Helldivers 2's Scope of Authority Warbond Trailer Zeroes In on Long-Range Kills
Arrowhead's new trailer previews the Scope of Authority Warbond, a sniper-focused arsenal and camouflage armor set landing in Helldivers 2 on October 20.
Arrowhead Game Studios and Sony released a new trailer on October 13 for Helldivers 2's next Premium Warbond, Scope of Authority, confirming a launch date of October 20. The 1:47 video runs through a sniper-first loadout built around slowing enemies down and picking them off from a distance, a change of pace from the shotgun-and-grenade chaos most Helldivers tend to favor.
What's in the Scope of Authority Warbond
The headline weapon is the R-40 Sightliner, a bolt-action sniper rifle firing armor-piercing rounds built for long-range precision work against Terminid and Automaton targets alike. It's paired with the P-44 Mist, a compact one-handed machine pistol meant as a sidearm for Helldivers who want their primary slot free for something heavier.
Two support weapons round out the arsenal. The AMW-20 Apex is a backpack-fed anti-materiel rifle with an assisted reload, designed to keep a shooter in position rather than ducking for cover to reload by hand. The LAS-44 Nova is an energy rifle with infinite ammo that charges briefly before releasing a non-explosive thermal projectile, and Arrowhead has given it a faster cooldown than earlier laser weapons in the game.
That shift matters because Helldivers 2 asks squads to fight two very different enemy factions. Automatons favor long sightlines and heavily armored units, while Terminid swarms close distance fast in large numbers. A dedicated marksman kit like the Sightliner is built with the former in mind, and Arrowhead has leaned on the Caltrops stratagem to make the latter survivable for a squad member who's standing still and lining up a shot instead of running.
Caltrops push squads toward crowd control
The Warbond's new stratagem, the G-11 Caltrops, scatters a field of proximity-detonated submunitions that slow and stun anything that walks through them. It's a direct complement to the sniper-focused weapons in the set: rather than killing a charging Bile Titan outright, the idea is to pin a swarm in place long enough for a Sightliner shot to land where it counts.
New armor and a passive built for stillness
Two armor sets ship with the Warbond. The SS-33 Mimetic Marshal light armor uses ghillie-suit-style, light-diffusing netting and comes bundled with the Mimetic Mesh cape and a matching player card. The SS-15 Focal Point medium armor pairs adaptive camouflage with an asymmetrical visor, alongside its own Boundary Banner cape and player card.
Both sets share a new passive, Stationary Shroud, which reduces weapon sway and shrinks a Helldiver's detection range while crouched or prone. It's the clearest sign of the Warbond's intent: these weapons and armor are tuned for holding a position and watching a lane, not for sprinting into the middle of a Terminid nest.
Cosmetic rewards round out the full track, including the Manual Ballistic Projection emote and the "Longshot" title, both unlocked as players spend Medals progressing through the Warbond's pages.
How to unlock it
Scope of Authority is a Premium Warbond, meaning it must be purchased with Super Credits on top of owning the base game, and progress through it is earned the same way as every other Warbond: spending Medals collected from mission objectives and side content. Arrowhead has kept the same structure since the game's original February 2024 launch, layering new weapon types into the existing arsenal rather than replacing it.
Scope of Authority goes live on PS5 and PC on October 20, roughly two and a half years after Helldivers 2 first shipped and continued to grow through regular free Major Orders and paid Warbonds alike. Full specifics on Medal costs per item and page order typically land in Arrowhead's patch notes closer to release.
Arrowhead Game Studios has developed Helldivers 2 under publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment since the game launched on PS5 and Windows in February 2024, with an Xbox Series X/S version following in 2025. Since then, the studio has kept the game on a steady drip of post-launch content rather than a single large expansion. Scope of Authority continues that approach: a focused, weapon-type-themed Warbond rather than a wholesale overhaul of the sandbox, aimed at players who've already cleared the game's existing Medal-gated tracks and want a new way to approach the same missions.
Players wanting a refresher on how Warbond pages and Medal costs usually work can check the community-maintained Helldivers Wiki's breakdown of past Warbonds. For now, the October 13 trailer is the only confirmed look at the new gear ahead of next week's launch.
Official links
Mira leads previews at Gamers6. She has spent fifteen years playing co-op shooters badly and writing about them well, and she still keeps a spreadsheet of every weapon reload animation worth the frame count.
