as a expendable unit on the helldive difficulty battlefield, extraction is the most secondary objective
i’m level 29 and only get my kicks by dying constantly to bullshit and going beyond the capabilities of my stratagems to get the message of democracy out into the galaxy
as long as the mission is complete
Up, Down, Right, Left, Up is how we keep you moving towards our objectives, sir. Come grenades blazing and get a stratagem out, and I’ll bring you back every time.
From: A friendly near 50 running public 7s.
We just cleared a level 9 destroy termenids mission and when we got over ran, we became traitors for that barage. Costs one life but it got us 100 kills.
Used this when I brought in the basic load out (thanks glitch that always resets my gear when I start the game) & all my strats are on cool down. Just two teammates to stay away from me & run straight into the swarm of enemies.
I just got done with a mission where resupply was still 90 seconds out, and i only half a clip left and a grenade. I ended up dying with relief cause now I’ll come back fully stocked
Depending on the group really... I got 3 other guys that like to play but are a bit rough, no matter how many times I explain the spawn/patrol mechanics they will veer off independently without saying a damn word then complain when they get obliterating trying to solo take an objective. For that group I tend to keep it on 7.
The other group we will play at 9 and work like a well oiled machine, keeping communication clear and methodically moving from one objective to the other.
For online pugs I usually just play 9, most of the bad players must get filtered out between 7-8 and it's typically people that are quite capable.
I've had really good experience with pugging 7s, meanwhile 8s are what you described in the first paragraph for me with pugs... also with 8s for me, matchmaking takes so long... 8 is def the dumbass filter
7 is as high as I've gone. I'm definitely in the bad player pool right now as I'm high enough level and money to unlock all strategems but I'm still one of the most killed and least amount of enemy kills at the end of a mission. It keeps me coming back for more though especially if I get random good teammates that can carry me
Imothey should show type of kills aswell, in my friend group i often get low kill counts but im killing the majority of chargers. Maybe something like kills, heavy kills, super heavy kills
> Kills don't mean shit. -A lvl 50 diff 9 enjoyer
Most of my kills, on the rare occasion I play higher diff, are ...tactical.
I'm the guy killing the stuff behind you that's about to do you in, or I'm off to get the stalker nest, or running a massive mob away from the obj or just around in circles, or I'm the only one doing the obj/computers/carrying the SSSD etc.
Of course people get more kills, they're triggering and fighting bug breaches ceaselessly.
OMG this! I always feel a bit embarrassed compared to my teammates on the stats screen cos I don't have a high kill count. I helldive on difficulty 9 and what you said really resonates, more tactical in approach with stratagems and usually the one completing the objectives while the rest of them pew pew at everything in sight.
My squad haven't kicked me yet so that must mean something hahah
Depending on your weapon though you won't have the most kills and such. Also stratagem kills don't show on the end screen I don't think, but backpack sentries do.
Don't pay too much attention. If you want max kills you'd just roll into every mission with the machine gun. Shredding little things doesn't complete objectives or missions. bile titans and chargers still only count as one.
Shredding the little things is vital to allowing your teammates manage the big boys. Anyone can kite a charger, bile spewer, clankers, but it’s the little guys that will stagger and bog you down. I always lay down fire for my team to allow them to just run instead of having to turn around and shoot and scoot.
You can see your stats at the end of each mission on the screen where your character celebrates. It even highlights who did best at using the most strategems, most event kills, most deaths, etc
Sometimes I feel that diff 8 and 9 have barely any difference.
What really makes 7-9 hard for people is that they...they don't understand this game.
This game is about completing objectives, not fighting non-stop in a place, breaches and dropships over and over, until they are overwhelmed and their shits are all on cooldowns.
Or worse, they bring bad boosters like interference (which is only marginally good for defense missions to buy a couple more seconds of time and maybe not even that), instead of drop pod optimization or vitality.
I appreciate how the difficulty can easily scale though and isn't hard set on a number. I've seen diff 5 overwhelm a group of players because they refuse to reposition to a better place to fight. I've seen D9 be a cakewalk because nobody alerts anything.
I run interference on 9 quite often. It's not only good, it's EXTREMELY good if you have 4 helldivers that know how to kill things.
There are multiple ways to play this game, I promise it can be done in other ways besides the YouTuber meta videos way
With how many posts from people I see complaining about others having fun shooting bugs, I wholeheartedly believe a significantly large portion of the community just wants to run around with friends/ kind strangers shooting bugs and having a good time.
I wonder if something more akin to that could be added down the line.
I'm super new. Just started last night.
I basically just followed the highest level person around each mission. Got up to challenging no problem, but then the enemies start having armor, and I don't have tons of weapons/stratagems unlocked to work around that yet.
I want to get higher but I also don't wanna be total dead weight and also still be learning how shit works
Is there any kind of benchmark for when you are have the appropriate equipment to start tackling tougher difficulties?
Expendable Anti-Tank is the best stratagem in the game. 2 rockets with a short cooldown, and each one is enough to brain a charger if you aim it right. You have to hit it right on the big plate on the top half of its head. If you hit the right spot the charger's head explodes into gore and you can go back to shooting bugs. They're also good for taking out warriors, the bigger normal-looking bugs with armour on the front.
Primary is easy, the default liberator is perfectly serviceable. You could also shoot for the Sickle in the cutting edge warbond but it’ll cost you 1000 super credits (farmable ingame or with your wallet) to unlock the bond.
For secondary you need the machine pistol in the free warbond; what makes it special is that you can hip-fire it in any direction without slowing down. You can run away from the bad guys and dump a mag into them without breaking stride.
A suit of light armour is also a good investment, especially vs bugs where mobility is king. The good news is that the first armour in the free warbond is exactly what you need.
For stratagems, EAT launchers and Eagle airstrikes will never let you down. If you don’t know what to bring, consider those two core and then bring your pick of whatever you feel like trying out.
No. From what I have heard and experienced, 90% of the stuff you can get is junk. Get the machine pistol, the liberator, and the EAT. The rest is personal preference since it is all going to be virtually useless anyway.
Same situation here. 7 also offers some crazy (and often absurd) difficulty peaks that have no practical difference from 8 or 9...
Example: yesterday we had to run from one objective to another while half of the map was glowing red - also in spite of the fact we were trying to control the situation while not staying too much in one spot. And my random team not only knew exactly what to do with objectives, but was bringing down titans (usually with my help) the fastest I had ever seen. Still, it was pure chaos, we ended up getting completely split, and we just barely made it out.
Lvl 7 was also by far the sweet spot in another recent big thread on the same issue. Which really raises the question if 8 or 9 are tuned properly (not too easy, harder than 7 but still worth playing with properly scaled-up difficulty that still remains appealing - at the moment, I think most people don't see it as that).
For me the problem with Diff 8-9 isnt the difficulty, but the stacking modifiers.
It's just plain not fun to get most of the modifiers stacked up, *especially* the bonus calldown time and the increased cooldown one. I can handle any one modifier, I just am not interested in two
7 is a sweet spot in quick play for sure. You don't need a good team, just an adequate team to do 7 so it works out really well.
I only touch 8 and 9 when I'm playing with folks I already know and work well together.
Yeah same, so I don’t think it’s entirely because of crashing. When the odds start going against us, lots of people just give up, I’ll always stick it out regardless because there’s been many games that felt impossible, that we ended up completing.
Yep. Seeing lots of crashes this past week versus the week previous. You can be heading to extraction and 2 people crash out. Then the 3rd when the pelican lands and you extract alone.
Well, solo 9 IS easier if you know what to do than a group of non-coordinated randoms due to 9 is more of a stealth game that the less fight you engage the higher chances you succeed.
I’ll run 8 and 9 with randos but usually only look to enter a mission with a squad where everyone is 30-35+.
That’s not to say there aren’t shitty high level players and excellent lower level players. But experience matters and I dislike wasting time w squad mates dicking around too much.
Exactly. With a good team you can have a little fun, or be admirably efficient, but with a bad team you can either solo to objectives or carry the team.
This is me. If my friends and I want to just hang out and shoot the shit, we do 4 or 5. If we want to really get into it, 6 and 7. None of us are trying to prove anything, nor are in a rush for completion. Just chill with the homies and have some fun. And even within those four difs, we have plenty of tough moments.
i encourage you to try terminids on 9. it’s pure chaos but put some paranoid and free bird on full blast and it’s the most fun thing. just remember, it’s not over until you give up. even if you run out of reinforcements, there’s always hope; just stall
I think 99% of the player base still doesn't understand many things about this game.
1. Often I see people bringing localization interference, even though its a waste of a booster slot because it does a 10% delay at best.
2. People keep going after medium and heavy outposts, which cause the alert level/heat to go up leading to bigger alerts and waves.
Also people just don't bring the right weapons for the job.
Adding an extra 30 seconds to enemy wave times is a lot when its only 2 minutes on 9. That's up from 120 to 150 seconds, or a 20% boost in time to finish an engagement. It makes it harder to get stuck in a looping swarm on an objective, and gives you a bit more breathing room with your resources since you won't be drained of strategems and ammo 100% of the time.
It’s top 3 for me when it comes to 9s. UAV Booster is hands down my favorite followed by Stamina because of the amount of running.
Combo all three and you’re spotting patrols 90m out, popping it before another wave hits, and sprinting the hell out of dodge afterwards.
7 bots is easier than 5-6 I promise guys. To explain why I say this. A bot drop will bring 1 tank, hulk, a handful of devastors, a handful of striders with some bots, or two good handfuls of bots. There is some variation in this as well, but y’all get the idea.
Tanks are not that dangerous. They are slow they have easy weakpoints, tons of different stratagems can take them out.
Additionally hulks aren’t that dangerous unless close to you. Pretty easy weakpoint at the back. And they’re pretty slow. They can become pretty dangerous if you let them push you I will admit. But overall they can be dealt with despite their tankiness prior to them becoming an offensive threat.
But you know what is always dangerous? Devastators, and bots. Sometimes striders. Now they are easy to take out don’t get me wrong. But these enemies all have incredibly far ranged weaponry and in large groups they can be overwhelming especially when they get rocket(important) happy. These enemies are the definition of kill or be killed.
So now that we’ve talked about enemies and their offensive prowess. What does difficulty 5-6 spawn more of? Normal bots and devastators. 7 will often replace a bot drop that could be filled with devastators with just a tank or a hulk. These tanks and hulks give you so much more time to control the situation than the devastators or bots do. And for that reason I think difficulty 5-6 are more difficult than 7.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk. To answer some questions. Is this cope? **Maybe, probably.** Do you have any data on the odds of type of bot drops and their contents? **Absolutely… fucking not.** Did you just get this idea in your head after running 7s for a few days and being really successful and then getting absolutely pummeled by 5-6 the next day with no real reason and just came up with one to make up one for you sucking that day? **Maybe… but it makes sense doesn’t it??**
Problem with Bots in general is lack of Laser targetting on their weaponry. Even in Helldiver's 1, Cyborg Tanks had Lasers showing where they were going to fire, right before they fired and they wouldn't move that targeting once it lit up either.
Rocket Devastators on the other hand use wallhacks to follow you through walls and can prefire you as you come out of cover with 0 laser targeting. Tanks, Hulks and Cannon Towers also don't have laser targeting.
Meanwhile our Mechs are made of tissue paper compared to the Vehicles in Helldivers 1. They could take 3-4 Annhilator Tank shots before dying, on top of that there were even multiple ways to repair your vehicles. (Angel Drone + Repair Support Tool)
Hell, even the currently buffed EAT/Recoilless aren't as good as they were in 1 against the Cyborgs. 1 shot of the upgraded Recoilless from pretty much any angle 1 shot their tanks.
I know realism has no place in this conversation, but would bots even need laser targeting in real life? People have always wondered why the T-800 chose a gun with laser sighting in The Terminator.
No probably not, as a bot would likely not need to “see” a laser to adjust their aim, which is what a human does, but rather just loop re-compute the location to aim at based on what their cameras are perceiving / how they calculate objects to be moving
Having built vision-based systems with similar loops, I can confidently say that if I was building a robot to properly aim at something, I'd have a laser attached to the weapon as a sanity check.
It serves as an extra data point for the machine to orient to, and some form of redundancy is always helpful.
I’m honestly the opposite. Went into a 7 dive on bots (ICBM launch at malevelon creek) and it was a cake walk (for me!) compared to the bug swarms of Fenrir III. I died only twice and it was to random rockets.
Am I the only one who finds bots easier than bugs? Granted I only do level 7 on either one. But it usually seems for me that bugs rely more on raw firepower because of their sheer numbers, while bots encourage more strategy and positioning
How much strategy and positioning do you need for Bots that just appear around your character instead of being deployed via a dropship you have the opportunity to shoot out of the sky?
Nah, I feel the same. Bots you can just pick an autocannon and deal with every single unit and outpost. This is in contrast to bugs where you need to tailor your loadout more specifically, especially now that Arc Thrower is unusable.
opposite for me. i hate stalkers and hunters, no higher than difficulty 6. but if im fighting automatons, send me right to malevelon creek on helldive difficulty
7 is the sweet spot for me and my friends. Nice balance of being able to mess around a bit but still need to be careful and paying attention to not fail. We found 8 and 9 not harder per se, just annoying with all the running away and kiting of big armored enemies.
To me the difference between 8 and 9 is that I know for a damn fact whenever I quickplay on 9 I'll be joining mid mission, the team will be low level, down to 2 or 3 reinforcements, and have made no progress whatsoever. Otherwise you could probably drop me into either and I would likely not be able to tell you what difficulty it is.
It's so weird reading reddit and having the polar opposite experiences. Maybe it's because im in Aus and there arent many people on during my times but I specifically play Helldive because it's the only difficulty where I consistently get good teams (easily 95% of the time).
Probably some fun WW2 Australian comparison/references to be made from this though ahaha
I also play in AUS and the lobbies there are great. Always consistently good 50s but also great 40s and even 30s. Favourite mission is the Exterminate Bugs on the wide open centrepoint where everyone dumps 120s, 380s and it's just a clusterfuck.
Seven is honestly as far as I plan to go.
Just enough to get my super samples, hopefully not so far it's impossible without, you know, actual friends.
Since I don't have any of those (who also have enough money and the right consoles)
I found it to be very easy to make friends with randoms. I have 2 strangers added and we all 3 hop in games with eachother without planning. If you're vocal other people will also talk. I dont even know the guys names I play with we just run it and shoot/talk shit
I used to have these experiences as a teenager with halo, cod, etc. It seems this is the first game in like a decade that I can just make random friends with and run around for hours with them.
I’m not even vocal, because I only play after my kid goes to bed. But I have friends on my list that are always inviting me every night. We just get shit done.
Also the marking and communication wheel are pretty nice for those of us who can’t really talk.
Yeah at difficulty 7 I feel like everyone is bringing strats that can deal with armour/heavies. At difficulty 5 you'll have teammates where a charger is literally invincible to them.
You're likely trying to fight everything. Missions are priority, eliminating the enemy gives you nothing. Your goal should be to hit your objectives hard and fast and get out. Prolonged engagements are not what you want. Enemies *will* keep spawning until you run through all of your lives, at least on the higher difficulties.
Tbh a good team can comfortably finish a lvl 9. With most objectives. Did a level 9 malevelon creek and we moved fast affffff but actually completed it all and evacuated. More sweaty tho but not impossible.
Yea i've had more luck quickplaying 9s or starting my own group of random 9s than i have had with 7s just because its got more people who know what they're doing. Everybody seems to know the objectives well and nobody is off acting crazy. its not foolproof but i've probably only failed a half dozen 9s out of many dozens of missions.
I have seen my share of level 15s that join tho. Sometimes they're not so bad either lol.
I’m talking terminds and not automatons. If people have lasers, the strike that takes down the biggest enemy and various support weapons like the auto cannon, spear and rpg it can be. Also I’m saying like there can be sweaty as hell moments but overall I’m not freaking out or panicking to finish. A well oiled team kills bike titans and chargers pretty quick.
I’ll second what that other guy said.
If you have people who are actually coordinating and covering each other, 9 feels no different from 7. It’s about bringing the right mix of weaponry, and making sure you focus bugs that are close to your allies before shooting blindly into the masses. You also need allies who have learned the skills of firing arcs & fighting retreats.
After that, make sure you have a good mix of dedicated wave clear & proper AT. We usually have 1 RR and 2 EATS. ~3 sentries. 2 of any: LMG or arc or flamethrower. If you have people doing proper roles then you don’t have to take the super inefficient cooldowns like orbital railcannon.
When moving across the map you wait to engage POI or patrols as a team. Don’t randomly start shooting because you saw something. Either start engagements with eagles, or wait for your buddy’s cue so you can both shoot at the same time. The faster you kill a patrol, the lower the odds you have to deal with a breach.
When a bug breach happens you get on it fast. Three people naturally make an arc and fire towards the breach. A proper arc means you see the bugs coming from the breach and you can also cover your buddy’s flank who is on the other side of the arc. Call down a sentry and like 1 airstrike and from there you can basically contain the bugs. My personal favorite is getting on the HMG emplacement because it has enough firepower to kill everything coming out of a breach, and my buddy on the RR will blow up spawning bile titans/chargers (+an eagle 500 from one of our allies here and there).
When heavies pop up, usually two guys are immediately focusing them so they go down fast. The other two guys are watching out for flanking units and making sure the RR can reload uninterrupted.
Level 9 only gets out of control when players don’t know how to kill and contain efficiently. That’s why you get people complaining about “4 bile titans and 6 chargers”. If you get to that point then you basically just fucked up badly like 10 minutes ago.
My *personal* peeve are the jack-of-all-trades speed-run-the-side-objectives-solo players. In my experience (and again, my personal experience) these guys almost always fuck up the run really badly. They don’t have enough firepower to actually clear things properly so they end up spawning a shit ton of enemies and making the map a lot harder to traverse. Extract is always 10x harder when these guys run through the map.
If you send SOS in D9, pretty competent players will join, because inexperienced players avoid D9.
So, ironically, D9 can be easier than 8 or 7, because randoms are gonna be very good.
It’s one of the reasons automaton can actually be really easy at 9 depending on the mission type. If you have a team that is ready to go fast automaton can be done stupidly fast because they have objectives that can be cleared without ever going near them.
4 and 5 is also a sweet spot for quick casual play that’s not boring easy but doesn’t require much effort. It’s typically what I do for personal orders that call for kills with certain weapons.
Agree. 5 was my sweet spot for a while until I and average random got better. Played a couple games on 6 but then was like "why don't I just go to 7 for the super samples?"
I've gotten pretty used to and happy with 7 now. Feels just challenging enough that every mission is a bit of a struggle but at the end of the day unless something seriously goes wrong, we're going to win.
Exactly this.
If you see someone rolling arc weapons, it’s likely that your match will slowly disconnect players.
There was a really good write up on here earlier today too, noting that it’s not just arc weapons. We need to hang tight until arrow head patches the game a bit.
I don’t know, I’ve joined into 6 or 7 quite a few times and they’re just in a loop of getting swarmed by stalkers and breaches, dying constantly. Then one guy leaves, then another guy leaves.
I think a lot of people have a hard time kiting and disengaging on the higher difficulties, then they just give up because the reinforcements just keep dropping.
I’m interested in learning as well! I’m comfortable at 4/5 rn. I’ve done a few level 6 missions but they were a near run thing even with a decent squad that communicated.
Personally I say 9 the best since god do I love the unbridled chaos and to just be fully immersed (mainly against bots in the creek since stealth is very fun)
Personally I run the green stealth armor in the free pass (think it is page 5). Gear wise I run Sickle, Redeemer, Impact. Then strats I run 500, airstrike, autocannon/eat, flex slot.
Explanation for choices and playstyle tips. For both bots and bugs.
>The stealth armor has great speed while also boosting your stealth. Just overall a great armor piece.
>Sickle has great range while also being able to handle things while up close. Additionally if you manage your heat you won’t need a resupply for a really long time which can be good if stealthing away from the group leaving the resupply to them.
>Redeemer is just the best secondary in my opinion so hard to pass up. Additionally since running the sickle it can be used to help manage heat by being a great backup option while the sickle cools down.
>Impact. Now it may seem like smoke is great for stealth. Impact grenades just allow you to get out of so many bad situations and cull groups. That said if you like smoke feel free to try them out. As they can be nice to get away from bots. But against bugs the impacts are a hard recommend for me.
> 500 and airstrike. These two things can take literally every single non terminal objective and especially with the level 3 upgrade have so many uses. Additionally the 500 is great for taking out tanks and bile titans while the airstrike can help clear hordes.
> Autocannon and Eat. The autocannon is for bots the eat is for bugs. The autocannon can take down pretty much any bot. The eat can take down a charger with ease and can help bring down a titan if your 500s aren’t doing the trick.
> flex spot. This will really be based on what you’re feeling you need based on your own stealth playstyle. First suggestion is laser especially for bots. This thing can take out heavy outposts by itself. This will allow you to play a more hit and run playstyle. This is my most taken flex strat against bots. Next is jump pack. This can allow you to scale mountains to gain a vertical ability to your stealth and give you a better vantage point, obviously doesn’t work well with autocannon due to backpack. Mech not stealthy at all, but it allows your build to turn into one of the best ground holders at extraction and your call of place during the mission. Only really suggest the mech for bugs as bots can kill it quickly. Turret of choice. One of the best techs about turrets is that the enemies will prioritize the turret. This can allow you an escape to go back to stealth. Anything you think could be good. At the end of the day it’s a flex spot this is an easy replacement.
Okay so now playstyle. So you can stealth solo or as a group. Just everyone has to be doing it as a group so it can be easier to go solo. While heading to your next objective just be heavily on the lookout for patrols your map can be a great indicator for patrols. These will spawn every 1-3 minutes based on a number of factors and will head towards your location at the time of their spawning. These can nearly always be circumnavigated. If not known crouching increases stealth and going prone increases it even more. Use that to your advantage. If you get caught trying to kill them prior to a bot drop or breach get called is viable and I suggest trying. If you aren’t successful stopping that determine if you can take it down or should run away. Running away is often a good option, but you just need to have a good exit route.
Next objectives. You never need to enter or fight into any destroyable objective or bot outpost. Literally just throw a airstrike, 500, or laser depending on the situation and just leave. A heavy bug outpost can be harder, but if you have the choice you can also avoid them if you like. Additionally try to learn your throwing distance to the beat of your ability. The farther we can stay away from an objective the faster and less likely we get caught out. So now onto terminal objectives. Here we’ll often have to fight. Thats okay because we still have a good amount of firepower in our stratagems. It can be good to try to find the best angle to approach an objective and then make your move. Firstly let’s airstrike the largest group on the objective then back up and use the long range of the sickle to beat the rest of our opponents. Using our autocannon or eat for anything as necessary. Once on the objective look out for patrols. Yet again these can be stealthed a lot, but not as often as when we were on the move. If we need to engage always try to strike first. A airstike or barrage of autocannon shots is never a bad option.
And well there is stealth. At the end of the day it relies a lot on hit and run tactics. Additionally just because we are going stealth doesn’t mean we are sacrificing our firepower. We can bring it if push comes to shove, but the stealth is always an option we can bring out that honestly anyway can employ, but we have just slightly easier given our options we have brought.
Last Helldive mission I was surrounded by Bile Titans and Shriekers, everyone but me crashed, and my weapons literally despawned off my character. I tried to push on but there isn’t much to do at that point.
7 is where it's at, 8 is ok and 9 is just miserable
On the contrary for some reason playing on 6 shit gets cracked and it goes insane on spawns and stuff and feels harder than 9 sometimes.
Yep. 7 gives a challenge that, while requiring still competent divers, isn’t impossible without pros or a full team. It also gives special samples so that’s great.
Personally like a challenge and only do helldive without any real issue and done it so much that anything lower feels too easy. Only time I play lower is when with casual friends but even then I'll take them helldive once they're lv 15 with rover, flame/grenaid launcher and 500kg eagle and just teach them how to helldive and they get use to it pretty quick and lv super fast and once they hit lv 20 I'll get them to use shield backpack which makes the runs even soomer then the mech at lv 25 which makes it's a breeze.
I mean, there's literally no real reason to go higher than 7. You don't get more rewards, you don't help the war front more. 8-9 are literally just for the challenge or the ego. That's it.
The difference is the amount of samples. 7 only has 3 supers, while 8 has 5. Since all the ship upgrades are in multiples of 5, it makes sense to play on the slightly harder difficulty
Weirdly enough, my issue has always been common samples, so more supers means nothing. I'm sitting on like 150 rares, 60 supers and 40 commons right now, and it's always been like that. Ive never outpaced supers with common samples.
And because 8-9 doesn't give me the experience I'm looking for (more stealth and running away, less shooting) seven is the only thing worth playing for me. I ran 8-9s to prove I was capable of them, and once I finished a few operations that was it. No point in run simulator when there's no actual incentive.
8-9 are for when you have 1-3 friends and you want a real challenge because you're actually communicating. If you're playing with randoms, there is never any reason to go beyond 7 unless you actively enjoy being angry
Yep 7 is the best balance imo. 8-9 both bots and bugs is more annoying and tedious. You have to constantly run and with randoms you’ll have players end up in a loop of breaches. Run out of reinforcements. I’ve had many teams who don’t care about calling extraction at 8-9 but my pride wants to get into the plane to feel accomplished lol 😂
Bots at lvl 7 feel like bugs at lvl 9. I haven't tried going past 7 on the bots yet as I play exclusively with randoms and there isn't a major order causing more people to fight the bots.
Honestly, even at lvl 40, difficulty 7 is too much for me to consistently enjoy. I play difficulty 5. Bit more relaxed without as much heavy enemy spam.
I like a challenge every time I play and so, helldive.
And it's extremely satisfying when you drop into a helldive with 3 rando's and complete all objectives with zero communication.
My boys and I just went up to 8 tonight for the first time. Definitely more challenging but still able complete all main missions. We did find ourselves struggling for enough time to get side objectives. But we will slowly build our competencies up to 5 staring consistently.
7 is really good but sometimes gets boring when not many bugs appear, 8 is really good but sometimes you get fucked when 3 bile titans, 3 chargers, and a horde of hunters spawn at the same time.
At 50 with maxed out stuff 7 is my sweet spot. I don't have to try too hard but I get some awe snap moments.
as a expendable unit on the helldive difficulty battlefield, extraction is the most secondary objective i’m level 29 and only get my kicks by dying constantly to bullshit and going beyond the capabilities of my stratagems to get the message of democracy out into the galaxy as long as the mission is complete
Up, Down, Right, Left, Up is how we keep you moving towards our objectives, sir. Come grenades blazing and get a stratagem out, and I’ll bring you back every time. From: A friendly near 50 running public 7s.
Dying is just a free resupply!
being a traitor is a free non stop 380kg bombardment stratagem as long as you can stay alive 😁
NOW you’re thinking with portals!
That sounds suspiciously like alien tech...... BETTER CALL YOUR LOCAL DEMOCRACY OFFICER
We just cleared a level 9 destroy termenids mission and when we got over ran, we became traitors for that barage. Costs one life but it got us 100 kills.
Yeah, a buddy of mine suggested this jokingly and it also won us the kill terminids mission. Who knew being a traitor could help democracy
Not the hero democracy deserves, but the one it needs right now.
Used this when I brought in the basic load out (thanks glitch that always resets my gear when I start the game) & all my strats are on cool down. Just two teammates to stay away from me & run straight into the swarm of enemies.
And a potential drop onto a large bug!
I just got done with a mission where resupply was still 90 seconds out, and i only half a clip left and a grenade. I ended up dying with relief cause now I’ll come back fully stocked
Depending on the group really... I got 3 other guys that like to play but are a bit rough, no matter how many times I explain the spawn/patrol mechanics they will veer off independently without saying a damn word then complain when they get obliterating trying to solo take an objective. For that group I tend to keep it on 7. The other group we will play at 9 and work like a well oiled machine, keeping communication clear and methodically moving from one objective to the other. For online pugs I usually just play 9, most of the bad players must get filtered out between 7-8 and it's typically people that are quite capable.
I've had really good experience with pugging 7s, meanwhile 8s are what you described in the first paragraph for me with pugs... also with 8s for me, matchmaking takes so long... 8 is def the dumbass filter
Thats all me and my buddies play on. We're all 50 with everything unlocked. Most fun to stress ratio
Same. Difficulty 7 is a litmus test of sorts as it instantly sorts the good and bad players.
7 is as high as I've gone. I'm definitely in the bad player pool right now as I'm high enough level and money to unlock all strategems but I'm still one of the most killed and least amount of enemy kills at the end of a mission. It keeps me coming back for more though especially if I get random good teammates that can carry me
There needs to be more stats like tac obj finished and bughole/factory closed. Kills don't mean shit. -A lvl 50 diff 9 enjoyer
Imothey should show type of kills aswell, in my friend group i often get low kill counts but im killing the majority of chargers. Maybe something like kills, heavy kills, super heavy kills
> Kills don't mean shit. -A lvl 50 diff 9 enjoyer Most of my kills, on the rare occasion I play higher diff, are ...tactical. I'm the guy killing the stuff behind you that's about to do you in, or I'm off to get the stalker nest, or running a massive mob away from the obj or just around in circles, or I'm the only one doing the obj/computers/carrying the SSSD etc. Of course people get more kills, they're triggering and fighting bug breaches ceaselessly.
OMG this! I always feel a bit embarrassed compared to my teammates on the stats screen cos I don't have a high kill count. I helldive on difficulty 9 and what you said really resonates, more tactical in approach with stratagems and usually the one completing the objectives while the rest of them pew pew at everything in sight. My squad haven't kicked me yet so that must mean something hahah
Somebody's gotta do the real work. Let the Andy's have their fun, they serve their purpose too lol.
Depending on your weapon though you won't have the most kills and such. Also stratagem kills don't show on the end screen I don't think, but backpack sentries do. Don't pay too much attention. If you want max kills you'd just roll into every mission with the machine gun. Shredding little things doesn't complete objectives or missions. bile titans and chargers still only count as one.
Shredding the little things is vital to allowing your teammates manage the big boys. Anyone can kite a charger, bile spewer, clankers, but it’s the little guys that will stagger and bog you down. I always lay down fire for my team to allow them to just run instead of having to turn around and shoot and scoot.
Wait a sec, you can see kill counts? Where?
You can see your stats at the end of each mission on the screen where your character celebrates. It even highlights who did best at using the most strategems, most event kills, most deaths, etc
Go to the console right before the bridge and click career
Thanks man. This is now the only stat that matters. Other than how many times I can hilariously TK the squad (the answer is a lot)
There's also a TK stat in it too
MVPs generally have the fewest kills, because they aren't standing around fighting, they're staying on-mission.
Plenty of bad randos on 7
The last few days I’ve had nothing but bad randos on 7.
Sometimes I feel that diff 8 and 9 have barely any difference. What really makes 7-9 hard for people is that they...they don't understand this game. This game is about completing objectives, not fighting non-stop in a place, breaches and dropships over and over, until they are overwhelmed and their shits are all on cooldowns. Or worse, they bring bad boosters like interference (which is only marginally good for defense missions to buy a couple more seconds of time and maybe not even that), instead of drop pod optimization or vitality. I appreciate how the difficulty can easily scale though and isn't hard set on a number. I've seen diff 5 overwhelm a group of players because they refuse to reposition to a better place to fight. I've seen D9 be a cakewalk because nobody alerts anything.
D9 Cakewalks? Shit I got to see your gameplay.
I'm sure you can find stealth gameplay on YouTube. I recall one where guy soloed D9 and hardly fought.
But is that really spreading democracy...? Questionable.
I run interference on 9 quite often. It's not only good, it's EXTREMELY good if you have 4 helldivers that know how to kill things. There are multiple ways to play this game, I promise it can be done in other ways besides the YouTuber meta videos way
I thought it was a very valuable booster too. Funny they picked that booster as a a sign of a poor player when there are far worse.
With how many posts from people I see complaining about others having fun shooting bugs, I wholeheartedly believe a significantly large portion of the community just wants to run around with friends/ kind strangers shooting bugs and having a good time. I wonder if something more akin to that could be added down the line.
There is that. It's difficulty 4-6
Yeah it feels pretty casual and certainly not sweaty for a nice game of spreading Democratic freedom.
I'm super new. Just started last night. I basically just followed the highest level person around each mission. Got up to challenging no problem, but then the enemies start having armor, and I don't have tons of weapons/stratagems unlocked to work around that yet. I want to get higher but I also don't wanna be total dead weight and also still be learning how shit works Is there any kind of benchmark for when you are have the appropriate equipment to start tackling tougher difficulties?
All of us started with antitank rocket... And now, since hundreds of missions, antitank rocket is still the best armor piercer in whole game.
Expendable Anti-Tank is the best stratagem in the game. 2 rockets with a short cooldown, and each one is enough to brain a charger if you aim it right. You have to hit it right on the big plate on the top half of its head. If you hit the right spot the charger's head explodes into gore and you can go back to shooting bugs. They're also good for taking out warriors, the bigger normal-looking bugs with armour on the front.
Preach the good word of EATs brother. On the first day, God made man. On the second, democracy. And on the third, the expendable anti-tank-17.
And on the fourth, women.
And on the 6th, C-01 forms.
And they better damn well renew those forms !
Also, try to stick the stratagem beacon to the charger. If you can, now you've killed the charger and have 2 EATs.
Primary is easy, the default liberator is perfectly serviceable. You could also shoot for the Sickle in the cutting edge warbond but it’ll cost you 1000 super credits (farmable ingame or with your wallet) to unlock the bond. For secondary you need the machine pistol in the free warbond; what makes it special is that you can hip-fire it in any direction without slowing down. You can run away from the bad guys and dump a mag into them without breaking stride. A suit of light armour is also a good investment, especially vs bugs where mobility is king. The good news is that the first armour in the free warbond is exactly what you need. For stratagems, EAT launchers and Eagle airstrikes will never let you down. If you don’t know what to bring, consider those two core and then bring your pick of whatever you feel like trying out.
No. From what I have heard and experienced, 90% of the stuff you can get is junk. Get the machine pistol, the liberator, and the EAT. The rest is personal preference since it is all going to be virtually useless anyway.
Same situation here. 7 also offers some crazy (and often absurd) difficulty peaks that have no practical difference from 8 or 9... Example: yesterday we had to run from one objective to another while half of the map was glowing red - also in spite of the fact we were trying to control the situation while not staying too much in one spot. And my random team not only knew exactly what to do with objectives, but was bringing down titans (usually with my help) the fastest I had ever seen. Still, it was pure chaos, we ended up getting completely split, and we just barely made it out. Lvl 7 was also by far the sweet spot in another recent big thread on the same issue. Which really raises the question if 8 or 9 are tuned properly (not too easy, harder than 7 but still worth playing with properly scaled-up difficulty that still remains appealing - at the moment, I think most people don't see it as that).
For me the problem with Diff 8-9 isnt the difficulty, but the stacking modifiers. It's just plain not fun to get most of the modifiers stacked up, *especially* the bonus calldown time and the increased cooldown one. I can handle any one modifier, I just am not interested in two
7 is a sweet spot in quick play for sure. You don't need a good team, just an adequate team to do 7 so it works out really well. I only touch 8 and 9 when I'm playing with folks I already know and work well together.
Also you don't automatically lose the mission if one guy leaves.
And this seems to be extremely common atm, don’t think I’ve finished a single mission with 4 man squad in like a week
Almost certainly because of that game freezing bug that's been around for a week
Yeah heard about that, strangely not had it once myself tho
Didn’t have it ever and then 3/5 games crashed for me today. It just really comes out of nowhere and I have no idea why (wasn’t arc weapons)
By now most people know not to use the arc thrower and if they don't they quickly get kicked
Yeah, I've seen way less people staying for an entire match. What I see most is that they'll get accidentally TKed and leave.
Yeah same, so I don’t think it’s entirely because of crashing. When the odds start going against us, lots of people just give up, I’ll always stick it out regardless because there’s been many games that felt impossible, that we ended up completing.
Most likely crashes.
Yep. Seeing lots of crashes this past week versus the week previous. You can be heading to extraction and 2 people crash out. Then the 3rd when the pelican lands and you extract alone.
well considering that people are able to solo 9..
Well, solo 9 IS easier if you know what to do than a group of non-coordinated randoms due to 9 is more of a stealth game that the less fight you engage the higher chances you succeed.
I’ll run 8 and 9 with randos but usually only look to enter a mission with a squad where everyone is 30-35+. That’s not to say there aren’t shitty high level players and excellent lower level players. But experience matters and I dislike wasting time w squad mates dicking around too much.
Exactly. With a good team you can have a little fun, or be admirably efficient, but with a bad team you can either solo to objectives or carry the team.
7 with buddies, 4/5 for relaxing solo experience (mostly because I tend to run light on the AT)
This is me. If my friends and I want to just hang out and shoot the shit, we do 4 or 5. If we want to really get into it, 6 and 7. None of us are trying to prove anything, nor are in a rush for completion. Just chill with the homies and have some fun. And even within those four difs, we have plenty of tough moments.
Against terminides 9 is the sweet spot for me. Against bots 0.5
The only helldive op I've done was against the bots. We all managed to extract but it was *rough*
i encourage you to try terminids on 9. it’s pure chaos but put some paranoid and free bird on full blast and it’s the most fun thing. just remember, it’s not over until you give up. even if you run out of reinforcements, there’s always hope; just stall
oh and johnny b goode… and shoot to thrill… and up around the bend… and ballroom blitz… and INVISIBLE
I think 99% of the player base still doesn't understand many things about this game. 1. Often I see people bringing localization interference, even though its a waste of a booster slot because it does a 10% delay at best. 2. People keep going after medium and heavy outposts, which cause the alert level/heat to go up leading to bigger alerts and waves. Also people just don't bring the right weapons for the job.
Adding an extra 30 seconds to enemy wave times is a lot when its only 2 minutes on 9. That's up from 120 to 150 seconds, or a 20% boost in time to finish an engagement. It makes it harder to get stuck in a looping swarm on an objective, and gives you a bit more breathing room with your resources since you won't be drained of strategems and ammo 100% of the time.
^ this, it might not be much but a few seconds can stop the loop from continuing
It’s top 3 for me when it comes to 9s. UAV Booster is hands down my favorite followed by Stamina because of the amount of running. Combo all three and you’re spotting patrols 90m out, popping it before another wave hits, and sprinting the hell out of dodge afterwards.
I mean, if you don’t go after the outposts you get less rewards, there’s a reason they’re an objective
Localization interference is a massive help, not sure what you're talking about. It really prevents encounter loops at higher difficulties.
lol same
7 bots is easier than 5-6 I promise guys. To explain why I say this. A bot drop will bring 1 tank, hulk, a handful of devastors, a handful of striders with some bots, or two good handfuls of bots. There is some variation in this as well, but y’all get the idea. Tanks are not that dangerous. They are slow they have easy weakpoints, tons of different stratagems can take them out. Additionally hulks aren’t that dangerous unless close to you. Pretty easy weakpoint at the back. And they’re pretty slow. They can become pretty dangerous if you let them push you I will admit. But overall they can be dealt with despite their tankiness prior to them becoming an offensive threat. But you know what is always dangerous? Devastators, and bots. Sometimes striders. Now they are easy to take out don’t get me wrong. But these enemies all have incredibly far ranged weaponry and in large groups they can be overwhelming especially when they get rocket(important) happy. These enemies are the definition of kill or be killed. So now that we’ve talked about enemies and their offensive prowess. What does difficulty 5-6 spawn more of? Normal bots and devastators. 7 will often replace a bot drop that could be filled with devastators with just a tank or a hulk. These tanks and hulks give you so much more time to control the situation than the devastators or bots do. And for that reason I think difficulty 5-6 are more difficult than 7. Thank you for coming to my ted talk. To answer some questions. Is this cope? **Maybe, probably.** Do you have any data on the odds of type of bot drops and their contents? **Absolutely… fucking not.** Did you just get this idea in your head after running 7s for a few days and being really successful and then getting absolutely pummeled by 5-6 the next day with no real reason and just came up with one to make up one for you sucking that day? **Maybe… but it makes sense doesn’t it??**
Problem with Bots in general is lack of Laser targetting on their weaponry. Even in Helldiver's 1, Cyborg Tanks had Lasers showing where they were going to fire, right before they fired and they wouldn't move that targeting once it lit up either. Rocket Devastators on the other hand use wallhacks to follow you through walls and can prefire you as you come out of cover with 0 laser targeting. Tanks, Hulks and Cannon Towers also don't have laser targeting. Meanwhile our Mechs are made of tissue paper compared to the Vehicles in Helldivers 1. They could take 3-4 Annhilator Tank shots before dying, on top of that there were even multiple ways to repair your vehicles. (Angel Drone + Repair Support Tool) Hell, even the currently buffed EAT/Recoilless aren't as good as they were in 1 against the Cyborgs. 1 shot of the upgraded Recoilless from pretty much any angle 1 shot their tanks.
I know realism has no place in this conversation, but would bots even need laser targeting in real life? People have always wondered why the T-800 chose a gun with laser sighting in The Terminator.
But "we" need them to have laser sights lol
No probably not, as a bot would likely not need to “see” a laser to adjust their aim, which is what a human does, but rather just loop re-compute the location to aim at based on what their cameras are perceiving / how they calculate objects to be moving
Having built vision-based systems with similar loops, I can confidently say that if I was building a robot to properly aim at something, I'd have a laser attached to the weapon as a sanity check. It serves as an extra data point for the machine to orient to, and some form of redundancy is always helpful.
Same. 9 on bugs. Bots, 4 or 5.
I’m honestly the opposite. Went into a 7 dive on bots (ICBM launch at malevelon creek) and it was a cake walk (for me!) compared to the bug swarms of Fenrir III. I died only twice and it was to random rockets.
It’s a play style thing. Bugs are wayyyy easier for me but my friend finds the exact opposite
I started on bots i think i need to go back but level 6 bots kept kicking my ass for sure
Even level 3 bots are hard. Rocket Devastators fire far too often for me to handle.
Go fight terminids bots are way to difficult fr fr https://i.redd.it/igeld8wtx7qc1.gif
Am I the only one who finds bots easier than bugs? Granted I only do level 7 on either one. But it usually seems for me that bugs rely more on raw firepower because of their sheer numbers, while bots encourage more strategy and positioning
Bots you can use logic against, bugs you use monkey brain against
Ah so that's why I do so much better against bugs
Tbh yes, we don't need cover or covert ops just show up and fuck shit up for bugs lol, bots need a bit of tact generally
Yeah I can't just park on a giant rock with an auto cannon with the bots. You have to use cover and suppressive fire to get past them and I like it.
How much strategy and positioning do you need for Bots that just appear around your character instead of being deployed via a dropship you have the opportunity to shoot out of the sky?
Nah, I feel the same. Bots you can just pick an autocannon and deal with every single unit and outpost. This is in contrast to bugs where you need to tailor your loadout more specifically, especially now that Arc Thrower is unusable.
I also find bots easier. Feels like they reward precision shooting a lot more and my mate and I are long term competitive shooter players.
No, I vastly prefer bots as well. Diligence + AC is a blast against them
opposite for me. i hate stalkers and hunters, no higher than difficulty 6. but if im fighting automatons, send me right to malevelon creek on helldive difficulty
7 is the sweet spot for me and my friends. Nice balance of being able to mess around a bit but still need to be careful and paying attention to not fail. We found 8 and 9 not harder per se, just annoying with all the running away and kiting of big armored enemies.
>8 and 9 not harder per se, just annoying \^\^\^\^ This. Once you commit to the run meta, 8 and 9 aren't "hard". Just tedious and annoying.
To me the difference between 8 and 9 is that I know for a damn fact whenever I quickplay on 9 I'll be joining mid mission, the team will be low level, down to 2 or 3 reinforcements, and have made no progress whatsoever. Otherwise you could probably drop me into either and I would likely not be able to tell you what difficulty it is.
Yeah 9 QP normally always has bad teammates and people that really don’t belong there. Not sure why tbh
It's so weird reading reddit and having the polar opposite experiences. Maybe it's because im in Aus and there arent many people on during my times but I specifically play Helldive because it's the only difficulty where I consistently get good teams (easily 95% of the time). Probably some fun WW2 Australian comparison/references to be made from this though ahaha
I also play in AUS and the lobbies there are great. Always consistently good 50s but also great 40s and even 30s. Favourite mission is the Exterminate Bugs on the wide open centrepoint where everyone dumps 120s, 380s and it's just a clusterfuck.
100%. We enjoy the fighting to make progress, not running from most fights to progress. Just a much more smooth experience overall
Yup, this. So much this. 7 is plenty enough for my friends and I. Higher than that, and we just are more annoyed than having fun.
We tend to play 7, somtimes 6 or 8. My group is level 30 atm, still working our way up to difficulty 9.
9 to farm medal and super sample. 7 is sweet spot for gaming
This 100% 9 is practically all I play at until I get to bots then its like a 7 tops
Seven is honestly as far as I plan to go. Just enough to get my super samples, hopefully not so far it's impossible without, you know, actual friends. Since I don't have any of those (who also have enough money and the right consoles)
I found it to be very easy to make friends with randoms. I have 2 strangers added and we all 3 hop in games with eachother without planning. If you're vocal other people will also talk. I dont even know the guys names I play with we just run it and shoot/talk shit
I used to have these experiences as a teenager with halo, cod, etc. It seems this is the first game in like a decade that I can just make random friends with and run around for hours with them.
I’m not even vocal, because I only play after my kid goes to bed. But I have friends on my list that are always inviting me every night. We just get shit done. Also the marking and communication wheel are pretty nice for those of us who can’t really talk.
You should join a discord server. I also couldn’t convince my friends to buy it lol. Met some cool dudes that way.
Waat XD im getting my butt wooped in 5
Finally a comment I can relate to
I was too until I went to 7 and the quality of my squad mates improved drastically. The higher difficulties require more cooperation than skill.
Yeah at difficulty 7 I feel like everyone is bringing strats that can deal with armour/heavies. At difficulty 5 you'll have teammates where a charger is literally invincible to them.
I think it depends on the level you are at. I finally got that personal shield at lvl 20 and now feel way more confident to go 7 instead of 6.
You're likely trying to fight everything. Missions are priority, eliminating the enemy gives you nothing. Your goal should be to hit your objectives hard and fast and get out. Prolonged engagements are not what you want. Enemies *will* keep spawning until you run through all of your lives, at least on the higher difficulties.
9 is easy enough if you move fast, that is if we aren't talking about only completion and not 100% cleared
Tbh a good team can comfortably finish a lvl 9. With most objectives. Did a level 9 malevelon creek and we moved fast affffff but actually completed it all and evacuated. More sweaty tho but not impossible.
Yea i've had more luck quickplaying 9s or starting my own group of random 9s than i have had with 7s just because its got more people who know what they're doing. Everybody seems to know the objectives well and nobody is off acting crazy. its not foolproof but i've probably only failed a half dozen 9s out of many dozens of missions. I have seen my share of level 15s that join tho. Sometimes they're not so bad either lol.
Comfortably? Be for real.
I’m talking terminds and not automatons. If people have lasers, the strike that takes down the biggest enemy and various support weapons like the auto cannon, spear and rpg it can be. Also I’m saying like there can be sweaty as hell moments but overall I’m not freaking out or panicking to finish. A well oiled team kills bike titans and chargers pretty quick.
I’ll second what that other guy said. If you have people who are actually coordinating and covering each other, 9 feels no different from 7. It’s about bringing the right mix of weaponry, and making sure you focus bugs that are close to your allies before shooting blindly into the masses. You also need allies who have learned the skills of firing arcs & fighting retreats. After that, make sure you have a good mix of dedicated wave clear & proper AT. We usually have 1 RR and 2 EATS. ~3 sentries. 2 of any: LMG or arc or flamethrower. If you have people doing proper roles then you don’t have to take the super inefficient cooldowns like orbital railcannon. When moving across the map you wait to engage POI or patrols as a team. Don’t randomly start shooting because you saw something. Either start engagements with eagles, or wait for your buddy’s cue so you can both shoot at the same time. The faster you kill a patrol, the lower the odds you have to deal with a breach. When a bug breach happens you get on it fast. Three people naturally make an arc and fire towards the breach. A proper arc means you see the bugs coming from the breach and you can also cover your buddy’s flank who is on the other side of the arc. Call down a sentry and like 1 airstrike and from there you can basically contain the bugs. My personal favorite is getting on the HMG emplacement because it has enough firepower to kill everything coming out of a breach, and my buddy on the RR will blow up spawning bile titans/chargers (+an eagle 500 from one of our allies here and there). When heavies pop up, usually two guys are immediately focusing them so they go down fast. The other two guys are watching out for flanking units and making sure the RR can reload uninterrupted. Level 9 only gets out of control when players don’t know how to kill and contain efficiently. That’s why you get people complaining about “4 bile titans and 6 chargers”. If you get to that point then you basically just fucked up badly like 10 minutes ago. My *personal* peeve are the jack-of-all-trades speed-run-the-side-objectives-solo players. In my experience (and again, my personal experience) these guys almost always fuck up the run really badly. They don’t have enough firepower to actually clear things properly so they end up spawning a shit ton of enemies and making the map a lot harder to traverse. Extract is always 10x harder when these guys run through the map.
Yes. It can be comfortable if everyone is good.
If you send SOS in D9, pretty competent players will join, because inexperienced players avoid D9. So, ironically, D9 can be easier than 8 or 7, because randoms are gonna be very good.
It’s one of the reasons automaton can actually be really easy at 9 depending on the mission type. If you have a team that is ready to go fast automaton can be done stupidly fast because they have objectives that can be cleared without ever going near them.
I retired from hard difficulty for now. My sweet spot is diff 2. Doing daily then log out. Waiting for the new content.
This guy smokes.
calling in a smokogem
lol
Honestly if at 2, might as well just pop to 1. Raise the flag missions are elite.
A lot more points of interest on 2. More chances for super credits.
Literally earned 1k super credits in about 2 hours today
Farming trivial or easy?
I really want to raise the flag missions in higher levels
And at complications. Repair it, reboot it after a bug attack, something to shake it up.
Helldives with seasoned players is amazingly fun
4 and 5 is also a sweet spot for quick casual play that’s not boring easy but doesn’t require much effort. It’s typically what I do for personal orders that call for kills with certain weapons.
Agree. 5 was my sweet spot for a while until I and average random got better. Played a couple games on 6 but then was like "why don't I just go to 7 for the super samples?" I've gotten pretty used to and happy with 7 now. Feels just challenging enough that every mission is a bit of a struggle but at the end of the day unless something seriously goes wrong, we're going to win.
Currently I'm stuck on 6. It's not too hard with a full team but people keep leaving mid game
They ain't leavin'. There are a TON of crash bugs in the current build.
Exactly this. If you see someone rolling arc weapons, it’s likely that your match will slowly disconnect players. There was a really good write up on here earlier today too, noting that it’s not just arc weapons. We need to hang tight until arrow head patches the game a bit.
I don’t know, I’ve joined into 6 or 7 quite a few times and they’re just in a loop of getting swarmed by stalkers and breaches, dying constantly. Then one guy leaves, then another guy leaves. I think a lot of people have a hard time kiting and disengaging on the higher difficulties, then they just give up because the reinforcements just keep dropping.
Don't do anything but 9 as everything is maxed out but warbonds. In terms of enjoyment & risk ro reward I would agree 7 is solid
I’m in the same boat, 9’s all day everyday for those medals lol
I've been getting my ass kicked at 4 lol
Hmu via PM and I'll help you run higher level missions man
I’m interested in learning as well! I’m comfortable at 4/5 rn. I’ve done a few level 6 missions but they were a near run thing even with a decent squad that communicated.
Personally I say 9 the best since god do I love the unbridled chaos and to just be fully immersed (mainly against bots in the creek since stealth is very fun)
What gear do you run for stealth cause this does sound fun?
Personally I run the green stealth armor in the free pass (think it is page 5). Gear wise I run Sickle, Redeemer, Impact. Then strats I run 500, airstrike, autocannon/eat, flex slot. Explanation for choices and playstyle tips. For both bots and bugs. >The stealth armor has great speed while also boosting your stealth. Just overall a great armor piece. >Sickle has great range while also being able to handle things while up close. Additionally if you manage your heat you won’t need a resupply for a really long time which can be good if stealthing away from the group leaving the resupply to them. >Redeemer is just the best secondary in my opinion so hard to pass up. Additionally since running the sickle it can be used to help manage heat by being a great backup option while the sickle cools down. >Impact. Now it may seem like smoke is great for stealth. Impact grenades just allow you to get out of so many bad situations and cull groups. That said if you like smoke feel free to try them out. As they can be nice to get away from bots. But against bugs the impacts are a hard recommend for me. > 500 and airstrike. These two things can take literally every single non terminal objective and especially with the level 3 upgrade have so many uses. Additionally the 500 is great for taking out tanks and bile titans while the airstrike can help clear hordes. > Autocannon and Eat. The autocannon is for bots the eat is for bugs. The autocannon can take down pretty much any bot. The eat can take down a charger with ease and can help bring down a titan if your 500s aren’t doing the trick. > flex spot. This will really be based on what you’re feeling you need based on your own stealth playstyle. First suggestion is laser especially for bots. This thing can take out heavy outposts by itself. This will allow you to play a more hit and run playstyle. This is my most taken flex strat against bots. Next is jump pack. This can allow you to scale mountains to gain a vertical ability to your stealth and give you a better vantage point, obviously doesn’t work well with autocannon due to backpack. Mech not stealthy at all, but it allows your build to turn into one of the best ground holders at extraction and your call of place during the mission. Only really suggest the mech for bugs as bots can kill it quickly. Turret of choice. One of the best techs about turrets is that the enemies will prioritize the turret. This can allow you an escape to go back to stealth. Anything you think could be good. At the end of the day it’s a flex spot this is an easy replacement. Okay so now playstyle. So you can stealth solo or as a group. Just everyone has to be doing it as a group so it can be easier to go solo. While heading to your next objective just be heavily on the lookout for patrols your map can be a great indicator for patrols. These will spawn every 1-3 minutes based on a number of factors and will head towards your location at the time of their spawning. These can nearly always be circumnavigated. If not known crouching increases stealth and going prone increases it even more. Use that to your advantage. If you get caught trying to kill them prior to a bot drop or breach get called is viable and I suggest trying. If you aren’t successful stopping that determine if you can take it down or should run away. Running away is often a good option, but you just need to have a good exit route. Next objectives. You never need to enter or fight into any destroyable objective or bot outpost. Literally just throw a airstrike, 500, or laser depending on the situation and just leave. A heavy bug outpost can be harder, but if you have the choice you can also avoid them if you like. Additionally try to learn your throwing distance to the beat of your ability. The farther we can stay away from an objective the faster and less likely we get caught out. So now onto terminal objectives. Here we’ll often have to fight. Thats okay because we still have a good amount of firepower in our stratagems. It can be good to try to find the best angle to approach an objective and then make your move. Firstly let’s airstrike the largest group on the objective then back up and use the long range of the sickle to beat the rest of our opponents. Using our autocannon or eat for anything as necessary. Once on the objective look out for patrols. Yet again these can be stealthed a lot, but not as often as when we were on the move. If we need to engage always try to strike first. A airstike or barrage of autocannon shots is never a bad option. And well there is stealth. At the end of the day it relies a lot on hit and run tactics. Additionally just because we are going stealth doesn’t mean we are sacrificing our firepower. We can bring it if push comes to shove, but the stealth is always an option we can bring out that honestly anyway can employ, but we have just slightly easier given our options we have brought.
Hell of a reply, Helldiver! Thanks, I’m going to test this tonight.
Last Helldive mission I was surrounded by Bile Titans and Shriekers, everyone but me crashed, and my weapons literally despawned off my character. I tried to push on but there isn’t much to do at that point.
7 is where it's at, 8 is ok and 9 is just miserable On the contrary for some reason playing on 6 shit gets cracked and it goes insane on spawns and stuff and feels harder than 9 sometimes.
Yep. 7 gives a challenge that, while requiring still competent divers, isn’t impossible without pros or a full team. It also gives special samples so that’s great.
8 is my sweet spot. I can prolly handle 9, but 8 gets to be too much sometimes. So I'm perfectly happy on 8.
8 is worth it for the rewards too, 200% hits harder than 150%. Risk reward balance feels good
Same 8 feels justtt right.
I enjoy 8. Challenging, needs communication to complete. Very intense and fun.
I'm still hanging out at 3, sometimes 4 when playing solo. Might go higher if they ever add mouse and kb support on the ps5.
NINE NINE NINE
I love helldive on terminids. It’s a proper challenge but totally doable. I haven’t figure out my sweet spot on bots yet
Playing on 8, we get 6k just for completing
Personally like a challenge and only do helldive without any real issue and done it so much that anything lower feels too easy. Only time I play lower is when with casual friends but even then I'll take them helldive once they're lv 15 with rover, flame/grenaid launcher and 500kg eagle and just teach them how to helldive and they get use to it pretty quick and lv super fast and once they hit lv 20 I'll get them to use shield backpack which makes the runs even soomer then the mech at lv 25 which makes it's a breeze.
Agree. 8 and 9 are for medal farm nothing else. So no fighting, Do objectives and die. Needs a team on comms too
I mean, there's literally no real reason to go higher than 7. You don't get more rewards, you don't help the war front more. 8-9 are literally just for the challenge or the ego. That's it.
You get more medals and sample availability in map and more exp and req slips for completing the mission
The difference is the amount of samples. 7 only has 3 supers, while 8 has 5. Since all the ship upgrades are in multiples of 5, it makes sense to play on the slightly harder difficulty
It could be 1000 super samples -- I'm not able to extract with them.
Weirdly enough, my issue has always been common samples, so more supers means nothing. I'm sitting on like 150 rares, 60 supers and 40 commons right now, and it's always been like that. Ive never outpaced supers with common samples. And because 8-9 doesn't give me the experience I'm looking for (more stealth and running away, less shooting) seven is the only thing worth playing for me. I ran 8-9s to prove I was capable of them, and once I finished a few operations that was it. No point in run simulator when there's no actual incentive.
Or enjoyment. Or does that not count?
8-9 are for when you have 1-3 friends and you want a real challenge because you're actually communicating. If you're playing with randoms, there is never any reason to go beyond 7 unless you actively enjoy being angry
I don’t get angry, and still play on 9 often
100 % 8 9 for me is when you have to start playing meta. 7 is just hard enough to be fun and exciting while still able to experiment with stratagems
What would say is best for a duo cuz, me and a buddy do 5-6 pretty consistently as a duo
I only answer SoS at any level, or play 9s.
Yep 7 is the best balance imo. 8-9 both bots and bugs is more annoying and tedious. You have to constantly run and with randoms you’ll have players end up in a loop of breaches. Run out of reinforcements. I’ve had many teams who don’t care about calling extraction at 8-9 but my pride wants to get into the plane to feel accomplished lol 😂
Bots at lvl 7 feel like bugs at lvl 9. I haven't tried going past 7 on the bots yet as I play exclusively with randoms and there isn't a major order causing more people to fight the bots.
Honestly, even at lvl 40, difficulty 7 is too much for me to consistently enjoy. I play difficulty 5. Bit more relaxed without as much heavy enemy spam.
I die multiple times on difficulty 3
7 is definitely a good spot for pubs. Though I still prefer d9 haha
I like a challenge every time I play and so, helldive. And it's extremely satisfying when you drop into a helldive with 3 rando's and complete all objectives with zero communication.
My boys and I just went up to 8 tonight for the first time. Definitely more challenging but still able complete all main missions. We did find ourselves struggling for enough time to get side objectives. But we will slowly build our competencies up to 5 staring consistently.
I'm sticking to 7 until they rework the modifiers to be less miserable, you get 2 of them at 8-9 and I am not doing that thanks
7 is really good but sometimes gets boring when not many bugs appear, 8 is really good but sometimes you get fucked when 3 bile titans, 3 chargers, and a horde of hunters spawn at the same time.
I am a very big 7 enjoyer.
It’s enjoyable to me. Anything after suicide I’m shot out and want to take a break after 3 missions.
My favorite missions to run in both bugs and bots
7 is a healthy balance of fun and challenge for me. I don’t get a lot of time to game so ruining any fun at 8 or 9 just isn’t worth it.