Primary weapons

Learn about primary weapons in Helldivers, including AP ammo, 'unstoppable' rounds, and how weapon choice impacts gameplay. Optimize your loadout for any mission.

You always carry exactly 1 primary weapon. You cannot lose it or give it to other players, and you always respawn with a new one and your starting load of ammo (half a full load). Don't obsess over your primary. They all serve the same role: direct damage to unarmored or lightly armored enemies. There's a lot of variation within that space, but not nearly as much variation as heavy weapons have. If you enjoy a primary and it helps you play the way you want, upgrade and use it without remorse, even if it's not an "approved" gun for that race/difficulty. Stratagems do more to define your role, and the right stratagems can cover for a "bad" personal weapon.

Some primary weapons upgrade to have the "AP ammo" property. Look on the encyclopedia screen to find what enemies have low or medium armor. "AP ammo" will kill these enemies faster. It does not give that weapon the ability to kill tanks. Some weapons also get "unstoppable." This lets your rounds go through your target and continue into more enemies (or allies). Shields and heavy armor can stop the unstoppable. This is a great property to have and can seriously increase damage, but please, be careful where you point that stuff. It's cool to kill a whole row of bugs at once; it's also cool to turn and knock out an enemy that got in among your formation without killing your fellow Helldiver on the other side.

I organize the categories the way the game stacks them in the selection screen. Within each category, I go in order of my own preference, which is for fast spike damage over mathematical efficency. Hell dives are urgent missions. You will need to do a lot of things besides shoot. In high difficulty levels where it takes a lot of damage to wear down melee packs, I find weapons like the Punisher, Camper, and Double Freedom get devalued because you don't have the choice to trade ammo for damage at a higher rate. The option to spend ammo fast against strong enemies outweighs the ability to spend it efficiently against weak enemies. If you like to spray a stream of fire for a long time – which is fun and certainly does come in handy – drop yourself a heavy weapon or vehicle for that purpose.