The Helldivers 2 community has discovered that using an emote when falling negates any fall damage, leading to an odd shift in the meta.
It doesn’t take much for a player to be damaged when falling in the multiplayer game, with the characters usually vaulting themselves headfirst into the ground to a bone-crunching effect.
However, this new method seems to avoid this entirely and has opened up a new method of traversal where Helldivers 2 fans won’t have to worry about jumping off of higher locations.
The new meta has spread around the game’s subreddit, with one user proclaiming to the community: “Using an emote mid-fall may SAVE YOUR LIFE!”
Their post is accompanied by a video that shows their character jumping off of various spots, both while emoting and while not. For every instance, emoting while falling caused zero fall damage for them when hitting the ground.
The Helldivers 2 fanbase embraced this idea, with one user saying: “This is why I love this game. This is probably 100 percent unintended, and it looks… hilarious.”
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It’s not just the utility of this discovery but also how it looks in-game that has players in love with the new meta. As one fan comments: “One of the few bugs/glitches that’s too fun to remove. This needs to stay!”
Others played into the themes of Helldivers 2 with their over-the-top proclamations that they “love T-Posing for Democracy…”
No one was sure about the cause of this bug, though one player theorized that it was related to the game’s physics.
They explained: “When you dive and flail, you seem a lot more likely to land on your head and, knowing AH, even impact damage can score headshots. Emotes meanwhile make you tumble more with their stiff postures, increasing the likelihood of landing primarily on one or more “non-head” limbs…”
Now, it could be something that the devs will patch out at some point given that it seems to be a completely unintentional side effect of the game’s physics. However, Helldivers 2 fans will use it as much as possible if that happens.