Helldivers 2’s latest patch adds blizzards and sandstorms, rebalances bunker and personnel missions

So, how was everyone’s long weekend? I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I think I may have even sensed the fading ghost of an immeasurably whisper-thin ray of sunshine at one point. Enough! Says a new patch for co-op shooter Helldivers 2. You know who else enjoys basking in the pleasant glow of mildly enjoyable weather when there’s freedoms that need fighting for? Bug sympathisers, that’s who. As such, the developers have gone and added new planetary hazards in the form of blizzards and sandstorms, alongside the usual balance tweaks.

Alongside these reminders that the war for democracy is never comfortable, the efficiently-named Patch 01.000.200 also includes a host of tweaks. Notable among these are balancing changes to the mission type ‘Retrieve Essential Personnel’, which now sounds more manageable. Enemy spawn points have been placed further away from the objective, “to give players a fairer chance of defending the location.” Additionally, fewer civilians are needed to beat the mission on higher difficulties.

Conversely, Arrowhead studios felt that the mission type ‘Destroy Command Bunkers’ was “too easy before compared to other missions,” so they’ve added more objective locations, while also halving “the negative effect of operation modifiers that increase stratagem cooldowns or call in times,” as a treat. You can read the full patch notes on Steam here.

These new weather events join previously added planetary hazards such as volcanic activity, meteor storms, and fire tornados, the latter of which I just Youtube searched, and, yep, those are definitely fire tornados. I especially like the camera spinning at the beginning as the featured ‘diver contemplates his life up until that point under a hellish, burning sky.

If you missed it, RPS recently fell victim to some devious Joel-duggery, raising the possibility of hidden stealth Joels alongside the game’s real game master Joel. A tricksy move, especially since the game itself doesn’t really have stealth gameplay according to Arrowhead.