It would appear that many players of Helldivers 2 are looking to get their teeth kicked in by the co-op shooter. Well, wish granted: Arrowhead Game Studios is launching the Escalation of Freedom update on Tuesday, August 6th, featuring a step up in the game’s difficulty levels, a challenging new map, stern new objectives, and the promise of dastardly new foes.
Escalation of Freedom will now bring the challenge rating (CR) difficulty options from a maximum of nine to 10, aka Super Helldive, which Arrowhead calls the game’s “most relentless dive difficulty yet.” Naturally, those who elect to take on these sweaty new CR 10 dives can expect greater rewards.
On top of CR 10 dives, Escalation of Freedom will introduce new mission objectives and bigger enemy outposts for both bots and bugs, the latter of which are heavily fortified locations that will take teamwork and strategy to reap the super sample rewards hiding within. CR 10 missions will likely see an increased chance for these new objectives, but the post does point out that many of them will be available on other difficulty levels, though it doesn’t specify which.
The new additions don’t stop there, as players can now expect several new enemies to face off against: On the bug side there’s the fog-spewing Spore Charger, the return of the Impaler from the first game, and the Terminid Alpha Commander that can call in additional bugs, while Automatons will get a new rocket tank and an unspecified number of “other bot surprises.” The update will also introduce a new swamp map that features extremely dense fog and plenty of darkness to worry about.
Lastly, Arrowhead plans quality-of-life features such as “major fixes” to the social list to help friends play together easier and new grief kicking mitigation that puts the kicked player into their own new session with all of the loot from the previous session ready to gather up before extraction.
