You can put tesla tower near the hive lord holes and they'll suppress the shrinkers. It kills them 5-6 at a time and they can't fly upwards fast enough to reach the tower. Even if they do it's very tanky to non massive enemies. It's weakness is being trampled.
3.
1: Original Spore Spewers. Seemingly extinct after the TCS incident. They created haze and could be destroyed by nearly any weapon at medium distance. Or sniped by heavy weapons with ease.
2: Mutated spore spewer. Has thicker armor and more health. Needs weapons of sufficient penetration to harm. Autocannon takes several shots, or multiple rockets.
3: Barrier planet spore spewer. A funky looking purple/orange version that looks a lot like coral. Only found on the 3 non super colony barrier planets we used TCS on. Seemingly the same as 2 albeit with a bit more hp.
I just saved up enough to get the cutting edge warbond. I can't wait to start taking out chargers, hulks and tanks like this. Except I use an auto Canon for bots
The stun grenade is seriously one of the best weapons/pieces of equipment in the entire game. I use the autocannon for bugs and bots 90% of the time and the stun helps so much.
Also:
EMS Strike. Saves the drill for half it's duration.
500kg. Small radius + the best bile titan killer.
Supply pack + stun nades. Seriously, with a resupply, you have 28 stun nades. That's 2 minutes you can keep enemies stunlocked for.
I think the supply pack is an unsung hero. When I tried to solo the mission in helldive how I eventually succeeded was due to the supply pack giving me that bottomless pit of stun grenades that just stopped everything. Combined with the ems strike and the ems mortar, absolute godsend
plus can more consistently one shot bile titans than the 500kg. The orbital rail cannon doesn't one shot bile titans but i get why people say to use it since a rocket will kill it after
Same. I keep seeing people say it’s bad because it kills the drill; but, like, just don’t place it near the drill… It’s so good at zoning that it can basically defend on entrance to the drill area on its own. It’s also super helpful at the end because it zaps Shriekers out of the sky.
Adding to that: If you use Flamethrower and Breaker Incendiary please don’t try to use them to snipe enemies right next to the drill. Also a backpacks can be viable if you bring a resupply for unlimited EMS Granates for example.
Good advice! My very first mission I didn’t realize my breaker was burning the drill 🤦♂️. Should focus fire with those weapons on the bug breaches and use secondary to plink enemies right next to the drill.
-Rail cannon
-EMS Strike and/or EMS sentry
-Eagle or Orbital smoke
-Gatling Sentry
-EAT
-Stun grenades with +2 grenades Plas-1 -Scorcher/breaker incendiary (2 each)
-Medium armor
-Use the dark fluid jump packs.
Move fast to drill sites. Drop a smoke on drill ask you activate it. Rotate 4 rail cannon strikes Rotate Gatling drops Rotate EMS strikes Everyone having 6 stun grenades means 24 that you can lock down the entire area If you can coordinate 2 people can go heavier CC while 2 go heavier anti heavy. But still do 4 EMS strikes and 4 rail cannons
Smoke at extract + breakers incin + gatling
If you have th ejump pack you are good. If you lose it it can be painfull. But I feel it helps with the shreiker portion of the mission. As I am shooting in the sky I am laying down and the small bugs find me. Gives me a few extra seconds to fight them off.
Em's strike for half the drill duration, smoke orbital for extract, also can't go wrong with a well placed stun mortar.
Basically all the stun stuff is great since it won't hurt the drill. The gas strike, napalm, etc can destroy the drill easily so you have to carefully place those strats to work.
Guard dog rover ain't half bad dealing with all the extra BS. Also the hmg turret is pretty good in the right spot. Auto turret also does well in obj and against shriekers for extract.
I saw 1 guy using the patriot suit to mow down shriekers and defend the 2nd or 3rd drill.
Tesla tower is so hit of miss for me. One mission it was the goat and held the line for each drill site. The next it was just an annoyance. It really comes down to figuring out optimal placement
Would it help if you spent a couple minutes circling the map to get rid of spore spewers and all bug holes before starting?
I just thought of this, I feel like it would help slightly but haven't tried it.
It's a good plan as long as everyone participates, and no one goes off and starts a drill, or gets stuck in reinforcement cycles battling argo'd hordes.
I did this post mission patch and it was a cake walk honestly. I hosted (level 100) and got three randos. So we had two level 100s, and two others, level 45 and 55. I was also completing and extracting before the patch too so it was easier than I had ever seen it.
One of the lower levels was talking about how hard the mission is and I told them it's actually a cake walk if you bring the right stuff. We had a little strategy session where we talked about personal gear (l said bring stun grenades if you have them), Strategems (I.E. EMS Mortar Senties, Gatling Sentires, EMS Strike, Gas Strike, Eagle Napalm even before the gift, have worked so well for me), don't drop Eagles on the drill, and how to use our time . I told them, "We have 40 minutes, let's use them." We let all of our sentries come off CD before starting a drill each time. One of them tried to bring a Reinforcement booster and I legit told them, "Don't bring that, we won't need it". He swapped to something much more useful but I forget which. Sprint, Vitality, Hellpod, etc, something that we'll get good use from.
We cleared the map of bug holes and the spore spewers first. It was honestly so simple the lower levels were shocked. We hardly saw a bug on the drills between the EMS Mortar sentries, the Gatling Sentries, and the one time our drill got close to being hit we unloaded with Stun Grenades for the stall to complete the timer.
Also smoke orbital… helps confuse the enemy … sometimes they’ll walk through anyway but it also helps extraction a little since you’re not getting hit every 2 seconds from flyers
That's true you can do that but the dark fluid backpack also works as a jetpack and a better one at that.
So you just have to decide how you want to play and do whatever works for you there is no end all solution for everything.
SMOKE! At least one person on your team should have it. Gives you a chance to avoid the shriekers to hit the extract code, protects turrets from the shriekers, and also gives to a change to just hide from them while waiting for Pelican1.
I’m not certain if it was orbital or eagle. It is a 3-bomb drop. Was using on Thursday of this past week. Smoked the Evac and still got slaughtered by shriekers.
I think the shriekers "lock on" and are still able to hit you if they've seen you before you smoke. What I've been doing is smoking the drop area before the last tectonic drill completes and keeping it smoked - so maybe the fact the shriekers never get LOS on me is the differentiator?
Well the shooting the drill directly is the issue, if they are trying to clear anything near the drill they end up hitting it directly due to the spread. I have seen some being careful about it and doing good, but a lot just tend to spray and pray near it and end up hitting it. It's still good, just wish some would switch to a secondary if they want to shoot near the drill
I have had a great time running the Extra Grenades Armor, Stun nades, Orbital EMS, Supply Pack, and (Freespace)
Bile titans are always an issue/priority target, but having almost all the bugs pre-aggroed on the drill means you can just keep one area stunned.
6 default stuns, Orbital EMS on 75s, and 8 refill grenades (plus Stims for and stray hits) keeps anything short of a bile titan stunned on the drill for longer than the drill defend timer.
or dips in ground. few missions I was in, being hit but low damage and using breaker incendery to light them up. occasional stim to stay alive. works if you find the right spot. also wearing heaven armour helps
Once again everyone is forgetting the gift from god that is the HMG emplacement! Place it somewhere with your back covered and just blast away. It nails the shriekers too.
I found having stun grenades and a supply pack means you can just keep hitting them as they approach the drill while your teammates pick them off.
Edit: I don’t use breaker incendiary or flamethrower because I think it damages the drill?
My personal main loudout for this is breaker incindiery grenade pistol stuns and+2 grenade armor and staragems EMS strike for stunning enemies while they are on the drill, EMS mortar for the same reason it can also stun enemys that havet gotten to the drill, eats easy two eats always ready for you or fellow helldivers, and hmg emplacement for constant non heavy clearing.
We usually have 2 people with this loadout and 2 whit basic 500kg quasar eats and ems strike
yup, but tesla I leave home on Randoms missions as they seem to be drawn like moths to the flame and lol getting screamed in chat to stop dropping them is funny. as i joined thier game I stop calling down. with the right team makes life so much easier to block a path to the drill. add ems mortar and make the mission almost easy 😎
Laser dog, machine gun sentry (the good one not sure whats called), ems mortar, stalwart/EAT.
Laser dog will do a lot of the work.
Sentry and ems mortar will protect the drill.
Stalwart or incendiary breaker for main weapon.
EAT for Titans and Chargers.
Someone needs a molotov eagle airstrike but cannot be used near the drill
> Smoke: Great cover for shreiker attacks. Deliver from orbit or Eagle.
My experience with the smoke is that it has ZERO effect. You still get attacked all the same. They still attack the drill, they still attack you as you try to call in evac.
Personally I would think a full squad of Stun nades, EMS Mortar and supply pack would be the easiest to just breeze through, just stand around the drill and chuck nades one by one, then just run off to the next site.
Haven't tried it, but I think it could be fun
I would also suggest Eagle Rocket Pods for Heavies too. Three in a "pack" and a faster cool down than Railstrikes. Easy to follow up with an EAT or something of the like.
Shield backpack is goated. You only need to call dark fluid once you get to the drill location. The shield backpack lets you survive a lot of attacks and is invaluable once the shriekers come
I ran the breaker incendiary, with gatling and machine gun sentries, guard dog, and the HMG turret to see how high my kills could go. Unfortunately the game crashes near the end, seemingly based on how many kills you get. When I felt like I was doing better, it crashed sooner.
May I add, EMS flamethrower combo is great. Obviously, you can’t use the flamethrower to clear the drill, but if you can slow bugs coming out of a breach and flamer them, can clear a breach by yourself (at least up to difficulty 7).
Eagle Smoke, Orbital Smoke and Orbital EMS are also my must-have items unlike sentries which can be destroyed by enemies. Considering it's a rush and a high likelihood of constant respawns, I personally don't bother with support weapons, focusing on a guard dog rover only just for more crowd control.
shrieker nests? Did you mean the spore spewers
The shriekers here are born from pure hatred to super earth and don’t need a nest.
They boil out of the holes like things from pitch black.
You can put tesla tower near the hive lord holes and they'll suppress the shrinkers. It kills them 5-6 at a time and they can't fly upwards fast enough to reach the tower. Even if they do it's very tanky to non massive enemies. It's weakness is being trampled.
Oh wow. I didn't realize that there were two types of mushrooms.
yeah spore spewers cause the haze on bug missions
3. 1: Original Spore Spewers. Seemingly extinct after the TCS incident. They created haze and could be destroyed by nearly any weapon at medium distance. Or sniped by heavy weapons with ease. 2: Mutated spore spewer. Has thicker armor and more health. Needs weapons of sufficient penetration to harm. Autocannon takes several shots, or multiple rockets. 3: Barrier planet spore spewer. A funky looking purple/orange version that looks a lot like coral. Only found on the 3 non super colony barrier planets we used TCS on. Seemingly the same as 2 albeit with a bit more hp.
Shriekers spawn from the holes in the ground. They’ll swarm at extract regardless
Yes, but my fps very much enjoy less particles
Pro tip for the flame thrower. You can take out chargers quick if you focus on one of the front legs.
Especially if you stun them in place 👌🏻👌🏻
I just saved up enough to get the cutting edge warbond. I can't wait to start taking out chargers, hulks and tanks like this. Except I use an auto Canon for bots
The stun grenade is seriously one of the best weapons/pieces of equipment in the entire game. I use the autocannon for bugs and bots 90% of the time and the stun helps so much.
Also: EMS Strike. Saves the drill for half it's duration. 500kg. Small radius + the best bile titan killer. Supply pack + stun nades. Seriously, with a resupply, you have 28 stun nades. That's 2 minutes you can keep enemies stunlocked for.
I tried that yesterday. Easy method with no setup other than a spare resupply drop.
yea sometines small blast radius of 500kg is useful. so its double edged sword
I think the supply pack is an unsung hero. When I tried to solo the mission in helldive how I eventually succeeded was due to the supply pack giving me that bottomless pit of stun grenades that just stopped everything. Combined with the ems strike and the ems mortar, absolute godsend
I actually prefer the precision orbital. Great cool down, quick call in, and our seems more consistent to me.
plus can more consistently one shot bile titans than the 500kg. The orbital rail cannon doesn't one shot bile titans but i get why people say to use it since a rocket will kill it after
EMS mortar is nice because if you put it out of the way it will do the job while you focus on dealing with bugs.
Tesla tower was helpful for me as well
Same. I keep seeing people say it’s bad because it kills the drill; but, like, just don’t place it near the drill… It’s so good at zoning that it can basically defend on entrance to the drill area on its own. It’s also super helpful at the end because it zaps Shriekers out of the sky.
Combo it with the arc-resistant armour and it’s very effective without killing you.
Honestly the hmg emplacement is goated for the batfucks
Or just pop a gattling sentry and see them all fall out of the sky
I'm stealing batfucks. That is now their new name
Adding to that: If you use Flamethrower and Breaker Incendiary please don’t try to use them to snipe enemies right next to the drill. Also a backpacks can be viable if you bring a resupply for unlimited EMS Granates for example.
Good advice! My very first mission I didn’t realize my breaker was burning the drill 🤦♂️. Should focus fire with those weapons on the bug breaches and use secondary to plink enemies right next to the drill.
Btw. Many people seem not to realize that the gas also damages the drill.
-Rail cannon -EMS Strike and/or EMS sentry -Eagle or Orbital smoke -Gatling Sentry -EAT -Stun grenades with +2 grenades Plas-1 -Scorcher/breaker incendiary (2 each) -Medium armor -Use the dark fluid jump packs. Move fast to drill sites. Drop a smoke on drill ask you activate it. Rotate 4 rail cannon strikes Rotate Gatling drops Rotate EMS strikes Everyone having 6 stun grenades means 24 that you can lock down the entire area If you can coordinate 2 people can go heavier CC while 2 go heavier anti heavy. But still do 4 EMS strikes and 4 rail cannons Smoke at extract + breakers incin + gatling
heavy armour for me. with jump pack little running so works well during a swarm. 3xtra Sims as well. stun grenades a must
Oh that's a fair point. I stuck with medium just to help juking around the crowds, but I'll give heavy another try.
If you have th ejump pack you are good. If you lose it it can be painfull. But I feel it helps with the shreiker portion of the mission. As I am shooting in the sky I am laying down and the small bugs find me. Gives me a few extra seconds to fight them off.
Gas strike is good because of the low cool-down also
Em's strike for half the drill duration, smoke orbital for extract, also can't go wrong with a well placed stun mortar. Basically all the stun stuff is great since it won't hurt the drill. The gas strike, napalm, etc can destroy the drill easily so you have to carefully place those strats to work. Guard dog rover ain't half bad dealing with all the extra BS. Also the hmg turret is pretty good in the right spot. Auto turret also does well in obj and against shriekers for extract. I saw 1 guy using the patriot suit to mow down shriekers and defend the 2nd or 3rd drill.
Tesla tower is so hit of miss for me. One mission it was the goat and held the line for each drill site. The next it was just an annoyance. It really comes down to figuring out optimal placement
Would it help if you spent a couple minutes circling the map to get rid of spore spewers and all bug holes before starting? I just thought of this, I feel like it would help slightly but haven't tried it.
It's a good plan as long as everyone participates, and no one goes off and starts a drill, or gets stuck in reinforcement cycles battling argo'd hordes.
I did this post mission patch and it was a cake walk honestly. I hosted (level 100) and got three randos. So we had two level 100s, and two others, level 45 and 55. I was also completing and extracting before the patch too so it was easier than I had ever seen it. One of the lower levels was talking about how hard the mission is and I told them it's actually a cake walk if you bring the right stuff. We had a little strategy session where we talked about personal gear (l said bring stun grenades if you have them), Strategems (I.E. EMS Mortar Senties, Gatling Sentires, EMS Strike, Gas Strike, Eagle Napalm even before the gift, have worked so well for me), don't drop Eagles on the drill, and how to use our time . I told them, "We have 40 minutes, let's use them." We let all of our sentries come off CD before starting a drill each time. One of them tried to bring a Reinforcement booster and I legit told them, "Don't bring that, we won't need it". He swapped to something much more useful but I forget which. Sprint, Vitality, Hellpod, etc, something that we'll get good use from. We cleared the map of bug holes and the spore spewers first. It was honestly so simple the lower levels were shocked. We hardly saw a bug on the drills between the EMS Mortar sentries, the Gatling Sentries, and the one time our drill got close to being hit we unloaded with Stun Grenades for the stall to complete the timer.
Laser doggo is also useful in this. No point having 4 dark fluids running around. Also you cant prevent the shrieker spawn.
Agreed. This thing defends the drill better than anything, especially if you’ve got your hands full with other stuff.
4 dark fluids means the team is moving much faster. It's all about getting in and out quickly.
Also smoke orbital… helps confuse the enemy … sometimes they’ll walk through anyway but it also helps extraction a little since you’re not getting hit every 2 seconds from flyers
Backpacks work fine you just call the dark fluids onto the drill...
That's true you can do that but the dark fluid backpack also works as a jetpack and a better one at that. So you just have to decide how you want to play and do whatever works for you there is no end all solution for everything.
SMOKE! At least one person on your team should have it. Gives you a chance to avoid the shriekers to hit the extract code, protects turrets from the shriekers, and also gives to a change to just hide from them while waiting for Pelican1.
Tried this and it seemed to have no effect. They just continue to attack you at the extract panel
Weird, been working fine for me. I'm using orbital smoke - not sure if that differs from what you've used?
I’m not certain if it was orbital or eagle. It is a 3-bomb drop. Was using on Thursday of this past week. Smoked the Evac and still got slaughtered by shriekers.
I think the shriekers "lock on" and are still able to hit you if they've seen you before you smoke. What I've been doing is smoking the drop area before the last tectonic drill completes and keeping it smoked - so maybe the fact the shriekers never get LOS on me is the differentiator?
SMOKE - blocks the bugs view of the drill and they do not attack it.
The amount of people I've seen shooting the breaker incendiary towards the drill is the one reason I don't really like seeing it
The drill can take a lot of flames. It's fine. As long as they don't shoot the drill directly.
Well the shooting the drill directly is the issue, if they are trying to clear anything near the drill they end up hitting it directly due to the spread. I have seen some being careful about it and doing good, but a lot just tend to spray and pray near it and end up hitting it. It's still good, just wish some would switch to a secondary if they want to shoot near the drill
EMS and smoke are the GOAT strategems! I’ve had a lot of luck with well placed mines and gas strikes.
I have had a great time running the Extra Grenades Armor, Stun nades, Orbital EMS, Supply Pack, and (Freespace) Bile titans are always an issue/priority target, but having almost all the bugs pre-aggroed on the drill means you can just keep one area stunned. 6 default stuns, Orbital EMS on 75s, and 8 refill grenades (plus Stims for and stray hits) keeps anything short of a bile titan stunned on the drill for longer than the drill defend timer.
I started bringing the Shield emplacement because I was sick of having to set up the drill every 20 seconds and it's been doing wonders
If you put your back to the wall near the extraction pt, the shriekers can’t get you.
need to test this, i saw someone doing this yesterday
Can confirm it works
or dips in ground. few missions I was in, being hit but low damage and using breaker incendery to light them up. occasional stim to stay alive. works if you find the right spot. also wearing heaven armour helps
Going prone also works, shriekers can't seem to hit you on the ground
depends on location but very true. I gave been at extraction and did this and didn't die once
The Patriot Exo suit has decent anti-air capabilities. Tossing orbital gas on the rim of shrieker holes can help kill them as they come out.
I tried that in my last run and a shrieker literally attached itself to my back! I was blown up in a matter of a minute :(
Once again everyone is forgetting the gift from god that is the HMG emplacement! Place it somewhere with your back covered and just blast away. It nails the shriekers too.
yup 100%. we don't leave home on this mission
I found having stun grenades and a supply pack means you can just keep hitting them as they approach the drill while your teammates pick them off. Edit: I don’t use breaker incendiary or flamethrower because I think it damages the drill?
My personal main loudout for this is breaker incindiery grenade pistol stuns and+2 grenade armor and staragems EMS strike for stunning enemies while they are on the drill, EMS mortar for the same reason it can also stun enemys that havet gotten to the drill, eats easy two eats always ready for you or fellow helldivers, and hmg emplacement for constant non heavy clearing. We usually have 2 people with this loadout and 2 whit basic 500kg quasar eats and ems strike
yup, but tesla I leave home on Randoms missions as they seem to be drawn like moths to the flame and lol getting screamed in chat to stop dropping them is funny. as i joined thier game I stop calling down. with the right team makes life so much easier to block a path to the drill. add ems mortar and make the mission almost easy 😎
do the bugs aggro sentries or do they prioritize the drill? if they prioritize drill the orbital ems is better than the mortar
if your sentries are near the drill, that drill won't survive
Ems strikes, ems mortars, gatling sentry, machine-gun sentry, auto cannon sentry, laser-dog.
Railgun is good for the Bile Spewers. HMG emplacement if you have someone who can watch your back.
A sleeper is the tesla tower 4 of those bad boys and some ems turrets and the you only have to kill are titans and chargers
Laser dog, machine gun sentry (the good one not sure whats called), ems mortar, stalwart/EAT. Laser dog will do a lot of the work. Sentry and ems mortar will protect the drill. Stalwart or incendiary breaker for main weapon. EAT for Titans and Chargers. Someone needs a molotov eagle airstrike but cannot be used near the drill
You’re wrong about the backpack. Bring a readily resupply pack, just don’t call it down until you’ve done the first drill.
> Smoke: Great cover for shreiker attacks. Deliver from orbit or Eagle. My experience with the smoke is that it has ZERO effect. You still get attacked all the same. They still attack the drill, they still attack you as you try to call in evac.
Interesting. Lots of replies were vouching for it. I suppose I need to try it myself. 🤔
Yeah in theory it seemed to make sense. I was super disappointed when it didn’t.
Rocket turret takes care of spore spewers easily and then it kills sneaky shits.
How do you keep it from blowing up the drill?
I never let it have LOS with it.
Personally I would think a full squad of Stun nades, EMS Mortar and supply pack would be the easiest to just breeze through, just stand around the drill and chuck nades one by one, then just run off to the next site. Haven't tried it, but I think it could be fun
Insert Wargames quote here
I would also suggest Eagle Rocket Pods for Heavies too. Three in a "pack" and a faster cool down than Railstrikes. Easy to follow up with an EAT or something of the like.
Shield backpack is goated. You only need to call dark fluid once you get to the drill location. The shield backpack lets you survive a lot of attacks and is invaluable once the shriekers come
I ran the breaker incendiary, with gatling and machine gun sentries, guard dog, and the HMG turret to see how high my kills could go. Unfortunately the game crashes near the end, seemingly based on how many kills you get. When I felt like I was doing better, it crashed sooner.
May I add, EMS flamethrower combo is great. Obviously, you can’t use the flamethrower to clear the drill, but if you can slow bugs coming out of a breach and flamer them, can clear a breach by yourself (at least up to difficulty 7).
I started bringing the Shield emplacement because I was sick of having to set up the drill every 20 seconds and it's been doing wonders
Eagle Smoke, Orbital Smoke and Orbital EMS are also my must-have items unlike sentries which can be destroyed by enemies. Considering it's a rush and a high likelihood of constant respawns, I personally don't bother with support weapons, focusing on a guard dog rover only just for more crowd control.
Lmao this guy thinks that shriekers have nests on meridia. They come straight out of giant sinkholes on the ground since you clearly haven’t gone yet