The latest Helldivers 2 mission has a twist: less killing, not more

In Helldivers 2The player base eagerly awaits Major Orders, military commands from Super Earth. The entire community then joins forces to achieve these goals. Since February, Super Earth leadership has asked us to do a lot of wild things, like opening a black hole or storming Automaton space to clear the universe of killer robots. But one recent Major Order is quite unusual, because it actively discourages murder.

Developer Arrowhead Game Studios is throwing the Anti-Tank Mine upgrade in front of players, a Strategem that Helldivers has managed to avoid time and time again. The only catch? Players must not achieve a certain number of kills.

Major Orders can award new toys called Stratagems, which are tactical tools such as weapons, backpacks, resupplies, or orbital bombardments for use in-game. But so far, Anti-Tank Mines have remained elusive.

In fact, this is the player’s fourth chance to unlock Anti-Tank Mines. The first Major Order that offered them as a possible reward instead yielded Airburst Rocket Launchers, which players overwhelmingly chose for their power against harmful Automaton ships. A second Major Order asked players to convert a certain number of Automatons to scrap to earn the mines; the community failed that Order.

Next, players had to choose between the Anti-Tank Mines and a hospital full of very sick children in the aptly named Operation Trolley Problem. The Helldivers community showed their courage by choosing to save the children. This was incredibly healthy, but it meant they had to do without those powerful explosive delights.

Enter the latest Major Order, Operation Vengeful Cleansing. High Command has ordered an Efficacy Review. For starters, if players can kill a certain number of enemies as a collective, then we’re clearly doing just fine and don’t need those mines. If we can not kill those enemies, then Super Earth will finally distribute those mines to Helldivers in the virtual field. It’s a pretty high target to hit – over 1.5 billion enemies — and players are only halfway there with just under a day to go. So, as long as all goes according to plan, we’ll finally get those mines.

The mines currently in the game aren’t an incredibly popular class of Stratagem. They’re generally unreliable for taking out large hordes of enemies – unless you can set up the ambush just right – yet terribly reliable to take out your allies in bursts of friendly fire. Call it poorly managed democracy, if you will. This is probably why players made different choices when they were offered.

However, Anti-Tank Mines don’t seem to be nearly as deadly to individual Helldivers as the current in-game offerings. Rather than blowing holes in soldiers, they’re designed for much larger targets and don’t trigger when infantry units move over them. We do know that the Escalation of Freedom update, currently scheduled for August 6, will include both a new Rocket Tank enemy and a new Spore Charger that cloaks itself in mist. Some new, heavily battle-tested mines could be just the thing to counter these new foes, so I’ll be thanking Super Earth High Command for their generosity when they do appear.

The new Freedom’s Flame Warbond will also be released on August 8, adding fire-resistant armor and new flamethrowers. Warbonds will include new weapons, cosmetics, and armor sets that players can unlock using medals earned in battle. We’ll have to wait and see what other missions Super Earth sets us after we complete the goal of killing an insufficient number of bots and bugs.