Hours After Liberating Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 Players Spot Enormous Cloaked Ships Over Automaton Worlds

Mere hours after liberating Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2 players have a new threat to contend with: mysterious cloaked ships.

Players took to social media and forums to post screenshots showing what appear to be enormous ships in orbit around Automaton planets. Redditor infinity__cube appears to be the first Helldiver to have reported a sighting, but more images have emerged since. The evidence is irrefutable: the cloaked ships are there, but they appear to be lying in wait.

Yesterday, April 1, developer Arrowhead delivered a new Major Order to Helldivers 2 players, giving them a 24-hour window to finally take back Malevelon Creek, the Automaton map dubbed ‘Space Vietnam’ by fans. The planet was liberated in only about five hours.

Now, with a new Major Order in place to fend off the Automaton counterattack, the mysterious ships have popped up in the sky across Automaton planets.

Cloaked massive ships over Automaton worlds ?!! pic.twitter.com/k3yNlqfGRT

— Helldivers 2 Media (@Helldiversmedia) April 1, 2024

But what could they be? There are a number of theories, including a rather boring explanation that they are a visual bug associated with the existing Super-Destroyer ships. More exciting is the suggestion they are Illuminate ships. The Illuminate are a third alien faction most Helldivers 2 players believe are on their way to the game.

Perhaps they are evidence that the Automatons’ true might is looming over the horizon, ready to pounce now that the terrifying alien robots have been sufficiently angered. If that’s the case, perhaps these ships mark the arrival of new Automaton aerial gunships, which were signaled in flavor text from a recently completed Major Order. Players are already speculating that these aerial gunships, if genuine, will cause Helldivers even more problems by intermittently firing at the battlefield. That won’t be annoying at all.

pic.twitter.com/WopTFTQEdI

— Tukenfarben (@tukenfarben) April 2, 2024

This is all part of Helldivers 2’s fascinating Galactic War, a meta narrative steered by Game Master Joel. Amid the push and pull of planets, new Stratagems are made available to players, with the promise of more to come. If you’re looking for more on Helldivers 2, check out IGN’s feature on the Let Me Solo Her of Helldivers 2, a player who has answered over 100 SOS Beacons as part of a mission to help others.

Helldivers 2 has become one of the surprise hits of 2024 since launching in February, topping the charts on Steam and reportedly selling around three million copies. According to at least one analyst, it’s still growing. Check out IGN’s Helldivers 2 review to find out why it’s going down so well.

Image credit: Firestorm_361 / reddit

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.