Helldivers

Controls and moving are not complicated. You move slowly on snow, more slowly still in water. On dry ground, your normal pace will equal or outdistance many enemies if running away. If you try to run around enemies that are focused on you, some of them will respond by playing cornerback and moving to contain you. If you want to get to the other side of weak enemies without shooting, it's better to go straight through with melee attacks. Small bugs die in 1 hit; the weakest Cyborgs die fast, too, especially to a bayonet. If you're faced with big enemies you don't want to fight, take an angle away from them; don't try to loop around.

If you push the right stick while moving, you will walk slowly in the direction of the left stick while aiming or firing in the direction of the right stick. This nudges the screen slightly in the direction you aim. Certain heavy weapons will fix you in place while firing until upgraded; submachine guns allow faster movement. When you first start out, you may find yourself using the left stick to aim at enemies; because you are only walking toward them slowly, using the left stick and R2 can feel right. It is wrong. You almost never want to be walking toward enemies as you attack them. Break this bad habit and aim with the right stick.

To run, press L3 while moving. No need to hold it, just click it. Stopping or shooting breaks your run. You will also eventually get tired and return to normal speed.

To take cover, hit square. You dive forward and enter a prone state where you can crawl slowly. You will not be able to attack or call stratagems. You are much less visible to enemy patrols. Direct fire will pass over your head, allowing your teammates to hose nearby enemies with bullets without fear of harming you. Explosions do reduced damage, including nuclear blasts. Melee attacks still hurt. The DLC backpack drones continue to attack or heal while you are prone. You can also acquire a jump pack to replace your "dive" move with a rocket jump.

If critically wounded, you will be knocked down on your back and begin to bleed out. You can crawl around slowly and mash X to get back up; the MD-99 autoinjector perk greatly speeds up this process. Direct fire will pass over you. A teammate can help you up much faster than you can recover by yourself.

IMPORTANT: While voluntarily prone, you give up all ability to attack. If wounded and downed (blood spurting, groaning, X prompt over your Helldiver), you can still fire and reload your pistol or another 1-handed weapon. You can throw grenades. Most important of all: you can call in stratagems while downed. If you die, you drop the stratagem marker, and it activates. If you are your team's last survivor, and you are bleeding out and doomed, you can still call in the reinforce stratagem and bring back your team as your last act of heroism. There's even a trophy for it!

You will always drop and respawn with your pistol, your chosen primary weapon, half your maximum ammo supply for both, and your maximum of 2 grenades. You can radio your ship and have heavy weapons sent down; most of these also drop with a half-load of ammo.

When your weapon gets low, the game will warn you. Your firing sound will often change. Some weapons have red tracers loaded as the last few rounds in each magazine. Your ammo gauge will empty and flash red. Lasers have their own warnings to signal imminent overheat. Hit R1 to reload. If you reload before your current magazine is completely empty, you do it faster, but you sacrifice the remainder of your old mag. Do not press reload after every brief encounter, as you should do in many FPS games! As you burn through the last of your reserve, your Helldiver will give off emotes saying "Low on ammo!" or "Weapon dry!"

The dive (square) and melee attack (circle) interrupt your reload animation. If you start to reload, but squash a bug before finishing, hit R1 again. If you just can't get time to finish reloading, you may need to switch to your pistol instead to clear out the immediate area. When upgraded, your pistol fires armor-piercing shots in 3-round bursts; it's then more of a PDW and does higher damage than you might expect.

To replenish your ammunition, pick up ammo boxes. These will be outlined in yellow. You find them from time to time, but you will also need to bring your own with the resupply stratagem (the blue icon with the 3 cartridges). This will drop 2 boxes anyone can pick up; upgrade it to shorten the wait. Most weapons drop with a half-load and pick up another half-load per ammo box. For instance, your starting primary weapon, the Liberator assault rifle, drops with 6 spare magazines, adds 6 per pickup, and maxes at 12. Other weapons use different numbers, but the pattern is almost always the same.

An ammo box replenishes pistol, primary, and heavy weapon ammo. It adds a grenade. It refills any backpack that involves a consumable (by far the most important with the missile rack!) You cannot pick up a box unless it would help you in some way. It does nothing for vehicle-mounted weapons. Heavy weapon ammo stays with the weapon. If you die and drop a flamethrower with half a tank in the gun and 2 spares, that is how much your teammate will have if he picks it up.

Try to avoid switching away from an empty weapon. In the chaos, it does happen to everyone sometimes, but it's never good when you need your other weapon _now_ and it's out.

IMPORTANT: You can make your life easier by topping off your ammo at the start of a mission. As soon as you get out of your Hellpod, call your resupply and any heavy weapon you plan to use. Get your weapon first, then pick up an ammo box; if the game offers an X prompt for the second box, get that as well. Upgrade your resupply all the way to make this go faster. Topping off is a good thing to do in any case, but it is especially important if armed with the Breaker shotgun. Too many new Helldivers equip the Breaker, assume they began the mission with all the shells they can carry, and run dry in a pitched battle. Don't become a statistic.

Hey there, Helldiver! This guide's all about getting you up to speed on the basics, especially if you're jumping into random online games. The real fun in Helldivers is figuring things out yourself, so definitely experiment! But if you want to know what most random teammates are hoping for, this is it. We'll touch on some advanced stuff for coordinated groups, but mostly, this is for enjoying those wild, unscripted encounters.

Be Patient with Low-Level Players

Remember, a Level 1 player is literally on their very first mission. Anyone under Level 10 is probably just starting out. They won't have many stratagems or weapons unlocked, let alone upgraded. They're still getting the hang of the game's mechanics. If you're more experienced, help them out! Drop them gear, help them grab samples, and don't rush them like a maniac. They need time to learn their new toys and get a feel for how things work. Let them find their own rhythm. Sometimes, experienced players get impatient and push new guys out of what they were doing successfully. I saw a new player on a cyborg planet, rocking the Patriot, who was a fantastic shot. He'd stand still, let patrols come around a hill, and pick them off one by one without raising an alarm. He'd check behind him after fights and drill Hulks perfectly. He wasn't the fastest, but he was playing smart. Then, a couple of higher-level players joined, and suddenly it was all rushing, reinforcements on tanks, turrets shooting other turrets, friendly fire, alarms everywhere. Yeah, we finished faster, but the new guy got pushed out of his own effective style. It's a bummer.

Keep Up with High-Level Players

Don't be intimidated by playing with higher-leveled players. Surviving and succeeding in tough missions is way more about your skill than your gear. The biggest complaint veterans have about new players is speed – specifically, not leaving when they want to. If you're new and in a game with veterans, they'll likely want you to move as fast as possible. On higher difficulties, the chance of a massive enemy force following you goes way up. If you join a game and everyone else is already moving, don't start dropping supply stratagems until the group stops. You might run into a massive enemy parade or a distractor beacon right off-screen. (Or, your teammates might just be jerks who like messing with you, but that's another story.) Also, on harder planets, reinforcements often arrive in delayed waves after even a single alarm. If everyone else is running from what looks like minor enemies, they're probably trying to clear the area before new waves hit. Staying to fight those current enemies could kick off a pointless, massive battle.

Adapt Your Loadout to the Mission

Honestly, each Helldivers objective feels designed to test specific playstyles and tools. Some missions are combat challenges that slow down players who just want to run and gun. Others require actions that can't be done from mechs or vehicles. Escort missions aren't great for stationary stuff like mines or gun turrets. 'Defend' objectives don't work well with tactics focused on backing up and calling in heavy air support on pursuers. As you unlock more stratagems and tackle harder planets with more varied missions, it becomes super important that someone brings the right gear. This is especially true against cyborgs. Sometimes, the game throws a mission with a really unbalanced set of objectives. Use that to your advantage with specialized gear! I don't always bring a Shredder missile, but on maps packed with 'destroy' objectives, I've brought two. I don't always bring a turret, but on maps with mostly 'capture' objectives, I've made room for one. I don't need samples anymore, but when a map is loaded with hidden objectives, I still break out my UAV. Terrain matters too. Jump packs and all vehicles get a huge boost in snowy environments.

Drop Smart

Every Helldivers mission map is procedurally generated. Unlike games with linear corridors forcing you through specific enemy encounters, Helldivers maps are more like small open worlds. Your team needs to decide where to start, how to move, and the order to tackle objectives. Normally, the map doesn't start with enemies already in place; it's patrolled by scouts. Scouts are weak, but if they spot you, they'll quickly trigger an alarm, and combat troops will arrive. This means a big fight can break out anywhere. During a fight, more scouts can show up and keep calling reinforcements. You can get pushed away from your objective, lose vital equipment, and die. These scouts are drawn to objectives, some more than others. Dropping right on top of an objective symbol means you're more likely to immediately encounter enemies.