Last week, Helldivers 2‘s simulated galactic war saw its first narrativized twist when the Automaton menace launched a surprise attack on the Xzar system. The event unlocked new planets and civilian extraction missions which proved so difficult that even experienced players couldn’t complete them. This led many to assume the abnormal difficulty spike was either a bug or an intentional tipping of scales in the robots’ favor by Arrowhead Games to challenge Super Earth’s liberation streak.
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Both scenarios are still on the table, but the latest Helldivers 2 patch, version 1.000.10, might bring relief: Arrowhead has “tuned” the difficulty of civilian extraction missions. Version 1.000.10 comes only a few days after the release of 1.000.009, which reduced the difficulty of the “defend event.” I managed to log in long enough to test out the patch and confirm the civilian extraction mission that gave our group trouble just a few days ago is now a cakewalk at lower difficulties.
Today’s patch also includes updates on Arrowhead’s ongoing firefight against its own popularity, as matchmaking and login servers have buckled under the weight of hundreds of thousands of active players on PC and PlayStation. An issue that was breaking quickplay matchmaking on PC has been resolved, as well as a fix for black screens on startup and login error 10002038.
While these issues associated with logging in are fixed, I wouldn’t expect a sudden improvement in Helldivers 2’s login queues. At 1 PM Pacific today, I still can’t play without waiting in line for 15-20 minutes. In an updated “known issues” list, Arrowhead says logins will still be slow as active players exceed server capacity (recently capped at 450,000) and disconnects remain common.
If you’re wondering why Helldivers 2’s developers can’t simply “add more servers” to address this issue, one game developer took to Twitter today to explain just how complicated and interdependent online games’ infrastructure is.
Another notable bullet from this patch: armor attributes “do not currently function as intended,” so it might not be worth slowing yourself down in heavy armor at the moment. It is still worth considering armor perks when picking the best Helldivers 2 loadouts, weapons, and armor.
Patch 1.000.10 is out now on PC and PS5. Read the full patch notes below:
Fixes
Fixed crash when replicating ragdoll momentumFixed crash when replicating destructionsFixed crash when displaying the mission end rewardsResolved a 100% block issue for Quickplay matchmaking on PCTuned extract civilian mission difficultyImproved the way that we handle platform authentication to avoid things like the black screen issue at startupImprovements to our client > backend communication for better backend performanceImplemented an automatic retry mechanism to quickplayAdded proper login error message for error “10002038”
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.
Login rate limiting when many are logging in at the same timePlayers can become disconnected during playRewards and other progress may be delayed or not attributedVarious UI issues may appear when the game interacts with serversPick-up of certain objects in-game may cause characters to freeze in place for an extended period of timeOther unknown behaviors may occurJapanese VO is missing from intro cutscene and Ship TVArmor values for light/medium/heavy armor do not currently function as intended
