ground faster.
• Dive backwards while shooting.
• Take a bit of damage to be able to stim when your stamina is depleted.
• When having a Jump Pack you can throw grenades or stratagems accurately while being mid-air if you also are holding the AIM button.
• Stop dying to the Tesla Towers by going prone/diving when next to them. You will not get zapped.

Others

• Higher difficulty means more enemies and more of the harder ones spawning, they are not harder to kill and do not deal more damage.

• The Shield Generator Pack protects you from melee attacks, slows and staggers as long as it’s up.
• If you’re a higher lvl player try equipping one of the boosters you’ve unlocked last, so that others (lower lvl players) can use the ones that are unlocked quicker.
• Farm green/common samples on Eradicate missions.
• Eradicate missions are the best for Medal, Requisition, XP and common sample farms.
• Daytime missions take place between 6 am and 6 pm, and nighttime missions between 6 pm to 6 am. Consider the starting time of a mission because the day/night cycle can change during the mission.
• If you have 3/4 grenades and hold one while looting more, you’ll get 5/4 grenades.
• If multiple players are looting the Resupply while having equipped the same Supply Backpack you can multiply the ammo supply threefold.
• If you get stuck somewhere, just ask one of your teammates to quick melee you. This will unstuck you most of the time.
• The extraction shuttle will always land facing South.
• Under Change Bindings, you can set a keybinding for Switch Camera Side that will allow you to change the camera shoulder perspective.
• The personal shield can protect you from the 500kg bomb’s explosion. You can also protect another teammate by hugging him.
• Automatons are susceptible to suppressive fire. They shoot less or less accurately when taking any amount of DMG from the Helldivers.
• You can make snowballs by sitting prone in the snow for a while.