Helldivers 2’s Factory Strider Surge is a Blessing and a Curse

For the next four days, players have been tasked with slaying millions upon millions of enemies from all three factions in Helldivers 2. However, these enemies, as nightmarish as they can certainly be, aren’t all equally easy or hard to fell, especially when players may not see more than four or five Factory Striders or Leviathans in any miscellaneous mission. This is undeniably true of the Illuminate’s Leviathans, who are elusive and can flank players from overhead or while sneakily vanishing behind skyscrapers in city missions.

No less true is it that Factory Striders are tanky, overpowered foes that are rarely seen in packs other than for the purposes of a convoy. Lone Striders are surely a reliable nuisance on any Automaton mission, but are ironically not that frequently seen in prominent city mission biomes. The current Major Order does bots a bit of a disservice, also, since players only have Factory Striders as an incentive to dive onto Automaton planets. Fortunately, Helldivers 2 is accommodating for that and is hoping that a surge in their numbers will help even the odds.

Helldivers 2’s current Major Order, with three days left, reads:

• Kill the designated number of each of the enemies that most frequently plague our citizens’ nightmares:
  • Kill 20,000,000 Shriekers
  • Kill 12,500,000 Impalers
  • Kill 6,250,000 Factory Striders
  • Kill 7,500,000 Fleshmobs
  • Kill 3,750,000 Leviathans

Related

Thanks to Helldivers 2’s Current Major Order, It’ll Be Clear What Enemy Faction is Favored

Bugdivers, Botdivers, and Squiddivers all rejoice in Helldivers 2’s new Major Order, and it’ll be neat to see who comes out on top first.

Helldivers 2’s Factory Strider Surge is a Godsend for the MO’s Bot Chapter

Because players only have Helldivers 2’s Factory Striders to kill on the Automatons’ side, one could be deceived into believing that the bots would be the ones whose Major Order task is completed first. Rather, the fact that only 1,539,695 (24.6%) have been killed at the time of this writing would suggest that they’re either a particularly fearsome and indomitable foe, or that players have been prioritizing Terminids and the Illuminate thus far.

• 14,717,964/20,000,000 Shriekers (73.6%)
• 3,141,600/12,500,000 Impalers (25.1%)
• 1,539,695/6,250,000 Factory Striders (24.6%)
• 7,500,000/7,500,000 Fleshmobs (100.0%)
• 353,053/3,750,000 Leviathans (9.4%)

Either way, it wouldn’t be surprising if that number skyrockets due to the Factory Strider Surge. Only three days remain in this Helldivers 2 Major Order, though, and it’ll be intriguing to witness whether the surge makes a big enough difference to tip the scales in bots’ favor.

Helldivers 2’s Factory Strider Surge dispatch reads:

“Significantly higher Factory Strider numbers have been observed on CLAORELL.”

On the contrary, Factory Striders are easily one of the hardest bot enemies—one of the hardest enemies in Helldivers 2 overall, even—and that was when players only needed to worry about going toe-to-toe with a few. Now, with a Factory Strider Surge in effect, the chances for players to complete the Factory Strider quota have risen exponentially. But so, too, have the chances of whole squads being slaughtered.

Factory Striders aren’t even the root of the problem. Instead, it’s the massive and menacing bot swarm that usually accompanies them, not to mention mobs of Gunships that follow players around incessantly and the mortars or turrets that can snipe players from absurd distances.

Ironically, this could make killing 6,250,000 Factory Striders as hard or harder than it would’ve been without the surge’s effect increasing their numbers. In the meantime, it may be advised for players to bring as many of Helldivers 2’s Orbital nukes as they can carry and dive exclusively onto planets boasting Factory Strider convoys to intercept so that they can hopefully take out as many as possible before they’re taken out themselves.

Helldivers 2

Systems

9/10

Released

February 8, 2024

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence

Developer(s)

Arrowhead Game Studios

Engine

bitsquid