Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Patch 10 Goes Live — and This Is the Big One, With Playable Helbrute, Power Axe Weapon, Chaos Spawn Enemy, and a Lot More

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 has its long-awaited Patch 10 across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S. This is the big anniversary update that makes a number of significant changes and additions to Saber Interactive’s explosive third-person action game.

It’s worth noting that while Patch 10 is live now, Season Pass 2 and the Black Templars and Imperial Fists cosmetics do not go live until later today, September 4.

Patch 10.0 adds new game modes and maps, along with the Chaos Armour Pack, Champion Customisation, new weapons, and more.

The Chaos Armour Pack is available for free. You can finally change the armour set of your Heretic Astartes in PvP, but you have to unlock the set first. Each class requires you to score a certain amount of kills per match to unlock the corresponding skin.

The new PvP mode is Helbrute Onslaught, which is playable on all maps. Two teams of Chaos Marines fight to control strategic areas, but also to take control of the Helbrute. The first team to take control of an objective gets to control the Helbrute, until the opposite team takes it down. One player gets to control the Helbrute at a time, and this player is picked randomly among players who participated in securing the control point. For the team that failed to secure the first control point to have the Helbrute on their side, they need to slay their opponents’ Helbrute and secure a new designated control point.

Controlling the Helbrute grants the team a strong advantage, but killing it rewards significant amounts of points to your team. The Helbrute uses a Helbrute Thunder Hammer in melee and a Plasma Cannon in range, and it can unleash a battle cry with its special skill to regenerate its HP.

Stratagems is a new PvE game mode. Unlike classic Operations, there are only two difficulty modes: Normal and Hard. What makes this new game mode different are the various Battlefield Conditions, which change every day and week and make each operation different.

Battlefield Conditions can either help or hinder your progress. Upon successful completion, you receive a new currency called Accolades, which can be exchanged for valuable rewards.

There are weekly and daily Stratagems, and each Operation has its own set of modifiers. Publisher Focus Entertainment provided a few examples:

• Summoner: Every uninterrupted call for Reinforcements summons the Extremis enemy.
• Where you aiming at: Friendly fire damage from firearms and explosives is enabled
• Cadia Stands: Imperial Guards spawn on levels.

Meanwhile, there are new PvP and PvE maps, the new Power Axe weapon (fans of the Warhammer 40,000 episode from Amazon’s Secret Level animated anthology series have been calling for this one for some time now), the Pyreblaster and Pyrecannon for PvE only, the new Hero Weapon Variants, and the new Mutalith Vortex Beast and Chaos Spawn enemy, the latter of which is seen in the image below. The Chaos Spawn comes in three variations, and is swifter and more agile than its bulk suggests. Focus warned players to expect a tough fight.

Check out the Update 10.0 patch notes below. The Techmarine, Space Marine 2’s first new class, is due out early 2026 with patch 12.

Last month, Focus lifted the lid on Space Marine 2’s second year of DLC, confirming patches 10 all the way up to 15, which takes us up to the end of the second quarter of next year (June 2026). On the way is a new Battle Barge expansion and a new Siege map coming Q2 2026.

Throughout the year, the Season Pass II will grant players nine new DLCs, with new Champion skins, armour pieces, and heraldry markings. While existing Chapters like the Blood Angels and Salamanders are to receive new cosmetics, fan-favorite Chapters like the Raptors, Iron Hands, and Carcharodons will get their due time in the spotlight.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 Update 10.0 Patch Notes:

GAMEPLAY & BALANCING TWEAKS

FIREARMS

Bolt Pistol: Headshot damage coefficient increased from 1.15 to 1.25 for all versions.

Master-Crafted Bolt Pistol Alpha

• Spread reduction increased from 15% to 30%.
• Recoil reduction increased from 20% to 40%.

Salvation of Bakka Artificer Bolt Pistol

• Spread reduction increased from 30% to 45%.
• Recoil reduction increased from 40% to 60%.

Gathalamor Crusade Relic Bolt Pistol

• Spread reduction increased from 55% to 70%.
• Recoil reduction increased from 60% to 80%.

Auto Bolt Rifle:

The Auto Bolt rifle suffers from that “default” gun syndrome that you swap to something more interesting immediately. The problem is that other guns, like Bolt Rifle, Bolt Carbine, Stalker Bolter and even Heavy Bolt Rifle are always going to be more specialized and more effective at what they do no matter what. Since the gun has a very limited number of versions, its perk tree is also very, very limited and it’s difficult to find a gameplay role with it. The correct move would probably be to merge it with Bolt Rifle variants, but the problem is that it would mess up with saves too much and that drastic move is too risky.

With this update we are going to try to make it a mix of all bolters, to make that “default” gun at least more effective, but I fear that this gun will always be outshadowed by more specialized bolters.

• Base damage increased by 25%.
• Added damage falloff curve from distance. After 20 meters, weapon damage falls by 25%.
• Headshot damage coefficient increased from 1.15 to 1.25 for all versions.

Heavy Bolt Rifle:​ Headshot damage coefficient increased from 1.15 to 1.25 for all versions except Drogos Reclamation and Ophelian Liberation.

• Drogos Reclamation Artificer Heavy Bolt Rifle Beta: Headshot damage coefficient increased from 1.15 to 1.35.
• Ophelian Liberation Relic Heavy Bolt Rifle Beta: Headshot damage coefficient increased from 1.15 to 1.35.

MELEE

Chainswor​d: Speed increased for all block versions.

Power Sword: Speed increased for all block versions.

Thunder Hammer:

The biggest issue of the Thunder Hammer right now is its contested health recovery, not its overall effectiveness. This will be addressed during contested health recovery rework. But at the moment, we wanted to improve it so it won’t feel like a worse version of other melee weapons.

• Speed increased slightly for all balanced and block versions.
• AoE radius for heavy and charged melee strikes increased by 50%.

GAMEPLAY QOL

• Added a new charged Shield Bash attack for Bulwark class.

With this update we are expanding Bulwark’s shield moveset to make shield based perk builds more interesting. We are going to continue doing this for other classes. While we think that overall Classes balance is good, the build variety within class could be improved and this cannot be done by simply tweaking numbers.

BALANCING – FIREARMS

​Las Fusil: Charging speed decreased from 1.1 sec to 1 sec.

​Stalker Bolt Rifle: Rate Of Fire increased from 150 shots per minute to 170 shots per minute.

​Occulus Bolt Carbine: Full damage range increased from 20 meters to 30 meters.

​Marksman Bolt Carbine: Headshot damage multiplier increased from 1.6 to 1.8.

​Plasma Incinerator: Common Shot damage decreased by 15%.

​Plasma damage: Fixed a bug where a player in a roll animation could not receive damage from plasma weapons.

BALANCING – MELEE

​Thunder Hammer: Fixed issue that caused the Thunder Hammer to have a longer reach.

BALANCING – ABILITIES

Sniper’s Camo Cloak Ability: Ability cooldown increased from 25 seconds to 35 seconds.

​Assault’s Jump Pack Ability

• Ground Pound Strike preparation time reduced by 30% for Chainsword and Power Fist. Also the new Power Axe has reduced preparation time.
• Minimum height for starting preparation of Ground Pound Strike increased from 6 metres to 9 meters.

​Bulwark: Bulwarks can now be knocked out of a shield stance if they take a lot of damage from enemies within 5 seconds.

PROGRESSION

Extended Weapon arsenal in PvP: Added Power Axe to Assault, Vanguard, Bulwark

XP Recalculated: The amount of experience required to earn rewards has been reduced, making progression faster and more rewarding.

New Levels Added: We’ve expanded the progression system. The new max level is 48.

OTHER PVP CHANGES

• Added new announcer events
• Large amount of small fixes in level geometry collision.

CUSTOMISATION

• Lots of minor customisation fixes.

OPERATIONS

Reliquary

• Enemies spawn in the tombs should now be slightly less aggressive.
• The ammo crate on the Heldrake’s bridge should now always spawn.

All: Lots of minor fixes with level geometry.

SIEGE MODE

• Lots of minor fixes with level geometry.
• Lots of minor fixes with enemies getting stuck in some places.
• Performance improvements.

AI

Carnifex: Fixed an issue causing the Carnifex to be too aggressive and too accurate with its ranged attacks.

All: Lots of minor fixes with animations.

GENERAL FIXES

• Fixed a bug preventing Adrenaline Surge from Block-type weapons to not stagger enemies.
• Fixed a bug causing the Auspex Scan effect to not apply to enemies after a perfect parry with the class perk “Battle Focus” equipped in some rare cases.
• Fixed a bug with Bulwark’s “Purity of purpose” perk not dealing damage to Barbed Strangler projectiles.
• Fixed a bug causing Assault’s Jump Pack ability to not land properly in some rare cases..
• Lots of minor bug fixes.
• Lots of minor localisation bug fixes.
• Lots of minor UI fixes.

TECH

• Crash fixes and general stability improvements.
• General connectivity improvements.

We’ve got plenty more on Space Marine 2 from our gamescom 2025 interview with Saber development chief Tim Willits. He spoke about how a large chunk of fans have “assumptions” about the Warhammer 40,000 universe that are incorrect as a result of the huge success of the game, why delaying Space Marine 2 was the best thing Saber ever did, and, of course, Space Marine 3.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.