{
"post": {
"title": "Just purchased horizon zero dawn! any tips to help me in my first playthrough? I'm playing on hard.",
"selftext": "I just started my save and I have about two hours in at this point. just helped Arana with the spear mission! I would really appreciate any tips that you could give me about this game.",
"url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/comments/18anu6g/just_purchased_horizon_zero_dawn_any_tips_to_help/"
},
"comments": [
{
"body": "Learn using your focus before you leave the sacred land. Level up a bit before ever going to kill the machine with Rost or doing the proving. Be comfortable with identifying weak spots on the machines. It’s been a while since I played ZD, but you should mostly just have watchers, striders, and scrappers in the area. Get comfortable around them, sneaking around them and killing them. Learn their alerted status and cool down times. This will get you the feel for timers for other enemies in the game. Hide in the red grass. lol. Use your whistle to lure machines in for quick kills. And level up what you can level up. \n\nThis is what I always do on my first play throughs, but I don’t like to struggle either.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "You also get (a few) points for wildlife kills, helpful early in the game. These provide useful meat and other parts that are helpful to sell for shards and/or use to upgrade your inventory capacity.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "What this guy said. Kill the shit out of some piggies."
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Be on the lookout for tear arrows and a bow that shoots them (this might be sold to Aloy as you explore later). Tear arrows “vibrate” tears armor and weapons off of machines, that will come in super useful for making defeating machines (especially bigger ones) a lot easier! Elemental arrows should not be overlooked either, as they can make taking out machines much easier too. Remember! If you find yourself in a battle pinch, always remember to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge! If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a Ravager! 😂",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Agree, so tearblast arrow will make your live easier. shooting the gun from ravager back then use it against them is fun. Too bad it's expensive and the material take a lot of hunting to make."
}
]
},
{
"body": "Fire arrows are very good against multiple targets and corrupted maschines especially in combination with the 3-Shot-Skill\n\n+ Dont forget you can \"slow down the time\" for better aim ( and i think you can combine this with jumping)\n\nBut besides that enjoy the story (avoid spoilers in this sub) and have fun",
"replies": [
{
"body": "yeah i figured out that by holding down 'tab' i can slow down time for as long as i want.\n\neven thought i cant turn while doing it its still a good way to dodge attacks that are fast",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Now that is a problem I wasn't expecting people to have. It never crossed my mind since every time I played the game I used a controller (first on PS4, and later on PC I still used one).\n\nCan't you just go into settings and change that keybind to something else? Maybe something that you don't mind having in alt that is not needed at the same time as wasd? Or a mouse side button (if yours has any)?"
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "The ropecaster is king.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Yep just got off and rope caster is a beast",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Focus on getting gold on all those challenges you can find. If you beat all of them you can a ropecaster that's stupid over powered."
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "I just restarted another play through and was reminded how hard the early game can be. Early weapons and buffs are pretty low powered, so the game is really trying to get you to skill up first. Kill all the animals you can to build up your carrying abilities (medicine, resources, ammo). With skills, I usually rush the ones that give me more salvage and then beeline Tinker. Do the weapon tutorials, as it's easy experience and you'll learn that the Trip/Rope casters are your friends. So take your time, get good at the basics while you figure out your style and enjoy!"
},
{
"body": "My tip would be not playing it hard lol"
},
{
"body": "That scrapper killed me several times the first time I played!"
},
{
"body": "Upgrade your freaking bags."
},
{
"body": "Also just re-started, man this game is huge, in the good way! Make sure you activate the tutorial missions for new weapons to obtain the experience."
},
{
"body": "Shoot shit, don't die. 🤣🤣"
},
{
"body": "Know that jumping off the ledge might take a few tries. Don't bother pressing square. It won't help. \n\nPressing square only helps you glide. In the sequel, not here. :)",
"replies": [
{
"body": "lol I’m replaying FW and my wife is replaying ZD. I went to do something in her game and immediately jumped off a cliff and died."
}
]
},
{
"body": "One thing that was a little jarring to me. You barely get any gear from the story itself. Minus a few choice items the best gear is purchased from merchants. I didn't really understand that (and you get two pieces of gear early for quests so I thought that would continue) so I didn't bother checking them (the merchants) out much. Made my first run a lot harder than it needed to be.\n\nAnyway, following skills are the most useful combat wise:\n\n-Double/triple shot\n\n-Concentration/Concentration +\n\n-Hunters Reflexes (can be difficult to use but very powerful once mastered)\n\nOther than that I'd recommend also picking up Expert Carver."
},
{
"body": "Use the focus to scan enemies and find the weak points, then go after those spots. If you just fire away at the enemies they take a ton of damage and it’s all a bit tedious."
},
{
"body": "Kill animals to gather skins (blue) and bones (green) in order to upgrade your storage. Resource is the most important since that lets you carry more materials that you'll be farming from local machines. You should be able to upgrade to max level with material available in the initial area."
},
{
"body": "Read everything n take it in. Get all berries till Ur pack is full. Get lots of wood. Kill everything I'm the initial area (except NPC of course lol) then do the mission to leave the embrace",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Also make sure to read all datapoints, books, listen to holographic video's"
}
]
},
{
"body": "Do as many side quests as you can! You get good rewards for completing them. Practice on machines by hunting them! They respawn when you leave and come back. Loot their corpses! Try and upgrade your gear ASAP. Try to get blue versions of your gear if you can. And use those skill points! You also don't have to just stick to the main mission. Explore as much as you like! There is no time limit to exploring the world."
},
{
"body": "Be patient and utilize stealth. It’s mainly a projectile game and spear combat is not the name of the game unless you’re in a pinch.\n\nMy friend got it into his head it was supposed to be like Dark Souls combat and hated the game. I told him it was never advertised that way but he still quit almost immediately after getting rocked by machines trying to do close combat."
},
{
"body": "Re: Playing on hard: Good choice.\n\nMy first playthrough was also on hard. It's very manageable. Normal difficulty is kinda lightweight. My second playthrough was on vary-hard. Haven't had the guts to try Ultra. Dodging needs to be a reflex action. Get that muscle memory early.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I played through normal on my first play through and I just started NG+ on ultra hard. Honestly, it’s not that bad at all, especially with all my top tier weapons from my loadout. \n\nNo healthbars is a little strange, but easily manageable. Biggest thing I’ve noticed so far is that I run past more enemies and ignore them, and that I use way more arrows than before.\n\n Taking on deathbringers and thunderjaws feel no different than normal when you don’t get hit"
}
]
},
{
"body": "Get triple notch as soon as possible. It multiplies your DPS and makes removing components so much easier.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "just got double notch. on the way to third",
"replies": [
{
"body": "You will miss it in HFW"
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Traps will help you through the harder encounters."
},
{
"body": "My main advice would be to avoid this sub, YouTube and anywhere else you might get spoilers! The story reveals itself in a really bit-by-bit way which made it so intriguing and made for some amazing reveals. Have fun!"
},
{
"body": "I just started a new playthrough on ultra-hard (not NG+).\n\nIt is hard... So much grinding with silent strike to save up shards for better weapons and armour. I now have 3 purple weapons, so progress is a little faster now, but I want some purple armour before I take on some of the biggest machines."
}
]
}