How to use the Helldivers 2 Anti-Materiel Rifle

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This Sniper Rifle in Helldivers 2 an armor-piercing powerhouse weapon

Helldivers 2 Anti Materiel rifle
(Image credit: Sony)

The Helldivers 2 Anti-Materiel Rifle is a special sniper rifle used to do long-distance damage, target weak points and break through armor on enemies who protect themselves with plating, natural and not. Not only is the Anti-Materiel Rifle great in general play against medium-tier enemies, and even some of the bigger ones. Whether you have a Personal Order to take enemies down or just want to know how it's best used in general combat, here's how to kill enemies with the Anti-Materiel Rifle in Helldivers 2. Boom - headshot.

How to kill enemies with the Anti-Materiel Rifle in Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 anti-materiel rifle

(Image credit: Sony)

The Anti-Materiel Rifle is an armor-piercing, sniper support weapon that can be brought along as a Stratagem when choosing your loadout before a mission or, if you're lucky, looted at points of interest and objective areas during missions. You can pay 5,000 Requisition Slips once you reach level 2 to unlock the Stratagem, which makes it quite expensive for level 2, but it's worth having once you reach Medium difficulty and above, especially as your options for armor piercing weapons in Helldivers 2 are limited early on.

If you have the personal order to kill 60 enemies, we recommend going onto low-level bot-missions - the bots are slower than bugs, easier to target from a distance, but the minor enemies still die in one shot, meaning you can line them up and fire from cover without any chance of them dodging or moving around. 

More generally, the Anti-Materiel Rifle itself is best saved for middling enemies and above, using it to punch holes in anything that your regular primary weapon can't handle. Its long range also means that if you're about to invade an enemy outpost or nest, you should take point at a distance and kill some of the bigger threats from far away before finally moving in to deal with the fabricators or bug holes.

The only thing to be aware of with the Anti-Materiel Rifle if you've not used it before is that it does not have a hip-fire crosshair while in third-person mode, so to use it effectively you must switch to first-person aiming to use the scope. Good luck out there, Helldiver!

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Will Sawyer
Will Sawyer
Guides Editor, GamesRadar+

Will Sawyer is a Guides Editor at GamesRadar+ with over five years of experience in writing online guides, news, and features, and has a BA (Hons) in Journalism. Starting as a freelancer, Will contributed to startmenu and Game Rant before joining the GamesRadar+ team in August 2021. Since then, he has written hundreds of guides about a huge range of games, with shooters and action games being his areas of expertise. Outside of writing about games, Will hops between multiplayer shooters with friends, such as Darktide and Helldivers 2, and delves into whatever has been on his backlog for far too long. He also tries to get through his never-ending Warhammer pile of shame of grey Tyranids, Aeldari, and Chaos Space Marines.