Weapons and ammunition

Learn how to manage ammo, reload effectively, and resupply in Helldivers. Avoid running dry and master weapon mechanics for survival.

You will always drop and respawn with your pistol, your chosen primary weapon, half your maximum ammo supply for both, and your maximum of 2 grenades. You can radio your ship and have heavy weapons sent down; most of these also drop with a half-load of ammo.

When your weapon gets low, the game will warn you. Your firing sound will often change. Some weapons have red tracers loaded as the last few rounds in each magazine. Your ammo gauge will empty and flash red. Lasers have their own warnings to signal imminent overheat. Hit R1 to reload. If you reload before your current magazine is completely empty, you do it faster, but you sacrifice the remainder of your old mag. Do not press reload after every brief encounter, as you should do in many FPS games! As you burn through the last of your reserve, your Helldiver will give off emotes saying "Low on ammo!" or "Weapon dry!"

The dive (square) and melee attack (circle) interrupt your reload animation. If you start to reload, but squash a bug before finishing, hit R1 again. If you just can't get time to finish reloading, you may need to switch to your pistol instead to clear out the immediate area. When upgraded, your pistol fires armor-piercing shots in 3-round bursts; it's then more of a PDW and does higher damage than you might expect.

To replenish your ammunition, pick up ammo boxes. These will be outlined in yellow. You find them from time to time, but you will also need to bring your own with the resupply stratagem (the blue icon with the 3 cartridges). This will drop 2 boxes anyone can pick up; upgrade it to shorten the wait. Most weapons drop with a half-load and pick up another half-load per ammo box. For instance, your starting primary weapon, the Liberator assault rifle, drops with 6 spare magazines, adds 6 per pickup, and maxes at 12. Other weapons use different numbers, but the pattern is almost always the same.

An ammo box replenishes pistol, primary, and heavy weapon ammo. It adds a grenade. It refills any backpack that involves a consumable (by far the most important with the missile rack!) You cannot pick up a box unless it would help you in some way. It does nothing for vehicle-mounted weapons. Heavy weapon ammo stays with the weapon. If you die and drop a flamethrower with half a tank in the gun and 2 spares, that is how much your teammate will have if he picks it up.

Try to avoid switching away from an empty weapon. In the chaos, it does happen to everyone sometimes, but it's never good when you need your other weapon _now_ and it's out.

IMPORTANT: You can make your life easier by topping off your ammo at the start of a mission. As soon as you get out of your Hellpod, call your resupply and any heavy weapon you plan to use. Get your weapon first, then pick up an ammo box; if the game offers an X prompt for the second box, get that as well. Upgrade your resupply all the way to make this go faster. Topping off is a good thing to do in any case, but it is especially important if armed with the Breaker shotgun. Too many new Helldivers equip the Breaker, assume they began the mission with all the shells they can carry, and run dry in a pitched battle. Don't become a statistic.