How to Unlock Difficulties in Helldivers 2

Unlocking new Helldivers 2 difficulty settings is a crucial step for fighters in Helldivers 2. Whether you want better rewards for your war efforts or just a better challenge for your loadout, you'll likely want to test your mettle at some point.

To progress through the range of difficulties, lone Helldivers or squads only need to complete a full planetary operation, which is a set of 2-3 missions bundled together on any available planet node. This is quite easy at first, but each progression step will prove more and more of a challenge.

In this guide, find everything there is to know about the Helldivers 2 difficulties, including how to unlock them for more of a challenge.

What Are the Helldivers 2 Difficulty Settings?

Helldivers 2 has nine difficulty levels, and while the gameplay loop is relatively the same through all of them, there is something for every type of Helldiver. Whether you want a more traumatic effort for higher rewards, or you just want to hang out with your squad and 'do your part' by squashing some bugs, you have plenty of options.

Every level of difficulty will increase general enemy spawns but these difficulty increases have other effects that carry on through each setting the higher you go.

We've listed out all of the available difficulty settings in Helldivers 2 below, plus we give you a brief idea of what rewards you'll get for each.

• Trivial - Primary mission objectives, lootable common samples, low enemy patrols.
• Easy - Adds light enemy outposts and allied tactical objectives for higher rewards.
• Medium - Unlocks secondary objectives, and adds medium enemy outposts and heavily armoured enemy units.
• Challenging - Introduces Heavy enemy outposts, enemy tactical objectives, and lootable rare samples.
• Hard - Introduces massive enemy variants such as Bile Titans or Annihilator tanks while including new operational modifiers such as increasing stratagem deployment time by 50% or limiting Helldivers to only three stratagems.
• Extreme - Increases tactical objectives available for completion.
• Suicide Mission - Even more tactical objectives for your credit and exp needs, as well as Super Samples which will be a highly coveted upgrade material for your ship and stratagems.
• Impossible - Increases enemy presence considerably and implements multiple operational modifiers at once.
• Helldive - Further increases enemy presence on the map. As the namesake difficulty, Helldivers will need to have curated loadouts and a deep understanding of not only objective mechanics but enemy weaknesses and behaviour.

How to Unlock Difficulty Settings in Helldivers 2

To unlock each difficulty, get out in the galaxy and do your part like training taught you. Optimise loadouts for your play style and the tasks you struggle with the most. Alternatively, consider playing slow to make the most of stealth or pull rank to make sure your squad has any weaknesses covered for you.

Pick a planet to liberate or any major order that needs boots on the ground, and then carry on through all the missions in that operation. Do this for any planet node in each difficulty until you unlock them all one by one.

The higher your difficulty gets the more optimised your loadouts and strategies will need to be. So spend your planetside time wisely. The higher your difficulty settings are, the more you may want to consider rushing your main objectives before doing any side objectives. That being said, do keep an eye out for any samples, loot sources, or easy one-explosion tasks along the way.

How to Change Helldivers 2 Difficulty Settings

Changing your operation and mission difficulty is available at the Galactic War Table before selection. You can change it at any point, you just need to select a new mission aboard your ship.

However, changing your difficulty will stop you from continuing any operation you were in the middle of, so only switch it up if you're sure. At the bottom of your HUD, there will be a set of tabs to cycle through for each difficulty.

That should cover everything you need to know about all the difficulty settings available in Helldivers 2. For some tips on specific enemy types check out how to defeat Terminids, how to defeat Brood Commanders, and how to beat Bile Spewers.