Essentials
Welcome to the HellDads Essentials, a quick, fun guide for everyone to understand all the wild game mechanics and gaming lingo, which might not be that obvious to figure out! Whether you're fresh from the academy or just need a refresher, we've got you covered with the combined knowledge of the HellDads. Proudly curated by the R&D Science Team.
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Tips & Tricks
Offensive
Calling extraction while the team pulls agro somewhere else, can make the rest of the mission much easier.
Offensive
The Pelican can hover and give you air support, when no Helldiver is in the extraction zone once the countdown has finished and he's on his final approach.
Offensive
You can shoot the broadcast tower from a distance with explosive weapons, you don't have to use the terminal.
Offensive
The Commando will attempt to guide the rockets into the last marked position of your laser, but it doesn't work with moving targets.
Offensive
All flame throwing weapons deal the same damage, only the fuel tank has different capacity.
Offensive
The Crossbow is a silent weapon, enemies will get only drawn to the explosion if they don't see you shooting it.
Offensive
The Dynamite has a timer which can be adjusted through the weapon wheel, up to 60 seconds.
Offensive
The Ballistic Shield also blocks melee attacks, perfect in combination with melee weapons.
Offensive
The kick emote "this is democracy" is doing melee damage and gets boosted by the peak physique armor passive.
Offensive
Enemies prioritise sentries over Helldivers, drop one to distract them.
Offensive
You can intercept melee attacks with your own melee if timed right (e.g. jumping Hunters, Overseers with staffs).
Offensive
Enemies can be affected by multiple DoT (Damage of Time) effects at the same time, e.g. fire and gas.
Offensive
Dive to steady aim: during the dive animation, injury sway is ignored.
Offensive
Fire, gas and explosives damage types hit the main HP directly, ignoring limbs and other body parts.
Offensive
You don't need medium penetrating weapons for higher difficulties, when you know how to hit the weak points of your enemies.
Offensive
Your crosshair shows the effectiveness of your weapon, a deflect icon indicates no damage against armor, a white hit marker 65% damage and a red hit marker full damage.
Offensive
Impact angles of your projectiles matter, a steeper angle increases the change of deflection.
Offensive
Enemies can have durable parts and most projectile weapons are less effective against them, aim for the legs instead.
Offensive
Explosive damage ignores durability, great against durable enemy parts.
Offensive
All non-laser weapons have damage falloff over distance, especially shotgun pellets lose damage quickly.
Offensive
Stay prone when using the Dickle (Double-Edge Sickle), so you wont catch fire.
Offensive
Enemies attacked by sentries don't call reinforments, only if they see Helldivers.
Offensive
Eagle 1 attack patterns are not random, some go along your throwing direction (Strafing, 500kg), some crosswise (Airstrike, Cluster). Make sure there are no fellow Helldivers in the area of destruction.
Offensive
You can update your key binding for the grenade to quick throw when you press the button instead of just holding it.
Offensive
Equip a light weapon or grenade to run slightly faster and consume less stamina.
Offensive
Hellpods have the highest armor penetration, each one is dealing 2500 damage, use them as weapons.
Offensive
Check your Super Destroyers' position before firing orbital stratagems, to avoid hitting obsticals in between.
Offensive
Don't mag-dump your incendiary weapons into enemies, only ignite them and let the burning take care of the rest.
Offensive
EAT-17 Expendable Anti Tank and LAS-99 Quasar Cannon are doing exactly the same damage.
Offensive
Consider placing your sentries in a flanking position instead of next your squad.
Offensive
Some weapons allow rounds-reload, get used to reload them often and in between.
Offensive
Reloading weapons is faster, when there is one bullet left in the champer.
Offensive
Use the ping command to measure the distance to a target, it allows you to account for the projectile drop.
Offensive
You can hit targets up to 500m with anti-tank weapons, before their projectile disappears.
Offensive
Mechs are immune to shockwaves and gas damage, also highly resistant to fire damage.
Offensive
Mechs can easily crush smaller enemies by simply walking over them. Medium enemies might need a melee stomp.
Offensive
The Vitality Enhancement booster combined with the Advanced Filtration passive gives 100% immunity to gas damage.
Offensive
Defensive
The shield backpack also protects you from weather effects and melee attacks.
Defensive
You can get accidentally killed by EMS mortar shells, when they hit your head.
Defensive
Dive down to put out flames, in case you catch fire.
Defensive
Being prone reduces explosive damage you receive by 90%.
Defensive
Diving in any direction already counts as being prone, even before you hit the ground.
Defensive
You can hide in bushes to reduce visibility, best go prone.
Defensive
Enemy patrols won't spawn during extraction, if you cleared all bases and the map border is closer than 80m, which is the minimum distance from where enemies can spawn.
Defensive
Use the shield backpack to attach sentry stratagems to it and drop it close to a wall / rock, which allows you to position your sentries in non-sticky elevated areas.
Defensive
Scout armor's passive reduces detection range by 30%, during storms you gain another 60% making you nearly undetectable.
Defensive
Tesla towers ignore civilians and SEAF troops, but will still kill them if the arc jumps over.
Defensive
The Shield Generator Relay has 4000 HP and blocks nearly everything, but two hellpods thrown inside are enough to destroy it. Place your sentry stratagems first, then deploy the shield and throw other stratagems outside.
Defensive
Stims also restore your stamina, which is useful when you have to cover long distance.
Defensive
Stims keep on healing you for the next 4 seconds, use them before you expect to take damage.
Defensive
Stay away from red beams.
Defensive
The Vitality Enhancement booster reduces all incoming damage types by 10%. It may not sound like much, but it adds up fast.
Defensive
You don't need to waste a stratagem slot for a support weapon, there are always plenty of weapons spread across the map.
Defensive
The stim pistol can't shoot through shields backpacks, you have to stim them manually.
Defensive
The shield backpack also works in mechs and emplacements, granting you an additional protection layer.
Defensive
You can stim other Helldivers in critical condition (below 50% HP or injured). If you hear 'I NEED STIMS!', help them out.
Defensive
You can still use SEAF artillery after the mission timer runs out, even once the Super Destroyers have left orbit.
Defensive
Movement
You can throw your stratagems further by diving forward while throwing.
Movement
You can do a kneeling reload midair while using the jump pack.
Movement
You can start unlocking the four rocket silo locks already, as soon as the terminal has been activated.
Movement
It's common practice to drop all samples at extraction, so you don't risk losing them during the rest of the mission.
Movement
Practice dropping your backpack, especially when you wear a shield and a stratagem ball gets attached to it.
Movement
You can reload your Guard Dog by calling it back, using the backpack button, it will drop the current magazine and pick up a fresh one when you start it again.
Movement
You can drive the FRV while holding mission items (e.g. SSSD), but you have to get in on the passenger side and then switch to the driving seat.
Movement
The experimental Warp Backpack can teleport you through bunker doors, so you don't need a buddy to open it.
Movement
You can reload while using the Warp Backpack.
Movement
You can stick the One True Flag to your rover backpack on the ground, then pick it up again.
Movement
The warp pack can also open containers when teleporting next to them.
Movement
You can use an exosuit to get into bunkers, when no buddy is around, position it with the back to the door and get out, you'll be inside the bunker and also can climb back in.
Movement
Storms reduce not only your vision, enemies' detection range drops by 60%.
Movement
Turning the lidar antenna beeps once when aligned correctly.
Movement
Pinging the lidar terminal tells your squad in which directing it needs to be aligned.
Movement
Getting on top of things is fun, but some spots are off-limits, stepping onto the rooftop hangar door at the civilian extraction site kills you.
Movement
Your stance directly affects the stamina recovery rate, being prone recovers the fastest.
Movement
You run slightly faster and consume less stamina, when your secondary weapon is equipped.
Movement
The Dead Sprint booster won’t kill you, it only drains your life until you’re near death.
Movement
The FRV can be flipped back on its wheels with explosive shockwaves, e.g. grenades or crossbow.
Movement
You can use the outer shockwave of an explosion, to free Helldivers who got stuck somewhere.
Movement
The VG-70 Variable can be used for rocket jumps, switch to full fire mode, jump, and shoot backwards to boost your distance.
Movement
Aiming backwards with two-handed weapons makes you turn around and walking backwards, but most can be fired without the need to aim first, allowing you to keep on sprinting.
Movement
Gameplay
Calling in extraction doesn't end the mission, boarding the Pelican does. Don't board the Pelican until your team is ready for extraction.
Gameplay
Map icons indicating a POI show as a diamond as long loot is available, it turns into a kite symbol once looted.
Gameplay
Samples are shared across the team after extraction, it's irrelevant who carries them.
Gameplay
The samples icon on the map has three different states, indicating how many samples it contains.
Gameplay
Dial in a stratagem code and hold it in your hands, right before the mission timer runs out, you can still throw it after the Super Destroyers have left.
Gameplay
Hold reload to access the weapon settings, for example to change the firerate or turn on and off the flashlights.
Gameplay
All explosive weapons can be used to open containers, not only grenades.
Gameplay
The Laser Cannon can open containers as well.
Gameplay
All resources like medals, super credits, requisition slips found during a mission are equally shared with the squad immediately, no need for a successful extraction.
Gameplay
Samples, requisition slips and medals have a cap, spend or donate them to the DSS so they don't go to waste.
Gameplay
The squad leader gets all the credits for kills from Eagle storms, SEAF artillery, and SAM sites — don't be discouraged.
Gameplay
Kill count doesn't affect player level progression, only completed mission and side objectives do.
Gameplay
You only need few missions to collect super samples, but you need many more rare samples for your ship upgrades, so collect them from early on.
Gameplay
Samples and sample containers make distinct sounds when you're nearby.
Gameplay
Enemies only react to red stratagem call-ins, not blue ones.
Gameplay
Ping a marked target once to acknowledge "I'll take it." or hold the button to reject with "Not needed."
Gameplay
Reload and heal before picking up supplies.
Gameplay
Supply drops contain four boxes, one per Helldiver. Ask before calling it in and before taking more than one.
Gameplay
Grabbing supplies from a resupply also restores one use of the supply backpack.
Gameplay
Boosters can only be selected once, let low level players select theirs first.
Gameplay
Salute the flag during spread democracy missions, it will increase the raising speed by 10% per Helldivers.
Gameplay
Some weapons have special animations, when you hold the reload button for longer than 10 seconds. (e.g. spin your revolver, wave the flag)
Gameplay
The fastest way to success is avoiding unecessary fights.
Gameplay
Weapon progression is based on the XP earned per mission, not how many enemies you killed with it.
Gameplay
Don't activate the SEAF Artillery, before you collected all shells, activation will attract enemies.
Gameplay
You can dive and stim at the same time.
Gameplay
Reloading a weapon will discard the remaining ammunition. Waste enemies, not bullets!
Gameplay
Helldivers don't need shovels to reach the samples below ground, simply go prone and grab them.
Gameplay
Carrying the SSSD across the map should be done by the Helldiver with an one-handed primary weapon.
Gameplay
Democratic Detonation is probably the best first warbond to unlock, because freedom requires firepower!
Gameplay
Avoid the Localization Confusion booster on Eradicate missions, it may reduce spawn rates so much that you can’t finish in time.
Gameplay
The UAV Recon booster stacks with Scout/Unflinching bonuses, letting you scan areas more thoroughly for enemies and side objectives.
Gameplay
A Helldiver without a backpack is like Freedom without Managed Democracy. Always check with your team if an extra backpack is available, especially after cooldown.
Gameplay
You can't use stratagems or reinforce Helldivers during ION storms.
Gameplay
Automatons
You can destroy fabricators from all sites with explosive damage, hitting the vents just makes it easier when you're in front of it.
Automatons
The Detector Tower can't see you, when you're prone on the ground.
Automatons
You can destroy the Detector Towers with an Orbital Gas Strike on direct hit, also works with Orbital EMS Strike.
Automatons
You can kill gunships with the Senator, aim for the rear thrusters, which have less health.
Automatons
You can trick cannon turrets to shoot at you, while positioning behind a stratagem jammer to let them take it out for you.
Automatons
The vents of big fabricators have the same weakness like the little ones, only their outside armor is higher to protect from explosive damage.
Automatons
You can kill a War Strider with a single EAT-17 shot to his crotch.
Automatons
Bots are inaccurate under suppressive fire, but deadly accurate if unchallenged.
Automatons
Bots will fire suppressively where they last saw you. Stay liquid!
Automatons
SEAF Artillery Smoke / EMS / Napalm strikes can destroy Jammers and Detector Towers.
Automatons
Command Bunkers can be easily destroy with only two GR-8 / EAT-17 / LAS-99 shots, simply aim at the main structure below their corner turrets.
Automatons
Ping turrets as soon as you see them, they are known for their dealy precision and need anti-tank weaponry.
Automatons
You can kill a Factory Strider by hitting it twice into the same foot with anti-tank weapons (EAT-17, LAS-99, GR-8).
Automatons
Using cover is key to success.
Automatons
All heavy Automaton enemies are susceptible to fire damage.
Automatons
The crisper, also known as pocket lighter, can destroy Factory Striders with the fuel of a single canister.
Automatons
Tanks can be easily destroyed from behind, their engine compartment between the tracks is a less obvious weakspot.
Automatons
Automaton anti-tank cannons (Annihilator Tanks, Factory Striders, Cannon Towers) can destroy Stratagem Jammers and Detector Towers. Take cover behind them, luring them to fire at these structures.
Automatons
Place sentry stratagems inside Automaton bunkers, the hellpod lands on top, leaving your sentry or emplacement in a strong position.
Automatons
You can destroy the double gunship facbricators at once, by placeing the hellbomb exactly between them.
Automatons
Terminids
Gas grenades can close bug holes.
Terminids
You can use any hellpod strategem to close bug holes, including the larger Bile Titan holes.
Terminids
Auto Cannon Flak rounds (shrapnels) are highly efficient against spore towers and shrieker nests.
Terminids
Mechs can close bug holes with a melee stomp.
Terminids
Killing a bile titan in front of a titan hole, will close it when he collapses.
Terminids
Chargers destroy bug holes when they step into them.
Terminids
Bugs detect vibrations and will investigate, even if they can't see you (smoke, storms).
Terminids
The Tesla Tower is ideal for silently clearing a bug nest, drop it in the centre, let it wipe the enemies, then close the holes from a safe distance.
Terminids
Bile Titans are known for killing their own, while spewing their bile.
Terminids
Use the Muscle Enhancement booster, to counter act the slow effect from acid spits.
Terminids
Mobility is key to success.
Terminids
Killing Chargers with a GL-21 Grenade Launcher is easier if you bounce the grenade under them.
Terminids
Illuminates
Being prone prevents you from being detected by watchers.
Illuminates
Orbital Gatling Barrage can destroy shielded warp ships.
Illuminates
Thermite grenades can burn through shields of warpships, aiming for the tail fin / engine part will always take them out, even on repel invasion missions.
Illuminates
Killing a watcher above a warp ship, will result in destroying it when he falls down on it.
Illuminates
Orbital Gas Strikes can destroy landed warp ships.
Illuminates
A single Pyro grenade can take out Harvesters, when positioned between his legs.
Illuminates
The Eagle Strafing Run can kill a Leviathan in a single flyby, but at least two-third of the shots need to hit.
Illuminates
Diversion is key to success.
Illuminates
Gaming Terms
Aggro
When you accidentally (or intentionally) annoy the enemy so much that they come straight for you.
Buff
A boost to a player's abilities or weapons, like an improvement.
Camp
To stay in one spot, waiting for something to happen, likely waiting to ambush someone.
Damage Per Second (DPS)
The measure of how much damage you can deal over time.
Drop In / Drop Out
Commonly used for joining or leaving a game or voice channel.
Experience Points (XP)
Points that help you level up.
Farming / Grind
Repeating an activity over and over to achieve something, like collecting samples to unlock upgrades or super credits for the store.
Hit Points / Health Points (HP)
This is how much "life" your character or enemies have.
Heads-Up Display (HUD)
All the overlay info on-screen during a game.
Lag
That frustrating delay between action and response, often related to a poor network connection.
1337 (Leet)
This is gamer speak for "elite," with numbers replacing letters.
Loot
Things you can pick up along the way, also commonly known as Samples, Super Credits and Medals. Not to be confused with the loadout from your fallen squad members.
Loot Ninja
Squad member (you know who you are!) who grabs all the goodies on the battlefield before anybody else has the chance. Good thing is, that most loot is evenly shared with the whole squad anyway, such as Super Credits, Requisition Slits, Medals and Samples.
Meta
The "Most Effective Tactic Available.", also used to describe the best gear in the game.
Nerf
When an ability or weapon is made weaker, often to balance the game.
Non-Player Character (NPC)
These are computer-controlled characters in the game on your Super Destroyer, SEAF troops or civilians.
Noob / Newbie
A new or inexperienced player.
Overpowered (OP)
When a character or item is ridiculously strong.
Player vs Environment / Player vs Player (PvE / PvP)
PvE is going up against in-game challenges; PvP is when you face off against other players. All Helldivers hopefully play PvE like HellDads do and don't team kill each other!
Respawn / Reinforcement
Getting back into action, after being reinforced and stepping out of your hellpod. Another dive, another life!
Tank
The player who absorbs all the damage and takes the hits for the team.
Team Kill (TK)
This refers to a player accidentally (or sometimes deliberately) taking out a teammate in-game.
Chat Abbreviations
Abbreviations commonly used in chats every HellDad should know:
AFK: Away From Keyboard
When you step away from the game for a moment.
BRB: Be Right Back
A quick heads-up that you'll be away but not for long.
CU / CYA: See You Around
A casual farewell that suggests you'll catch up later.
GG / GD: Good Game / Good Dive
A friendly way to say, "Well played!" or "Good job!" to everyone after a mission, win or lose.
GTG: Got To Go
When real life pulls you away for good.
GN / GN8: Good Night
A simple way to say "good night".
LOL / ROFL: Laughing Out Loud / Rolling On Floor Laughing
For funny moments when you can't stop laughing.
o7 / ¡O: Helldivers Salute
This is a quick way to show respect for a fellow Helldiver!
TL;DR: Too Long; Didn't Read
Commonly used to indicate very long texts ahead.