Helldivers 2 Beginner's Guide: Your First Drops
The first things every Helldivers 2 beginner should learn are how to punch in stratagem codes and throw the beacon, that reinforcements and samples are shared across the whole squad, and that friendly fire is always on, so spacing and callouts matter as much as your aim.
Helldivers 2 drops you onto hostile planets as a lightly trained soldier of Super Earth, where teamwork, positioning, and the right stratagems matter far more than raw aim. This guide covers what you actually need for your first several hours.
Stratagems: your real weapons
Stratagems are called-in support powers, including airstrikes, orbital cannons, support weapons, sentries, backpacks, and reinforcements, and they are the heart of Helldivers 2. You bring up to four into every mission, chosen on your Super Destroyer before you drop.
To use one, hold the stratagem key, punch in its short directional code (combinations of up, down, left, and right), then throw the glowing beacon where you want it to land. The beacon sticks to whatever it touches, so you can toss a support-weapon call onto open ground or bounce an airstrike beacon straight onto a bug hole. Almost everything except reinforcements can also hurt you, so aim away from your own feet.
Your first mission, step by step
- Pick a low difficulty, level 3 or 4, so you can learn the systems without being overwhelmed, and either join a squad or open your game to matchmaking.
- On the loadout screen, equip a primary weapon, a secondary, a grenade, and four stratagems, making sure at least one is a support weapon and one is an offensive strike.
- After landing, move toward the main objective marker while clearing points of interest for samples, Requisition, and Super Credits along the way.
- Complete the primary objective, which often means entering a code at a terminal or arming SEAF artillery, then tackle any secondary objectives you have time for.
- Call the extraction stratagem, defend the landing zone through the countdown, and board the Pelican-1 dropship, because everyone who boards keeps the full haul.
Reinforcements and friendly fire
Your whole squad shares one pool of reinforcements, five per player, so twenty for a full team of four. When you die, a living teammate throws the Reinforce beacon and you drop back in a fresh Hellpod with full ammo but no support weapon (you can run back and grab the one you dropped). If the pool empties, one reinforcement slowly recharges roughly every two minutes, so a total wipe is not always the end of the mission.
Friendly fire is always on, for bullets and stratagems alike. A carelessly thrown airstrike or a machine gun sprayed through a teammate will kill them just as fast as it kills the enemy. The simplest fix is spacing: if you cannot see your teammate's whole body on screen, you are probably too close. Call out your throws before you make them.
Choosing a starter loadout
Your starting Liberator assault rifle is genuinely good and stays useful for a long time, so do not feel pressured to chase new guns immediately. The Defender SMG and, a little later, the Breaker shotgun are reliable primaries for clearing lighter enemies.
The bigger early decision is your support weapon stratagem, bought with Requisition Slips from the ship's Armory. The Expendable Anti-Tank (EAT-17) is cheap, has a short cooldown, and lets any beginner one-shot armor; the Recoilless Rifle and Autocannon are excellent all-rounders; and a Machine Gun mows down swarms. Pair one anti-armor answer with one crowd-clearing tool and you can handle almost any early mission.
Samples, Requisition, and ship modules
Missions reward several currencies. Requisition Slips buy stratagems and support weapons; Medals unlock gear pages inside Warbonds; and Super Credits are the premium currency you can also find in the field. Samples are the special one: green Commons appear at every difficulty, orange Rares from Challenging (level 4) upward, and pink Super Samples only on the higher tiers, Extreme (level 6) and above.
Samples pool for the whole squad, but you only keep them if at least one player extracts, so grabbing samples off a dead teammate and getting them to the Pelican matters. Spend them on Ship Modules aboard your Super Destroyer, which are permanent passive upgrades that shorten Eagle rearm times, boost sentry ammo, and improve orbital strikes. They apply to your entire team, making them the biggest long-term power gain in the game.
Playing as a squad
Helldivers 2 is built for four-player co-op, and a rough division of labor helps: one player carrying dedicated anti-tank, one on sustained crowd control, and the rest flexible. Use the ping wheel to mark enemies, samples, and objectives instead of relying only on voice chat.
Share resupplies, too. The Resupply stratagem drops four ammo-and-stim boxes, so take one each rather than one person hoovering all four. Reviving, covering a downed teammate's dropped gear, and staggering your stratagem cooldowns so the team always has an answer ready are what separate a smooth run from a reinforcement bleed-out.
Climbing the difficulty ladder
There are ten difficulty levels, from Trivial up to Super Helldive. To unlock the next tier you must complete a full Operation, a linked set of missions, at your current highest level. Higher difficulties add tougher armored enemies and more objectives, but they also pay out more Medals, Requisition, XP, and better samples.
Do not rush the climb. Levels 3 to 4 teach you enemy types and stratagem timing; levels 5 to 6 are where you learn to handle heavies, and level 6 begins dropping Super Samples; and only push into level 7 and beyond once your loadout and teamwork are dialed in. It is far better to reliably extract on a lower tier than to repeatedly wipe on a higher one.