Do I need the DLC's?

[a pimp named helldiver]

Title. I bought the game years back, only played for about 8 hours. Wanna get back in. is anything required or nah?

[Leon]

nothing required, but if u wanna buy a dlc weapon or 2, i suggest buying armory pass as it includes all previous dlc weapons for way cheaper price than buying individual weapons, ( i think excluding a barbed wire bat that i forgot its name for how useless it is ).

that is all.

[Hudson]

No, all content and updates available to everyone, nothing is paywalled.

DLC weaponry are optional guns you can buy and play with, they aren't P2W and just add guns in case you aren't satisfied with the many the game already has.

[Serious]

In short:
No, you don't need any dlc.

In detail:
None of the DLC weapons is "pay to win". Some are good, other ok, some of them pretty bad (just effectivness, no statement about animation or general implementation).
The skins of the weapons are also just skins, no affect on the weapon quality.
Same for the payed characters or costumizations.

[Igyzone]

The DLCs are meh plus the game has this sharing system that if you play with someone that has them, you'll be able to access any additional weapons your mate owns.

Nothing P2W.

[Lyrik46807]

The DLC weapons are "shared content". If just one player of the lobby have a DLC weapons every player can use it.

=> If you join a lobby look at the shared content and try the weapons. If you like it/them buy the armory pass, if not, then not.

[Littlefoot]

You don't need it, none of the current DLC weapons are must-haves.

[Gunthak]

None of the DLC guarantees the win/prevents the loss.
It's more akin to extra variety/playstyle gap-filler, which is fine.

[Lokaror]

Not really. Maybe a dlc weapon if you really want one but beyond that the game is perfectly fine as is. Which is nice just because they haven't yet seen fit to milk the game in that way.

[Ricardo Milos]

No, you don't need any of them. However, there are some useful DLC weapons like Mosin, C-Bow, Glock 18C & Frost Fang. Others are either mediocre or trash.

[Tacticowl]

I don't find myself using any of them regularly save for the g18+shield. You're not missing much, most of the dlc weapons are not very good, and some of them even straight up bugged (the minigun bugs your mouse sensitivity, they still haven't fixed that to this day)

The new thermite bore for instance is pretty awful and does nothing a few shots with a trenchgun/spitfire can't do. The explosion doesn't even deal decent damage as far as I could tell.