Helldivers 2 patch 01.001.201 sees Arrowhead ditch its previous Punisher Plasma tweaks and puts on a “dignified funeral” for a technician’s goldfish

Helldivers 2 just got a fresh patch, patch 01.001.201, and while it’s not quite as beefy as those released as part of Arrowhead’s just over 60 day plan, it’s still got a lot of stuff in it. For example, there are a heap of fixes to bugs involving bugs and a big change to the Punisher Plasma.

This is the first big update the game’s gotten since patch 01.001.104 closed out that plan with its own laundry list of tweaks, and it comes just after the divers have been given a pretty tough task in the Galactic War, following a nice Liberty Day break.

So, what does it do? Well, let’s start off with the two balancing changes outlined in the notes. First of all, the Shield Generator Relay stratagem’s had its lifespan upped from 30 to 40 seconds, but the bigger news concerns an energy weapon:

“In response to popular Helldiver demand, General Brasch has issued an administrative order to revert the production changes made to the SG-8P Punisher Plasma (from Patch 01.001.104),” Arrowhead writes, “We have reverted the latest changes so the SG-8P Punisher Plasma will now have a more noticeable arc in its projectile path, starting off slower and maintaining speed longer. This will affect its recoil, fire rate, and projectile behavior. To further improve its effectiveness, the magazine capacity has increased from 8 to 10.”

Beyond that, the studio’s put out a whole bunch of bug fixes, including some for “top priority issues”, such as “an issue where encounters would not end and enemy spawning was turned off for the rest of the mission”, and charger corpses launching divers into the air.

It’s also ensured the service technician “can now be interacted with again”, with Arrowhead writing that this was accomplished by staging a “dignified funeral” for her deceased goldfish, Goldie. Basically, it’s been “laid to rest gracefully in a waste capsule, ejected towards the nearest planet’s atmosphere where the friction between the air and the capsule caused it to heat up, violently explode, and disintegrate”. S**t, if I’d known I’d have sent some flowers along.

Among the other changes I’ll highlight are a couple of fixes to issues with weapons like the Airburst Rocket Launcher and enemies including the impaler and shrieker. Nuke Nurseries missions also sound like they should be a lot less buggy. Finally, Arrowhead has “fixed an issue causing excessive ragdolling when diving or crawling on uneven terrain” in this patch, but writes that it’s still “currently working on further solutions to address the ragdolling issues”.

So, there you go, make sure to get youself up to speed before you dive back into try to complete three MO objectives at once.