Helldivers 2 devs promise fire changes as players get sick of diving into actual hell

Arrowhead / Sony

Super Earth’s forces have finally managed to establish a defensive line to meet the merciless Automaton assault in Helldivers 2, holding on to the planets of Menkent and Lesath. Menkent proved to be an especially tough fight, as the Automatons actually wrestled control of the world back from the Helldivers at one point, necessitating another offensive to liberate it – and that seems to have taken the wind out of many soldiers’ sails.

Menkent is one of those planets that really give the Helldivers their name – it’s actual hell, filled with fire and brimstone and very often featuring devastating flame tornadoes. These conditions have led to players calling on the developers to make some changes to fire damage in the title.

At the moment, there is something seriously wrong with how fire works – players take massive damage if they merely touch a small ember on the ground, for example.

Arrowhead has officially acknowledged these issues. In a post on the game’s Discord server, a community manager wrote: “We’re going through ‘fire as a whole’ at the moment. The works – DPS, DOT, the host thingie, not dying in 2 secs from just touching it etc.” Fixes, he stated, would likely come in several small parts and not all at once, though he assured players that “we’re on it like Donkey Kong on barrels!”

In another post, the same community manager agreed that flame damage and behavior at the moment is “ridiculous – or at least wrong” and “something we’re changing.”

Players are currently embroiled in a desperate defensive campaign against the Automatons in Helldivers 2 after basically wiping them from the galactic map earlier this month. However, this turned out to be a cunning trick by the machines, who lulled the forces of Super Earth into a false sense of security before re-invading the galaxy from a different angle, overwhelming the sector containing Cyberstan. This is the homeworld of the Cyborgs, the faction that originally created the Automatons and has been imprisoned on the planet. 

It’s very likely that the robots have some grand plans with this world, so the Helldivers need to be prepared for the worst – and the first step was made over the past weekend with the liberation of Menkent and Lesath, which will anchor a new defensive line to block the Automatons’ advance.

Luckily, some new Super Destroyer upgrades were recently unlocked to help players out.