What is Shellshock?

Shellshock is a standalone mod from my Tactical Combat Overhaul, and adds concussive blasts to nearby explosions. See a quick preview of Shellshock's effects here.

In vanilla Helldivers 2, being close enough to an explosion to get thrown across the ground is often surprisingly clean from the player's perspective: if you survive the damage, your senses are immediately fine. Shellshock changes that.

Qualifying explosions can now leave your diver temporarily disoriented, visually distorted and concussed. The effect is based on Helldivers 2's own native status systems rather than simply putting a screen overlay on top of the game.

The result is intended to make artillery, grenades, rockets and other large explosions feel dangerous even when they don't kill you outright.



Normal Explosions

Shellshock is not limited to stun grenades or weapons that already apply a stun status.

Regular explosive blasts can cause concussion too.

This includes ordinary explosive attacks such as grenades, rockets and other qualifying blast effects.

The mod uses a short-lived concussion volume at the point of detonation so that the shellshock effect can reach nearby players independently of the game's normal stun-effect system.

Existing special explosion fields such as:

• Gas
• Smoke
• EMS / Static Fields
• Other persistent environmental effects

are preserved rather than overwritten.

Distance Matters

Not every tiny pop needs to turn your Helldiver's brain into soup.

The minimum explosion radius that qualifies for concussion is configurable.

This lets you decide whether these blasts should primarily affect:

• Large artillery and heavy explosives
• Grenades and rockets
• Nearly every meaningful explosion in the game

The blast itself still determines whether you are close enough to be affected.

Concussion Strength

The visual concussion effect is fully adjustable.

The strength setting ranges well beyond the game's normal native effect so you can decide how severe shellshock should be.

As a rough guideline:

• 1.0 — approximately the native effect
• 2–3 — pronounced concussion
• 4–5 — severe shellshock
• 10 — you have made a terrible tactical decision

The maximum is deliberately excessive because the setting is user-adjustable.

Duration

Concussion duration is configurable separately from its strength.

A powerful blast does not therefore have to leave you disoriented forever, and players who want a more punishing experience can increase both independently.

This also makes the effect useful across very different difficulty preferences.

Reverse Input

For players who want concussion to be substantially more disruptive, Shellshock can optionally use Helldivers 2's native Inverted Aim Assist effect.

This setting is deliberately simple:


Off is the default.

This is intentionally opt-in. Reversed controls are considerably more disruptive than the visual concussion effect and are not required for the intended Tactical Combat Overhaul experience.

Features

• Concussion from normal explosions — not just dedicated stun effects.
• Adjustable concussion strength — from subtle disorientation to extreme shellshock.
• Adjustable effect duration.
• Adjustable minimum blast radius — decide how large an explosion must be before it can concuss you.
• Optional reverse input using the game's native Inverted Aim Assist effect.
• Preserves existing special explosion volumes such as gas, smoke and EMS.
• Live configuration through Mod Options Menu when installed.
• Standalone — the other Tactical Combat Overhaul components are not required.

Settings

With Mod Options Menu installed:

ESC → MODS → SHELLSHOCK

Settings include controls for:

• Shellshock On / Off
• Effect Duration
• Concussion Strength
• Minimum Explosion Radius
• Normal Explosion Concussion
• Reverse Input

Changes can be applied in-game.

Requirements

• Helldivers 2 on Windows PC
• Bingus Shared Loader v19+
• SHODAN Stat Editor v2.3.1+
• Mod Options Menu — optional, but recommended for configuration
• A compatible Helldivers 2 mod manager such as HD2 Arsenal or HD2MM

The other Tactical Combat Overhaul components are not required.

Shelshock is independently deployable.

Compatibility

• Existing gas, smoke, EMS and other persistent explosion fields are left intact.
• The mod modifies explosion, damage and status-effect definitions through SHODAN's shared scanning system.
• It can be used alongside the other Tactical Combat Overhaul components.
• Reverse Input is disabled by default and is only added when explicitly enabled.

Diagnostics

Shellshock writes diagnostic information to:


If an explosion does not appear to trigger concussion, include this log with the bug report.

The log records:

• Whether the Explosion, Damage and Status tables were located
• How many explosion rows qualify
• How many normal explosions received concussion delivery
• Current concussion strength and duration
• Whether Reverse Input is enabled
• Whether any guarded patch was refused rather than written