Makes Helldive difficulty easier than hard.
Contents
Gear
Сrеdit gоеs to Miseriae Cordis !
The simple version: Stay low to avoid detection, watch your radar, hit objectives and run.
Take any light scout armour because you wont be getting shot at much at all. You can use your radar ping feature to detect enemies around any objective to see the way you should enter. UAV booster and nuclear radar ship module are helpful but not at all required. Preferably do night time missions. Eagle Airstrikes can be great for destroying buildings, as can precision strikes be good for AT.
Personally I run AMR + Precision Orbital + Railcannon + Eagle Airstrike but honestly you can take whatever you want aslong as you have options to kill heavier enemy units fast if the situation calls for it or something goes wrong. Smoke can be good too sometimes but I prefer to just have an extra bomb to kill them rather than obscure their vision.
Initialization / First Drop
As soon as you drop in, go prone and survey your immediate area. If you’re spotted on drop, then you need to kill all of them as fast as possible to avoid scouts calling in breach/dropship/attracting nearby patrols, and if they do it’s time to either run and break contact, or try tough them out the hard way. If not spotted open up your map, and use the radar pings to get yourself away from the enemies/towards your objective.
Swap from prone to crouch/standing/sprinting as appropriate for detection range. You would be surprised what you can get away with and for this to be time efficient you need to get a feel for yourself at about when and where enemies will see you, so you can move at high speed and evade all in one to finish missions faster than if you were trying to rush them head on. If you are not too close to your enemies, call in any equipment drops you might need and go from there.
Traversing The Map
Basically, any objective you want to do drop a radar ping on it from your map and get an idea of what to expect if you go there. This is the same for PoIs– anywhere you want to navigate. You should be watching your radar near constantly to be able to detect and avoid patrols before they see you.
You should be able to complete most things without too many dramas if doing this correctly. If you want to do side objectives you can also do them while stealthed. Enemies will likely be on any objective or PoI and you want to minimize the amount of time you spend up close to them if you can.
Do not engage patrols unless they see you, or will see you engaging someone else.
Completing Objectives (Stealth Kills)
If you are lucky you will be able to sneak your way in to the terminal/mission area without enemies being in a position where you will have to take them out to not have the entire enemy force ontop of you. Otherwise and most times, you will have to kill atleast some enemies in order to complete it.
To do this, you will have to take out enemies within’ LoS of eachother, and anyone who might hear your gunshots quickly. Surprisingly, gunshot range is actually not very far! Being concealed from specific enemies can also work to prevent them calling reinforcements, but you should prioritize killing enemies who you know can. Most enemy grunts can on both factions. If it looks too much, you can also try distract enemies away by getting a friend to hit the base first to lure them out if you have decided to do this non-solo. Turrets can also work from time to time but it can be finicky.
There is one other option that is extremely handy for making an area clear, however.. and it is the STEALTH KILL. Yes, you can stealth kill enemies in HELLDIVERS 2. You heard it here first, folks! If an enemy is weak enough to be quickly killed by melee, you can crouch on up behind them and melee them to death without worrying about enemies hearing your gunfire and investigating. You can do this to enemies who are relatively close together, too– even a few meters away and their buddies will not detect you so long as you are not seen or making too much sound with your movement. This tactic is best used to kill off smaller enemies safely that might otherwise be overwatching your objective terminal. Be wary as sometimes they might take a few too many hits, and you will be detected on some types of bots.
Anything you hit with a stratagem is going to detect you before it even drops so you should only use them when needed for destroying nests, fabs, buildings, heavies, etc. For the sake of clearing heavy enemies out of an area along with other enemies that could detect you, you can get away with calling a strike on the heavy to start then quickly murdering everyone else.
Complications
There are a bunch of things that can thwart your plans to utilize stealth effectively, though they can more or less all be countered. Stalker bugs for example seem to always know your location no matter what in my experience, so if you see one you are probably going to need to destroy it’s lair ASAP or start going loud. Detector towers are another obvious tough one, though even they can be evaded. Jammers can stop you from calling in mission critical equipment, so you in some cases must take them out. Often times destroying the FAB near the bottom of them by any means is enough to detonate them — my squad mate likes using the SPEAR on his stealth runs.
Beyond that if you get into any firefight that is looking like it is going to spiral out of control that you cannot quell or do not want to quell, the simplest solution is to break contact and go somewhere else. Put foliage between yourself and your enemy, mountains, hills, buildings, smoke.. they will investigate your last known if you manage to lose contact with an enemy that has seen you.
Note, that even though some enemies are engaging you entirely, does not necessarily mean others will. Patrols might still not have seen you even though a group of enemies 80 meters away are firing on your position.
Extract
First things first,if you’ve completed all the objectives you want to complete you don’t actually have to extract to have it count as complete. You can just blow yourselves up to waste reinforcements and skip right back to the ship and get those medals with less cutscenes to waste your time. Of course, you wont get samples this way and it will not feel nearly as awesome as completing an entire mission successfully in this manner and then also getting back alive.
But I have bad news for you. No matter what on extract, you will have to have some sort of gunfight. Some new enemies will spawn, and enemies from surrounding areas that are still alive can come on over as soon as the extract is called. This is why you always want to be equipped to deal with the enemies that your chosen difficulty has. That said, I have noticed playing in this method I have had to deal with far less enemies on extract than playing normally and I am not sure if that is just my luck or not.
Either way.. that’s pretty much everything, the rest you can probably figure out yourself. Experiment with different stratagems that work for this playstyle, since it is very different. Oh also, you can totally do this and even better with a squad aslong as they all know what they are doing. Works great for duos.
Now get out there and be the behind enemy lines commando of your dreams.
I have done a few solo helldive difficulty missions exclusively against bots and its been really really fun.
One great tip is that if you find an objective that you cannot stealth through with regular means you can make sure to kill the stationed enemies that are blocking your access and leave after they call reinforcements, if you go do something else and come back after a while the reinforcements will not be there anymore and no one would have replaced the guards you took out leaving a pretty easy path to the terminal/objective.
They also dont seem to target you after using orbitals if thrown far away enough as others have pointed out (orbital railgun being absurdly good, they will call reinforcements though)
I just solo’d extreme and suicide difficulty using stealth, it’s doable. Against the bugs at least. Tried automatons at first, but their artillery seems to be able to spot you no matter what..
Shouldn’t you recommend “Infiltrator” light armor? It reduces your detection range by 30% and puts an active radar anywhere you drop a pin on the map.
OP mentions it LITERALLY the first sentence:
“Take any light scout armour because you wont be getting shot at much at all. You can use your radar ping feature to detect enemies around any objective to see the way you should enter.”
Infiltrator isn’t the only armour to have this ability.
still needs testing but i think if prone and sniping at around 200m or more enemies do not react to you (make sure your 200m from all enemies as the enemies your firing at might not react but that nearby patrol will.
SMOKE, use that to break LoS if you’ve been seen.
If extraction has cliffs, the jumppack is great for allow you to hide on said cliffs for the extraction to come and you can pretty much fly into the ship when its down.
Great share, there’s a lot of stealth and aggro management tactics available in this game. I would add a couple pointers for folks:
1) There’s a difference between something noticing you vs. engaging you. Enemies will react to seeing you with a tell but will continue to move at their regular patrol speed. You have a chance here to break contact and get away without fighting them if you take it.
2) The EM orbital is clutch. Dropping it on a patrol can give you time to clean them all out or time to run away from them. Combo it with the toxic gas orbital to commit war crimes. It’s great.
Doubles as a method of removing heavy armor guys too; lock them in the field then crush them with your resupply. We have railcannon strike at home.
3) Turrets make great decoys if you want to pull enemies away from something. I pray we get distractor beacons again some day but these kinda serve.
ORBITAL STRATEGEMS DO NOT AGGRO ENEMIES – ALL OTHER TYPES DO. I’ve noticed this in gameplay. I’ve tossed the 380 into a horde and an eagle strike they will always come after you on the eagle strike.
Something I noticed on extract with bots is it’s better to wait out the timer, I hid unseen after calling the shuttle and about 6 or so squads spawned in pairs over time, didn’t see me just stood around the extract point, until T-minus 30 seconds and then suddenly they all magically knew exactly where I was and started shooting, charging and launching everything they had in my direction along with 2 more squads for around 8 total after my ass which made getting out very hard with much dodging and using all 4 stims and nades. Difficulty was medium.
About your loadout, whats AMR and when you say railcannon do you mean the strike or weapon?
the AMR is the Anti-Materiel Rifle, and I do mean the Orbital Railcannon, not the railgun. It isn’t really required but it is nice when you want to destroy a heavy that is in your way, or if one is camped out in a base. Again, you can use whatever you want but that was how I found a good deal of success.
Very good guidelines !! And I must say I’ve been experimenting on the stealth path since I’ve started playing.
This guide is very solid and concise, it’s like someone else saying what I’ve felt and experimented Thank you for it 😉
– My 2 cents : I did not try the last two difficulty lv (but soon…) but i’ve managed to throw stratagems and stay completely unnoticed.
I’ve always done it prone and behind a visual cover, maybe distance is a factor (more than 50 less than 100 to be able to hit target precisely)
– Also, the SEAF arti (secondary objective) can be fired without aggro and is a big help whatever the case.
– For EVAC I like to be seen pruposedly before the launchpad (usually oustide the defense zone) and make the ennemy pursue, to group them but most of all leading them away. (against bots try to go the way with more covers…)
Keep a corridor so you can go straight right back to the extract, and time it to arrive with the shuttle.
A bit more :p
Stealth is paramount like said before because it lets you determine the rules of the engagement AND disengagement
Also speed, stamina and covers… -and on 4th only : bullets- are your lifeline : when you run out on the three first, you’re dead 😉
– Ammo boxes refills… ammo. BUT SUPPLIES refill ammo & 2 grenades & 2 stims each
(in group be nice and try to share with near teammates as the cooldown is shared :p)
The one you just helped will make your life easier just by being there and able to shoot things or even just running the other way !
STIMS refills not only health but STAMINA; limbs & poisoning too ! (but only usable if you’ve lost some health)
– Avoid using mortar turrets and any not precise bombing or aoe IN or NEAR the extract when the ennemies are in the perimeter > one dead is better than 4 and it saves samples.
These are general guidelines and must have been said elsewhere though; sorry if I’m out of line here
Anyway, thanks again, great guide !
Remeber you can drop your samples on the extraction pad and come back for them later, so you don’t risk loosing them far away if you die. And like Zone said, drop your samples wait out the timer, then pick them up and head out in the shuttle! You don’t even have to complete the mission.
been doing this on the creek, its been working wonders for solo ops deep in enemy territory
Good guide. Another trick: if you run out of time on the mission and the emergency shuttle is called in the game does NOT spawn any enemies to attack the extraction and you do NOT have to stay close to the extraction point. In other words, there is nothing to defend. It’s still possible for a patrol to path by, but you can just go prone and AFK until the shuttle lands and safely get out – assuming you’re ok with waiting out the time.
Tested on Helldive and below.
You can actually stealth the extraction as well. Just call it in and use your scout armor perk to see which direction enemies are coming from and put a big wall between you and them. The key is to stay prone or at the very least crouched, as enemies investigating extraction count as aware and have much better detection.