Helldivers 2 update 1.000.400 patch notes: Major balance changes, invite-only lobbies, and more

It’s the big one

Arrowhead / Sony

The highly anticipated major update 1.000.400 for Helldivers 2 is here, bringing a metric ton of balance changes to the third-person co-op shooter.

An upgrade to the galactic map has been made as well: It now depicts additional information like the attack vectors of invading forces, enabling the community to stop an offensive by mounting a direct counterattack against the source planet. Supply Lines, which have been part of the game from the start, but hadn’t been shown on the map to avoid clutter, are also being displayed now.

Helldivers can also choose their comrades for the next jump onto the battlefield by using the new invite-only lobbies introduced with this update.

You can find the full Helldivers 2 update 1.000.400 patch notes including explanations for the changes by Arrowhead CCO Johan Pilestedt below.

Helldivers 2 update 1.000.400 patch notes

Balancing

Goal with stratagem balance changes this patch:

“With these balance changes we wanted to buff up some of the weaker stratagems to make them more viable and add more possibility for variety in the loadouts. We also changed a few to make them more consistent, but the goal was to keep a similar or higher power level.

We are looking into the stratagems more to see if there are any other stratagems that might need some buffs or changes to make them more viable. We also want to be better at explaining what our goals are with the changes, please see the linked blog post for more information.”

A/MLS-4X Rocket Sentry:

• Decreased spread
• Prioritize larger targets
• Increased target distance from 75 to 100m
• Decreased Rockets per salvo 2 to 1 (to get a better ammo economy)
• Increased explosion radius from 1m to 4m
• Decreased explosion armor penetration (Explosion can no longer damage heavy armored enemies. The projectile still has enough AP to damage heavily armored targets.)
• Increased projectile damage from 200 to 300

“The old intent was to saturate an area with rockets, but it made it too inconsistent against medium and larger enemies. We want to make it more consistent against medium and larger enemies and give it a better ammo economy to separate it from the autocannon sentry that has a higher damage output, but can waste ammo by shooting targets that are already dead.”

A/MG-43 Machine gun sentry:

• Reduced cooldown from 180 sec to 120 sec.

“The Machine Gun Sentry felt like a worse version of the Gatling sentry and we wanted it to have a different place in the tool box. We lowered the cooldown to make it more available and more useful when changing position often.”

A/MG-43 Machine gun Sentry, A/G-16 Gatling Sentry, A/MLS-4X Rocket Sentry, A/AC-8 Autocannon Sentry, A/M-12 Mortar Sentry, A/M-23 EMS Mortar Sentry:

• Increased durability* from 0% to 80%

“The sentry turrets in the game were a little too easily killed by the bullets flying in a chaotic situation. We have increased the durability* factor of the turrets to make them more resistant to small arms fire.”

E/MG-101 HMG Emplacement:

• Increased rotation speed by 100%

“The HMG Emplacement is intended to be a way of defending a fixed position but due to its immobility and the drawback that presents, the slow rotation speed was a bit too much of an additional drawback. Therefore we have increased the rotation speed significantly.”

MD-6 Anti-Personnel Minefield:

• Increased explosion damage from 250 to 350

MD-I4 Incendiary Mines:

• Increased explosion damage from 150 to 210

“The minefields are supposed to be a strong but volatile way of blocking off certain approaches for a limited time. They are currently not very good at filling this role and we will be looking more at them in the future. For now we are increasing their damage to at least improve their effectiveness against targets that trigger them.”

Orbital Gatling:

• Increased fire rate by 25%
• Increased rounds per salvo from 30 to 60
• Increased armor penetration (Can damage heavy armored enemies)
• Decreased cooldown from 80 sec to 70 sec

“The Orbital Gatling Barrage was not effective at dealing with any specific targets. We want it to be better at saturating the target area and also be able to do damage against heavy armored units. It is still not very likely to outright kill heavily armored targets but should be able to soften them up a bit. We also lowered the cooldown to make it more available and to make it more competitive in comparison to Eagle stratagems.”

Orbital Precision Strike:

• Decreased cooldown from 100 sec to 90 sec
• Decreased Spawn/Call-in time from 4 sec to 2 sec

“The Orbital Precision Strike’s original intent was to be used against spawners and fixed positions. However this hasn’t stopped the community from using it against pretty much everything. Therefore we want to make it a little easier to use against moving targets by lowering the call in time. We also lowered the cooldown to make it more available and to make it more competitive in comparison to Eagle stratagems.”

Orbital Airburst Strike:

• Decreased cooldown from 120 sec to 100 sec

“The Orbital Airburst Strike’s original intent was to block an area for a short duration and kill most non-heavy armored enemies in the area. It was underperforming compared to other anti-chaff options and had a very low rate of use. To make it a more attractive option we lowered the cooldown which should also make it more competitive in comparison to Eagle stratagems.”

Eagle 110MM Rocket Pods:

While these changes may look like a straight up nerf, that is not the intention. Please see the blogpost for more information.

• Improved targeting
• Increased projectile armor penetration (now does 100% damage to heavily armored enemies instead of 50%)
• Decreased projectile damage 600 to 250 (to compensate for the improved targeting and the extra damage from the increased armor penetration.)
• Decreased explosion armor penetration (explosion can no longer damage heavily armored enemies)

“The Eagle Rocket Pods were very inconsistent in dealing with its main targets, heavily armored enemies. The changes we are making aim to make it more consistent at dealing with these targets, but it will still not be a surefire way of outright killing them. It should however always soften up a target in some way. We are interested in hearing feedback on how this feels now and are open to tweaking them further.”

Eagle Strafing Run:

• Increased uses from 3 to 4
• Increased armor penetration, can now damage heavily armored enemies.

“The Eagle Strafing Run is supposed to be a tool to effectively deal with small groups of medium armored enemies. To that end we have increased its armor penetration to be able to reliably penetrate medium armored targets and soften up heavily armored enemies. We expect to have to tweak this further in the future. As with the Eagle Rocket Pods, we are very interested in your feedback.”

GL-21 Grenade Launcher:

• Increased explosion damage by from 350 to 400

“The Grenade Launcher is intended to be good at softening up hordes of enemies and provide utility for destroying spawners. While it is still good at destroying spawners the explosion was a little too weak to reliably damage medium enemies. The change in its explosion damage should put it in a better place when it comes to dealing with hordes, and more effective against some medium armored enemies.”

MG-206 Heavy Machine Gun:

• Increased projectile damage from 100 to 150
• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 23% to 33%
• Decreased fire rate from 450/750/900 to 450/600/750
• Decreased reload time from 7 to 5.5 sec
• Increased stagger strength

“The HMG failed to deliver on the fantasy of a Heavy Machine Gun when it was released. It had a weak round with low damage and impact, while the fire rate was up in levels more likely seen on smaller MGs. The HMGs intent is to be a great option at dealing with medium armored enemies and should chew them up easily, similar to the HMG emplacement. We are lowering the rate of fire further to resemble the fire rate seen in contemporary weapons of similar type, and increasing the damage and stagger so that each hit is significant. This should also make the available ammo last longer.”

MG-43 Machine Gun:

• Decreased reload time from 4 to 3.5 seconds
• Increased max amount of Magazines from 3 to 4

“The intent of the Machine Gun was that it should be a great crowd clear weapon with the ability to tackle medium armored enemies. The drawbacks of the machine gun are that you have to sit still while reloading and this made it hard to compete with the Stalwarts mobility. Therefore we want to lean into its strengths and reduce its drawbacks slightly to improve the value proposition of the weapon. To that end we are lowering the reload time, and giving it an additional magazine. It is also receiving a buff to damage described below.”

MG-43 Machine Gun, A/MG-43 Machine gun Sentry, A/G-16 Gatling Sentry and EXO-45 Patriot Exosuits Gatling:

• Increased projectile damage from 80 to 90
• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 7.5% to 25%

“The family of machine gun stratagems that used the 8mm rifle round were underperforming slightly and we have therefore increased the damage slightly.”

AR-23 Liberator, M-105 Stalwart and AX/AR-23 “Guard Dog”:

• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 23%

AR-23C Liberator Concussive:

• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 23% to 35%

BR-14 Adjudicator:

• Increased magazine capacity from 25 to 30
• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 20%

“The Adjudicator, with relatively few rounds in each magazine combined with a wild recoil, left players no room for error, which didn’t feel good for an assault rifle type weapon. The increased magazine capacity should make the weapon more forgiving of mistakes and encourage a more aggressive playstyle. Remember, short controlled bursts!”

AR-61 Tenderizer:

• Increased projectile damage from 60 to 95
• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 17%
• Decreased ammo capacity from 35 to 30
• Decreased number of magazines from 10 to 8
• Increased stagger strength

“The Tenderizer was released in a non-representative state as it used the incorrect stats, didn't have its own niche and felt like a worse Liberator. We're restoring justice and bringing it back to its intended design, which is a very precise assault rifle that rewards high accuracy play by having a heavy hitting round that doesn’t penetrate medium armor. “

PLAS-101 Purifier:

• Increased projectile armor penetration to be the same as the explosion
• Decreased explosion damage falloff

“The original idea behind the Purifier was to create a Scorcher variant with a charge up mechanic. Unfortunately, since the projectile didn't have enough armor penetration against medium-armored enemies, even a direct hit didn't deal enough damage to justify its long charge-up time. By increasing the armor penetration of the projectile and reducing the damage falloff of the explosion we hope to make it an exotic option that is viable in capable hands.”

CB-9 Explosive Crossbow:

• Increased explosion armor penetration to be the same as the projectile
• Increased demolition strength (Can destroy Bug holes and Bot Fabricator buildings)
• Added medium penetration tag

“Similarly to the Purifier, the crossbow's bolt didn't always deal its full damage due to the explosion having lower armor penetration than the projectile. Making both the projectile and the explosion penetrate medium armor should make the crossbow more consistent against medium-sized targets and increase its AoE viability.”

R-36 Eruptor:

• Increased total damage from 420 to 570 damage per shot

“In one of the previous patches we removed the shrapnel from the explosion as it made Eruptor's ability to spike damage too much for a primary weapon (and for a support weapon even, its theoretical max was over 9000!) and introduced some unexpected interactions. We acknowledge that the Eruptor lost a good portion of its capabilities and the additional damage boost didn't make up for the loss of shrapnel. Adding back shrapnel is quite tricky because of the low visibility of shrapnel, which sometimes created situations where you or your fellow helldivers died with very little feedback of what killed you. To compensate for that, we're giving the Eruptor 150 more damage per explosion to make it more consistent without introducing new edge-cases. The intent is that this change will make the Eruptor viable both against medium armored targets and groups of cannon fodder enemies.”

R-63 Diligence:

• Increased projectile damage against durable* body parts from 10% to 25%

“Small arms fire in the game does less damage to durable* body parts, however many small arms were doing the same damage (percentage wise) not representing the larger impact a rifle type round would have compared to other types. Therefore, rifle type bullets are now slightly more effective against durable* body parts. In general, the higher your caliber of weapon the better the effect is against durable body parts. Explosions also have very high effectiveness against durable body parts as shockwaves ripple through whatever you are hitting. Some weapons are more effective than others or have special exceptions, though this should follow the same logic as above.”

* Some enemies have durable body parts that receive only a portion of base damage from projectiles

Other:

• Updated Recoil stance modifiers: We made changes to the recoil stance modifiers to make them more consistent and also reward being prone more. Almost all of them will improve the recoil and only a two have been made worse (and only by 10%).

“The intention of our recoil modifiers is to reward usage of different stances in relation to different weapon types. They are also there to highlight that constantly moving around isn't doing your accuracy any favors. We made some changes to the recoil stance modifiers to make them more consistent and also reward being prone more.”

Gameplay

Removed operation modifier AA-Defenses: Reducing the stratagem slots by 1:

• We want to look over the operation modifiers in the future. Right now there are too few of them which become repetitive and the ones we have do not create variety or promote different playstyles. For now, we removed this one because it only encourages the players to bring the best stratagems and does not promote variety

Disabled the Retrieve Essential Personnel defend event mission for the time being:

• This is to give the mission the proper attention and care that it deserves as it is now deemed not fun enough or performing as we want it to.

Super Samples:

• Super samples now spawn on difficulty 6. The reason for this change is that we feel that their existence only on difficulty 7+ forced some players to play the game on a harder difficulty than they wanted to comfortably play on. We do however still want a gating of them but a less punishing one.

• The SEAF Artillery stratagem is no longer blocked by stratagem jammers or Ion Storms, and is available after the mission timer ends and the destroyer leaves close orbit.

• Enemies in melee range of the gates in the Evacuate High-Value Assets mission will now attack it more consistently.

• Added the ability to chat from in-game menus and mission loading screen.

• Updated some first person crosshairs to improve readability.

Social:

• Invite-Only lobbies are now supported

Armors:

• New armor passive Peak Physique (+50% melee damage, +30% weapon ergonomics)

Planets & Hazards

Spike Plant:

• The spike plant that appears on certain planets has been reworked.
• No longer causes bleed or stamina drain if hit by the plant explosion or spikes.
• Now “pops” three times sending spikes everywhere, dealing increased damage.

Fire Tornados:

• Fire tornados have had their behavior changed, they should no longer feel like they actively respond to player movement, and should move more randomly.
• While a fire tornado storm takes place, enemy vision is reduced. Player vision is unaffected.

*Fire tornados being more random should result in more variance in situations players find themselves in. Tornados are significantly less likely to pile up and overlap on extraction points or objectives, and will generally be a bit easier to deal with.

Tremors:

• Tremors have had their spawning tweaked to be slightly more random.
• Tremors have had their epicenter size and effect range increased.

*These changes should result in more situations where enemies away from the player get stunned, as well as reducing how consistently the player has a tremor occur next to them.

Ion Storms:

• Added additional VFX for Ion Storms.

Visibility:

A lot of planets have had their fog amounts tweaked to be a bit less harsh and dense, to provide less fatigue from constantly fighting on planets with bad visibility. We still intend there to be foggy planets with worse visibility, but the balance was a bit off.

• Desert planets such as Erata Prime, Chort Bay, Hellmire, and similar.
• Highlands planets such as Varylia 5, Matar Bay, Oshaune, and similar.
• Artificial light sources have had their intensity rebalanced and reduced across the board to fix situations of lights completely blinding the player.

Unexploded Hellbomb:

• The unexploded malfunctioning hellbombs that can sometimes be found on planets will now explode immediately if hit with strong explosions or heavy weaponry. They will still have the same delay if hit by small arms fire or weaker attacks.

Vegetation:

• Vegetation that’s large enough to slow the player now has an extra function. When inside the vegetation helldivers will be harder to detect, reducing their detection range by enemies. This effect stacks with other detection reducing effects such as nighttime, being crouched or prone, or things such as the scout armor passive.

Enemies

Acid Effect:

• The acid effect applied by hunters, bug mines, etc. now allows you to sprint while under the effect and slows you by 30% instead of 50%. Duration has been increased from 3 to 4 seconds. These changes are intended to make it less punishing for players to be slowed while fighting the Terminids, This allows us to use it in more places without making the experience very punishing, for example the Bile Spewers.

Armored enemy balance:

• We have toned down the amount of heavily armored enemies like Bile Titans, Chargers on higher difficulties and instead spawn more hordes of smaller enemies, the difference should be quite noticeable and the amount should be at least 30% less than before during bug breaches. We have also toned down slightly how many Hulks that spawn for the Automatons. Our intent is to ease up on the demand of anti-tank weapons and by having more of the other enemies give a better incentive for the group to bring stratagems and weapons that take care of hordes.

Patrols:

• Patrol spawning is now back to how it worked before patch 01.000.300 with some slight tweaks so that the levels are less empty if you are far away from important locations with enemy presence.

Stunning:

• Medium and large sized enemies now don't get stunned as easily. This will not affect the stratagems that stun, and will mostly just affect how easily the Pummeler can stun larger enemies

Terminids

Bile Spewer and Nursing Spewer:

• Spewers will now get slowed if they lose their legs.
• Spewer puke now applies the acid effect.
• Spewer puke now can only damage helldivers up to 4 times per second and the helldiver cannot take damage multiple times from the same projectile. This should reduce instances where you are instantly killed by it.

Bile Titan:

• The Bile Titan’s head is slightly less durable against weaker anti-tank weapons. It's not a large change, and will mostly matter for weapons like the railgun.
• The Bile Titan’s puke can now only damage the helldiver 4 times per second and the helldiver cannot take damage multiple times from the same projectile. The damage is still very deadly so running through their puke is not recommended. Their puke now also has a bigger spread.

Charger Behemoth:

• The Charger Behemoth is now joining the battle on higher difficulties, it can now also take more damage than before. This enables us to spawn fewer chargers but still retain the difficulty.

Chargers:

• Will now only show bleedout effects from the body if the bleedout state has started. It can still show bleedout effects from the mouth without having started the bleedout state.

Automatons

Hulk Scorcher:

• The Hulk’s flamethrower now does less damage and cannot damage helldivers more than 4 times per second. In addition, the helldiver cannot be damaged multiple times by the same flame projectile. This should reduce instances where you are instantly killed by it.

Automaton Tanks:

• The Tank armor value on the front has been lowered to be the same as the non-vent sections on the rear of the tank. The intent was initially that it was supposed to be more armored in the front, but the visual language did not show that.
• The vents on the back of the Tanks turret still has the same armor value as before, but will check for explosion directions correctly now.

• The damage of exploding automaton jump packs has been decreased by 50%, it will still set you on fire though.

Galactic War

Introducing Supply Lines & Origin of Attacks:

Supply lines were previously not shown on the Galactic War map to reduce clutter and improve readability. However based on the feedback from our community we have made an implementation showing them on the map. This solution tries to maintain the general readability while still exposing the system to players in game.

You will now also be able to see which planet an attack is originating from, potentially allowing for the community to stop the attack at its source. We have also updated visuals in the sector and planet info pop-ups.

Fixes

• The FAF-14 Spear targeting has been reworked and should now function much better. However it has lost the ability to target Automaton Spawners, this is not intended and will be fixed in the future.

• Intense Heat and Extreme Cold environmental modifiers will now affect the Quasar Cannon’s reload speed and will show correctly in the HUD.
• Reload speed on Cold planets -2.5 sec
• Reload speed on Hot planets +2.5 sec
• The radar pulse that detects enemies on the mini-map is now visible.
• Most of Automatons weapons have now gotten tighter limits to how much the projectile they shoot can deviate from its weapons muzzle angle. What this means is that situations where devastators shoot sideways and similar should be fixed.
• The weapons of the Exosuits are now allowed small adjustments in the angle they fire their projectiles versus their muzzle angle. This should make their weapons more accurate.
• Ballistic shield now collides with grenades.
• The unblock button should no longer disappear from the social menu.
• Blocked players can no longer join the blockers lobby through recent players.
• Fixed a bug where enemies killed, missions played, and missions completed stats would not be properly displayed in armory.
• Fixed issue where the player can throw an unlimited amount of grenades by pressing the "Quick grenade" button right after closing the Stratagem menu.
• Helldiver now also switches to the last active weapon when out of grenades, fixing the issue where they would be holding a stratagem ball without the stratagem menu being open.
• Fixed some text overlap in various locations.
• The burning effect applied to the player when a combat walker dies is now a normal burn. The intent is that you should be able to escape it alive. But you will be on fire so hit the ground!
• The extraction shuttle can no longer take damage preventing extraction. New high grade materials directly from Super Earth R&D have been utilized.
• On PC you can now navigate the super credits menu with “WASD” keys
• Fixed an issue where sample count in missions were incorrectly displayed
• Levels no longer generate with blocked areas preventing player progression.
• Your Ships bridge is no longer cast in perpetual shadow.
• Reduced situations where blue stratagems would bounce when placed next to the detector tower.
• The warbond menu now displays correct emote & victory poses in the thumbnail.
• War Medals cap is now displayed in the UI.
• Fixed a bug where the Helldivers armor could appear invisible for other players.
• Refined player reporting UI.
• Fixed issue where Helldivers could be launched into the air if close to a Bile Titan or Factory Strider corpse.
• Fix for Factory Strider sometimes spawned an extra model after being destroyed.
• Reduced situations where helldivers could spontaneously die while walking into seemingly walkable valleys on some planets.
• Fixed rare issue on arctic planets where players could spontaneously die close to large bodies of water.
• Fixed Pelican-1 sometimes leaving immediately after any player gets onboard.
• Fixed bug where helldiver could get stuck in grenade idle state after throwing grenades
• Fix Superior Packing Methodology not working for other peers.
• Recent Players list will now include hot-joining players.
• Relaxed disconnection policy for PC users.
• Fixed an issue where previous sessions' player names might not be saved correctly when restarting.
• Defend event attack origin now visualized when hovering the planet with the defend event or the attack origin planet.
• Implemented outlines for previously poorly readable texts.

Crash Fixes

• General crash fixes.
• Fix for a crash that could occur when applying wounds to multiple enemies.
• PlayStation Only: Fixed an issue that would sometimes cause a crash when switching between Quality and Performance mode.
• Fix for a crash when a player leaves after all their railguns have exploded.
• Fix for crash that could occur when rejoining a previous session
• Fix for crash that occurred when trying to throw a snowball in ADS mode
• Fix for potential crash when loadout is aborted during hotjoin.
• Fix for rare crash linked to leaving a session while aiming a weapon.

Known Issues

These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.

• Sending friend requests via friend code in game currently does not work.
• Players may be unable to be joined or invited to the game.
• Players added to the 'Recent Players' list will appear in the middle of the list.
• Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.
• Spear targeting is unable to target Automaton Spawners.
• Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.
• Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.
• Most weapons shoot below the crosshair when aiming down the sights.
• Plasma Punisher is unable to shoot out of the shield generators.
• Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
• Helldiver may be unable to stand up from crouching when surrounded by enemies.
• "Hand Carts" ship module does not reduce Shield Generator Pack's cooldown.
• Bile Titan sometimes does not take damage to the head.
• Charger’s butt does not take damage from explosions.
• Players may become stuck in the Loadout when joining a game in progress.
• Reinforcement may not be available for players who join a game in progress.
• Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
• "Raise Flag of Super Earth" objective does not show a progress bar.
• Mission count in the Career tab is being reset to zero after every game restart.
• Some weapons’ descriptions are out-of-date and don’t reflect their current design.
• BR-14 Adjudicator has incorrect recoil values