Helldivers 2 just dropped a chunky balance patch that fixes heavy armour, adds meteor swarms, and deals a blow to eradication mission farmers

Helldivers 2 just had its first balance update. While mechs are still en-route, this payload is certainly nothing to sniff at—especially since it's still adding one major feature to the game: True to the game's Starship Troopers inspiration, meteors are now a major concern for the hardworking patriots of Super Earth. I'm sure nothing bad will happen to Buenos Aires, though.

«Many planets now have additional environmental challenges that will appear at random while you are deployed, from fire tornadoes to meteor showers and many more,» the patch notes state. Helldivers 2 actually already had fire tornadoes in the planet of Hellmire—but as far as I can tell they were just background dressing. Until now, that is.

Eradicate missions—which were previously used as an XP, medals, and requisitions farm—have also had their duration doubled. «The time to complete the mission was previously shorter than intended and should now usually take twice as long to complete.» This should ideally stop players from simply dipping in, knocking out some waves of bots or bugs, and dropping the rest of the operation to rinse and repeat—which could have an impact on the ongoing galactic war.

A swathe of adjustments has also hit some fan favourite guns—including the SG-225 Breaker, the RS-422 Railgun, and the Shield Generator Pack. Initially the patch notes didn't have specifics, but they've since been updated. Arrowhead Developer Alex Kravchenko also shared some more granular details via the game's official Discord.

There's also been a supply package of fixes to bugs and issues. Most notably, Arrowhead has «fixed armor rating values not reducing damage as intended». Previously, heavy armour wasn't doing much of anything to reduce damage, meaning all those stompy, Space Marine-adjacent suits were just sitting in my cargo hold collecting dust. I'm peachy keen to leverage their weight to stomp some bugs, now.

You can find the full list of patch notes below.

Fresh new patch notes Helldivers!

Maj