No Hell Diver is a stranger to explosive ordinance, and things just heated up with the newest Democratic Detonation Warbond. The G-123 Thermite Grenade is the newest thrown item given to Divers in Helldivers 2—an item slot desperate for attention. Let’s touch on this grenade.
How to get Thermite Grenades in Helldivers 2
As of the release of April 2024’s Helldivers 2 Warbond, you can only get the G-123 Thermite Grenade through the Democratic Detonation Warbond. After purchasing the premium Warbond for 1000 Super Credits, you can buy the Grenade for 15 Medals. It is available on the first page, so it’s an easy buy once you have the Warbond.
If you haven’t purchased a Warbond before, simply hit R to go to the Requisitions Menu. This brings up a series of Warbonds. Democratic Detonation is the third Premium Warbond—so, the fourth Warbond in total.
How to use Thermite Grenades in Helldivers 2
Thermite Grenades, once equipped to your Loadout, are used through your Grenade slot. By default, this is G on a keyboard and D-pad Right for controllers. You come equipped with four by default and reload half of them from Resupply cartridges. If you have Grenade-focused armor, such as CE-Trench Engineer, you get two maximum more charges.
Unlike many Grenades, you want to throw this directly at an enemy’s weakpoint. This is because it sticks to foes throughout its fuse time, eating away at their armor before exploding. So, headshotting foes is likely more effective than the leg or body shots most grenades enjoy.
Are Thermite Grenades worth using in Helldivers 2?
Unfortunately, right now, the Thermite Grenade is not a powerful option in Helldivers 2. The grenades are currently extremely inconsistent against both enemies and enemy spawners. They also don’t do their job very well when they do work, taking a long time to assassinate most boss-type enemies. While they can kill single bosses more effectively than most grenades, you’re trading a lot of versatility for that role.
Thermite Grenades are designed to be high-penetration grenades that stick to a single target when thrown, melting the outer armor before a final explosion. This means they do an excellent job of punching through enemies’ armor. However, they are designed to do this for a single target, sporting a terrible Outer Radius of two and a rather long 2.9-second fuse time. Sadly, the Thermite fails to be impactful in this role. Chargers and Tanks can eat the chain explosions just fine. It doesn’t even seem to melt their armor all that well, leaving small-to-medium-sized holes you can barely shoot at. It usually takes three to four well-aimed grenades to take out these targets without help from Stratagems or Primary weapons. That means you’re reloading your ‘nades between every high-armor target. And this isn’t even touching on issues of the grenade’s poor sticking, inconsistent Fabricator destruction, and slight accuracy problems.
Several divers on Reddit suspect the qualities of the G-123 Thermite Grenade are bugged. The grenade’s damage is comically low and could be tied to the recent damage-over-time bug that cropped up in Patch 1.000.202. They also discuss how the Grenade can destroy Fabricators, though only when thrown through the front door of the spawner building. Considering Thermites do explode, that behavior is almost certainly unintentional. We can only hope some of these things will be fixed in a future patch, or the G-123 Thermite will remain a dud.
