Helldivers 2 Ship Module Order: What to Unlock First

Ship module order in Helldivers 2 comes down to samples, not raw power: every module costs Common, Rare, or Super Samples plus a spot in a fixed purchase sequence, so the real question at low level isn’t “what’s the best module” — it’s “what can I actually afford to unlock first.” This guide lays out the early unlock order guides tend to agree on for patch 7.0.0, where the Zero-G Breech Loading vs. High-Quality Lubricant fork sits, and how sample farming and difficulty actually gate what you can buy before level 25.

Ship modules are the passive upgrade system tied to your Destroyer, separate from Warbonds and stratagem unlocks. Where a Warbond gets you new weapons and armor, a module is a permanent buff to a stratagem category — faster Eagle rearms, more sentry ammo, quicker orbital deployment, and so on. They’re purchased through the Ship Management terminal, and they only affect the Helldiver who bought them, not the whole squad. Modules are grouped into categories, each built around a stratagem type:

These are four of the confirmed departments; the full module list spans more categories than that, but these four cover almost everything worth planning for before level 25.

Every module has its own sample cost, and within a category you have to buy them in a fixed chain — you can’t jump to a later, flashier module without owning the one before it in that branch. That means a module being “the strongest” on paper doesn’t help if you’re nowhere near affording it, or if buying it first locks up samples you needed for something more useful right now. This is the same logic behind the stratagem unlock order at neonsect.com/helldivers-2/stratagem-unlock-order/ — a system where sequencing your purchases against your actual currency matters more than chasing whatever a tier list calls the best pick in isolation.

The order guides land on most often follows the same logic: cheap, broadly useful modules first, then a fork based on whether you lean Eagle, orbital, or sentry.

Liquid-Ventilated Cockpit is the closest thing to a universal first pick because it’s cheap relative to its impact and needs only Common Samples, which drop starting at the lowest difficulties. Everything past that point starts asking for Rare and eventually Super Samples, which is where the order actually starts to matter.

Once the cheap early modules are out of the way, the order genuinely splits depending on how you play, and picking wrong means you’ve spent samples that could’ve gone toward the branch you actually use.

If You Play Around Orbital Strikes

Zero-G Breech Loading sits behind an earlier Orbital Cannons module and costs 80 Common, 80 Rare, and 10 Super Samples. It reduces orbital stratagem cooldowns, and because orbitals already run long cooldowns, guides describe the cut as shaving well over 20 seconds off in most cases. If your loadout leans on Orbital Railcannon Strikes or Orbital Barrages, this is worth prioritizing over sentry modules.

If You Build Around Sentries and Turrets

High-Quality Lubricant sits behind Shock Absorption Gel in the Robotics Workshop line and requires both Common and Rare Samples, though exact figures vary between sources so it’s worth confirming the number in your own Ship Management menu before committing. Players running Gatling Sentries, Autocannon Sentries, or turret-heavy loadouts get more mileage from finishing this branch than from chasing orbital upgrades they rarely use.

The bottleneck before level 25 usually isn’t the Requisition Slip cost, it’s sample access. Common Samples drop across a wide difficulty range, but Rare Samples only start appearing from around difficulty 4, and Super Samples are locked to the higher end of the difficulty ladder. That means a module like Shock Absorption Gel, which needs 5 Super Samples, is functionally unreachable until you’re pushing harder missions, regardless of how many Common Samples you’re sitting on. The specifics of which difficulty unlocks which sample type and when to push your difficulty tier are covered in the difficulty ladder guide at neonsect.com/helldivers-2/difficulty-ladder-samples-guide/, and it’s worth reading alongside this one rather than guessing at what your current difficulty can actually supply.

The honest cost here: getting through just the first three sample-gated picks above — Liquid-Ventilated Cockpit, Targeting Software Upgrade, and Shock Absorption Gel — already adds up to roughly 220 Common Samples, 40 Rare Samples, and 5 Super Samples before you’ve touched Donation Access License or a playstyle branch. Unlocking every ship module in the game reportedly runs into the thousands of samples and hundreds of thousands of Requisition Slips, a total nobody reaches casually — the early order matters precisely because you’ll be picking a handful of these, not all of them, for a long while.

Myth: Modules Benefit the Whole Squad

They don’t. Ship module upgrades only apply to the Helldiver who purchased them — your squadmates need to unlock the same module on their own ship to get the same benefit, aside from a few specific call-in interactions.

Myth: You Can Buy Any Module in Any Order

Within a category, modules unlock sequentially. You can’t skip past an earlier module in the Orbital Cannons or Hangar line to grab a later one just because you’ve saved up enough samples — the prerequisite has to be purchased first.

Myth: The Most Expensive Module Is Always the Strongest Pick

Cost scales with tier, not necessarily with how much a module actually helps your build. A cheap early module that fits your loadout, like Donation Access License for anyone running a support weapon, often outperforms an expensive late-tier module tied to a stratagem type you rarely use.