HELLDIVERS™ 2 News

Everyone be quiet, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has just announced the game's "biggest update yet". It's called Escalation of Freedom and it's set to drop early next month with a bunch of the new content folks have been craving.

Yep, if killing things in uber-quick fashion and clutching MOs with less than an hour to go has left you a bit bored with the whole Galactic War thing as of late, it looks like your prayers to whichever god Super Earth worships (Arnold Schwarzenegger, maybe?) have been answered.

"We’ve taken the time to gather feedback from our players on the front lines, and we’re bringing greater variety to our content. From missions and objectives to enemies and planets, we’re delivering lots of new content for both our veteran players and brand-new Helldivers on the battlefield," Arrowhead community manager Katherine Baskin writes in the update's PlayStation blog, "Get ready for our biggest update yet!"

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Welcome to the Escalation of Freedom, Helldivers. We’ve taken the time to gather feedback from our players on the front lines, and we’re bringing greater variety to our content. From missions and objectives to enemies and planets, we’re delivering a ton of new content for both our veteran players and brand-new Helldivers on the battlefield. Get ready for our biggest update yet!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Our community continues to show us how strong we all are when united against the mindless Automatons and the scourge of the Terminid. As we stand here, on the eve of the Escalation of Freedom, we reflect on the 6 months since launch. We could never have predicted how far this game would go and how many Citizens would answer Super Earth's call to arms!

We’ve watched our forces expertly handle every conflict and challenge we’ve thrown their way, from flying enemies to the Terminid Control System, to saving the children of Super Citizen Anne’s Hospital. Now for this major update, it’s time for us to give back something big to the community and welcome in even more players to the Helldivers universe.

Helldivers, this is escalating quickly.

[h2]Go on a Super Helldive[/h2]
Go up against the new supersized bot fortresses.

Something that continues to amaze us is our players’ insatiable desire for more bugs, more bots, more liberation, and more destruction. We thought nine levels of Helldiving difficulties would be enough, but in the Escalation of Freedom we’re turning it up to 10… Combat Rating 10 that is.

CR 10: Super Helldive is our most challenging, most relentless dive difficulty level yet, and we hope that this is going to give players the intensity they’re looking for on the battlefield. And with a great challenge comes greater rewards.

The larva retrieval mission has the Helldivers babysitting a bug.

But a new difficulty level isn’t the only thing the community wanted. We’ve also heard your desire for mission variation, which is why we’re bringing you new mission objectives and bigger enemy outposts for both bots and bugs that offer brand new Super Sample rewards. These outposts will be heavily fortified, and require players to coordinate and strategize in order to take them out.

And if you’re new to HELLDIVERS 2, you don’t have to worry about missing out on all the fun until you unlock Super Helldive, because many of our new mission objectives will be playable on other difficulty levels.

[h2]New Enemies & Dangerous Swamps[/h2]
The Impaler returns!

Escalation of Freedom is unleashing some new threats to our liberty that will take some serious strategizing from the Helldivers to take down.

Back by popular demand: the Impaler! This big guy from the original HELLDIVERS creates some new challenges. No longer can you run from the bugs when the Impaler is around–big, imposing, and destructive, it demands to be dealt with.

Also new among the Terminid ranks is the Spore Charger. As if the regular old Charger wasn’t scary enough, the Spore Charger is shrouded in fog to obscure its location until it’s right up on you, Helldiver.

The new Spore Charger in the fog.

Lastly, the Terminid Alpha Commander, which is a supercharged Brood Commander that’s bigger, meaner, and doesn’t hesitate to call in other bugs for backup.

You thought the regular old Brood Commander was bad? Think again.

Don’t think we forgot about the Automatons. Their ranks are growing, too, with the addition of the formidable Rocket Tank, as well as some other bot surprises we’ll be throwing your way.

The Automaton uprising continues.

Explore the swamps but not as you know them, with rolling fog and the untamed flora, the blackened trees obscure the light and the air itself feels haunted. Keep your flashlight handy, as visibility is limited and light is key. The enemy could be hiding anywhere amongst the undergrowth.

Get spooked, Helldivers.

[h2]Under the Hood[/h2]
The last addition I want to highlight about the Escalation of Freedom update is that we’re making changes to mitigate the problem of grief kicking in HELLDIVERS 2. While it’s our hope that players engage with the game in good faith and sportsmanship, we do recognize that some players are using the team kicking to grief others.

To help improve this we have implemented a system where if a player is kicked, they will spawn into a new session as the host with all of the teams loot from their previous session. All items can now be picked up by the player before extraction. The squad doing the kicking will see a message in the chat widget that a player has been kicked, yet their loot remains unchanged.
With these changes, all players have the opportunity to leave with all loot collected on mission, with no one Helldiver losing out. We’re committed to making changes that will improve the player experience and encourage healthy, cooperative gameplay.

Along with this, we’re also releasing other quality of life upgrades with Escalation of Freedom, including major fixes to the social menu to make diving with your friends easier.

Overall, we think this escalation is going to be packed full of awesome additions, long-awaited improvements, and a ton of surprises to discover! HELLDIVERS 2: Escalation of Freedom is launching on August 6th!

Oh no, you'd better run to Helldivers 2 as fast as you can. There's another Major Order about killing a bunch of things, and it's looking like it'll be over before you can say 'slow down Super Earth, you're supposed to savour it a bit or you might get indigestion'.

In case you don't get what I'm on about, Helldivers 2's player base has worked very hard to cultivate a reputation of being able to murder death things in incredibly rapid fashion. The first time it happened, people were so confused they started trying to do maths. More recently, they blew through an entire MO in one evening and then started wondering if Arrowhead had accidentally set the required kills total too low. These people do not play - well, they do, but you get what I mean.

After landing some temporary free mech ride tickets via their last victory, the MO that's followed is a nice break from both fighting to control planets and battling the automatons. "Following the Helldivers' inspiringly rapid support of the Terminid Research Initiative, the Ministry of Science has requested a second, much larger research trial," it reads. "A key finding of the first research phase was that Terminid E-710 yield is significantly increased if harvested following periods of extreme duress.

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