How to Get Super Samples in Helldivers 2: Minimum Difficulty, Sample Rocks and Farming Tips

Common samples practically fall into your pockets in Helldivers 2, and rare ones show up as soon as you push the difficulty a little. Super Samples are a different story. They only appear on the harder missions, they sit in one specific kind of spot on the map, and they're what stands between you and the best upgrades on your Super Destroyer.

The good news: they're much easier to farm than they were at launch. Since patch 01.000.400 in June 2024, Super Samples spawn from difficulty 6 (Extreme) instead of 7, and the sample rules have stayed the same through the current patch, 1.007.202 from late October 2026. Here's everything you need to know.

Quick answer

Step-by-step: how to get Super Samples

1. Unlock and pick Extreme or higher. Super Samples don't exist on difficulties 1–5. Choose Extreme (6), Suicide Mission (7), Impossible (8), Helldive (9) or Super Helldive (10). Higher difficulties place more of them on the map.
2. Choose a mission type that has a sample rock. Eradicate Terminid Swarm, Eradicate Automaton Forces and Retrieve Essential Personnel missions usually don't spawn a Super Sample Rock, so skip those if samples are the goal.
3. Scan the map for the rock. The Super Sample Rock counts as a point of interest. Look for a small gray marker with a silvery outline on the map and hover over it to check what it is. If the map has a radar station, activating it reveals all points of interest, which makes the hunt much quicker.
4. Look for the spire itself. In the world, the rock is a tall, bulbous, fist-like formation streaked with silver veins. It stands out from normal terrain once you know what to look for.
5. Collect the samples at its base. The Super Uranium floats as silvery blobs of liquid metal right next to the rock. Walk up and pick each one up; in your sample count they're the ones with the four-square icon.
6. Stay alive or recover your drop. If you die, every sample you carried falls to the ground where you went down. It's marked on the map, so you or a teammate can grab it again.
7. Extract. Samples only count once they're on the extraction shuttle. As long as one squadmate who holds them boards the Pelican, the whole team gets the full amount.

Requirements

• Difficulty access: You must have unlocked Extreme by completing operations on the difficulties below it.
• A successful extraction: Super Samples you pick up but don't extract are lost when the mission ends.
• Room under the cap: You can hold at most 100 Super Samples (common samples cap at 500 and rare at 250). Anything above that is wasted.

What Super Samples are used for

Samples, together with Requisition Slips, are the currency for Ship Modules, the permanent upgrades on your Super Destroyer that make your stratagems stronger. You don't need Super Samples for most of the early upgrades, but the final module in each section requires all three sample types.

Unlocking every Ship Module takes 305 Super Samples in total, along with thousands of common and rare samples. Since the cap is 100, you can't bank everything up front. Spend them as you go rather than sitting on a full stack.

Farming tips

• Play on clear planets. Bright, open terrain makes the silver rock easy to spot from a distance. Jungles, sandstorms, blizzards and other visibility-reducing conditions make it much harder.
• Go during the day. Picking a planet on the light side of the galaxy map gives you daylight and better visibility.
• Use Blitz missions. They're short, use smaller maps and have quick objectives, so you can grab the rock and get out fast. Repeat for steady progress.
• Turn on radar first. If a radar station is on the map, activating it early saves you from wandering around looking for the rock.
• Higher difficulty, bigger haul. Helldive and Super Helldive can put several more Super Samples on the map than Extreme. If your squad can handle it, the payoff per run is better.

Common mistakes

• Farming on Hard or lower. Super Samples simply don't spawn below Extreme, no matter how long you search.
• Leaving a death drop behind. If the carrier dies and nobody picks the samples back up before the shuttle leaves, they're gone.
• Hitting the cap. Once you're at 100 Super Samples, extra pickups are wasted. Buy an upgrade before your next run.
• Choosing the wrong mission type. Eradicate and Retrieve Essential Personnel missions usually have no rock, so you can clear them perfectly and still come home empty-handed.
• Spending the whole mission searching. If there's no rock on the map and no radar station to help, finish the objectives and move on to the next run instead.