New Helldivers 2 patch unleashes blizzards and sandstorms, and quietly increases the level cap to help you manage democracy even harder

A new Helldivers 2 patch has added blizzards and sandstorms among the "planetary hazards," which sounds lush.

Developer Arrowhead released a new patch earlier today, April 2, aimed at generally helping stability and performance issues in Helldivers 2. On Steam though, the new patch notes reveal two new "planetary hazards" now available in-game, which are blizzards and sandstorms.

Surely this won't make completing missions in Helldivers 2 significantly more painful, right? Players already have fiery tornados to contend with, which is to say nothing of the actual enemies themselves bearing down with gnashing claws and dozens of chainsaws - even the skies aren't safe thanks to the new Helldivers 2 Gunships.

Elsewhere in the new patch, there's modifications to the 'Retrieve Essential Personnel' missions - the enemy spawn points are now thankfully further away from the objective, and fewer civilians are required to complete the missions themselves. This should be great news for players.

Also, the 'Destroy Command Bunkers' missions can now appear in operations from difficulty level five, and now have more objectives to complete, since before they were apparently "too easy." The operation modifiers that restricted Stratagems cooldown times have also been halved, so it's not all bad news on this front.

Arrowhead does note that, although it isn't fixed in this patch, work is progressing on cross-play friend invites not appearing for players. This has been a sore point for players for a few weeks now, and although this isn't the first time the issue has been acknowledged by the developer, it's good to know that work to fix the issue is still actively progressing. 

There's also some relatively small adjustments for weapons and Stratagems. The Patriot exosuit's rockets will now only pierce armor on a direct hit, while the Arc Thrower has had its stagger force increased. Guard Dogs will now fully recover ammo from supply boxes, and fire damage per tick has increased by 50% from all sources. The Anti-Material Rifle has had its damage increased by 30%, and the Breaker Incendiary has seen its damage increase from 15 to 20 per bullet.

Oddly, a change has been omitted from the patch notes: the Helldivers 2 level cap has been increased. Over on the game's subreddit, players have suddenly found they've rocketed past the previous level cap into the 60s and even 80s, with new titles like 'Fleet Admiral' now being available. 

Helldivers 2 players have spotted huge cloaked gunships above Automaton-controlled worlds, and surely nothing good can come of this.