What are the best Helldivers 2 settings? Democracy is the flavor of the month, and taking on hordes of Terminids is much easier with a buttery smooth frame rate. With that in mind, we’ve put Helldivers 2 to the test to figure out the best video and gameplay settings that will bring you the best performance.
Helldivers 2 doesn’t demand the best graphics card, but a lack of upscaling tech like Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR will make stable frames harder to come by for older gaming PCs. Our best settings will try and navigate this shortfall as much as possible, but upscaling tech arriving in the future isn’t off the table just yet.
Here are the best graphics and gameplay settings for Helldivers 2:
Best Helldivers 2 graphics settings
- Graphics Preset: Custom
- Motion Blur: 0
- Depth of Field: Off
- Bloom: Off
- Sharpness: 0.75
- Texture Quality: High
- Object Detail Quality: High
- Render Distance: High
- Shadow Quality: High
- Particle Quality: High
- Reflection Quality: High
- Space Quality: High
- Ambient Occlusion: On
- Screen-Scape Global Illumination: On
- Vegetation and Rubble Density: High
- Volumetric Fog Quality: High
- Volumetric Clouds Quality: High
- Lighting Quality: High
- Anti-Aliasing: On
- VSync: On
- Render Scale: Quality
With the above settings, we have been able to achieve an average of 98fps at 1080p, and 76fps at 1440p. At both resolutions, the gameplay was stable with little stuttering to speak of as the 1% lows sat at 55fps for 1440p and 73fps for 1080p.
We did have to play around with a few of the settings from the preset defaults, but this was largely due to the 8GB VRAM limit of our testing card.
Despite this limit, we are still able to get away with high-quality textures as the in-game help text describes the high texture quality setting as ideal for 8GB graphics cards, while ultra should be reserved for cards with 10GB or more.
Our decision to stick with VSync despite the game being a shooter comes down to the type of shooter that Helldivers 2 is. It’s not an ultra-competitive esports title where every single frame is going to be super valuable, so sticking with VSync to ensure your frame rate can’t exceed your monitor refresh rate makes sense. This prevents screen tearing in more powerful systems where such a situation could occur.
There is currently no ray tracing possible in Helldivers 2. This fits in alongside the decision to forgo Nvidia, AMD, or Intel upscaling, instead opting for a generic render ‘scale’ that has little impact on visuals or performance. While these graphical features could be added in the future, the developers have expressed a clear desire to perfect the base game and expand its content first.
Best Helldivers 2 gameplay settings
There are plenty of gameplay settings in Helldivers 2, and many are best left to their default configuration, but here are a few key settings you should keep an eye on.
- Crossplay: On
- Vertical Field of View: 90
- Camera Shake Strength: Low
- Primary Objective Visibility: Visible
- Secondary Objective Visibility: Dynamic
- Mission Info Visibility: Dynamic
- Strategem Visibility: Header Visible
- Health Visibility: Visible
- Weapon Status Visibility: Visible
- Stamina Visibility: Dynamic
There are so many more gameplay settings you can tweak, many of which slightly adjust your experience to create what is a very Call of Duty-esque hardcore mode, with less HUD clutter and interference.
While the default settings are great for getting started, after a while the HUD can become cluttered during heated firefights, and you may prefer to have certain information appear dynamically or hidden entirely.
Field of view is always a no-brainer to increase where possible, as you can open up just how much you can see in front of you, which is even more beneficial in a third-person shooter. This sometimes creates a fish-eye view, but no such distortion appears in Helldivers 2.
As for crossplay, while Helldivers 2 is incredibly popular right now, should a time come when the servers are a little less busy, having crossplay enabled helps cast a wider net for the number of players you can group up with to save democracy.
How we tested Helldivers 2
At PCGamesN, we use specific gaming rigs to test the best settings for performance and gameplay in the latest releases. Currently, our test rigs include the following components; Intel Core i7 11700F, MSI Ventus Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 8GB, 32GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Widows 11 64-bit.
Can you play Helldivers 2 on an HDD?
Yes, you can install and play Helldivers 2 on an HDD, although as with any game, there are performance benefits to opting for an SSD instead. As such, opting for one of the best SSDs for gaming is something we’d strongly advise.
How to monitor performance in Helldivers 2
If you want to keep an eye on performance in Helldivers 2, which is yet to add an in-game benchmarking tool, there’s an easy method that works whether you’re using an Nvidia or AMD graphics card.
For Nvidia cards, ensure you have GeForce Experience or the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.
Or, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Frameview, for a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking option that works with any graphics card.
If you like what you see but are worried that you still need a new system to adhere to the Helldivers 2 system requirements, we can show you how to build a gaming PC and let graphical worries become a thing of the past.