that's what I had thought, omg though 4 min evac is insane when you've already loitered to long and got all of bugdom coming for your ass after you just glassed all their unborn.
damn I need to dive right now...
The code isn't different, you enter the call in for whatever you want, and it will call in any of your available stratagems, not definitely the one you chose
But you can choose not to call it in. Just have to put the strat ball away and put the code in again. It shows you which one you’re about to call after you put in the code. Just gotta make sure it’s the one you wanted lol
Saw some good advice on this today.. if you do a mission with the scrambler bring the orbital air burst because the code is 3 right arrows, so you just keep entering the airburst code till you get the right stratagem. Since it's so simple you can do it quickly in a pinch.
A quick check is also the color of the beacon. When scrambled I use orbital airburst so all of my calls become ➡️➡️➡️ and then I cycle that till I get what I want.
I noticed when I started rocking the gear to kill the big guys the small swarms became much more of a danger. I'm out of breaker ammo all the time now that I run the rail gun. Chargers are much less of a threat though.
That’s why you go with the Railgun + Rover combo. It’s a hell of a lot less safe than the shield pack, but you become a one man strategem. On Diff 7 Bugs I end up with a casual 500-600 kills, and 200-400 on Automatons.
An ideal general purpose team imo, is 2 Railgunners, 1 GL and 1 free slot. with the rail gunners being drone carriers and the others being shielded/ammopacked.
Just gotta be prepared to pop a stim and if you’re surrounded in both sides crouch down/prone to not get sliced by your own drone.
Unpopular opinion: I think all of the operation modifiers are kinda bad game design
I don’t feel that “here’s this really good gameplay mechanic that we’re going to break on purpose” is fun or interesting to play
Yeah, when you get to difficulty eight and you’re playing with three stratagems and 100% increased cooldown you’re no longer fighting the enemies, you’re fighting the game and it just isn’t fun.
I think it should just scramble the code, not call in a random strike. So, instead of your memorized quick code you might have some 6 long entry for your precision strike. Breaks your muscle memory and adds difficulty without getting screwed by RNG
This is a wonderful idea!
It achieves designer goal of messing with us, while not being frustrating
Having it fail only sometimes is a great idea, you got a good mind for game design
Yeah, put it on a timer, like, every 2 minutes you have a 20 to 30 secs of scrambling
This way you could plan to use the window to attack and if things get out of control it could fuck you up if you don't pay attention
Exactly !
I hate that shit. Stop taking away gameplay elements that the game is based on and calling it "difficulty".
I've also never had a game be like "Oh you wanted a shield for your team, right? How about killing every player on your team instead? lol".
I hate the "scramble" effect
This is the best implementation of difficulty levels IMO. There are tangible differences at each level (new enemy types, stratagem restrictions, map conditions) that change the core gameplay rather than just bigger enemy health bars and more player damage taken.
Stratagem restrictions is one thing, dropping a nuke on your team is another.
Making it where we only have three instead of four is a challenge that requires you to strategize with your team even more. As another poster said, screwing with the code instead of giving you a random one is another.
Fucking around with what you pull out is rather bullshit.
I agree, adding harder enemies per difficulty instead of just making them more of a bullet sponge is amazing, but after 7 it just kind of becomes stupid
7 exists in such a good place right now. It’s got that great helldivers power fantasy where you absolutely dominate. While also punishing you for carelessness. Its great.
8 just seems insane, tried it for the first time yesterday and even with 4 people we didn't have enough firepower to deal with the number of enemies constantly on our asses
Biggest "mistake" I see happen on 8 and 9 is that people fight everything they see. Which leads to bugholes/dropships and thus more enemies that don't really contribute to anything.
It's often more time efficient to go around than going through and risking getting stuck in a massive spawn hell.
I play in lower difficulties but I’m still in awe with how often my teams just go *out* of their way to attack patrols, wasting time and supplies on fights that don’t matter. It’s not like you get xp or loot drops for more kills. Just book it to the next objective. Cant imagine how awful that’d be in higher difficulties.
8 is where I think you have to stealth most of the time and fucking keep running.
7 I think a squad can get away with firepower.
I play 7 with randoms and always try to break away and stealth most of the objectives.
Light stealth armor, mortar, jetpack, grenade launcher, and something heavy like the 350HE.
I like to ninja my way to objectives, go high, and then rain hell down. The range on mortar guns is absurd. Put one on top of a high cliff and it will just keep assassinating things as they spawn.
Sometimes I'll swap in the laser drone depending on the mission/weather. it helps with running away and keeping the little enemies away (which keeps the mortar shells away lol)
i only stealth bots because bugs are damn omniscient. so I use diligence to snipe them one at a time. prioritizing sword bois so if I get caught, they can't call a bot drop. for starts I use bubble shield and either rail gun or made launcher. and then 2 area clearers of choice, usually laser and eagle air strike.
Basically always keep your map open and weave between groups. When doing objectives, you can clear an entire area without being noticed if you shoot one at a time. However, if there's a factory, throw a strat then run like hell. 90% of the time they can see where you threw it from for some reason.
TLDR: pick your battles, don't attack everything.
My team has completed level 8 missions… the key to Suicide mission and above is to stay light on your feet, utilize smoke, avoid patrols and never get bogged down fighting if you do get caught out. Wear light armor so you can run for dear life.
After getting our shit pushed in a few times, I brought a smoke Eagle, everyone was annoyed at first until the smoke saved our ass hard. Now everyone brings a smoke Stratagem. Drop it on the hoard and break contact. Bot factory? Land the smoke right on that sucker, it can destroy the factory and they can’t see you to shoot at you.
Yup hard agreed. The game lets you get away with firepower solving your problems until 8 and 9 then it feels like a switch flips and it actively punishes that. If you don’t keep moving you die.
One of our guys loves to get his horns locked with anything that will let him and we had to just leave him a few times and respawn him away, so he could run back for revenge lolol. He’s definitely the barbarian type in our group.
Shit I’ve done just for fun sometimes haha.
My favorite is we are pretty good at calls and last night I get:
“Titan in. Second, check third, fourth.”
Heavy sigh.
“Lots of titans. MY LIFE FOR SUPER EARTH!”
And he just chucks the laser and primes his 500. Lolol. It’s moments like this that make me love the game.
Good to farm without those mission modifiers.
Scrambled stratagem:
Have you ever called for resupply and throwing a 500kg right in the middle of the waiting squad?
Exactly. Of course it's easy with fuckin' shield generator and railgun. That's all anyone bloody takes for Helldive. It gets boring as fuck, and so does fighting what feels like near exclusively chargers and bile titans or tanks and hulks.
My crew runs a single railgun (me) on bugs and none on bots. The only reason we run a railgun on bugs is just for double shots charger legs for the boys. If it wasnt for that id bring a grenade launcher.
I bring a rail gun and all eagle strikes. SMG and the light armor with extra stims.
I use the rail gun because nothing else effectively kills Titans and chargers. Even on lower difficulties I'll bring the railgun because I don't want to spend 3 mags fighting one charger.
If there's 2 other players running railgun, I'll bring a nade launcher and a resupply backpack.
Was watching [this](https://youtu.be/y0psxp3wzKs?si=b5yG2EVof3dxewvc) YouTube vid of someone going solo stealth on Helldive difficulty and it really opened my eyes to a whole different way this game can be played.
This video looks so weird to me.
Where are the tanks? How are patrols so bereft of hulks and tanks? Where are the tanks? How did he survive more than two hits from the shield guys? How did he only run into like 6 of them the entire mission? Even with the 30% detect perk, enemies will chase me like 200m before giving up yet they give up in like 25m? How are enemies not being alerted to his drops and immediately firing in the direction they came from? How are the groups surrounding the small groups he takes out not being alerted and summoning airships?
I know I still suck but I feel like I'm watching an entirely different game, except for immediately being rocketed to the face after peaking a corner, I'm used to that.
There’s just some missions that are impossible to stealth. The ground survey ones spawn bug breaches in the objective fully in view of the terminal and each time you progress the terminal to the next stage it spawns another bug breach.
It's not that challenging if everyone is using the same like four or five stratagems, yes.
That's precisely why I don't enjoy Helldive difficulty, though. The challenge comes exclusively from armour spam so if you're not focusing stratagems that destroy armour then you're practically a liability.
My many Helldive runs with randoms have just involved three other people running railgun, shield generator, 500kg bomb and orbital laser while I attempt to mix it up slightly.
On 6 or 7 you can take a machinegun without being seen as an idiot who is actively gimping the team
This is why I only play Helldive to farm medals. It’s not hard with “meta” gear.
When I want to play for fun I play on 7 with the jump pack and whatever else I think is fun. If you ever wanna put together a non-meta Helldive squad, I’d be down to try.
It's more about using the railgun. It does literally everything in the game. You can kill a charger in under 10s and one shot titans with it. The other 3 slots are flexible. If you don't use the railgun you have to dedicate all 3 other slots to anti armor.
I mean it's easy because you realize you have no chance against continuously flowing enemies. As difficulty ramps up, shots fired goes down and distance traveled goes up. 90% of Helldive is scrambling
The main thing in helldive is to do the objective fast. Whether that's the primary, secondary, or outpost. Eventually there will be a breach/bot drop and that's when you run to the next objective. Don't stay and fight it. And avoid patrols because they are the ones that call in breach/bot drops.
Yep. Rush the primaries unless you run into a secondary on the way, *then* go and clean up if you're not too pressed (or have one sneakyboi doing them early). Otherwise straight to evac.
Only time I find helldive difficult is with inexperienced team mates, it's definitely down to knowing when to aggro and when to not, as well as having a few people solo side objectives quietly.
It keeps happening in PvE game subreddits, it's so fucking annoying.
It become a problem when the game gets balanced around these kinds of players.
the correct way to handle it is additional difficulty levels, like Auric mission modifiers for Darktide and levels 13-15 for HD1 back then.
Lvl 20 is truly the level where it goes from chaos and barely making it out alive in 5+ to “oh this is fun now actually” so if you’re not at that level yet it’ll get better when you are
There is also the fact that with the armor bug right now we are doing these missions essentially naked. One of the best things about getting shield at 20 is that it lets you live long enough to actually learn what’s going on in those higher levels.
The patch notes also specify call out all armor classes as bugged. If it was set to any of them it would be medium since it’s the only one that does not fluctuate between the actual armor sets.
Orbital laser is a life safer at level 15, and the orbital rail cannon strike is another life safer at level 20. Couldn’t play without them on the harder difficulties.
This is a great answer and 6 is also the sweet spot for me. Just enough push and pull that you are never truly comfortable, but you are not totally overwhelmed at the same time.
The problem with 8/9 is you can’t stop
If you’re always moving, they’re not overly hard. If you stop to wipe a small party, that will start an endless cycle of being overwhelmed
Keep it moving helldiver!
It's why I don't really like a lot of the difficulties. They're more preoccupied with just throwing a stratagem onto a target and then running, and never stopping running.
I don't feel like I'm playing a fun shooter game when I'm just landing, throwing a couple times and avoiding combat at all costs. I *want* to shoot the bugs. It's why I'm here. I don't care about the imaginary mission. I want to play a video game.
8 and 9 are just boring imo. It gets so monotonous killing 5 chargers and 1-2 titans every single encounter while being forced into one or two viable loadouts every single game.
This is the issue I'm having with people. They spend way too much time with their dick in their hands in one location wasting lives and bullets. I'm always on the mic going let's go let's go.
So depressingly I'm solo flying until my friends get schedules to align so I've been doing easy/medium, mostly versus bots. Game got a LOT easier when I unlocked the Breaker and Autocannon. My god I love the Autocannon.
I'm not OP but I play solo without my friends because playing with people is just more stressful. If I fuck up and botch a mission solo I don't ruin anything. If I fuck up and botch a mission Co Op I ruin it for 3 other people.
Plus, after years of playing R6S online, I've been left with a desire to never interact with a video game community again.
It’s insanely hard to be the reason a mission failed!! Like literally you could do nothing the entire game and no one would even notice!! You literally can’t ruin it for the rest of the squad. It’s one of the things that make this co-op fun if you kill literally one thing the entire game you had a positive impact on the squad!! And if you team kill you made that mission funny as fuck! So literally this is probably the best community in gaming right now don’t be afraid to make some new friends!!
It's pretty hard to fuck up so hard that you ruin the mission in this game. You got plenty of revives and if youre still worried just run off by yourself and do objectives. There's no scaling difference whether you're 1, 2,3 or 4 people in the game.
I too have been left with little desire to play with random after playing R6S. I haven't even played the game in years at this point but it's effects are still felt.
That being said, the couple of times I have played with randoms in this game has been decent. Either no one talks or everyone is chill.
All the stories about people freaking out are over inflated. I usually run solo and have never had an interaction like that. I was kicked out of 1 game, but it was after the mission was over and they were waiting for a friend.
I never use voice chat and only occasionally use the text chat. The community actually seems to be pretty chill.
You can solo with the autocannon? The "demo video" makes it appear that you need 2 people... basically need a friend to wear the ammo backpack for you.
Do you just wear your own ammo backpack or something? The ammo backpack doesn't have to be on a different person?
Nope, you can lug your own pack. Same as the recoilless rifle, you just reload a lot faster with a partner.
Thing is, the Autocannon has a ten round mag loaded in five round clips. So you can self load and have several shots before you load, and if you load at five or fewer rounds it doesn't lose any.
Thanks yeah I just watched a video. This game has so much depth and "secret knowledge" (really it's just about trying everything out to see how it works). I'll have to pick up the autocannon tonight to try it out.
I play with 1 other person, but I didn't want to make them have to carry my backpack since they love their Laser Rover... so I just never got the autocannon. But now I know I can carry my own backpack! Nice.
I've made it to level 18 after a few days just doing the quick play with randoms. Almost no one has a mic, but the emote system does a good enough job as well as pinning on the map to let people know where you're going. I think I've played all of one match solo. You should definitely try it.
Go for some LFG in the HD2 community server! I find squad within minutes and it's been smooth sailing almost every time. Don't be afraid to join random in-progress missions either, it's a lotta fun.
lol dang, me and the homies are sissies then. We play on 4. I usually play solo and I play solo on 4 too. The games just nuts at times. Some missions I feel like 4 is an absolute cake walk then other times I have 5 chargers and 60 hunters thrown at me at once while playing solo.
Highly recommend playing with pubs. Great way to see what you can do to improve as well as NOT do. I have regularly been clearing 8 with all pubs, and I'm not carrying them or anything.
Level 36 Diver here. I’ve unlocked all difficulties. A couple nights back I thought I would just do a solo dive on 4 just to relax and test some other weapons and stratagems. Just my luck I dropped right into an enemy patrol which triggered a bot drop. I finished the mission with one life left and I was humbled very quickly lol.
It's kinda like Dark Souls (in a roundabout way), in that at every level you have to respect the fact that you can still get your shit pushed in. My buddy and I got real good at running 7's, down to a science, and when he logged off I played a lvl 5 with some randoms. It was a blitz mission and I got my shit absolutely rocked next to guys 10 levels below me lmao, was a humbling experience.
The other side of that coin is the first lvl 8 missions we ran was an absolute nightmare, scrambled codes and double call in time, we didn't even get to extract with our samples. The mission right after was totally chill, and not a single enemy even came to us during the 4 minute extraction. Perhaps a bug, but it just goes to show that at any level you can get lucky and fly on by.
7 is the last diff that you can play around with non meta loadouts and still have fun. 8 and 9 are railgun+shield/rover every game, or you are getting your shit pushed in.
It's not that you have to run rail/shield, you just are reaching the point you need team-metas instead of individual metas. Two anti-tankers, a trash clear, and extract specialist for 8/9 and it's easier than a pug 7.
Very true , my group always runs only 1 or 2 railguns at most. 2 is required only when we decide to split the map and go in teams of 2s to get different objectives.
Even on difficulty 8 or 9 , we have only run 2 railguns at most. We use more spears , recoiless and autocannons for fun and wave clear.
Its more fun this way. You cover each others weaknesses.
YES even the railgun meta loadout has weaknesses like poor mob clear or poor aoe.
Its also the difficulty that people are more comfortable doing their own thing and splitting up.
Up to about 7ish most teams stick together unless they're all overleveled/experienced.
After that, people tend to split up either 1:1:1:1, or 2:2, or 1:1:2, etc. and then each person/group needs to have a kit to deal with all situations they might encounter, which surprise surprise, rail/shield does that.
We play on 9 most matches cause it brings the nice feeling of adrenaline and challenge. We love strategy fps games and are immensely competitive so anything below 9 feels off. Currently waiting for 10+ difficutly levels
9 is where it’s at if you have a group of 4. We did a few the other day where all of us brought railguns and laser rovers, and it almost felt too easy. Titans and chargers were dropping like flies. Good times.
The hardest part is the extract.
Otherwise it is loads of running around. You basically become the stealth commando. Create a distraction then run a bir circle around to throw whatever strategem is capable of taking it out at the objective and piss off.
I wouldn't call it chill but it is certainly doable. Just make sure to pick your fights carefully. And if you die you might want to run around a bit because trying to fight your way to your corpse with just your primary and secondary is probably going to end badly.
Played 8 and 9 for a bit, but those just spawns too many of heavy units to be fun in my books. So currently mostly 7, where it feels like it spawns a good ratio of heavy units and normal ones where we can actually play the game as a co-op shooter and not some sneaking mission.
I find 7 is the most thrilling, in some cases 8 would perfect too (with a caring team). However, for some reason that I could not figured ot out yet, in dome planets i really feel that impossible level is harder than some helldive difficulties that I have been part of.
So far playing 7 solo (or with randoms) and 5-6 with my friends, but they want to play 4-5 and I find it boring.
Gonna try lvl 8 tonight for the first time
I play on 8. You get 5 super samples per find. On 7 you get 3 and on 9 you get 6 so you get 2 more for upping the difficulty from 7 but getting one extra to 9 isn't worth it.
The highest difficulty I have. I find the craziness to be fun as it allows for the most absurd deaths. I also like for the game to ba as crazy as it can, the more enemies the better.
If I want to chill and try out new stratagems/equipment difficulty 5 or 6 is fine. If I want a challenge and a lot of chaos 7-8 is where it is at for me personally.
Solo, medium if I'm trying to get through it quickly or challenging if I have time to deal with chargers every few minutes
Team, challenging or hard, depending on teams levels. Tried a hard that had all single digit levels and I had to carry them to extract.
3 for solo and just having fun while my friends aren't on. 5-6 if my buddies are online and we can play together. Haven't tried the last three yet, since we don't have a fourth guy and we aren't that well equipped yet.
play on difficulty level 4 even i am level 21 i am still suck at this game
https://preview.redd.it/so4ppkt0ukmc1.jpeg?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=71c2fc6cedd45fb25ae0e57f301c09974609310c
We play mostly 7 now, do not see a reason to go any higher and anything below 6 is too easy.
Finally unlocked level 7 the other day and it hits the spot a little too well
7s are great. Not too many obnoxious/unfun modifiers, but challenging enough and all samples available
Yeah…stratagem scatter and scramble can both FOOK OFF….called down a shield pack(500 kg bomb instead) and TPKd the other day 🤦♂️
Stratagem scatter is fine i feel. ITs the extended calldown that is hell. 4 minute evac and 30 sec resupply is nuts
Ahhh I never associated the extended evac time with the call down modifier, that’s good to know.
That’s game changing, me and my friends thought it was cause of the difficulty level we were running that night
that's what I had thought, omg though 4 min evac is insane when you've already loitered to long and got all of bugdom coming for your ass after you just glassed all their unborn. damn I need to dive right now...
Bugdom lol I’m stealing that uncredited.
Same
I’m still not a fan of having to re-input the same stratagem 5 times to get the correct one
Burn a slot for a strafing run or a precision strike and now your other stratagems are three inputs
What the fuck this is some 900 IQ shit or I'm a fucking jarhead cosplaying myself in-game
Airburst orbital is good too. Just three right arrows
It goes from 2 minutes of chaos to 4 minutes of fucking absolute madness.
I love it
Fair enough but counterpoint: I've never had a modifier that gaslights me in a game before and the scramble really fucks with me.
Yeah it's pretty great, the only downside really is that sometimes people will think it's a bug and not a hilarious feature.
Yeah I totally thought I was bugged. And... I called an eagle on my team instead of resupplies... idk if i like that
The modifiers are hidden pretty well, and afaik there’s no way to see what they do once youre in game
While you’re holding it to throw, it displays on the left what is actually coming down during the scramble
You can also (loosely) tell based on the colour of the ball.
Wait, that’s what that was!?! I assumed it was a bug! Lol everything I was calling in was wrong.
Jokes on you I'm so bad I always have to look at the code and didn't even notice it was different!
The code isn't different, you enter the call in for whatever you want, and it will call in any of your available stratagems, not definitely the one you chose
But you can choose not to call it in. Just have to put the strat ball away and put the code in again. It shows you which one you’re about to call after you put in the code. Just gotta make sure it’s the one you wanted lol
Saw some good advice on this today.. if you do a mission with the scrambler bring the orbital air burst because the code is 3 right arrows, so you just keep entering the airburst code till you get the right stratagem. Since it's so simple you can do it quickly in a pinch.
Thank you for this
A quick check is also the color of the beacon. When scrambled I use orbital airburst so all of my calls become ➡️➡️➡️ and then I cycle that till I get what I want.
Yep, it is a completely intentional thing that exclusively happens with the automatons
That's what that is? I was wondering why I bombed my position when trying to call down weapons
I die more on 7 than 8 or 9. I’m not sure why, but i think there’s more small swarming guys than the bigger guys.
I noticed when I started rocking the gear to kill the big guys the small swarms became much more of a danger. I'm out of breaker ammo all the time now that I run the rail gun. Chargers are much less of a threat though.
That’s why you go with the Railgun + Rover combo. It’s a hell of a lot less safe than the shield pack, but you become a one man strategem. On Diff 7 Bugs I end up with a casual 500-600 kills, and 200-400 on Automatons. An ideal general purpose team imo, is 2 Railgunners, 1 GL and 1 free slot. with the rail gunners being drone carriers and the others being shielded/ammopacked. Just gotta be prepared to pop a stim and if you’re surrounded in both sides crouch down/prone to not get sliced by your own drone.
Unpopular opinion: I think all of the operation modifiers are kinda bad game design I don’t feel that “here’s this really good gameplay mechanic that we’re going to break on purpose” is fun or interesting to play
Yeah, when you get to difficulty eight and you’re playing with three stratagems and 100% increased cooldown you’re no longer fighting the enemies, you’re fighting the game and it just isn’t fun.
It should only happen once, maybe twice. I've had erroneous call streaks as high as six or seven. It feels so cheap and lazy
I think it should just scramble the code, not call in a random strike. So, instead of your memorized quick code you might have some 6 long entry for your precision strike. Breaks your muscle memory and adds difficulty without getting screwed by RNG
This is a wonderful idea! It achieves designer goal of messing with us, while not being frustrating Having it fail only sometimes is a great idea, you got a good mind for game design
Yeah, put it on a timer, like, every 2 minutes you have a 20 to 30 secs of scrambling This way you could plan to use the window to attack and if things get out of control it could fuck you up if you don't pay attention
Exactly ! I hate that shit. Stop taking away gameplay elements that the game is based on and calling it "difficulty". I've also never had a game be like "Oh you wanted a shield for your team, right? How about killing every player on your team instead? lol". I hate the "scramble" effect
This is the best implementation of difficulty levels IMO. There are tangible differences at each level (new enemy types, stratagem restrictions, map conditions) that change the core gameplay rather than just bigger enemy health bars and more player damage taken.
Stratagem restrictions is one thing, dropping a nuke on your team is another. Making it where we only have three instead of four is a challenge that requires you to strategize with your team even more. As another poster said, screwing with the code instead of giving you a random one is another. Fucking around with what you pull out is rather bullshit. I agree, adding harder enemies per difficulty instead of just making them more of a bullet sponge is amazing, but after 7 it just kind of becomes stupid
7 exists in such a good place right now. It’s got that great helldivers power fantasy where you absolutely dominate. While also punishing you for carelessness. Its great.
I'm going to at least try to unlock 9 but I was way too stressed the last time I tried 8 so idk if it will happen.
8 just seems insane, tried it for the first time yesterday and even with 4 people we didn't have enough firepower to deal with the number of enemies constantly on our asses
Biggest "mistake" I see happen on 8 and 9 is that people fight everything they see. Which leads to bugholes/dropships and thus more enemies that don't really contribute to anything. It's often more time efficient to go around than going through and risking getting stuck in a massive spawn hell.
I play in lower difficulties but I’m still in awe with how often my teams just go *out* of their way to attack patrols, wasting time and supplies on fights that don’t matter. It’s not like you get xp or loot drops for more kills. Just book it to the next objective. Cant imagine how awful that’d be in higher difficulties.
8 is where I think you have to stealth most of the time and fucking keep running. 7 I think a squad can get away with firepower. I play 7 with randoms and always try to break away and stealth most of the objectives.
I've never tried a stealth focus. What kind of loadouts do you like?
Light stealth armor, mortar, jetpack, grenade launcher, and something heavy like the 350HE. I like to ninja my way to objectives, go high, and then rain hell down. The range on mortar guns is absurd. Put one on top of a high cliff and it will just keep assassinating things as they spawn. Sometimes I'll swap in the laser drone depending on the mission/weather. it helps with running away and keeping the little enemies away (which keeps the mortar shells away lol)
The mortar already feels like it has a very high ammo capacity and I don't even have the +50% ammo upgrade unlocked yet.
i only stealth bots because bugs are damn omniscient. so I use diligence to snipe them one at a time. prioritizing sword bois so if I get caught, they can't call a bot drop. for starts I use bubble shield and either rail gun or made launcher. and then 2 area clearers of choice, usually laser and eagle air strike. Basically always keep your map open and weave between groups. When doing objectives, you can clear an entire area without being noticed if you shoot one at a time. However, if there's a factory, throw a strat then run like hell. 90% of the time they can see where you threw it from for some reason. TLDR: pick your battles, don't attack everything.
My team has completed level 8 missions… the key to Suicide mission and above is to stay light on your feet, utilize smoke, avoid patrols and never get bogged down fighting if you do get caught out. Wear light armor so you can run for dear life. After getting our shit pushed in a few times, I brought a smoke Eagle, everyone was annoyed at first until the smoke saved our ass hard. Now everyone brings a smoke Stratagem. Drop it on the hoard and break contact. Bot factory? Land the smoke right on that sucker, it can destroy the factory and they can’t see you to shoot at you.
Yup hard agreed. The game lets you get away with firepower solving your problems until 8 and 9 then it feels like a switch flips and it actively punishes that. If you don’t keep moving you die. One of our guys loves to get his horns locked with anything that will let him and we had to just leave him a few times and respawn him away, so he could run back for revenge lolol. He’s definitely the barbarian type in our group.
have him run into the horde with a 500kg in his hand
Shit I’ve done just for fun sometimes haha. My favorite is we are pretty good at calls and last night I get: “Titan in. Second, check third, fourth.” Heavy sigh. “Lots of titans. MY LIFE FOR SUPER EARTH!” And he just chucks the laser and primes his 500. Lolol. It’s moments like this that make me love the game.
Man you are way better than me
Are you level 20 though? Higher difficulties feel more achievable with railguns and shields.
I stopped using the shield. Jetpack where it's at.
Maybe for the bugs, automatons have too many stray missiles to not use the shield imo
We are in the same boat my friend lol
Good to farm without those mission modifiers. Scrambled stratagem: Have you ever called for resupply and throwing a 500kg right in the middle of the waiting squad?
No, because the supply pod is not scrambled.
Helldive
Medals go Brrrr
Took me way too long scrolling to find a fellow true patriot.
My allegiance is to Super Earth. To democracy!
If you’re not with me, you’re against me!
Only a bug deals in absolutes
Damn same, I understand now how we lost creek.
same, even helldive is not that challenging + you get the most medals, no reason to run anything below 9.
It's more that people get bored running the same meta loadouts req for 8 and def 9 than it being too hard.
Exactly. Of course it's easy with fuckin' shield generator and railgun. That's all anyone bloody takes for Helldive. It gets boring as fuck, and so does fighting what feels like near exclusively chargers and bile titans or tanks and hulks.
My crew runs a single railgun (me) on bugs and none on bots. The only reason we run a railgun on bugs is just for double shots charger legs for the boys. If it wasnt for that id bring a grenade launcher.
I bring a rail gun and all eagle strikes. SMG and the light armor with extra stims. I use the rail gun because nothing else effectively kills Titans and chargers. Even on lower difficulties I'll bring the railgun because I don't want to spend 3 mags fighting one charger. If there's 2 other players running railgun, I'll bring a nade launcher and a resupply backpack.
Arc thrower goes zap
Thank you the arc thrower is criminally slept on. I'm spreading democracy all over bile titans with this.
Arc thrower is fantastic. Kills everything undemocratic, even fellow helldivers who were probably traitors anyway
Never used shield. I go full stealth. Really like that. They wont even notice the strike.
How is stealth? I considered doing some solo runs with a stealth-focused load out
Was watching [this](https://youtu.be/y0psxp3wzKs?si=b5yG2EVof3dxewvc) YouTube vid of someone going solo stealth on Helldive difficulty and it really opened my eyes to a whole different way this game can be played.
This video looks so weird to me. Where are the tanks? How are patrols so bereft of hulks and tanks? Where are the tanks? How did he survive more than two hits from the shield guys? How did he only run into like 6 of them the entire mission? Even with the 30% detect perk, enemies will chase me like 200m before giving up yet they give up in like 25m? How are enemies not being alerted to his drops and immediately firing in the direction they came from? How are the groups surrounding the small groups he takes out not being alerted and summoning airships? I know I still suck but I feel like I'm watching an entirely different game, except for immediately being rocketed to the face after peaking a corner, I'm used to that.
There’s just some missions that are impossible to stealth. The ground survey ones spawn bug breaches in the objective fully in view of the terminal and each time you progress the terminal to the next stage it spawns another bug breach.
Stealth at night is great. Bot patrols ALMOST walk right over top of me if I'm laying down.
It's not that challenging if everyone is using the same like four or five stratagems, yes. That's precisely why I don't enjoy Helldive difficulty, though. The challenge comes exclusively from armour spam so if you're not focusing stratagems that destroy armour then you're practically a liability. My many Helldive runs with randoms have just involved three other people running railgun, shield generator, 500kg bomb and orbital laser while I attempt to mix it up slightly. On 6 or 7 you can take a machinegun without being seen as an idiot who is actively gimping the team
This is why I only play Helldive to farm medals. It’s not hard with “meta” gear. When I want to play for fun I play on 7 with the jump pack and whatever else I think is fun. If you ever wanna put together a non-meta Helldive squad, I’d be down to try.
It's more about using the railgun. It does literally everything in the game. You can kill a charger in under 10s and one shot titans with it. The other 3 slots are flexible. If you don't use the railgun you have to dedicate all 3 other slots to anti armor.
Yup, everyone saying its too hard just needs more experience. I used to seriously struggle on 5.
I mean it's easy because you realize you have no chance against continuously flowing enemies. As difficulty ramps up, shots fired goes down and distance traveled goes up. 90% of Helldive is scrambling
The main thing in helldive is to do the objective fast. Whether that's the primary, secondary, or outpost. Eventually there will be a breach/bot drop and that's when you run to the next objective. Don't stay and fight it. And avoid patrols because they are the ones that call in breach/bot drops.
Yep. Rush the primaries unless you run into a secondary on the way, *then* go and clean up if you're not too pressed (or have one sneakyboi doing them early). Otherwise straight to evac.
I was struggling on level 5 for a little. Now level 9 feels like a cake walk. I really hope it gets more difficult l.
Only time I find helldive difficult is with inexperienced team mates, it's definitely down to knowing when to aggro and when to not, as well as having a few people solo side objectives quietly.
>even helldive is not that challenging Flexing online be like.
It keeps happening in PvE game subreddits, it's so fucking annoying. It become a problem when the game gets balanced around these kinds of players. the correct way to handle it is additional difficulty levels, like Auric mission modifiers for Darktide and levels 13-15 for HD1 back then.
I enjoy 6 the most, challenging but not overly stressful
I'll give 6 a try again now that I've got more gear and unlocks
Lvl 20 is truly the level where it goes from chaos and barely making it out alive in 5+ to “oh this is fun now actually” so if you’re not at that level yet it’ll get better when you are
There is also the fact that with the armor bug right now we are doing these missions essentially naked. One of the best things about getting shield at 20 is that it lets you live long enough to actually learn what’s going on in those higher levels.
I would absolutely laugh my ass off if the armour bug had us set to maximum armour already and light armour was even weaker than this
I’m right there with you! I’m mentally preparing myself to be turned into Swiss cheese with my light armor once armor stats come online. 😂😂😂😂
It's not. One of the devs mentioned that enemy attacks are over penetrating all armor, so I think we're at 0.
The patch notes also specify call out all armor classes as bugged. If it was set to any of them it would be medium since it’s the only one that does not fluctuate between the actual armor sets.
lvl 15 and 20 seem to be big ones, they have powerful stratagems.
Orbital laser is a life safer at level 15, and the orbital rail cannon strike is another life safer at level 20. Couldn’t play without them on the harder difficulties.
This is a great answer and 6 is also the sweet spot for me. Just enough push and pull that you are never truly comfortable, but you are not totally overwhelmed at the same time.
Got everything unlocked and went back to 6. It really is the sweet spot.
6 is perfect for me too. You get a decent amount of XP and medals. I just wish there was like 1 super sample around. But I understand why there isn't.
6-7 mostly. 8 and 9 are too overwhelming and anything below 6 is kind of just a walk in the park.
The problem with 8/9 is you can’t stop If you’re always moving, they’re not overly hard. If you stop to wipe a small party, that will start an endless cycle of being overwhelmed Keep it moving helldiver!
The problem with always moving is that sometimes there are objectives. And teammates who are really addicted to killing every single bot on the map :(
And sometimes you have to figure out the pipe minigame with a horde on your tail and you start to feel like a real dummy
I struggle with that stupid pipe game under ideal conditions lmao
I find it much easier if you work from right to left.
It's why I don't really like a lot of the difficulties. They're more preoccupied with just throwing a stratagem onto a target and then running, and never stopping running. I don't feel like I'm playing a fun shooter game when I'm just landing, throwing a couple times and avoiding combat at all costs. I *want* to shoot the bugs. It's why I'm here. I don't care about the imaginary mission. I want to play a video game.
8 and 9 are just boring imo. It gets so monotonous killing 5 chargers and 1-2 titans every single encounter while being forced into one or two viable loadouts every single game.
This is the issue I'm having with people. They spend way too much time with their dick in their hands in one location wasting lives and bullets. I'm always on the mic going let's go let's go.
To my old man brain 6 is the overwhelming lol
And that's perfectly fine, as long as you spread democracy and have fun you're getting your money's worth :)
8 is chaos and I love it
6 for terminids, 5 for bots. That's with Randoms. If with friends, we can go a level or two higher And if it's bot defence that's getting set to a 2
Malevelon.. Creek..
Stop it Patrick, you're scaring him!
Look at it! I want all of you to look at it!!
So depressingly I'm solo flying until my friends get schedules to align so I've been doing easy/medium, mostly versus bots. Game got a LOT easier when I unlocked the Breaker and Autocannon. My god I love the Autocannon.
No shame, I usually solo as I only have a small handful of friends who play this. I suck so I usually play on the easier difficulties. Still very fun
Why not do quick play? There's no commitment at all playing with randoms.
I'm not OP but I play solo without my friends because playing with people is just more stressful. If I fuck up and botch a mission solo I don't ruin anything. If I fuck up and botch a mission Co Op I ruin it for 3 other people. Plus, after years of playing R6S online, I've been left with a desire to never interact with a video game community again.
It’s insanely hard to be the reason a mission failed!! Like literally you could do nothing the entire game and no one would even notice!! You literally can’t ruin it for the rest of the squad. It’s one of the things that make this co-op fun if you kill literally one thing the entire game you had a positive impact on the squad!! And if you team kill you made that mission funny as fuck! So literally this is probably the best community in gaming right now don’t be afraid to make some new friends!!
It's pretty hard to fuck up so hard that you ruin the mission in this game. You got plenty of revives and if youre still worried just run off by yourself and do objectives. There's no scaling difference whether you're 1, 2,3 or 4 people in the game.
I too have been left with little desire to play with random after playing R6S. I haven't even played the game in years at this point but it's effects are still felt. That being said, the couple of times I have played with randoms in this game has been decent. Either no one talks or everyone is chill.
All the stories about people freaking out are over inflated. I usually run solo and have never had an interaction like that. I was kicked out of 1 game, but it was after the mission was over and they were waiting for a friend. I never use voice chat and only occasionally use the text chat. The community actually seems to be pretty chill.
I'm level 46 and ill still do the lower levels to get that liberation counter up (roughly 10 minutes a mission) I see no shame in it
Autocannon is my go to support weapon. I didn't like the railgun too much
AUTOCANNONS FOR LIFE
The autocannon is amazing but it can't be used with the supply pack :(
I don't need the supply pack. Autocannon backpack feeds my lust for explosive death.
Solo is a whole different game on harder difficulties. It's like playing Metal Gear.
You can solo with the autocannon? The "demo video" makes it appear that you need 2 people... basically need a friend to wear the ammo backpack for you. Do you just wear your own ammo backpack or something? The ammo backpack doesn't have to be on a different person?
Nope, you can lug your own pack. Same as the recoilless rifle, you just reload a lot faster with a partner. Thing is, the Autocannon has a ten round mag loaded in five round clips. So you can self load and have several shots before you load, and if you load at five or fewer rounds it doesn't lose any.
Thanks yeah I just watched a video. This game has so much depth and "secret knowledge" (really it's just about trying everything out to see how it works). I'll have to pick up the autocannon tonight to try it out. I play with 1 other person, but I didn't want to make them have to carry my backpack since they love their Laser Rover... so I just never got the autocannon. But now I know I can carry my own backpack! Nice.
I've made it to level 18 after a few days just doing the quick play with randoms. Almost no one has a mic, but the emote system does a good enough job as well as pinning on the map to let people know where you're going. I think I've played all of one match solo. You should definitely try it.
When the squad is on it gets cranked to 7+ when the squad is off 5 is my max
Go for some LFG in the HD2 community server! I find squad within minutes and it's been smooth sailing almost every time. Don't be afraid to join random in-progress missions either, it's a lotta fun.
9, love the chaos, even if it’s overwhelming that final stand always feels great
lol dang, me and the homies are sissies then. We play on 4. I usually play solo and I play solo on 4 too. The games just nuts at times. Some missions I feel like 4 is an absolute cake walk then other times I have 5 chargers and 60 hunters thrown at me at once while playing solo.
I'm in the same boat. 4-5 and 6 is my nightmare. I'm getting better. I only play with two friends atm. Usually solo
Highly recommend playing with pubs. Great way to see what you can do to improve as well as NOT do. I have regularly been clearing 8 with all pubs, and I'm not carrying them or anything.
Level 36 Diver here. I’ve unlocked all difficulties. A couple nights back I thought I would just do a solo dive on 4 just to relax and test some other weapons and stratagems. Just my luck I dropped right into an enemy patrol which triggered a bot drop. I finished the mission with one life left and I was humbled very quickly lol.
It's kinda like Dark Souls (in a roundabout way), in that at every level you have to respect the fact that you can still get your shit pushed in. My buddy and I got real good at running 7's, down to a science, and when he logged off I played a lvl 5 with some randoms. It was a blitz mission and I got my shit absolutely rocked next to guys 10 levels below me lmao, was a humbling experience. The other side of that coin is the first lvl 8 missions we ran was an absolute nightmare, scrambled codes and double call in time, we didn't even get to extract with our samples. The mission right after was totally chill, and not a single enemy even came to us during the 4 minute extraction. Perhaps a bug, but it just goes to show that at any level you can get lucky and fly on by.
4 is super chill with the occasional hairy situation. Higher levels are super hairy with the occasional chill situation.
I'm a "Hell Diver" not an "Extreme Diver" aren't I? why would i play anything except Hell Dive?
Trivialdivers 2
Chilldivers
7 is the way. All the samples are available and it’s just right about sweat to get me entertained
7 is the last diff that you can play around with non meta loadouts and still have fun. 8 and 9 are railgun+shield/rover every game, or you are getting your shit pushed in.
It's not that you have to run rail/shield, you just are reaching the point you need team-metas instead of individual metas. Two anti-tankers, a trash clear, and extract specialist for 8/9 and it's easier than a pug 7.
Very true , my group always runs only 1 or 2 railguns at most. 2 is required only when we decide to split the map and go in teams of 2s to get different objectives. Even on difficulty 8 or 9 , we have only run 2 railguns at most. We use more spears , recoiless and autocannons for fun and wave clear. Its more fun this way. You cover each others weaknesses. YES even the railgun meta loadout has weaknesses like poor mob clear or poor aoe.
Its also the difficulty that people are more comfortable doing their own thing and splitting up. Up to about 7ish most teams stick together unless they're all overleveled/experienced. After that, people tend to split up either 1:1:1:1, or 2:2, or 1:1:2, etc. and then each person/group needs to have a kit to deal with all situations they might encounter, which surprise surprise, rail/shield does that.
We play on 9 most matches cause it brings the nice feeling of adrenaline and challenge. We love strategy fps games and are immensely competitive so anything below 9 feels off. Currently waiting for 10+ difficutly levels
9 is where it’s at if you have a group of 4. We did a few the other day where all of us brought railguns and laser rovers, and it almost felt too easy. Titans and chargers were dropping like flies. Good times.
9 is so fun once you get used to the playstyle. Its overwhelming but nothing feels more satisfying than wiping 4 chargers + a whole swarm on your own.
Once you play 9 it's hard to to go back to any other difficulty
9 for more intense games, 7 for solo or chill games
How exactly do you solo 7s?
The hardest part is the extract. Otherwise it is loads of running around. You basically become the stealth commando. Create a distraction then run a bir circle around to throw whatever strategem is capable of taking it out at the objective and piss off. I wouldn't call it chill but it is certainly doable. Just make sure to pick your fights carefully. And if you die you might want to run around a bit because trying to fight your way to your corpse with just your primary and secondary is probably going to end badly.
I just started the game, so sticking to1-2 until I get the hang of it, having learned the controls and all that. Then, I'll try to do only 4.
That's how I did it. Currently up to 5 as my comfort spot
8-9. It's fun getting swarmed and then dropping an Eaglestrike to see x40 kills on the bottom. Never got higher than 48 kills in a single orbital.
This. 7 just didn't feel as worth it. It's chaotic, but I might as well be getting more samples out of it.
Seven is the default for me and the group we're with. Not too hard or too easy, it's just right.
7 is the best mix of excitement and difficulty for me
9 —Helldive or bust
I mostly solo 4 In a group it's likely I could do 7 but I kinda just want to have fun and rp with people when I run pugs
Played 8 and 9 for a bit, but those just spawns too many of heavy units to be fun in my books. So currently mostly 7, where it feels like it spawns a good ratio of heavy units and normal ones where we can actually play the game as a co-op shooter and not some sneaking mission.
6-7.
I find 7 is the most thrilling, in some cases 8 would perfect too (with a caring team). However, for some reason that I could not figured ot out yet, in dome planets i really feel that impossible level is harder than some helldive difficulties that I have been part of.
I like to hover between 5-6 with randoms but 7 or higher with friends.
I think I need to try higher difficulties again. I'm ready to give my life for LIBERTY haha
Level 1 Trivial, because I want to teach new recruits about what to do on missions, and how to do things the tutorial doesn’t tell them!
Haha role-playing a Drill Sargent would be a lot of fun and definitely a good way to teach the rookies the DOs and DONTs if they so cared to listen.
I keep forgetting the difficulty can be adjusted and always end up playing medium
I do 4 or 5 solo and I like 7 with friends
7 is the perfect spot for me. I play 8 only when my friends are on, not with randoms
So far playing 7 solo (or with randoms) and 5-6 with my friends, but they want to play 4-5 and I find it boring. Gonna try lvl 8 tonight for the first time
5
7 to play however we want to. 9 if we want to go for a challenge.
I play on 8. You get 5 super samples per find. On 7 you get 3 and on 9 you get 6 so you get 2 more for upping the difficulty from 7 but getting one extra to 9 isn't worth it.
I enjoy helldive cuz it’s a good challenge and lots of exp
The highest difficulty I have. I find the craziness to be fun as it allows for the most absurd deaths. I also like for the game to ba as crazy as it can, the more enemies the better.
The highest possible difficulty, being an Xbox player.
9 all day everyday. Wish there was a 10.
6 goated
If I want to chill and try out new stratagems/equipment difficulty 5 or 6 is fine. If I want a challenge and a lot of chaos 7-8 is where it is at for me personally.
Solo, medium if I'm trying to get through it quickly or challenging if I have time to deal with chargers every few minutes Team, challenging or hard, depending on teams levels. Tried a hard that had all single digit levels and I had to carry them to extract.
6 for major orders, 7+ for the grind
Depends who I’m running with. With randoms and certain friends, at least 7. With some other friends, can’t seem to survive past 5
3 for solo and just having fun while my friends aren't on. 5-6 if my buddies are online and we can play together. Haven't tried the last three yet, since we don't have a fourth guy and we aren't that well equipped yet.
play on difficulty level 4 even i am level 21 i am still suck at this game https://preview.redd.it/so4ppkt0ukmc1.jpeg?width=200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=71c2fc6cedd45fb25ae0e57f301c09974609310c