Helldivers 2’s latest patch makes some significant changes to the game balance and adds more planetary hazards for players to contend with.

Patch 01.000.200, out now across PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam, makes balance changes to missions, Stratagems, weapons, enemies, and the Helldivers themselves, as well as general fixes and stability improvements.

On the gameplay side, developer Arrowhead has added two new planetary hazards: blizzards and sandstorms. On the balance side, Arrowhead has tweaked the Retrieve Essential Personnel mission type, moving enemy spawn points farther away from the objective “to give players a fairer chance of defending the location”, and making it so there are fewer civilians required to complete the mission on higher difficulties. The Destroy Command Bunkers mission type now has more objective locations because “the mission was too easy before compared to other missions.”

Crucially, Arrowhead has also halved the negative effect of operation modifiers that increase Stratagem cooldowns or call in times.

Perhaps of most interest to players is the sweeping balance pass made to weapons, with the likes of the Anti-Materiel Rifle, Breaker Incendiary, and Dominator buffed. The Slugger, meanwhile, is nerfed. The recently added Heavy Machine Gun sees its highest fire rate mode reduced from 1200 rpm to a more “moderate” 950. On Stratagems, the Patriot Exosuit’s rockets will now penetrate armor only on direct hit.

As for enemies, the Charger, Bile Spewer, and Nursing Spewer are nerfed, as are the Shriekers. The Bile Titan can no longer be stunned, however. The Helldivers themselves are buffed, with heavy and medium armor offering better protection.

And finally, the patch adds various fixes for crashes and other bugs. Arrowhead has improved the system that prevents hellpod steering close to large or important objects. “This system is intended to prevent softlocks where players can drop on important interaction points, or drop into unintended places,” Arrowhead explained. “We will continue to monitor the state of the system after the update to see if additional tweaks are necessary.”

There’s a lot going on in the world of Helldivers 2. Hours after liberating Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 players reported seeing enormous cloaked ships over Automaton worlds. Amid the push and pull of planets, new Stratagems were recently made available to players, with the promise of more to come. If you’re looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN’s feature on the Let Me Solo Her of Helldivers 2, a player who has answered over 100 SOS Beacons as part of a mission to help others.

Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around three million copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why it’s going down so well.

Helldivers 2 update 01.000.200 patch notes:

Gameplay

Planetary Hazard additions

• Blizzards
• Sandstorms

Balancing

Missions

Retrieve Essential Personnel

• Moved the enemy spawn points further away from the objective to give players a fairer chance of defending the location.
• There are fewer civilians required to complete the mission on higher difficulties.

Destroy Command Bunkers

• Now has more objective locations, the mission was too easy before compared to other missions.
• It can now appear in operations from difficulty 5.
• Halved the negative effect of operation modifiers that increase stratagem cooldowns or call in times.

Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons

• Arc Thrower: fixed charging inconsistencies; it will now always take 1s to charge a shot.
• Arc Thrower: reduced distance from 50m to 35m.
• Arc Thrower: increased stagger force.
• Guard Dog: now restores full ammo from supply boxes.
• Anti-Materiel Rifle: damage increased by 30%.
• Breaker Incendiary: damage per bullet increased from 15 per bullet to 20 per bullet.
• Fire damage per tick increased by 50% (from all sources).
• Liberator Penetrator: now has a full auto mode.
• Dominator: increased damage from 200 to 300.
• Dominator: increased stagger.
• Diligence Counter Sniper: increased armor penetration from light to medium.
• Slugger: reduced stagger.
• Slugger: reduced damage from 280 to 250.
• Slugger: reduced demolition force.
• Slugger: fixed armor penetration tag in the menu.
• Slugger, Liberator Concussive, Senator: fixed incorrect armor penetration tags in the menu.
• Recoilless Rifle: increased the number of rockets you restore from supply boxes from 2 to 3.
• Spear: increased the number of missiles you restore from supply boxes from 1 to 2.
• Heavy Machine Gun: the highest fire rate mode reduced from 1200 rpm to a more moderate 950.

Stratagems

• Patriot Exosuit: rockets will now penetrate armor only on direct hit.

Enemies

Balancing adjustments have been made to:

• Chargers normal melee attack now does less damage against Exosuits.
• Bile Spewer and Nursing Spewer do less damage with their puke.
• The Bile Titan can no longer be stunned.
• Shriekers no longer create bug breaches.
• Shriekers hitting you while they are dead now does significantly less damage.

Helldiver
Balancing adjustments have been made to:

• Heavy and medium armor protects better and you now take about 10% less damage than before while wearing heavy and about 5% less when wearing medium armor. Fortified commando and light armor is unchanged.

Fixes

• Fixed issue where save settings for PS5 would be reset when the game is rebooted, causing things such as loadout and hint settings to reset.
• Enemies now properly target Exosuits. Previously, many enemies effectively ignored Exosuits if a helldiver on foot was available for them to target.
• Fixed Exosuits being able to fire their weapons while opening the minimap.
• The Helldiver and the Exosuit both had a bug that made them sometimes take explosion damage multiple times making things like automaton rockets be too deadly, this is now fixed.
• Automaton enemy constellations that preferred to spawn more of certain Devastators types did not work and are now functioning as they should. This means that sometimes when playing against the Automatons you will face more Devastators instead of other enemy types.

We have improved the system that prevents hellpod steering close to large or important objects.

• We have solved issues where the effective area around objects was a lot larger than intended.
• We have reduced the number of objects that prevent hellpod steering.
• Note: This system is intended to prevent softlocks where players can drop on important interaction points, or drop into unintended places. We will continue to monitor the state of the system after the update to see if additional tweaks are necessary.
• Fixed cases where the ground under some assets could be bombed causing them to float.

Ballistic Shield changes

• Collision mesh has been slightly increased in size for more forgiveness
• Changed shield poses so that less of the helldiver is exposed
• Addressed bug where parts of the helldiver would become vulnerable while using the shield in first person

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 might crash when picking up a snowball or throwing back a grenade

Various issues involving friend invites and cross-play

• Cross-platform friend invites might not show up in the Friend Requests tab.
• Players cannot unfriend other players befriended via friend code.
• Players cannot unblock players that were not in their Friends list beforehand.
• Players cannot befriend players with Steam names shorter than 3 characters
• Explosive weapon stats include only direct hit damage but not explosive damage.
• Explosions do not break your limbs (except for when you fly into a rock).
• Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
• Drowning in deep water with a Vitality Booster equipped puts Helldiver in a broken state.
• Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
• Some player customizations (like title or body type) may reset after restarting the game.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Mere hours after liberating Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 players have a new threat to contend with: mysterious cloaked ships.

Players took to social media and forums to post screenshots showing what appear to be enormous ships in orbit around Automaton planets. Redditor infinity__cube appears to be the first Helldiver to have reported a sighting, but more images have emerged since. The evidence is irrefutable: the cloaked ships are there, but they appear to be lying in wait.

Yesterday, April 1, developer Arrowhead delivered a new Major Order to Helldivers 2 players, giving them a 24-hour window to finally take back Malevelon Creek, the Automaton map dubbed ‘Space Vietnam’ by fans. The planet was liberated in only about five hours.

Now, with a new Major Order in place to fend off the Automaton counterattack, the mysterious ships have popped up in the sky across Automaton planets.

Cloaked massive ships over Automaton worlds ?!! pic.twitter.com/k3yNlqfGRT

— Helldivers 2 Media (@Helldiversmedia) April 1, 2024

But what could they be? There are a number of theories, including a rather boring explanation that they are a visual bug associated with the existing Super-Destroyer ships. More exciting is the suggestion they are Illuminate ships. The Illuminate are a third alien faction most Helldivers 2 players believe are on their way to the game.

Perhaps they are evidence that the Automatons’ true might is looming over the horizon, ready to pounce now that the terrifying alien robots have been sufficiently angered. If that’s the case, perhaps these ships mark the arrival of new Automaton aerial gunships, which were signaled in flavor text from a recently completed Major Order. Players are already speculating that these aerial gunships, if genuine, will cause Helldivers even more problems by intermittently firing at the battlefield. That won’t be annoying at all.

pic.twitter.com/WopTFTQEdI

— Tukenfarben (@tukenfarben) April 2, 2024

This is all part of Helldivers 2’s fascinating Galactic War, a meta narrative steered by Game Master Joel. Amid the push and pull of planets, new Stratagems are made available to players, with the promise of more to come. If you’re looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN’s feature on the Let Me Solo Her of Helldivers 2, a player who has answered over 100 SOS Beacons as part of a mission to help others.

Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around three million copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why it’s going down so well.

Image credit: Firestorm_361 / reddit

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Time is one of the great enemies of board games. It’s often hard enough to get a group of people together in the same space for a gaming session, doubly so if you need to find several hours to play the latest heavy, epic title. So there’s an instant market for faster-playing games. They’re also great for family play or for casually breaking out for a quick game before you head out for the evening. But as you’ll soon find out from our list of suggestions, small and fast doesn’t mean light or boring: from timer-based games to hilarious dexterity games, you’ll soon discover that fast often equals fun.

Scout

Ignore the pointless circus theme, this is a fantastic little set collection card game with a devious twist: you can’t change the order of cards in your hand. Nevertheless, you have to work with what you’ve been dealt to try and beat whatever’s in the middle of the table, with higher value cards beating lower value, and longer runs and sets beating shorter ones.

If you can’t – as is often the case – the person who played those cards gets a point, and you have to pick a card up, making it easier for the next player and allowing you to slot it into your hand where you like, creating new combos for future plays. It’s fast, furious and surprisingly hard to master, with timing your best plays properly critical for success. No wonder it was a nominee for the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award the year it was released.

5 Minute Dungeon

One way to ensure a game is quick playing is to run it to an absolutely punishing timer, which is how 5 Minute Dungeon manages to do exactly what it says on the box. Build a deck of dungeon challenges, pick a character, start the timer, and then it’s down to the adventuring party, working together, to defeat the dungeon in real-time.

Each trap or monster needs a particular set of symbols to banish, but you don’t have time to coordinate your plays properly, leading to a desperate slapping down of wasted cards, cries of woe, and forgetting of special character abilities in the heat of the moment. You’ll need to try and slow down just enough to chart a path through the chaos while still keeping up with the clock, and finding a moment to delight in the hilarious artwork and fantasy meme riffs.

Fuse

Another timed game, this one sets the clock at 10 minutes, which your group must use to try and defuse as many bombs as possible from a deck of bomb cards. On your turn you’ll draw and roll as many dice, which come in different colors, as there are players, then discuss and divide them up while the timer ticks down. Each bomb card comes with a dizzying array of color and number requirements for dice to defuse it, from simple addition or equality to actually making stacks of dice in particular combinations.

The uncertainty of drawing and rolling never fails to give this game a thrilling edge, while probability ensures there’s some good strategy to doling out the dice. If you want to up the ante, there are some super-hard bombs to shuffle in for extra challenge.

Kites

A whole different take on the cooperative real-time mechanism, Kites comes with several sand timers of different lengths and colors, which represent different kites that you’ve got to keep in the air. On your turn, you play a card and flip any timers that match its colored icons. Your goal, as a group, is simply to stop any one of the timers from running out.

This is much easier said than done, and the game has an extraordinary spinning plates feeling as you desperately speed round the table, trying to flip timers trickling out their very last grains. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you can add more colors and special challenge cards to keep your game in the air for longer, just like the titular kites.

Klask

Possibly the shortest game on the entire list, with almost no setup time and games that can be over in seconds. But that’s no problem when it’s so addictive you’ll want to go again right away! Klask is a simple dexterity game where you use a magnet to steer a paddle that knocks a little plastic ball around the playing area, aiming to get it into your opponent’s goal while defending your own.

To add even more skill and amusement value to an already breakneck experience, there are also magnetic obstacles to avoid, lest they stick to your paddle and make your shots even more unpredictable. It’s such a fast, fun, fickle game that you’ll be using that short play time to host mini-tournaments.

Strike

Strike is a fast-paced push-your-luck game that gets even faster the more players choose to tempt fate. Everyone starts with a fistful of dice and, on your turn, you throw one into the “arena”, an oval box insert, possibly aiming to knock existing dice there around. What you’re looking for are matching numbers, which you can add to your dice collection, ending your turn.

If you don’t get any matches, you can pass or continue throwing, which ups your chance of matching but also risks leaving more options for others if you don’t. Each dice has an X instead of a 1, meaning it’s removed from the game instantly, and the last player left with dice wins. It’s an addictive combination of luck, dexterity and playing the odds and once it’s reeled you in there are tournament rules for extended play.

Sail!

Most folk are familiar with the common playing card mechanic of trick-taking, which really helps this two-player cooperative game run faster. You’re working together to steer a pirate ship through dangerous seas, pursued by a hungry kraken. The symbols you pair on your trick might inch your craft forward, injure the sea monster, cause it to attack you, or do nothing at all.

But you’re not allowed to tell your shipmate what’s in your hand, only pass one card to them at the start of each turn, which has to try and speak volumes as to your plans. This makes every single play a mini-drama of tension and release in an overall arc of terror as you try to balance tricks won, movement and keeping the beast at bay. With six scenarios of punishing difficulty, this is a lot of game in a small box.

Coup

Bluffing on hidden roles is a great way to fit a lot of game into a small package, and Coup give you the biggest bluffing bang in the smallest box. Each player gets two role cards which give special powers like taking extra coins or cheap assassinations. The aim is to knock out your opponent’s roles, putting them out of the game.

The genius twist is that, whatever roles you’re dealt, you can execute any power in the game, providing no-one catches you at it. Most roles have the chance to block one another, which is fine until it becomes clear that someone is claiming one they don’t have. Then all hell breaks loose as the accusations start flying and no-one wants to be first to make the actual challenge. Because if you’re wrong, it’s you that looses out and not the target.

Love Letter

Another bluffing game but with much more dynamic roles, Love Letter sees the players competing to get the titular epistle to the princess, who is also the highest-valued card. You start with a card and, on your turn, draw another and choose which to play. Each card has a number and a special effect, two of which knock other players out of the round based on whether you can either guess what card they’re holding or beat the value of that card against yours.

Other cards protect you, let you swap cards with another player or peek at their held card. The last two players left compare card values, and the highest wins. It’s a devious little game of social engineering, just like real courtly courtship, and while the rules suggest you play the superfast rounds multiple times to determine an overall winner, it’s also easily fun enough to play a single quick-fire hand.

Draftosaurus

Games of Draftosaurs begin with players grabbing a handful of dino-meeples – which are cute enough to justify owning this game on their own – at random from a bag. Then, you take it turns to roll the dice and place a dinosaur on your dino-zoo playmat. The dice-roller can place where they want, but all other players have to obey the rule on the dice face. There are a number of different enclosures, each with their own simple placement rules and scoring opportunities. Then, everyone passes the remaining dinosaurs to your left and repeat until all the pieces have been placed, and the scores tallied to find a winner.

The combination of random roll and passing on gives the game some interesting teeth as you ponder whether to risk pieces in higher-scoring options or keep back something your neighbor is collecting. Easy to learn and fast to play, it’s a quick filler that can easily end up being popular enough to play all evening.

Ticket to Ride: London / New York

The enormously successful Ticket to Ride franchise is based on players collecting sets of colored cards and playing them to claim routes on a map. Most of your points come from tickets that you score if you connect their printed destinations, but fail to complete the route, and you’ll lose those points instead.

It’s a brilliant recipe that forces you to balance the desire to collect against the risk of other players slapping down the cards before you. These two variants keep that addictive core gameplay loop, but make it quick by giving you only a tiny, cramped board to play on, leaving you feeling like you’re scuffling in a phone booth. Each has its own unique twist to the recipe, with London offering bonus points for completing districts and New York for linking up tourist hotspots.

Matt Thrower is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in tabletop games. He’s also been published in The Guardian, Dicebreaker and Senet Magazine as well as being the author and co-author of several books on board games. You can reach him on BlueSky at @mattthr.bsky.social.