Helldivers 2 latest patch introduces planetary hazards and more environmental challenges

Arrowhead Game Studios has released a new Helldivers 2 patch that adds planetary hazards to the game. 

Version 01.000.100 is labeled as a “minor” patch and is currently only live for PC, but will arrive on PlayStation 5 “soon”. The main takeaway from this update is the plethora of quality-of-life changes, balance updates, as well as a ton of bug fixes related to ongoing technical issues. 

However, the most notable feature comes with the introduction of “Planetary Hazards” which are now active in the game. It’s unclear what these hazards may be, and the patch notes are fairly vague, but players should now expect to encounter more dangers as they fight for liberty across the galaxy.

In addition, plenty of planets have also received additional environmental challenges, which Arrowhead says will “appear at random while you are deployed”, challenges that range from fire tornadoes to meteor showers, and more yet to be discovered.

In terms of balancing, Eradicate missions have been adjusted, and now require more kills while enemies will spawn more often, adding to the pressure. The studio also notes that the time to complete missions was previously shorter than intended and has been resolved, so now should take twice as long to complete.

You can check out the full patch notes below, which also confirm numerous technical improvements, as well as the fact that party members will now take damage from fire and gas generated by other players.

Helldivers 2 version 01.000.100 patch notes:

Major Updates

• Planetary Hazards active
• Many planets now have additional environmental challenges that will appear at random while you are deployed, from fire tornadoes to meteor showers and many more.

Balancing
Eradicate Missions

• Eradicate missions now require more kills and enemies spawn more often. The time to complete the mission was previously shorter than intended and should now usually take twice as long to complete.

Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons

• SG-225 Breaker
• SG-8 Punisher
• SG-225SP Breaker Spray & Pray
• RS-422 Railgun
• FLAM-40 Flamethrower
• LAS-98 Laser Cannon

Stratagems

• Shield Generator Pack
• Orbital 120MM HE Barrage
• Orbital 380MM HE Barrage

Fixes

• Fixed armor rating values not reducing damage as intended.
• Fixed certain Bug Holes (including Stalker Nests) that were unnecessarily hard to destroy.
• Fixed anti-aliasing toggle not working on PS5.
• Balanced lighting across all planets to solve cases where the game was too dark.
• Improved flashlight efficacy.
• Increased visibility during “sand rain” weather on Erata Prime.
• Updated tutorial materials and lighting.
• Improved cases where some materials could look blurry if “Lighting” graphic setting was set to “Low”.
• Fixed timing issues that could occur in the “Extract E-710” primary objective.
• Changed button interaction behavior for buttons in bunker POIs. Helldivers will now let go of the button after holding it for a few seconds.
• Fixed some cases of large assets floating if the ground beneath them was blown up.
• Helldivers standing next to ICBMs during launch will get properly toasty with a chance of not-so-spontaneous combustion.
• Fixed unthrowable snowballs after ragdolling.
• Fixed being able to use grenades after drowning.
• Camera no longer locked on the player’s own corpse and blocking spectator mode.
• Helldivers now take damage from fire, gas, etc. generated by other players.
• Armor no longer stretches when dismembered.

Known Issues

These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.

• Game may crash after dropping several high power stratagems in succession.
• Picking up items from caches may cause characters to freeze in place for an extended period of time.
• Picking up items from bunkers and caches in quick succession may render one of the items unpickable.
• Players cannot unfriend other players befriended via friend code.
• Players may be unable to select loadout or return to ship when joining a multiplayer game session via PS5 Activity Card.
• Mission objective HUD displays different numbers for client and host during some missions.
• Default armor is always shown while viewing the warbond, regardless of the armor that player has equipped.
• Text chat box display is obstructed by the cinematic letterboxing during extraction.
• Some text in the HUD/UI is missing or not displaying correctly.
• Players may experience issues when many players attempt to login and/or play at the same time:
• Login rate limiting
• Players may become disconnected during play
• Various UI issues may appear when the game interacts with servers
• Some games may not be joinable by others for a short period of time

For more, be sure to check out our list of the best multiplayer games, along with our list of the best PS5 games.