Measure of a Helldiver - Part 3
Part One: Become a Helldiver
Part Two: Find Your Battle Buddy
Part Three: Hey Darlin’, You’re Holding the Map Upside Down
Good morning, cadets! Welcome to the Helldivers and welcome back here. If you missed parts one and two of our talk you can find them linked above. For those who don't know me, I'm WandererInGray of the ship Harbinger of Benevolence. I've been playing since May 2024 and have 2,700-plus hours of in-mission time.
In my spare time I write science fiction as K.B. Wagers and it’s in part because of the skills I’ve honed there but also because of how my brain works that I'm forever breaking down the game and gameplay in my head. Today we’re tackling a wide range of things, starting with the galactic war and then zooming in like a 200m scope to talk about mission strategies. Buckle in.
Real quick - if you want Helldivers 2 lore, check out Super Earth Galactic War Data Archive for all your nerdy needs.
The galactic war is a massive topic in and of itself so I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time on it, you’ll have to do some homework if you’re curious enough. First and foremost the Helldivers Companion App is a great resource for everything happening in the war right now. On your ship the comparable items are the war table and your Orders station (across from the armory). All these places will give you all the information about your job as a Helldiver. You will also find major order briefings and smaller crucial information about planets in the lower right side of your screen in game. Read those, they might save your life.
Major Orders are timed, game-wide objectives that usually carry a reward or have an impact on the war if failed. Bear in mind, you’re part of a community, so it’s nice to participate in these when you can. However, I’m also of the firm belief that this is your game and you play it how you want. If you’re only a bug diver, good on you, have fun. If you’re annoyed that the bug divers aren’t “helping” suck it up and put your eyes back on your own missions.
Strategic Orders are smaller efforts within the greater scope that give us some kind of advantage. Free stratagems and the like.
Personal Orders are chances to get medals for those who need them and usually involve trying out a weapon that you’re maybe not as familiar with, or killing enemies of Super Earth, or doing secondary objectives. Most of the time these personal orders can be won by a team pretty easily. Remember if you drop in on a lower level player and can knock this out for them it’s a good thing!
One major thing I wanted to highlight in the galactic front is paying attention to how the map works. Know that if one planet is under attack (denoted by red arrows pointing at the planet from the attacking planet), you can cut off the attack two ways: one is by liberating the planet itself, the other is by liberating the planet where the attack originates. Sometimes the second option is easier.
You can dive into some very heavy data oriented topics if you’re interested in how and why planets get liberated, what makes for more difficult troop encounters even on the same difficultly level (see major order planets), and how you and your crew can more effectively fight the war if you put your ego on the shelf and play lower levels when things get challenging and the clock is ticking. I’m not going to go over all that here, it’s a whole other series on its own.
Let’s talk about maps! Have you ever looked at the map in the drop pod and then gotten on the ground and realized that the map doesn’t look the same? It’s because the briefing map gives you a heads up as to where everything is, including secondary objectives, but the mission map leaves the secondaries off. (Except for if there’s a blue tagged one at the start and/or you’re lucky enough to find a lidar along the way.)
Fun fact: You can toggle the map back up even after you’re in the pick stratagems screen, though if it’s not your ship for some reason you can only see a section of the drop area. If you’re on your ship you can, and I think should, be taking a look at the map just before dropping to try and get a good sense of where things are.
So every briefing turns into a game of memory. Take a hard look at the map, and try to remember where the red spots are before you drop. I always open my map (if I can) the second I land to try and compare the two. It gives me an idea where secondaries will be and means we’re less likely to be hunting around the map for a SAM site or a Stalker nest. Secondary objectives generally work like this:
- Difficulty 1-3: 1 or 2 secondaries
- Difficulty 4-5: 2 or 3 secondaries
- Difficulty 6-10: 3 or 4 secondaries
If there’s not a blue secondary showing on the briefing map you’ll generally have one less on the mission map. Arrowhead has done some shenanigans lately that makes this a little less reliable than previously, though, and I’ve run into several D10 missions with only three secondaries. But in general you can use this to make sure that you’re not missing a secondary.
Speaking of briefings, pay attention to them! They will tell you if you’re short a reinforcement, or stims and ammo are rationed, they’ll tell you if the planet is too hot or too cold (these things impact your weapons), they’ll tell you why shit is taking extra long to come down so you can attempt to plan accordingly.
The briefing is also the point where you can plan out how your crew is going to hit the objective. A large percentage of the missions have steps, sub-objectives that you have to complete before you can do the main. As I mentioned in the very first part, I’ve dropped into far too many SOS calls where the Helldiver is all the way across the map from the necessary sub-objective, so I am begging you all to pay attention to the maps and put yourself down in the best spot possible to give you the best chance to finish a mission.
I move fast on the battlefield, in part because the people I played with early moved fast and I learned that the only way for me to get anything done was to keep up. These days I try to slow down and stick together, though I forget on occasion. But more than just speed I had to start looking ahead at what was next, because if I'm playing with a fellow veteran Helldiver and they're headed for objective A? It's pointless for me to go there also. Instead my sights are set on objective B, which is further beyond A. Leapfrogging like this in teams of two is a super effective way to clear the map and it keeps teammates reasonably close to each other to help with supplies and call ins and cutting down on patrol spawns. (did you know that the game spawns additional patrols for every Helldiver who's 75 meters from another diver?) Communication again is a big deal here because you can let people know where you're headed next and you let people know if you need help. (a super common failing for upper level Helldivers, we think we've got it handled and maybe we do but there's nothing wrong with getting by with a little help from our friends) This is a team game designed to be played as a team and I find it's far more fun when it's played that way. With the reminder that as I talked about in part two, there are many components to a team that work in some really wonderful ways.
By this same logic, you want to start thinking in terms of multitasking when you're doing secondaries that are close to each other, or on blitz missions. There's no point in standing around waiting for a lidar tower to raise when there's a SAM site 20 meters away. I'll often start the lidar, run to the SAM, then come back to the lidar. (Or better yet if someone is coming up behind me, they'll be able to finish up the lidar when they get there.)
I like sticking together as a group especially on higher levels, even if sometimes I get distracted and wander off, I try to come back or meet up at a rally point (like a secondary or the objective). You do get some measure of increased XP for how fast you finish missions but at the end of it it's relatively negligible. It's always more fun to play together and on the higher levels it sometimes the best way to get things done.
A word about loading artillery shells because I have nowhere else to put it: Please, for the love of democracy, put the most powerful shells in first. Mini-nukes always, then high-yield. I think there’s some arguments to be made on regular explosives or napalm and statics or smokes last but in general you want your order to be: mini nukes, high-yield, regular, napalm, statics, smokes. Artillery is first in first out, so you want your artillery to work for you. My one and only exception to this is if the clock is running out and you’re just trying to get it done before the ship takes off, then load whatever you can grab and get your ass running.
My family motto (unofficially) is “Pay attention to what’s going on around you” and Helldivers 2 seems to have taken this to heart. This game punishes you if you don’t pay attention to the terrain, the planet situation, the various effects and factions you are fighting. Ion storms and blizzards. Fire bastards, sorry, Incinerator Corp will chew you up and spit you out if you're not prepared. Your laser weapons will overheat on hot planets. Your guns will jam on cold ones. Swamps and planets with trees are unforgiving to many Eagle strikes and you’ll want to watch where you’re throwing them from to make sure the bomb gets to where you want it. Same with big cities and orbitals, or planets with large rock formations. Pro Tip - the location of your destroyer is marked with a colored triangle on the compass at the top in cities, in the countryside the host ship is in the east and then ships spread out going south, west, north (why I don’t know) depending on the number you are in the squad. It can be helpful for planning your strikes. There’s a very long conversation to be had about physics and how things are impacted the closer you get to the edge of the map, but we don’t have time. Bottom line is you want to be aware of what’s going on and use it to your advantage.
The longer you play the game, and if you're a nerd like me and my friends, the more you start asking questions about the effective range of an Eagle Strafing Run or how many beeps there are in the Dynamite set with a 60 second fuse. How far across the map can I hit a Bot Fabricator with a Recoilless Rocket? (437m is my record, with spotting help from teammates!) Any manner of “what does this do and why” comes up when we’re playing and someone will usually be game for scientific testing. This sort of stuff is part fun, part learning things about the game that make you a better player and a better teammate. That leads into a whole other section about advanced shit like the angles you’re shooting at, armor weak points, weapon damage, the incredible chaos of war, why the game devs aren’t cheating it’s likely a skill issue and owning it is a good thing (learn how to laugh it off and say you fucked up), and all the other little pieces and parts that make up Helldivers 2. It remains a miracle this game works as well as it does. I might write it at some point down the road or you can always do your own hunting around on places like the Helldivers Wiki for more information to better your gameplay.
Thanks so much for reading, and I’ll catch you on the battlefield. For Democracy!
Website: www.kbwagers.com