How to unlock & use Boosters in Helldivers 2

How to unlock & use Boosters in Helldivers 2
Images via Arrowhead Game Studios

Written by 

Dave McAdam

Published 

9th Feb 2024 14:31

If you have noticed the Boosters menu in Helldivers 2, you might be curious how to unlock and use them.

What are Boosters?

Boosters are equipable items with specific effects that benefit you and your teammates. They are permanent unlocks, not consumable items; so once you have a Booster you can use it as much as you like by simply equipping it in the preparation stage at the start of an operation.

As mentioned, Boosters affect both you and your squad, but they do not stack. As such, there is no value in multiple players bringing the same Booster into battle, so be sure to coordinate with your teammates and each equip different Boosters.

How to unlock Boosters

You won't have any Boosters when you start the game, as you must purchase Boosters with Medals in the Warbonds section of the Acquisition Centre. That was a lot of very specific words, so let's break that down.

The Warbonds menu in Helldivers 2
Click to enlarge

While in your ship, you should see a prompt at the top of the screen to bring up Acquisitions, which would be Square on a PlayStation controller. In the Acquisitions Centre menu, the first tab is the Warbonds menu. There are two options here, the standard Warbond, and the premium Warbond.

These work similarly to the battle passes you find in games like Fortnite or Destiny 2, you earn currency through playing which allows you to unlock items in the Warbonds, and the Premium Warbond must be purchased with a premium currency that you can purchase with real money, but you can also find it in small amounts in the game.

On either Warbond, you can unlock items by spending Medals. These are earned by completing operations, you can see on the war table how many Medals you can earn by completing a given mission. Once you have enough Medals, you can buy items on the Warbond.

Earning Medals by completing Operations in Helldivers
Click to enlarge

Again, like the Fortnite battle pass, Warbonds are divided into pages, and you must spend a specific number of Medals on one page to progress to the next.

If you look through the current standard Warbond called Helldivers Mobilize, you will find the first available Booster on page three, called Hellpod Space Optimisation. To unlock page three, you must first spend 35 Medals, and then you can purchase this Booster for 15 Medals.

There are several more Boosters that you can unlock (details on those are below) so you will need to rake in the Medals if you want to get them all.

All Booster effects in Helldivers 2

The Hellpod Space Optimisation Booster in the Warbond menu
Click to enlarge

There are seven Boosters currently available through the Warbonds, six from the standard and one from the premium. Those Boosters and their effects are:

Helldiver's Mobilise! (Standard Warbond)

Booster (Page and Cost) Effect

Hellpod Space Optimisation (Page 3, 15 Medals)

Helldivers come out of the Hellpod fully stocked on Ammo, Grenades, and Stims
Vitality Enhancement (Page 4, 20 Medals) Allows all Helldivers to resist injury
UAV Recon Booster (Page 6, 40 Medals) Increases all Helldivers' effective radar range
Stamina Enhancement (Page 7, 75 Medals) Increases all Helldivers' stamina capacity and recovery
Muscle Enhancement (Page 9, 90 Medals) Allows Helldivers to traverse difficult terrain with ease
Increased Reinforcement Budget (Page 10, 150 Medals) Increases the number of available reinforcements

Steeled Veterans (Premium Warbond)

Booster (Page and Cost) Effect

Flexible Reinforcement Budget (Page 3, 75 Medals)

Reduces time until new reinforcements are granted once they've been depleted
Dave McAdam
About the author
Dave McAdam
Dave is a Senior Guides Writer at GGRecon, after several years of freelancing across the industry. He covers a wide range of games, with particular focus on shooters like Destiny 2, RPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, and fighting games like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8.
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