Helldivers 2‘s next Warbond has been revealed, and it looks like a fun one for the dedicated Bugdivers of the world, as the new gear will let us become professional Terminid exterminators.
As well as some new green and yellow armor sets, capes, matching patterns for your Hellpod, Shuttle and Exosuits, and two fart joke-themed emotes, there’ll be two new Stratagems to sink your teeth into. The first of these is the TX-41 Sterilizer, which looks like a seriously industrial bug spray that can be used to cover foes with gas. In the official trailer, it looks like this has quite a long range on it and appears to be quite an effective crowd-control tool.
If you don’t fancy spraying the bugs yourself (or if you want to double down on the extermination action), there’s also the AX/TX-13 ‘Guard Dog’ Dog Breath Stratagem, which you can employ to automatically fire gas at foes for you. Continuing the theme, the G-4 Gas grenade is also joining the lineup as a new way to show undemocratic bugs who’s boss. I’ll admit that my first thought about this Warbond’s additions was just how chaotic they’re going to be thanks to Helldivers 2’s friendly fire, but thankfully, the new armor sets come with the Advanced Filtration passive ability, which gives wearers resistance to gas clouds, so Arrowhead was one step ahead here.
Deviating from the Warbond’s theme slightly, Arrowhead is also adding a whole new way to support your teammates with the P-11 Stim Pistol, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like – a handy new gun that can fire at your allies of democracy to give them a small heal from a distance. As community manager Katherine Baskin puts it in a new PlayStation Blog post, this really is “the friendliest of friendly fire.”
The Chemical Agents Warbond is set to release on September 19, two days after the upcoming patch that’ll mark the first wave of changes from Arrowhead’s 60-day action plan to improve the third-person shooter. Arrowhead has already revealed a few details about the upcoming update, including the fact that bug barbecuing is back on the menu thanks to Flamethrower buffs, and the Railgun is about to become an absolute menace again. There’s certainly plenty for players to look forward to next week, anyway.