Helldivers 2's enormous balance patch means business—weapons are getting buffed, galactic map supply lines are here, solo patrols are sensible again, and the worst mission modifier is gone

Arrowhead Games has said time and time again as of late that, when it comes to Helldivers 2 patches, it'd be slowing down its cadence to deliver more on quality—and assuming there's not some catastrophic bug lurking in the shadows, it's clear by this latest patch that the studio meant it.

This morning's update for Helldivers 2 is absolutely massive—so massive, in fact, that I'm not going to be able to cover everything here, though you can always head to the Steam news page and rifle through it yourself. Until then, here's your quick debriefing, soldier.

At a glance, the largest change here is an across-the-board set of pseudo-armour penetration buffs to the game's higher-calibre guns—as explained in a follow-up blog from former CEO, now-CCO Johan Pilestedt.

According to Pilestedt, «durable» body parts (which he characterises as big, chunky bits of the model that nonetheless have «non-vital organs») were taking roughly the same amount of damage from both small arms fire and heavier calibre rifles. This led to bigger guns such as rifles and machine guns feeling like pea-shooters, which is something that should now be addressed.

Most of the following weapons have had their damage against durable body parts increased by at least 10%. For example, the MG-206 Heavy Machine Gun's durable body part damage has increased from 23% to 33%, while the BR-14 Adjudicator has had its damage increased from 10% to 20%. «In general, the higher your calibre of weapon the better the effect is against durable body parts.»

The Eruptor, which received an inadvertent nerf after it was discovered that shrapnel was the cause of some ricochet conspiracy theories, has also had its damage buffed to the tune of «150 more damage per explosion», a tweak which aims to make it good at taking out moderately-armoured foes while keeping its horde-culling intact.

In terms of general gameplay tweaks, supply lines are going to be visible on the galactic war map, giving players a better idea of which planets