Helldivers 2 community briefly mourns the loss of Malevelon Creek, a gloomy jungle planet that's fast become the holy grail of the playerbase

I'm pleased to see that Helldivers 2's strategy of creating an overarching, narrative-driven campaign is already working. Just like people grow attached to their roombas, wanting them repaired rather than replaced, the player base has been growing fond of certain planets, despite all tactical evidence pointing to signs that things are hopeless—personally, I think that rules.

No planet is a better example of this phenomenon than Malevelon Creek, a dense jungle shrouded in twilight in the Severin Sector, at the edge of deep Automaton territory. The vibes are immaculate, and they've led to some genuine mythology surrounding the planet—don't believe me? Here's proof.

Despite the current major order being a defence campaign, a dedicated quadrant of players—affectionately known as «Creek Crawlers»—has been doggedly fighting to liberate the planet, rubberbanding between percentages in the zero decimal range to around 20%—I'm even seeing players report it was over the halfway mark at one point. But the Creek didn't start out that way.

When the major order shifted from squashing bugs to breaking bots, Malevelon Creek was one of the first planets to fall in a doomed defence campaign known as the «Massacre of Malevelon Creek.» The helldivers who were used to squishing bugs weren't prepared for the Automaton's heavily-armoured units, entrenched defences, rockets, and mines. While I'm not sure if rumours of a higher difficulty on the Creek are substantiated, it sure felt that way.

Since then, Creek Crawlers have had a somewhat unhealthy (but metal as all hell) obsession with the Malevelon. When a planet's defence fails, it ticks over into 'liberation' mode. If that fails, the planet is lost—and it's in this liberation mode that Malevelon Creek has sat for days, a holy grail for soldiers with their boots on the ground. 

There've been other, more reasonable, far more easily obtainable defence targets with their own charms (I've quite enjoyed my deployment on Draupnir) but the