Essential Tips for New Recruits

New to Helldivers 2? Learn essential tips for new recruits, including how to ping objectives, use the minimap effectively, and understand Super Citizen status. Dominate the battlefield!

Helldivers 2 isn't a game that explains a lot to you. If you've been matchmaking with other players, you may have seen some of your fellow soldiers with the ‘Super Citizen’ status. If you are here, then you are likely curious as to how you can get it for yourself. Thankfully, it isn’t hard to unlock, but you will have to fork out some extra money.

Super Citizen Status is simply a title that appears next to your name in-game. It doesn’t offer any gameplay benefit. The only way to earn Super Citizen Status in Helldivers 2 is by purchasing the Super Citizen Edition of the game or the Super Citizen Edition - Upgrade pack from the PlayStation Store or Steam. If you have purchased either of these and still have not received Super Citizen status, or any of the other cosmetic bonuses and the Steeled Veterans Warbond, then you aren’t the only one. The best thing to do is to keep playing and see if it eventually pops up for you. Some players have reported getting it after several hours and restarting the game, so as long as you have purchased it you are entitled to these bonus items. Chances are, if the problem persists, Arrowhead Game Studios will release a fix in the coming weeks too.

The missions in Helldivers 2 have various objectives that you need to complete before you can be extracted back to your ship. These are easy enough to complete on your own most of the time, at least on the easiest difficulties, but when you’re playing in co-op or online with strangers, things can get messy – not least because friendly fire is turned on! With that said, there are things you can do to improve the experience, outside of communicating via voice chat. One of the most important tips is to make use of the minimap, and ping or mark locations for objectives or enemies that you intend to focus on. On this page, we’ll briefly show you how to do that on the PC and PS5.

As mentioned above, the main reason why you’d want to ping locations on the map is to alert your fellow Helldivers to a specific group of enemies or objective. If you’re playing online with strangers, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of wandering in different directions, while neglecting to focus on each objective together. If you’re not fond of using voice chat, the next best thing is marking things on your minimap, or pinging things (whether nearby or in the distance), but it’s not immediately obvious how to do this since there’s no tutorial for it. We’ll briefly show you the relevant key / button combinations for how to do it on the PC and PS5 below.

Controls for Pinging and Marking Locations on the PC

To ping a location using mouse and keyboard, all you need to do is look around using your mouse, and press Q while facing the objective, enemy, or specific location that you want to bring attention to. A brief ping will then appear, and it’ll last for about 6 seconds. Plenty of time for the others in your group to notice.

To mark a specific location on the minimap, you need to press Tab to open it, then hold down the right mouse button while moving the mouse to explore the map. Once you’ve found the area that you want to highlight, just click the left mouse button to place a marker. The marker will remain until you place another one.

Controls for Pinging and Marking Locations on PS5

To ping a location on the PS5, you just need to press R1 + D-Pad Up. To mark a location, you can open the minimap via the touchpad, navigate to the spot you’re looking for using the joystick, then press the Cross button to mark it.