All being said, Helldivers 2's latest patch appears to have been a solid hit with players, which is a relief. While the game's never going to claw its way back to its stratospheric 400,000 player peak—a normal thing for most live-service phenomena—it's nestled into a very respectable 50,000-player average. Doubly so considering everyone and their Mohg is playing a little game called Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, right now.
Well, there is one exception—it's a good patch for everyone but the Spear—a rocket launcher I am about to humanise to a weird degree, because for some reason I just feel so bad for the little guy. In case you don't know your history, the FAF-14 Spear has been a bit of an underdog since launch. Chiefly, because its targeting system was utterly busted.
Intended to be a long-range solution to all your unexploded problems, the Spear's meant to fire a guided missile into liberty's enemies. Only, it rarely did that, because the targeting computer was incredibly unhelpful—it would rarely lock on to what you wanted, and even when it did, it had a propensity to whiff for no discernable reason.
An end to its woes seemed in sight when the patch notes dropped earlier this month: "The FAF-14 Spear targeting has been reworked," they optimistically read, "and should now function much better. However it has lost the ability to target Automaton Spawners, this is not intended and will be fixed in the future."
Unfortunately, another unintended thing happened. The Spear (bless its heart, it's trying so hard) started crashing games. In response to player reports, community manager Twinbeard confirmed on the Helldivers 2 Discord that the Spear's haunted: "Yeah, there are crashes affiliated with the Spear right now. We're looking into it. Seems the Spear is cursed."
In a later message, Twinbeard added that players experiencing trouble should "pray to the diver gods, perform a Spear exorcism, [and] say 100 hail Liberty" but, most importantly, "hope that High Command and Ministry of Defence manage to produce a hotfix. (Maybe even next week)."
So pour one out for the spear, the rocket launcher that really, really couldn't. I'm hoping it'll finally claim its rightful place as "a weapon you want to use, sometimes" because it's a killer concept on paper. In the meantime, you might have another rocket launcher to try out soon.
