Helldivers 2 Medals: How to Farm Them and Beat the Cap

Medals in Helldivers 2 are the currency that unlocks Warbond items, and you earn them from mission rewards, from loot at points of interest and from Personal and Major Orders. You can hold at most 250 at a time, and anything earned past that cap is thrown away. The fastest steady source is a full three-mission operation on Helldive or Super Helldive, which pays 33 or 36 medals, while Major Orders add bigger lump sums when the community succeeds.

We checked this against the Helldivers wiki's medals and Warbond pages, the official in-game Major Order data and Arrowhead's announcements on Steam in November 2026.

What Medals Are For

Medals buy the items inside Warbonds: weapons, armor, throwables, emotes, capes and more. Each Warbond is split into pages, and you spend medals on items to work through them, with prices rising deeper into a Warbond. On the wiki's item pages, the G-6 Frag on page 1 of the free Helldivers Mobilize! Warbond costs 2 medals, the G-16 Impact on page 5 costs 20, and the exosuits on pages 2 and 3 of Exo Experts cost 50 each. Even after you pay Super Credits to unlock a Premium or Legendary Warbond, its items still cost medals.

The numbers add up. According to the wiki, as of 18 September 2026, maxing out every Warbond in the game costs 18,522 medals. Nobody needs everything, but it explains why medals feel scarce for anyone who buys new Warbonds as they release.

The other number to remember is the cap. You can hold 250 medals, and the wiki is blunt that extra medals earned beyond that are discarded. Since patch 1.000.400 in June 2024, the cap is shown in the interface, so you can see when you are close. Hitting the cap is the single biggest way players waste medals, and the fix is simply to spend before a big payout lands.

Medals per Mission by Difficulty

Missions pay medals on completion, and the amount rises with difficulty and with how far through an operation you are. On Hard and above, operations have three missions, and later missions pay more. The wiki's table shows the full spread:

Helldivers 2 medals per mission by difficulty (Helldivers wiki)

Difficulty	Mission 1	Mission 2	Mission 3	Operation total
Trivial	1	-	-	1
Easy	2	-	-	2
Medium	2	4	-	6
Challenging	3	5	-	8
Hard	4	6	8	18
Extreme	5	7	9	21
Suicide Mission	6	8	10	24
Impossible	7	10	12	29
Helldive	8	11	14	33
Super Helldive	9	12	15	36

Two things jump out. First, the jump from Challenging to Hard more than doubles the operation total, from 8 to 18, because Hard adds the third mission. Second, the top four difficulties are close together: Impossible pays 29 for a full operation, Super Helldive 36. If your squad clears Impossible cleanly but struggles on Super Helldive, the safer tier usually earns more per hour because failed missions pay nothing.

The third mission is where the reward sits. On Super Helldive, mission three alone is worth 15 of the 36 medals, so quitting an operation after two missions leaves the biggest payout on the table. Our difficulty guide explains what changes at each tier if you are deciding where to settle.

Loot Medals at Points of Interest

Medals also turn up as loot. Minor points of interest, the drop pods, containers and bunkers scattered across each map, can hold cases with 1 to 3 medals. The wiki notes that loot medals go to every Helldiver present instantly, with no need to finish the mission, so a squad that splits up to search gets four times the coverage.

There is a useful wrinkle by difficulty. The wiki says special loot containers with medals are more likely on Trivial through Medium, because on those difficulties Rare Samples do not take up the same spawn slots. That makes low-difficulty sweeps a decent medal source on top of being the classic Super Credit route, which our Super Credits guide covers in detail.

A few tools speed up looting. The Feet First armor passive raises point-of-interest identification range by 30 percent, the G-4 Gas grenade can open special loot containers, and an exosuit's stomp can break open cargo containers. Our armor passives guide lists the other passives that suit a loot run.

Orders and Campaigns: The Big Payouts

Orders are where medals arrive in bulk. The wiki lists Personal Orders at 15 medals each and Major Orders at 35 to 100 medals per order. Major Order medals go to every Helldiver when the community succeeds, and failed orders pay nothing. As of 6 November 2026, the active Major Order, a 700 million Terminid kill quota with a hold on Fori Prime, was worth 45 medals.

Since June 2026, Major Orders sit inside Galactic War Campaigns lasting roughly one to three weeks, and each Campaign can carry its own reward for winning most of its orders. Arrowhead's game director also said Personal Orders would become Personal Campaign Progression, a personal reward track for each Campaign, though not at Campaign launch. Keep an eye on the Control Center terminal to see what your current Campaign offers. Our Major Order guide tracks the live order and recent results.

Because order payouts can be up to 100 medals, they are the moment the cap bites hardest. If you are sitting at 200 medals when an order is about to complete, you will lose most of the reward unless you spend first.

A Farming Plan That Fits Your Time

There are two honest routes, and the right one depends on how your squad plays:

1. High-difficulty operations. If your squad can clear Impossible or Helldive reliably, run full three-mission operations. At 29 to 33 medals each, plus loot along the way and the XP multiplier, this is the best all-round return.
2. Low-difficulty sweeps. If you are newer or playing solo, run Trivial to Medium missions and clear every point of interest. Mission rewards are tiny, but loot medal containers are more common, and you pick up Super Credits too.
3. Always play the order. Whatever route you choose, dive on the Major Order planet. The order payout often outweighs several operations, and your missions help earn it.
4. Spend between sessions. End each session by checking your balance against the cap and buying a Warbond item if you are above about 150.

Leveling and medals go hand in hand, because the same high-difficulty clears that pay medals also carry the biggest XP multiplier. Our level cap guide explains how far the XP curve stretches now that the cap is 300.

Medal Math: What the Numbers Mean

Putting the figures side by side shows why medals feel slow and where the leverage is. A full Super Helldive operation pays 36 medals, so the 250 cap is roughly seven perfect operations of saving. Collecting the 18,522 medals needed for every Warbond would take over 500 such operations from mission rewards alone, which is why nobody should aim to own everything at once.

Orders change the picture. A single 45 medal Major Order, like the one active on 6 November 2026, is worth more than a full Super Helldive operation, and the largest orders at 100 medals are worth nearly three. A player who dives on order planets and stays below the cap collects all of that on top of mission rewards, while a player sitting at 250 throws it away.

Loot is the small but steady third stream. One to three medals per case does not sound like much, but a squad that clears every point of interest on a map can add a few medals to each mission, and on Trivial through Medium those cases are more common. Over a long session, that loot can rival the mission payouts at the lower difficulties.

The lesson is simple: play the hardest operations you can finish, play the order planet, loot what is on your route, and keep your balance well under 250.

Spending Smart Around the Cap

Spending well is as important as earning. Start with items that change how you play: a throwable, a primary or an armor passive you will actually use, rather than cosmetics. Our Warbond rankings help you decide which Warbond to work through first.

Next, remember that some items pay you back. The Super Credit stacks inside Warbonds are bought with medals too: in Helldivers Mobilize! they cost from 1 medal on the first page up to 50 on the last, and the three stacks in each Premium Warbond cost 7, 12 and 32 medals. Buying those stacks as you pass them turns medals into credits toward your next Warbond. And remember the 18,522 medal total: with new Warbonds arriving regularly, you will never run out of things to buy, so there is no reason to sit on a big balance.

Chasing Trophies Rather Than Medals

On PlayStation, medals do not gate any trophy: the wiki's achievement list has no trophy for earning or spending medals, though "Doing your part" asks for 100 completed missions, which you will reach while farming. If you would rather have the trophy list handled for you, the store's Helldivers 2 Platinum trophy service covers all 24 Bronze, 11 Silver and 3 Gold trophies plus the Platinum, unlocked on your account, with an option for realistic timestamps. It works on PS5 only. Medal and other services appear on the Helldivers 2 boosting hub, where you should check current availability.

Frequently Asked Questions