Stop being a liability, start distributing Liberty the way the Ministry of Defense trained you to. Check out the following tips that will help you complete the ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ difficulty and get you to see the real hell that will make you a true HELLDIVER. High Command may not agree but once you unlock HELLDIVE difficulty all bets are off and you may end up like our fellow soldier below, BUT… if you stick to your training you’ll be fine. That being said, let’s “dive” in!

Keep MOVING!

All too often, players get caught up mowing down hordes in front of them but this is exactly what the putrid enemy wants. The game will pump out Terminid and Automaton faster than you can exit your hellpod, instantly turning you into a pile of broken limbs, and sailing your corpse across the map. If you’re calling in one or any of your less fortunate teammates, you might want to keep from chucking that rapidly-diminishing reinforcement at those Bile Titans since your teammate, who just ended up turning into a pancake by one of them in the first place, may not even deliver a swift killing blow to any of them anyway. Instead, focus on completing main objectives as fast as possible. As soon as a fight gets overwhelming, head for the hills and start rotating to another objective. Cutting your losses can prove highly effective when keeping in mind that you’re just there to survive and complete the overall mission in Helldive mode.

Pro Tip: Lighter armor does come in handy for moving quickly but medium armor helps particularly when getting shot at.

Play around your stratagems

Even with all the awesome additions this most recent update gave us, stratagems are still made as the most useful tool against anything larger than your primary weapons magazine. If you are still having trouble reaching Helldive mode or completing it consider all requisites while in fights. Do you have too much of the same artillery in your loadout that is optimized, therefore making cooldowns take longer? Die and drop your gun that you just called in and now bugs or bots pitched a tent on your dead body? With Joel and the dev team at Arrowhead Studios giving cooldowns on stratagems with 100% multipliers at times, improperly positioned or mistimed ordinances are major factors of failed missions in Helldive mode. Plan accordingly with your team which stratagems you have on a long cooldown. This makes the effective use of these stratagems another key component in the completion of the difficulty setting.

The Mission, Helldiver

We all want to be the guy who shoots the most bullets, gets the most kills, revives, uses the most stratagems, but what truly serves Democracy? Every scientist you’ve saved, satellite you realigned, and ICBM you hugged a buddy in front of matters more now than ever. Each completed mission objective gets you closer to being out of Helldive mode and back to something more manageable. Which brings me back to leaving those samples, your shield backpack, and those side objectives alone if things get sticky. In the spirit of, “Focus on the war, not the battle,” one could say it is necessary here. Fighting for Super Earth with such passion is extremely patriotic, but countless Helldivers stay hard-stuck in lower difficulties as they focus more on oil/bloodshed rather than the mission at hand. Live to spread Democracy another day, soldier. Smash those main objectives and get out of dodge. These difficulties are not meant to be easy and they will test you in ways that you have to be wary of or you will pay the price, don’t be greedy.

Use what you’re comfortable with

Sure there are better primary weapons, ordinance, boosters, and backpacks than others but you have to play to your strong suits. You may want to use an AP Mines but your teammate may want you to use a more effective mission forward stratagem against a specific enemy type and thus they may turn into a traitor-baby. Don’t let this keep you from using a weapon or stratagem you best play with. Gamers these days generally tend to stick more meta weapons in games worldwide, but that might not fit your playstyle. Though a goal to keep in mind for succession of this difficulty is efficiency. The game has quite a lot to offer already. Be sure to try everything and learn what works best for your playstyle. Most importantly, have fun and play the way you want. Extra kudos if you are able to get the job done using something that may not be as advantageous as a meta option for the universe’s arduous bug problem or robot revolution. Whatever the future has to bring to us Helldivers, stay vigilant and skilled with the tools you have at our disposal.

Let us know what we missed in the comment section below!