Helldivers 2 Escalation of Freedom Deploys August 6

Arrowhead Game Studios revealed Helldivers 2‘s “biggest update yet,” Escalation of Freedom, will release on Aug. 6.

With this update players will be able to experience Combat Rating 10, affectionately called Super Helldiver. Along with that, new missions, and fortified outposts will entice players with new Super Sample rewards. Those unsure if they can liberate at that level will be able to experience “many” of these new mission objectives on lower difficulties.

Three new enemies will also join the fight. On the Terminid side there is The Impaler, Spore Charger, and Alpha Commander. The Impaler is a massive bug that is unrelenting in its opposition to freedom. As for Spore Chargers they are traditional Chargers with spores that hide their movements until it’s too late. Finally, Alpha Commanders are a more powerful Brood Commander variant.

This update also gives Automatons a Rocket Tank, and “other bot surprises.”

To combat negative experiences a number of changes are being made to the kick system, which can be found below.

The last addition I want to highlight about the Escalation of Freedom update is that we’re making changes to mitigate the problem of grief kicking in Helldivers 2. While it’s our hope that players engage with the game in good faith and sportsmanship, we do recognize that some players are using the team kicking to grief others.

To help improve this we have implemented a system where if a player is kicked, they will spawn into a new session as the host with all of the team’s loot from their previous session. All items can now be picked up by the player before extraction. The squad doing the kicking will see a message in the chat widget that a player has been kicked, yet their loot remains unchanged.

With these changes, all players have the opportunity to leave with all loot collected on mission, with no one Helldiver losing out. We’re committed to making changes that will improve the player experience and encourage healthy, cooperative gameplay.

Along with this, we’re also releasing other quality of life upgrades with Escalation of Freedom, including major fixes to the social menu to make diving with your friends easier.