Helldivers 2 Mission Types and What They Pay

The shapes you will see

Elimination and Eradicate missions are kill-count arenas. Short, dense, no exploration. They are the fastest medals per minute and the worst samples per minute in the game. Destroy objectives — illegal broadcasts, nurseries, stockpiles, fuel depots — spread several targets across the map, which forces travel and therefore passes points of interest on the way. Retrieve and upload objectives put a terminal in the open and ask you to hold it. They generate the longest fights and the most deaths, and they pay for that in objective completion. Escort and evacuation missions put civilians or a convoy on the map. These are the only missions where killing civilians costs you requisition slips — see the slip penalty before you call an airstrike near a convoy. Launch, raise and survey objectives — ICBMs, flags, geological scans — are multi-step sequences that keep the squad in one place long enough for a patrol to find them.

Why this decides your evening

An operation is two or three missions, and the medal payout includes a bonus for completing them in sequence. If you are farming medals, pick an operation whose three missions are all short: three Eradicates chain faster than three terminal defences. If you are farming samples, do the reverse. Samples spawn at points of interest, main and side objectives, and enemy outposts — and outposts only exist on maps that generate them. An arena mission has none. The super sample rules make the same point about the rock formation: no wild map, no rock.

Reading the map before you drop

The tactical map lists the objectives before you commit. Check three things: whether there is at least one side objective, whether the map has outposts, and how far the objectives are from the extraction point. A long extraction route is a free sample run, because you pass every point of interest on the way out.

The mission nobody picks

Defence and Eradicate get skipped by sample farmers, which means they are usually available and usually quick. Run them when you need medals or when your evening is short, and run objective maps when you need the upgrade.