Fire tornadoes in Helldivers 2 make flying bugs the least of your worries

The Helldivers 2 developers introduced extreme weather effects in a recent update, but arguably the most extreme of these events has finally appeared in the form of terrifying, destructive fire tornadoes.

Players have reported today that fire tornadoes have been spotted on the fittingly named planet Hellmire in the Terminid-controller Mirin sector. The planet’s description notes “scorching temperatures, high winds, and low precipitation” that cause “a near constant cycle of fires to sweep the planet.” And after a short visit to the planet’s surface, we can confirm that the fire tornadoes are both present and ruthless.

Like actual wildfires, the fire tornadoes in Helldivers 2 start small and quickly ramp up into a raging inferno, getting bigger and bigger and leaving a fiery path in their wake. And when the fire tornadoes really start to get going, it can feel like they’re following and actively trying to get you. Getting hit directly by a fire tornado is almost certainly instant death, and the fiery path it leaves behind can make retrieving your samples or support weapons a nightmare.

The good news is that the fire tornadoes are just as destructive against the bugs as they are against you. If you can avoid them yourself, you can treat fire tornadoes like a collection of smaller, uncontrollable orbital lasers.

It seems like there’s no shortage of new obstacles and threats that the Helldivers 2 team is willing to throw at its players, whether it be surprise invasions, destructive weather effects, or the totally real flying bugs that they’re trying to gaslight us into believing don’t exist. This persistent wave of changes and fresh effects is part of why the game has been such a massive success over the past month and why players are coming back and completing major orders at a breakneck pace.