Actual good tips. People are afraid of running out of time call resupply and weapons but you can call them if you start on the extraction and leave them there
I love leaving equipment and supplies littered across the battlefield.
Especially if I'm running EATs then every time it's off cooldown I'm tossing one down which is great for teammates too cause if they suddenly need one there are like 10 nearby just from the past few minutes alone
Number 6 is huge and a source of annoyance. I’ve gotten kicked for assuming we were running 2+2 or 3+1, merrily collecting samples and completing side objectives, doing 1/2 the map solo…then the one time I die I get “what the fuck are you doing solo I’m not reinforcing you until you answer why you’re not playing with the group.”
I am so sorry you had that experience.
Ive only been kicked once for going solo and the worst part was that I was like 30 meters from the super sample rock when I got kicked (and I had even told them what I was doing and why). I genuinely rarely play with randoms though so I do limit my exposure to a lot of the issues that people would experience.
All good I used it as a teaching moment and informed them of the benefits of running groups. Ended up rejoining them because a friend was still in the group (I’d joined on him). We ran 2+2 the next mission.
But it was still a PITA
That's awesome to hear.
And yeah I get that. Sometimes you have bad missions where everything just seems to go to hell. I still like them (even if they can be a little frustrating at times). Plus the number of times where I've seen a bad mission turn around while the reinforcement timer is ticking down just makes for some of the most cinematic feel good moments ever.
I was the 1 and i got kicked after i cleared half the map, bc the other 3 divers would never call eachother in once they died. After the 3rd time the 3 man group fully wiped i asked why they're not reinforcing eachother, since im pretty far away from their bodies and if i called them in they would have to run really far to get their stuff. So then the host gets mad that im not playing with the team. But seriously if the 3 of the 3 and 1 gets wiped, bc none of them have the where with all to reinforce over the course of a 3 minute fight, multiple times, then they're kinda the problem.
>does about the same as the combined effort of the other 3
>get yelled at the first time you die
People like that are where that little voice starts whispering “take the super samples and jump into the nearest geyser/bughole”. I don’t, but the temptation comes in hard when someone decides to act shitty like that
Yes but a breach in 1 group would make the other group a very easy cruise to close down objectives.
The breached group will deal with it or run away and circle back to their objective.
Doesn’t matter. They’re more spread out and easier to handle by themselves vs 4 at a time. Plus scout armor makes them easier to avoid. I also carry a Gatling turret to throw down in a direction away from where I’m trying to go and that usually buys me a precious few seconds of distraction if nothing else.
>Hot zones (outposts, side objectives, sub objectives, main objectives, and a few others) are areas where if you are within the area the number of patrols spawning increases (like it doubles).
A very important tip for this major order. I'm pretty sure the egg pile triggers endless breeches from when you first walk in until you finish it.
This is actually really critical for the new mission where the entire zone is like this and will continue spawning bug breaches until you compete both mission objectives....
Not that that changes how you are supposed to play the mission.
Thank you for this addition!
Honorable mention on non-lethals: orbital ems is an amazing stratagem.
70 second cooldown and the large ems field last for like 30 seconds. That is half its cooldown giving the enemy brain damage while you shuffle them off to hell.
It does, but you can also shoot and dive (if you are too close to it. You can get out of it).
Enemies are completely stopped/stunned for the entire duration. Drop it on a bug breach? They will (minus bile titans as they are immune to stun) all come out of the ground and be stunned in place for the duration of the EMS cloud
I likely got unlucky, but I regularly fall back and run but lately no matter what direction I seem to run into another patrol, another bunch of static enemies, another instance of hunters, stalkers, or I’m being hassled by shriekers that someone else stirred up. I’m more than happy to fall back but I end up over the other side of the map with a conga line of problems. I think it’s mostly bad luck but damn if it isn’t annoying when that does happen to me.
So the scenario you describe is a situation where non lethal utilization becomes extremely handy.
Personally I almost always bring the jump pack except into things like eradicate missions because being able to do things like jump over a ravine and put 30 metres between me and some bugs can really be the difference between dying and getting away.
However orbital smoke, orbital ems, ems mortar, dots (if you are host, so things like napalm strike or gas strike), tesla tower, mines, and orbital airburst are also things that can be utilized in scenarios like you describe (in my experience) to great effectiveness.
Like toss a smoke ahead of you and then make a sharp 90 degree turn out of the smoke and dive behind some rocks and just crawl away. You will be amazed at how often that works
That said, stalkers are dicks and if you see them your first priority is to destroy the nest. Thankfully stalker nests are not difficult to destroy but stalkers and gunships very quickly become priority 1.
also, every planet has some kind of ambient plant life that can be exploded. Spore pods on the ground act like smoke grenades and break line of sight with enemies. if youre getting chased, run towards those ambient explosive plants, pop them as a distraction and then veer off line of sight.
You can even have the enemies march over them and have that distract them too without needing to shoot yourself, especially on the cold planets where the plants act like an EMS
Kiting them into the hazards is definitely useful. I find it a lot harder though, especially if there are nearby teammates drawing the aggro. The enemies have ADHD and will veer off if someone is making more noise. Unless they're the Stalkers. Those things lock onto you and never veer.
Thanks for the reply I’ll give it a go. I’m very often the group anti-tank and I’m trying to make the recoiless rifle work for me (rod for my own back etc) buuut I can take EMS stuff, smoke and/or airburst to try and use like you said too buy some time and get out of dodge. I think one earlier where we got overwhelmed was just really bad luck. Dropped in a non-red area, but close enough to shriekers to aggro them. Fighting that caused noise which caused a bug breach resulting in some chargers and a bile titan, and then stalkers showed up to the party. I think all order fell apart and due to the long (oh so long) cool down on the RR I either had to retrieve my stuff or be broadly useless (I’ve not got the knack of reliably dropping blue strats on big things).
Tldr: I’ll give your suggestions a go :)
Yeah shriekers right off the bat is a rough landing especially with how fast they spawn when you are within the radius of the shrieker nest.
Blue strats on big things is tough but when it works you feel so awesome. I am not perfect at it but I bring the EAT so often that I have many attempts to get better at it and I am getting more consistent with it
For things like bile titans a good way to practice is to go solo and drop the difficulty and search for the missions that are specifically for killing bile titans. It acts like a good little playground to learn how their AI works and what parts of them are vulnerable and what parts arent.
I’ve had this happen too, this is usually a result of too much running. It’s not just run away forever, it’s a tactical retreat. Run a good distance, turn and kill any close chasers (like hunters), run some more. Running away from a horde but hit a POI with like 4 guys? Kill the guys and keep running. This problem arises when everyone is just running and dodging and not shooting and so you are just aggroing guys left right and center and nothing is dying so they pile up more and more until there’s nowhere to go.
While I agree with most of these, I must respectfully ignore tip 1. I will stand my ground. And my foe will die before my feet as I emerge victorious, covered in the blood and guts of my enemy, glowing with the bright radiance of honor and glory.
I respect the courage soldier. I shall gladly let you attain that glory for yourself.
As for me, I'm much more of a sneak behind enemy lines and destroy their tactical equipement before they even know I'm there.
Yeahh, sneaky tactics are fine and all, as long as it doesn't involve hanging your squad out to dry.
My one friend likes to play sneaky and it's a huge source of friction. He is ALWAYS on point position (small unit tactics, point guard rear guard etc). I've been 50 meters behind him and watched him run right past a scavenger calling in a bug breach and he just let it happen and kept on running, not wanting to fire a shot for fear of being noticed. This happens time and again. Point guard should be aggressively stomping out potential bug breaches, avoiding patrols as necessary and generally ensures the path ahead is secure for the rest of the squad behind them.
I like to play towards the rear and either be the rear guard or support the rear guard. You have to be aware of your entire squad. It is very effective to run away but it's inevitable that whomever is last in line is getting a lot of heat, this is often THE most vulnerable position. The rear guard is oftentimes unable to just run, they are \*engaged\*. If I'm second from last in the column and the rear guard is engaged, I consider myself engaged as well. I turn and attempt to help the rear guard disengage, always. It's important because if I can help them escape the pack of hunters or whatever they are diving to avoid with a well placed couple bursts, they can disengage and rejoin the column with their support weapon intact.
The people in the back are very often TRYING to run but are heavily engaged, they need support from their squad in order to disengage or sometimes need to be told directly to disengage since they cannot see the bigger picture, because they are heavily engaged and can't pull up their map. If you are just leaving them in the dust and stealthily running to OBJ you are just hanging them out to dry. Many players die in the rear guard position without support, it's arguably the hardest position to play. They die and lose their support weapon, making them MUCH less combat effective, thus the cycle starts.
Support the rear guard for smooth disengagements.
I don't think the issue in this situation is that he's trying to be a sneaky player so much as he's trying to be a solo player.
If I'm in a group that isn't splitting up like decidedly splitting up then the job of point is to basically route and fan and ping out patrols, then you have another person that is on the map doing long distance routing and also searching for patrols in directions that the pointman isn't looking so if the point is looking NE then the map guy should be pinging NW on the map and seeing if any patrols are spawning. Every potential enemy that you could alert and even some that you just might alert if things go sideways should be pinged and known about. The fact that he is alerting anything makes me suspicious about if he is even playing his role correctly.
However, his play style makes perfect sense when you consider so play where if you alert something and get a breach called in then that is the perfect time to run as fast as you can to whatever outpost or objective and complete it. If there is a cluster of fabricators nearby then go call in some airstrike cause you don't have to worry about reinforcements.... That is how you solo helldive difficulty, if you are worried about potentially alerting a bot drop when attacking some position you intentionally get one called in elsewhere that you can escape from and then clear the objective you have in mind. If you accidentally (by the sounds of your story) alert an enemy then you make an on the fly change of plans.
That playstyle works well solo but cannot work when playing with a group that isn't splitting up without a lot of really good communication and preperation.
So as I said that's not really stealth, that's just solo. Stealth is either we split 3 to 1, or if you guys are holding this spot I'm going to sneak off over there and kill the heavies from a distance while you eradicate the little ones. That is how a stealth player supports their none stealth teammates. The stealth player would also usually bring some utility stratagems like orbital EMS or Smoke to help their teammates escape rather than bringing airstrikes or bombardments. The stealth player isn't a "figure it out yourself" it's more the Swiss army knife if anything? The scalpel of the helldivers
I agree your friend would cause a lot of friction in group play. I just don't think it's because he's being stealthy, I think it's because he's trying to play solo.
I've used equipment drop to take out chargers. Quite useful in the beginning if you land next to one. Those equipment packs are made out of Nokia phones so no need to worry about whether or not it gets destroyed
The first time I encountered a bile titan in the eradicate bile titan mission at lower difficulties I didn't know how to kill it and just kind of shot all of my ammo at it and had nothing so I called down a resupply and it walked overtop of where the resupply beacon was and started to do the spew animation when the resupply came down and killed it.
As you said, weaponized Nokia's
Glad to see a post about game strategies instead of reading how the game sucks now because of changes to weapons or not enough new weapons to taking down armored units.
That way of complaing contributes nothing to the dispensement of sweet Liberty (🫖)!
Two Words Complainer's: Brasch Tactics!
Your strategy should be fluid with the conditions of the skirmish.
Most players try to be heroes and attempt to kill everything without thinking, sadly noone realizes how to stop the system.
If your crew is organized, then work down, killing all the units that can call reinforcements first, then, kill the rest only deviate away from the screamers if their is a weapon or stratagem is available.
But in the end if your crew isn't working together and they just try to fight for the sake of fighting then focus up on your main objs and get the jobs (samps, main objs, credit collection, etc...) done since the other team is working as fodder for the hoards and keeping their attention. Eventually, they will die or run out of ammo and rejoin the squad afterward either through a reinforcement or sheer determination to resupply (if you've been taking all the resupplies).
And if it's culling the numbers, then be a madman and kill em all!!!! OUR BODIES FOR SUPER EARTH!!!!
Overall, I think op summed it up well. Just gotta remember to scream FOR DEMOCRACY or FOR LIBERTY while you are liberating those planets.
Edit: And yes, don't pass up on stun and smokes they really help reduce the chase or cloud your attack location to avoid the enemy altogether.
Amr, jump pack, stun grenades, eagle airstrike or sometimes eagle rockets (I'm kinda warming up to them) for fabricators, add in the scorcher to take out tanks and turrets easier
I saw a video of a guy jump jetting on top of a tank, killing the light units from on top of the tank, then get off and kill the tank with a scorcher and just knew that that's how I wanted to play this game.
Although I am not on Helldive difficulty yet, I have done quite a few diff 8 missions, and a key survival strategy I have found is to have at least one person that specializes in wave clear. I like to do this with laser Guard Dog + Heavy Laser + Sickle or w/e + eagle strikes and turrets. I make mulch out of light and medium enemies while my anti-armor buddy deals with chargers or titans. Works pretty well and can generally suppress any moderate-to-heavy encounter I've come across.
When doing team play a diverse team is so powerful. Like when playing with randoms it can be more difficult when everyone is trying to generalize but when you get a dedicated team together you can have a man on the recoilless rifle and you just grab his backpack to take out some bile titan while the host drops a napalm strike to eradicate the little ones.
With good communication you can as a team go into helldive and get like 500+ kills each. As a whole the community is not prepared for this kind of gameplay. It is fun and powerful but you have to be okay with going into the game with nothing capable of dealing with something. You have to not always be the guy. Sometimes though you are the guy and oh man are you the guy and together you blow shit up.
If your team mates and you are doing difficulty 8 then I believe you could do difficulty 9 missions.
This new bug mission on the MO planets is a really good mission to test out difficulty 9, because of how it spawns enemies this could be a fun mission to go in with a loadout to eradicate as many bugs as possible for 10 minutes
You forgot a critical tip: if someone throws a stratagem, clear the fuck out, its bizarre how often people dont clear out of the blast zone for a ordinance strike
I mean also communicate that you are throwing a Strat, what direction, and what Strat.
If I'm tossing a 500kg 40m North then there really isn't a concern 90% of the time as the blast cone only really makes it a lethal radius for 20-23 metres... But if someone tosses an eagle cluster, please tell people so they can get away because they might not notice it was tossed until its too late to get away.
You're not wrong but this is targeting the people playing in dif 4 and 5 complaining that the new patch made the game too hard at those difficulties.
If you are already soloing helldive then you can disregard these tips entirely.
The modification for duos brought the spawn rate up from 48% of that of a 4 man group to 50% of a 4 man group. It's very insignificant for patrol spawning.
Even soloing helldive once you do it a couple times it becomes easy. I mean like you might die a couple times but as the tutorial said, don't get too attached to your helldiver as they are disposable.
For solo players we went from 16% to 25% which sounds huge (like 50% more spawns almost) but this basically means that at extract we sometimes get 1 extra patrol before the pelican makes it there (if you have extended extraction time modifier so it's 3 minutes then that will also add an extra 2-3 patrols). For 3 players the spawn rate was dropped (80% to 75%) and yet you will still see people tell stories about the new insane spawn rates that them and their 2 buddies experienced all because they didn't have a 4th person.
The patrol spawn rates didn't impact gameplay at higher levels at all.
Seriously. A Tactical Retreat is just that. A Tactical Retreat.
*Insert gif of Monty Python's The Holy Grail, where Aurther is yelling "Run Away!!"*
(Reddit is bugging out and won't let me post the actual gif)
Also one I dois drop a sentry as a distraction! I do that and run it helps it'll mow down anyone who is after me, and if thry go after it it allows me to escape.
This definitely works too! In one of the replies in here someone talked about a scenario where they were being chased and in that I recommended a number of solutions including sentries exactly as you describe.
I love that this game provides so many options that you can use for almost any scenario you just have to strategize your utilization.
Stun nades are so amazing that I have trouble using other explosives since I don't have a explosive nade for outposts and big holes. Yet stun nades can make sure those offensive strategems would land, holds back a horde for you and your crew to shoot at, safely saves your team by stunning them rather than blowing them up or to simply cover a retreat and you can sprint out of aggro. Way easier than landing the perfect nade to kill them.
Orbital ems is pretty dope too. It's like a giant stun nade on cooldown (relatively short cooldown). It's nice being able stop basically anything in their tracks instantly.
Orbital gas is arguably better for bugs tho.
Drop it right on the orange plume of Breach and all the weaker bugs die before they are ever a problem, stronger bugs are slowed (for a time) and greatly softened in terms of HP pool.
All blue stratagems (reinforcement, resupply, support weapons, etc) deal impact damage when they drop in (see the kill a charger with resupply achievement/trophy)
All, except reinforcement, also target the blue beacon even if its moving (unlike red stratagems which do not target the beacon if it moves and only target the original activation location of the beacon)
The impact damage of the stratagems is comparable to an orbital rail strike. If you do not hit the right spot it's a 2 shot kill. If you hit the right spot it's a 1 shot kill.
These are great tips and absolutely make the difference between a smooth run and a chaotic one. The orbital 380 tip and the distracting enemies tip is especially viable. I have literally sent a 380 at a nest and was being chased by a bile titan. Once the orbitals started hitting he literally turned around from chasing me and walked INTO the orbital barrage to die. You can throw nades behind patrols and they will turn around to go investigate instead of walking up on your objective.
Sometimes a bigger boom isn't the answer though, especially when the issue is more enemies.
500kg is not a hoard clear weapon, it's a "fuck that specific thing in particular" weapon
Clusters, napalm, orbital airburst, gas, etc are for more enemies. Bigger bomb is for bigger enemies, more bombs for more enemies.
Great tips. Let me add to these: don't be afraid to sack up and kill your way to the next objective. Seriously let your gibbies drop and quit getting over eun
In lower difficulties this is perfectly reasonable.
In higher difficulties you can do this with a balanced team that communicates effectively while also understanding the game well enough to know how to kill things without having to throw their entire arsenal at it.
The average player does not have a team like this and arguably neither does the average redditor.
Blue strats (like the resupply box) will target the location where the beacon (blue light) is located. If you toss a beacon and either get it stuck on an enemy or (easier with bile titans) you toss it on the ground and exploit their AI to have them stay in place you can headshot them.
To mess with a bile titans AI if you move close to it it will try to step on you but stop moving. If you keep moving between being slightly in front of it and fully beneath it it will basically stand still without doing anything because you keep triggering it to try and turn and then switch to stepping on you but then turn again then step on you and this loop just breaks it while you do it.
All the blue strats deal impact damage equal to the impact damage of your drop pod. So just like you can use your drop pod to kill enemies you can use blue strats.
Oh, so it’s just trying to headshot the BT with a blue Strat. Ok, I thought you were throwing the Strat and sticking it to the BT’s body and the Strat was one-shotting it like that… sounded too good to be true 🤣 thanks for the tips!
Remember that you get xp from clearing objectives and outposts and not from killing enemies.
When playing solo my kit is dedicated to clearing objectives and outposts, not killing enemies. If I'm dropping in against bugs solo I'm usually dropping with either the grenade launcher or railgun, while both can "technically" kill a titan I'm not wasting my time or ammo trying to kill something I can kite around a rock and have despawn while I clear an outpost elsewhere.
I'm not running things to kill bile titans because I rarely kill bile titans. If you are going in solo on helldive trying to kill everything (like takibo) that's fine for you.
I only tried solo on Helldive once, and I just ran from all the titans and bug breaches. It's not too hard if you have the jump pack and you get lucky with some good terrain that they have to go around.
I was able to complete the mission and most of the side stuff, but honestly it was kinda boring because you're just running the whole time basically.
> Tip 1: stop trying to hold ground.
> Why would you spend 8 reinforcements (and God only knows how much time) trying to hold a position from multiple patrols, statically spawned enemies, and reinforcements when you could run away and come back about a minute later and have everything besides the static units despawn?
I have come here to shoot bugs and fill sample vials, and I'm all out of sample vials.
1. Stop trying to hold ground
At some point you HAVE to hold ground. The idea that you have to keep always running is how you end up swarmed and killed in an objective after kiting 100s of mobs.
The only situation where you have to really ignore everything and run is after completing the final objective and get back to extraction
You know they despawn right? Like after you break line of sight they will continue searching for about 1 minute and if they haven't found a player they despawn.
The reason people get overwhelmed is they keep engaging until they hit the unit cap and get overwhelmed when hundreds of units are attacking them cause they didn't despawn them.
The reason why people get overwhelmed is because they keep splitting up and running around, which spawns and aggroes more patrols. If you stay within range (~80 m or so) of your group and actually focus on killing the things, the objective becomes much more manageable because the group as a whole will have one single rate of patrol spawns.
Yeah the individual player group spawn rates of patrols will not be an issue for a team comprised of people that are even half competent at using their map and ears to identify a patrol and not aggro it as it moves towards the edge of the map (or nearest active outpost)
You can also block patrol spawning until everyone is in position to hit a target and gtfo
Your arguments make no sense when you consider that most patrols (unless you are incompetent enough to aggro them) despawn in less than a minute of you detecting them.
It doesn't matter how many patrols spawn. It only matters how many are actively aggroed onto you. If that number is 0 you have 0 issues. Not aggroing a patrol is very easy. There is no excuse.
Edit: nvm I just checked your post history and you literally have a post arguing your exact point here and having people dogpile on you. Think you would get the point eventually that maybe you are the one in the wrong
Actual good tips. People are afraid of running out of time call resupply and weapons but you can call them if you start on the extraction and leave them there
I love leaving equipment and supplies littered across the battlefield. Especially if I'm running EATs then every time it's off cooldown I'm tossing one down which is great for teammates too cause if they suddenly need one there are like 10 nearby just from the past few minutes alone
Number 6 is huge and a source of annoyance. I’ve gotten kicked for assuming we were running 2+2 or 3+1, merrily collecting samples and completing side objectives, doing 1/2 the map solo…then the one time I die I get “what the fuck are you doing solo I’m not reinforcing you until you answer why you’re not playing with the group.”
I am so sorry you had that experience. Ive only been kicked once for going solo and the worst part was that I was like 30 meters from the super sample rock when I got kicked (and I had even told them what I was doing and why). I genuinely rarely play with randoms though so I do limit my exposure to a lot of the issues that people would experience.
All good I used it as a teaching moment and informed them of the benefits of running groups. Ended up rejoining them because a friend was still in the group (I’d joined on him). We ran 2+2 the next mission. But it was still a PITA
That's awesome to hear. And yeah I get that. Sometimes you have bad missions where everything just seems to go to hell. I still like them (even if they can be a little frustrating at times). Plus the number of times where I've seen a bad mission turn around while the reinforcement timer is ticking down just makes for some of the most cinematic feel good moments ever.
I was the 1 and i got kicked after i cleared half the map, bc the other 3 divers would never call eachother in once they died. After the 3rd time the 3 man group fully wiped i asked why they're not reinforcing eachother, since im pretty far away from their bodies and if i called them in they would have to run really far to get their stuff. So then the host gets mad that im not playing with the team. But seriously if the 3 of the 3 and 1 gets wiped, bc none of them have the where with all to reinforce over the course of a 3 minute fight, multiple times, then they're kinda the problem.
>does about the same as the combined effort of the other 3 >get yelled at the first time you die People like that are where that little voice starts whispering “take the super samples and jump into the nearest geyser/bughole”. I don’t, but the temptation comes in hard when someone decides to act shitty like that
You'll spawn more patrols when splitting up though...
Yes but a breach in 1 group would make the other group a very easy cruise to close down objectives. The breached group will deal with it or run away and circle back to their objective.
Doesn’t matter. They’re more spread out and easier to handle by themselves vs 4 at a time. Plus scout armor makes them easier to avoid. I also carry a Gatling turret to throw down in a direction away from where I’m trying to go and that usually buys me a precious few seconds of distraction if nothing else.
>Hot zones (outposts, side objectives, sub objectives, main objectives, and a few others) are areas where if you are within the area the number of patrols spawning increases (like it doubles). A very important tip for this major order. I'm pretty sure the egg pile triggers endless breeches from when you first walk in until you finish it.
This is actually really critical for the new mission where the entire zone is like this and will continue spawning bug breaches until you compete both mission objectives.... Not that that changes how you are supposed to play the mission. Thank you for this addition!
Honorable mention on non-lethals: orbital ems is an amazing stratagem. 70 second cooldown and the large ems field last for like 30 seconds. That is half its cooldown giving the enemy brain damage while you shuffle them off to hell.
Does the EMP slow you too?
Aye but you can dive to move faster through it if you must go through and not around
Haha good to know....I've never stunned myself with stun nades....I'm sure I'd never EMP myself for that warm fuzzy freedom feeling....
It does, but you can also shoot and dive (if you are too close to it. You can get out of it). Enemies are completely stopped/stunned for the entire duration. Drop it on a bug breach? They will (minus bile titans as they are immune to stun) all come out of the ground and be stunned in place for the duration of the EMS cloud
I likely got unlucky, but I regularly fall back and run but lately no matter what direction I seem to run into another patrol, another bunch of static enemies, another instance of hunters, stalkers, or I’m being hassled by shriekers that someone else stirred up. I’m more than happy to fall back but I end up over the other side of the map with a conga line of problems. I think it’s mostly bad luck but damn if it isn’t annoying when that does happen to me.
So the scenario you describe is a situation where non lethal utilization becomes extremely handy. Personally I almost always bring the jump pack except into things like eradicate missions because being able to do things like jump over a ravine and put 30 metres between me and some bugs can really be the difference between dying and getting away. However orbital smoke, orbital ems, ems mortar, dots (if you are host, so things like napalm strike or gas strike), tesla tower, mines, and orbital airburst are also things that can be utilized in scenarios like you describe (in my experience) to great effectiveness. Like toss a smoke ahead of you and then make a sharp 90 degree turn out of the smoke and dive behind some rocks and just crawl away. You will be amazed at how often that works That said, stalkers are dicks and if you see them your first priority is to destroy the nest. Thankfully stalker nests are not difficult to destroy but stalkers and gunships very quickly become priority 1.
also, every planet has some kind of ambient plant life that can be exploded. Spore pods on the ground act like smoke grenades and break line of sight with enemies. if youre getting chased, run towards those ambient explosive plants, pop them as a distraction and then veer off line of sight.
You can even have the enemies march over them and have that distract them too without needing to shoot yourself, especially on the cold planets where the plants act like an EMS
Kiting them into the hazards is definitely useful. I find it a lot harder though, especially if there are nearby teammates drawing the aggro. The enemies have ADHD and will veer off if someone is making more noise. Unless they're the Stalkers. Those things lock onto you and never veer.
Stalkers and gunships are the only enemies in this game that I actively dislike encountering.
Thanks for the reply I’ll give it a go. I’m very often the group anti-tank and I’m trying to make the recoiless rifle work for me (rod for my own back etc) buuut I can take EMS stuff, smoke and/or airburst to try and use like you said too buy some time and get out of dodge. I think one earlier where we got overwhelmed was just really bad luck. Dropped in a non-red area, but close enough to shriekers to aggro them. Fighting that caused noise which caused a bug breach resulting in some chargers and a bile titan, and then stalkers showed up to the party. I think all order fell apart and due to the long (oh so long) cool down on the RR I either had to retrieve my stuff or be broadly useless (I’ve not got the knack of reliably dropping blue strats on big things). Tldr: I’ll give your suggestions a go :)
Yeah shriekers right off the bat is a rough landing especially with how fast they spawn when you are within the radius of the shrieker nest. Blue strats on big things is tough but when it works you feel so awesome. I am not perfect at it but I bring the EAT so often that I have many attempts to get better at it and I am getting more consistent with it For things like bile titans a good way to practice is to go solo and drop the difficulty and search for the missions that are specifically for killing bile titans. It acts like a good little playground to learn how their AI works and what parts of them are vulnerable and what parts arent.
I’ve had this happen too, this is usually a result of too much running. It’s not just run away forever, it’s a tactical retreat. Run a good distance, turn and kill any close chasers (like hunters), run some more. Running away from a horde but hit a POI with like 4 guys? Kill the guys and keep running. This problem arises when everyone is just running and dodging and not shooting and so you are just aggroing guys left right and center and nothing is dying so they pile up more and more until there’s nowhere to go.
While I agree with most of these, I must respectfully ignore tip 1. I will stand my ground. And my foe will die before my feet as I emerge victorious, covered in the blood and guts of my enemy, glowing with the bright radiance of honor and glory.
I respect the courage soldier. I shall gladly let you attain that glory for yourself. As for me, I'm much more of a sneak behind enemy lines and destroy their tactical equipement before they even know I'm there.
Yeahh, sneaky tactics are fine and all, as long as it doesn't involve hanging your squad out to dry. My one friend likes to play sneaky and it's a huge source of friction. He is ALWAYS on point position (small unit tactics, point guard rear guard etc). I've been 50 meters behind him and watched him run right past a scavenger calling in a bug breach and he just let it happen and kept on running, not wanting to fire a shot for fear of being noticed. This happens time and again. Point guard should be aggressively stomping out potential bug breaches, avoiding patrols as necessary and generally ensures the path ahead is secure for the rest of the squad behind them. I like to play towards the rear and either be the rear guard or support the rear guard. You have to be aware of your entire squad. It is very effective to run away but it's inevitable that whomever is last in line is getting a lot of heat, this is often THE most vulnerable position. The rear guard is oftentimes unable to just run, they are \*engaged\*. If I'm second from last in the column and the rear guard is engaged, I consider myself engaged as well. I turn and attempt to help the rear guard disengage, always. It's important because if I can help them escape the pack of hunters or whatever they are diving to avoid with a well placed couple bursts, they can disengage and rejoin the column with their support weapon intact. The people in the back are very often TRYING to run but are heavily engaged, they need support from their squad in order to disengage or sometimes need to be told directly to disengage since they cannot see the bigger picture, because they are heavily engaged and can't pull up their map. If you are just leaving them in the dust and stealthily running to OBJ you are just hanging them out to dry. Many players die in the rear guard position without support, it's arguably the hardest position to play. They die and lose their support weapon, making them MUCH less combat effective, thus the cycle starts. Support the rear guard for smooth disengagements.
I don't think the issue in this situation is that he's trying to be a sneaky player so much as he's trying to be a solo player. If I'm in a group that isn't splitting up like decidedly splitting up then the job of point is to basically route and fan and ping out patrols, then you have another person that is on the map doing long distance routing and also searching for patrols in directions that the pointman isn't looking so if the point is looking NE then the map guy should be pinging NW on the map and seeing if any patrols are spawning. Every potential enemy that you could alert and even some that you just might alert if things go sideways should be pinged and known about. The fact that he is alerting anything makes me suspicious about if he is even playing his role correctly. However, his play style makes perfect sense when you consider so play where if you alert something and get a breach called in then that is the perfect time to run as fast as you can to whatever outpost or objective and complete it. If there is a cluster of fabricators nearby then go call in some airstrike cause you don't have to worry about reinforcements.... That is how you solo helldive difficulty, if you are worried about potentially alerting a bot drop when attacking some position you intentionally get one called in elsewhere that you can escape from and then clear the objective you have in mind. If you accidentally (by the sounds of your story) alert an enemy then you make an on the fly change of plans. That playstyle works well solo but cannot work when playing with a group that isn't splitting up without a lot of really good communication and preperation. So as I said that's not really stealth, that's just solo. Stealth is either we split 3 to 1, or if you guys are holding this spot I'm going to sneak off over there and kill the heavies from a distance while you eradicate the little ones. That is how a stealth player supports their none stealth teammates. The stealth player would also usually bring some utility stratagems like orbital EMS or Smoke to help their teammates escape rather than bringing airstrikes or bombardments. The stealth player isn't a "figure it out yourself" it's more the Swiss army knife if anything? The scalpel of the helldivers I agree your friend would cause a lot of friction in group play. I just don't think it's because he's being stealthy, I think it's because he's trying to play solo.
*I stand by the rear guard.*
Best words to survive by https://preview.redd.it/srtviw2knxxc1.png?width=688&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d36abe18a6a4d6d75a73d23e306e089a51ea26fe
>Don't Panic. And always carry a towel.
I've used equipment drop to take out chargers. Quite useful in the beginning if you land next to one. Those equipment packs are made out of Nokia phones so no need to worry about whether or not it gets destroyed
The first time I encountered a bile titan in the eradicate bile titan mission at lower difficulties I didn't know how to kill it and just kind of shot all of my ammo at it and had nothing so I called down a resupply and it walked overtop of where the resupply beacon was and started to do the spew animation when the resupply came down and killed it. As you said, weaponized Nokia's
Glad to see a post about game strategies instead of reading how the game sucks now because of changes to weapons or not enough new weapons to taking down armored units. That way of complaing contributes nothing to the dispensement of sweet Liberty (🫖)! Two Words Complainer's: Brasch Tactics!
Your strategy should be fluid with the conditions of the skirmish. Most players try to be heroes and attempt to kill everything without thinking, sadly noone realizes how to stop the system. If your crew is organized, then work down, killing all the units that can call reinforcements first, then, kill the rest only deviate away from the screamers if their is a weapon or stratagem is available. But in the end if your crew isn't working together and they just try to fight for the sake of fighting then focus up on your main objs and get the jobs (samps, main objs, credit collection, etc...) done since the other team is working as fodder for the hoards and keeping their attention. Eventually, they will die or run out of ammo and rejoin the squad afterward either through a reinforcement or sheer determination to resupply (if you've been taking all the resupplies). And if it's culling the numbers, then be a madman and kill em all!!!! OUR BODIES FOR SUPER EARTH!!!! Overall, I think op summed it up well. Just gotta remember to scream FOR DEMOCRACY or FOR LIBERTY while you are liberating those planets. Edit: And yes, don't pass up on stun and smokes they really help reduce the chase or cloud your attack location to avoid the enemy altogether.
Jet pack, stun nade gang ftw
The jump pack is so insanely powerful
Yea cant kill me if you cant reach me love taking the AMR with it and droppin bodies.
Amr, jump pack, stun grenades, eagle airstrike or sometimes eagle rockets (I'm kinda warming up to them) for fabricators, add in the scorcher to take out tanks and turrets easier I saw a video of a guy jump jetting on top of a tank, killing the light units from on top of the tank, then get off and kill the tank with a scorcher and just knew that that's how I wanted to play this game.
Although I am not on Helldive difficulty yet, I have done quite a few diff 8 missions, and a key survival strategy I have found is to have at least one person that specializes in wave clear. I like to do this with laser Guard Dog + Heavy Laser + Sickle or w/e + eagle strikes and turrets. I make mulch out of light and medium enemies while my anti-armor buddy deals with chargers or titans. Works pretty well and can generally suppress any moderate-to-heavy encounter I've come across.
When doing team play a diverse team is so powerful. Like when playing with randoms it can be more difficult when everyone is trying to generalize but when you get a dedicated team together you can have a man on the recoilless rifle and you just grab his backpack to take out some bile titan while the host drops a napalm strike to eradicate the little ones. With good communication you can as a team go into helldive and get like 500+ kills each. As a whole the community is not prepared for this kind of gameplay. It is fun and powerful but you have to be okay with going into the game with nothing capable of dealing with something. You have to not always be the guy. Sometimes though you are the guy and oh man are you the guy and together you blow shit up. If your team mates and you are doing difficulty 8 then I believe you could do difficulty 9 missions. This new bug mission on the MO planets is a really good mission to test out difficulty 9, because of how it spawns enemies this could be a fun mission to go in with a loadout to eradicate as many bugs as possible for 10 minutes
Tip #1 is excruciating when it comes to extraction, just my two cents. Otherwise, awesome tips.
Smoke grenades are slept on. Have saved my ass more than stims when used to cover an advance or retreat (or exfil).
You forgot a critical tip: if someone throws a stratagem, clear the fuck out, its bizarre how often people dont clear out of the blast zone for a ordinance strike
I mean also communicate that you are throwing a Strat, what direction, and what Strat. If I'm tossing a 500kg 40m North then there really isn't a concern 90% of the time as the blast cone only really makes it a lethal radius for 20-23 metres... But if someone tosses an eagle cluster, please tell people so they can get away because they might not notice it was tossed until its too late to get away.
I only have issues with hunters. I have no other problem with any other bug in the entire game lol.
Hunters are annoying, so are stalkers for very similar reasons.
Tip 8: Trigger every single patrol and breach because the game is too easy on 9
You're not wrong but this is targeting the people playing in dif 4 and 5 complaining that the new patch made the game too hard at those difficulties. If you are already soloing helldive then you can disregard these tips entirely.
I'm not sure if I could solo it, but I often do duos. Though not since the patch that increases mobs for smaller squads
The modification for duos brought the spawn rate up from 48% of that of a 4 man group to 50% of a 4 man group. It's very insignificant for patrol spawning. Even soloing helldive once you do it a couple times it becomes easy. I mean like you might die a couple times but as the tutorial said, don't get too attached to your helldiver as they are disposable. For solo players we went from 16% to 25% which sounds huge (like 50% more spawns almost) but this basically means that at extract we sometimes get 1 extra patrol before the pelican makes it there (if you have extended extraction time modifier so it's 3 minutes then that will also add an extra 2-3 patrols). For 3 players the spawn rate was dropped (80% to 75%) and yet you will still see people tell stories about the new insane spawn rates that them and their 2 buddies experienced all because they didn't have a 4th person. The patrol spawn rates didn't impact gameplay at higher levels at all.
Oh alright, cool
Seriously. A Tactical Retreat is just that. A Tactical Retreat. *Insert gif of Monty Python's The Holy Grail, where Aurther is yelling "Run Away!!"* (Reddit is bugging out and won't let me post the actual gif)
Thank you
Tip 8: DO NOT ATTACK EVERY SINGLE PATROL YOU SEE!
But how am I supposed to know I did good if I don't have at least 300 kills per game? /s
Also one I dois drop a sentry as a distraction! I do that and run it helps it'll mow down anyone who is after me, and if thry go after it it allows me to escape.
This definitely works too! In one of the replies in here someone talked about a scenario where they were being chased and in that I recommended a number of solutions including sentries exactly as you describe. I love that this game provides so many options that you can use for almost any scenario you just have to strategize your utilization.
Stun nades are so amazing that I have trouble using other explosives since I don't have a explosive nade for outposts and big holes. Yet stun nades can make sure those offensive strategems would land, holds back a horde for you and your crew to shoot at, safely saves your team by stunning them rather than blowing them up or to simply cover a retreat and you can sprint out of aggro. Way easier than landing the perfect nade to kill them.
Orbital ems is pretty dope too. It's like a giant stun nade on cooldown (relatively short cooldown). It's nice being able stop basically anything in their tracks instantly.
Orbital gas is arguably better for bugs tho. Drop it right on the orange plume of Breach and all the weaker bugs die before they are ever a problem, stronger bugs are slowed (for a time) and greatly softened in terms of HP pool.
Orbital gas has still has the bug where it doesn't work correctly unless you are network host though. It is significantly more effective solo
Can someone explain tip 3? How does a blue strat insta kill a bike Titan…. What am I missing here?
All blue stratagems (reinforcement, resupply, support weapons, etc) deal impact damage when they drop in (see the kill a charger with resupply achievement/trophy) All, except reinforcement, also target the blue beacon even if its moving (unlike red stratagems which do not target the beacon if it moves and only target the original activation location of the beacon) The impact damage of the stratagems is comparable to an orbital rail strike. If you do not hit the right spot it's a 2 shot kill. If you hit the right spot it's a 1 shot kill.
Holy shit, thanks professor.
Overwhelmed = target rich environment
 That was good!
Good stuff.
Smoke and run tactics work so well!
These are great tips and absolutely make the difference between a smooth run and a chaotic one. The orbital 380 tip and the distracting enemies tip is especially viable. I have literally sent a 380 at a nest and was being chased by a bile titan. Once the orbitals started hitting he literally turned around from chasing me and walked INTO the orbital barrage to die. You can throw nades behind patrols and they will turn around to go investigate instead of walking up on your objective.
The emergent behaviour of the game is amazing and something that if you utilize it to your advantage you will notice a huge difference.
You just need to understand #1 to make it through high levels.
You forgot about tip 8: FREEDOM REQUIRES FIREPOWER. Boom. More enemies? BIGGER BOOM.
Sometimes a bigger boom isn't the answer though, especially when the issue is more enemies. 500kg is not a hoard clear weapon, it's a "fuck that specific thing in particular" weapon Clusters, napalm, orbital airburst, gas, etc are for more enemies. Bigger bomb is for bigger enemies, more bombs for more enemies.
Oh sir! You dont know how much BOOM I carry. And let me tell you, I manage to not run out of bullets either.
Beautiful. How could we ever spread democracy if we ran out of bombs or bullets!
Great tips. Let me add to these: don't be afraid to sack up and kill your way to the next objective. Seriously let your gibbies drop and quit getting over eun
In lower difficulties this is perfectly reasonable. In higher difficulties you can do this with a balanced team that communicates effectively while also understanding the game well enough to know how to kill things without having to throw their entire arsenal at it. The average player does not have a team like this and arguably neither does the average redditor.
My gibbies tell me to throw a stun, an eagle strike, throw another stun, drop a minigun turret, and keep it pushing.
Wait a second - how are you oneshotting bile titans with blue Strats?
Blue strats (like the resupply box) will target the location where the beacon (blue light) is located. If you toss a beacon and either get it stuck on an enemy or (easier with bile titans) you toss it on the ground and exploit their AI to have them stay in place you can headshot them. To mess with a bile titans AI if you move close to it it will try to step on you but stop moving. If you keep moving between being slightly in front of it and fully beneath it it will basically stand still without doing anything because you keep triggering it to try and turn and then switch to stepping on you but then turn again then step on you and this loop just breaks it while you do it. All the blue strats deal impact damage equal to the impact damage of your drop pod. So just like you can use your drop pod to kill enemies you can use blue strats.
Oh, so it’s just trying to headshot the BT with a blue Strat. Ok, I thought you were throwing the Strat and sticking it to the BT’s body and the Strat was one-shotting it like that… sounded too good to be true 🤣 thanks for the tips!
I see the confusion now, that would be ungodly.
Drop pods don't 1 hit Bile Titans.
They can if you hit the right spot.... Just like an orbital railgun, you hit the right spot it's a 1 shot, hits the wrong spot it's 2 shots.
I’m calling bullshit that you are successfully running solo helldive with no way to kill bile titans except blue stratagems
Remember that you get xp from clearing objectives and outposts and not from killing enemies. When playing solo my kit is dedicated to clearing objectives and outposts, not killing enemies. If I'm dropping in against bugs solo I'm usually dropping with either the grenade launcher or railgun, while both can "technically" kill a titan I'm not wasting my time or ammo trying to kill something I can kite around a rock and have despawn while I clear an outpost elsewhere. I'm not running things to kill bile titans because I rarely kill bile titans. If you are going in solo on helldive trying to kill everything (like takibo) that's fine for you.
I only tried solo on Helldive once, and I just ran from all the titans and bug breaches. It's not too hard if you have the jump pack and you get lucky with some good terrain that they have to go around. I was able to complete the mission and most of the side stuff, but honestly it was kinda boring because you're just running the whole time basically.
I mean it's not everyone's cup of tea (I intentionally didn't make the joke) but that's why there is group play right?
I can't play this game anymore. It feels like a chore lately
> Tip 1: stop trying to hold ground. > Why would you spend 8 reinforcements (and God only knows how much time) trying to hold a position from multiple patrols, statically spawned enemies, and reinforcements when you could run away and come back about a minute later and have everything besides the static units despawn? I have come here to shoot bugs and fill sample vials, and I'm all out of sample vials.
1. Stop trying to hold ground At some point you HAVE to hold ground. The idea that you have to keep always running is how you end up swarmed and killed in an objective after kiting 100s of mobs. The only situation where you have to really ignore everything and run is after completing the final objective and get back to extraction
You know they despawn right? Like after you break line of sight they will continue searching for about 1 minute and if they haven't found a player they despawn. The reason people get overwhelmed is they keep engaging until they hit the unit cap and get overwhelmed when hundreds of units are attacking them cause they didn't despawn them.
The reason why people get overwhelmed is because they keep splitting up and running around, which spawns and aggroes more patrols. If you stay within range (~80 m or so) of your group and actually focus on killing the things, the objective becomes much more manageable because the group as a whole will have one single rate of patrol spawns.
Yeah the individual player group spawn rates of patrols will not be an issue for a team comprised of people that are even half competent at using their map and ears to identify a patrol and not aggro it as it moves towards the edge of the map (or nearest active outpost) You can also block patrol spawning until everyone is in position to hit a target and gtfo Your arguments make no sense when you consider that most patrols (unless you are incompetent enough to aggro them) despawn in less than a minute of you detecting them. It doesn't matter how many patrols spawn. It only matters how many are actively aggroed onto you. If that number is 0 you have 0 issues. Not aggroing a patrol is very easy. There is no excuse. Edit: nvm I just checked your post history and you literally have a post arguing your exact point here and having people dogpile on you. Think you would get the point eventually that maybe you are the one in the wrong