{
"post": {
"title": "The Ultimate Horizon Zero Dawn Guide containing everything from Story tips to specific combat tactics that somebody should've made a long time ago",
"selftext": "\\[Last updated on 25.02.2021\\]\n\nAll spoilers should be covered, please correct me if you find any that I missed!\n\nI've broken this guide up into major segments and I might add more with future updates to it. Feel free to make update requests and please redirect any players to it with your own additions, if you see fit. Currently, it consists of \"SKILLS\", \"STORY\", \"GENERAL GAMEPLAY TIPS\", \"EQUIPMENT\", \"TACTICAL COMBAT\" and \"SITUATION-SPECIFIC TIPS\". If this guide is overwhelming, read only the part of if that interests you.\n\nI'm open to edit suggestions from anyone.\n\nThis comes from someone who has completed HZD on UH on their first playtrough, so I have little to no experience with other difficulties, but you can find difficulty comparisons online and adjust things for yourself.\n\n# SKILLS\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/rtbn3l0ws5d61.png?width=1785&format=png&auto=webp&s=4b667fd512b09a84f4849cf015730dc55d44d8ad\n\nI've attached a tier list of skills above, but I would like to make some notes:\n\n1. Strike from above is obviously only useful on hilly or jagged terrain, and the bigger the machine, the harder it is to use against it.\n2. Silent strike doesn't do anything against huge machines, but it's still an essential skill.\n3. Strong Strike (+) does NOT affect Crtitical Hit!\n4. I DID unlock Hunter Reflexes early on, while I was still near the Nora lands. I quickly deemed it too OP and reverted to an previous game save. That skill honestly turned me into a COD rage kid that got mad every time his slide tactics didn't work 1 in 1000 times, that's how much I started relying on it.\n5. Concentration + is only ever useful with Fast Reload, since you can get the aim benefit by using Concentration briefly and only right before shooting, having it never run out anyway if you're skilled enough.\n6. When downing a machine, don't assume that you need to Critical Hit it in order to do the most damage do it. When fighting dangerous / bigger machines you will more often than not be able to get in a few shots before depleting the timer almost completely. TL;DR: only use Critical Hit when the down timer is about to run out.\n7. I've done over 1000 damage with a fully charged Banuk Hunter Bow with triple hardpoint arrows fully upgraded with very rare damage mods. (In case you're wondering what kind of potential the white marked mods have. I'd say the DPS that comes from this setup is around 1000 damage every 5-15 seconds, greatly depending on where you hit and how fast you can set up a shot)\n8. Even tho I marked Knockdown as OP on most difficulties, even on these difficulties you will have big trouble knocking down huge enemies, so don't count on it in that instance.\n9. Combat Override (+) can be useful if you encounter 1 big machine that you can override, that you really don't want to fight right then and could get in the way of you doing other things, like that one Ravager near the double Rockbreaker corrupted zone, north of Medidian.\n10. I deemed all repair skills useless since you, in my opinion, should never need them, because there's not a good way of bringing for example a Sawtooth around the map with you to fight other things, once he clears his immediate vicinity, he is 100% useless to you, so there's no point in repairing him after a fight (trust me, you can't do it during a fight)\n11. You should only get Hoarder after you've maxed out your resource carry capacity.\n\n# STORY\n\nYou can easily get caught up in doing the quests in HZD, but I have some tips for you that might help you enjoy the story a lot more.\n\n1. If anyone has questions regarding the story I will happily answer them, there doesn't seem to be a consistent yet easily understandable documentation on the story, and especially the lore of the HZD world and Aloy and >!Elisabet!<.\n2. During a quest, you should know that you can talk to people, like, A LOT OF PEOPLE, I just started a new game+ knowing this and apparently I've missed so much dialogue during the Sacred Lands phase because I simply didn't realise I could talk to anyone unless a quest marker specifically tells me to. For example (this example is taken from The Proving, if you've played it, you can probably read this): >!Aloy runs in The Proving mainly in order to talk to Theresa to find out more about her mother, which she gets the chance to do right after The Blessing, in the same area, but you are never prompted to talk to her, so I simply walked away and only found any useful information about Aloy's mother much later, after the Proving.!<\n3. Contrary to what some others might say, I think you should not complete the area you are currently in fully. You might enjoy to come back later on and do side quests / camps / corrupted zones / collect collectibles etc in areas that you are familiar with, for nostalgia's sake.\n4. I advise you to only start the \">!Looming Shadow!<\" quest after you have done everything you were interested in in the game that is quest and story related, since this quest is the last quest of the main story and changes everything so dramaticaly that the game needs to be reset to before doing \">!The Looming Shadow!<\" after you complete it, in order to keep the gameplay part of the game connected to the story.\n5. The Cut is extremely harsh in comparison to the vanilla game, leave it at the end (still, it should be explored before playing thru \">!The Looming Shadow!<\" quest) or play it earlier on to make fights in the Carja territory much easier.\n6. Sometimes, when in crouded places, not everyone will show up on your focus, leaving the people you can actually talk to show up exclusively, this can be useful if you want to find out everything that you can. This seems to be...inconsistent, though, sometimes everyone gets highlighted by your focus.\n7. Many characters that set you out on quests are still up for talk even after sending you to God knows where to do God knows what. You can learn many things by going back to talk to them, especially Theresa.\n8. You should probably read any datapoints you encounter on the spot because many of them refer to the place where they were found, and reading them without spacial context was often confusing to me. Also, you can rescan datapoints to reveal their name and be able to play them again without opening the notebook and trying to find out which one of them you were just looking at.\n9. The main and side quests do not take you to all places on the map, but some very interesting encounters / quests reside in these places. You should explore the map, especially settlements and anything that looks like an empty nook next to a cliff (some of them are empty tho).\n10. Some seemingly random places end up telling you something about the story and lore of the game, I will not give examples as I don't want to spoil anything.\n11. Quest order can matter to some extent, as dialogue about certain things is possible if Aloy has been trough a specific quest sometimes. I think this is most prelavent with Nakoa's quest line as you can sometimes talk / ask about her.\n12. You shouldn't try to do everything as fast as possible, I think, so it would be a good idea to use as little fast travel as possible, and perhaps only fast travel to settlements. I say this because there are a LOT of random encounters scattered throughout the map that are not marked in any way, which are really fun to come across.\n\n# GENERAL GAMEPLAY TIPS\n\n1. Lenses are traded for Carja (blue) outfits while hearts are traded for Shadow (purple) weapons and outfits (same as braidings). DO NOT, under any circumstance sell these items before you've bought every single respective piece of equipment that you could need them, you will regret it unless you really enjoy hunting certain machines. You would rather upgrade your pouch, trust me. Furthermore, some items like Ancient Debris are much more valuable and more plentiful than machine parts.\n2. You should only trade resources for shards when you need to free up inventory space, but again, consider upgrading your pouches first before selling these. Although I don't use these weapons, some weapons require enourmous amounts of resources to be used. For example, I could use up 500 blaze in only around 30 minutes using the blast sling.\n3. Rich and bony meat seem to be way less useful than fatty meat, consider selling your exccess of those.\n4. The Cut is extremely harsh in comparison to the vanilla game, leave it at the end (still, it should be explored before playing thru \">!The Looming Shadow!<\" quest) or play it earlier on to make fights in the Carja territory much easier.\n5. Keep all stealth mods you find, they seem to be EXTREMELY rare. I think I might have gotten under 15 of them (including green ones) during my 101 hours of playtime. Furthermore, stealth is extremely useful, you should invest into it even if you don't plan on using it to fight. It can come in extremely handy, for example, while hunting wildlife, or in any other situation in which you don't want machines to notice you. You can avoid entire fights if you are skilled enough to get right thru unnoticed. Also, the bigger the enemy, the easier they spot you: for example, a Rockbreaker can instantly spot me (red icon) in a 57% stealth outfit from more than 100 meters away.\n6. You will need a wide array of equipment to take down machines, don't assume the best Blast Sling in the game can destroy every single enemy in the game (not on UH at least). You will need at least 3-4 different weapons to be combat effective in any situation, same as outfits. We will talk about outfits and weapons more in the EQUIPMENT segment.\n7. If you shoot from far enough away, you can remain hidden even if you hit enemies, seems to work best while hitting ONLY weakspots or instakilling enemies.\n8. Only watchers will actively alert all nearby machines, from my experience.\n9. Tearing off a component seems to do nearly no damage to the machine in some cases (correct me if I'm wrong, but I can barely tell on UH since I don't have health bars). This can work for us in some cases, like when we want to tear off a cannon then override the source machine for aid, but can also work against us when we want to straight kill that machine. If you want to do maximum damage to a machine, I recommend leaving some components on there that you can shoot off with simple damage (like arrows or hardpoint arrows) to increase your damage efficiency.\n10. Sometimes, weakspots can be covered by a protective casing which doesn't allow you to, for example, set off a blaze canister using fire. (This made me assume that I just couldn't make these explode even tho the game was telling me so for so long...up until I found my first grazers). These pieces of armor or casings can be tricky to remove with the Tearblaster, because you often end up removing the component itself. I recommend using simple damage to remove the layer of protection instead of tear-based weapons, the best option being the hardpoint arrows, from my experience.\n11. The Banuk bows get increased elemental severity if you charge them up all the way, not just damage!\n12. If you've been playing games on the regular, choose Ultra Hard, it's seriously not that hard in the end if you don't play with a controller.\n13. I think you should disable the dynamic map markers for both quests and waypoints, they usually act like a horrible GPS system. I also recomment turning off \"mount follows road\" because most of the time it will end out with you going into a river if you rely on it, just follow the road yourself. By the way, if you do follow this advice, it is much smoother to steer with the mouse than with WASD, but you need to turn your camera a lot (like 20 degrees) to get the character turning at all, you'll get used to it.\n14. Handling has a 200% cap when modding (as in putting a total of 4 handling mods with +50% each maxes out handling, a 5th one would make no difference) Any other weapon stat has a 150% cap. This is only relevant with Adept weapons only available in NG+. Check out [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/comments/6pxt1d/hardcapped_stats_adept_weapon_modifications/) to find out more about weapon caps and the required elemental severity per machine class for triggering the status effect.\n15. When searching for anything that can be found within a certain area, like Metal Flowers. for example, the elevation of the Metal Flower icon is at the exact elevation of the actual Metal Flower that you're looking for. You can get the icon to appear by placing a marker on it.\n16. If you need shards, shell walkers seem to be a good target along with bandit camps, more often than not you can make upwards of 500 shards from a single bandit camp. Ruin exploration can also be lucrative, along with finding Banuk Figures and ancient artifacts, metal flowers are good too but you need to find at least 10...apex machines can also yield a lot of stuff which you can trade in (Thunderjaws, Behemoths, Stormbirds etc) but they are tougher to bring down.\n17. You can go underwater by holding CTRL. Not sure how it helps yet, I've just discovered it myeself.\n\n# EQUIPMENT\n\n**A LOT of information online about the stats of weapons is simply OUTDATED, listing things like 50% base stealth for the Nora Silent Hunter Heavy (which in fact has 30% base). The stats's representations have been modified in the meantime, meaning that the previous 50% stealth is equal to the actual 30% stealth, for example.**\n\nI will not refer to the Adept (New Game+) gear as new players will not get to play with these right away anyway.\n\nSome equipment in this game is, in my opinion, completely useless, and some other things are absolutely necessary, I will be going over which ones are what, and how to use each one of them effectively.\n\nAlso, OBVIOUSLY you don't have to follow my advice religiously, especially when it comes to my choice of mods.\n\nI also attached my current weapon loadout that I frequently use right now.\n\nBanuk weapons can be charged for around double the time it normally takes to fully charge a bow to do around 2.5x more damage than when using a shadow bow, however, not charging them FULLY will result in you dealing only around 60% damage of a normal shadow bow. I think you can also increase your DPS by a significant amount by charging shots completely and using double / triple shot. The stats below were captured with simple hunter arrows shot in the main chassis of Tramplers.\n\n&#x200B;\n\n|Undercharged Banuk Hunter|Shadow Hunter Bow|Fully Charged Banuk Hunter|\n|:-|:-|:-|\n|7 damage|11 damage|28 damage|\n\nIn the pictures below, the stat values are listed for the fully charged shot (aka \\~2x the charge time of normal weapons) for the Banuk weapons, so if you're looking for the Shadow version stats, just divide everything except handling by around 2.5. Although if you're looking for accurate Shadow stats you should consult the wiki.\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/uwttqmnzs5d61.png?width=702&format=png&auto=webp&s=96430ba26c6c5605f800f5727e50a1171a80b303\n\nI will be listing the trading requirements for the SHADOW variants, you can probably find the others in game.\n\n**Weapons**\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/8g774f81t5d61.png?width=326&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa55d256def9fdc7c769c6619d2e75ab498fb576\n\nThe Hunter Bow also requires 2 Watcher hearts. It's the first weapon you will ever touch and also the best (that being the Shadow OR Banuk variant if you own Frozen Wilds). I think you should aim to have 2 of them, actually. One of them should be damage oriented with a little bit of handling as a secondary stat, and the other should be fire oriented (but you should put some damage on it too, because fire damage scales with the damage stat, not with the fire stat), again, with handling as the secondary stat. The fire one's use is obvious, I think it's the best way to deal fire damage. The damage one is quite possibly the #1 best damage dealer in the whole game if you can be arsed to target weakspots. The hardpoint arrows of the shadow variant (and Banuk) seem amazing to me, topping even the damage of the Lodge Blast Sling with the Banuk version, all while not eating thru a mountain of resources in the meantime. Just target any components with it, but if none are available, shooting the main chassis is also good. The hardpoint arrows can also easily one shot headshot human enemies, quite possibly without any damage upgrades even.\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/zw4ntm42t5d61.png?width=311&format=png&auto=webp&s=061a81dcbb910baf2d9bf449cc34691f8272450c\n\nThe Sharpshot Bow also requires 2 Sawtooth hearts. It's good up until you find the Tearblaster in my opinion, because it is your only good source of Tear which can blast off components, armor and even guns. I suggest upgrading it with tear and / or handling. The simple precision arrows are good at taking out humans with one headshot early game when you don't have hardpoint arrows for your hunter bow yet. The DPS of this bow is good as long as you don't yet have the Shadow Hunter Bow with hardpoint arrows, use it with double / triple shot to maximize your efficiency with it. You will probably have a hard time ever managing to draw the bowstring all the way back for maximum precision tho, as you will probably get attacked and have to dodge. The harvest arrows aren't useful in the slightest in my opinion, they can knock off components but they seem to do nearly zero damage...so...why tf would I want to use them? it's not like the machine will just leave and let me pick up whatever it dropped...Also, harvest arrows don't seem to be effective against enemy armor or guns. Wether you chose to do simple damage with the Hunter Bow or the Sharpshot Bow is up to you, their DPS is nearly the same comparing the simple Hunter Bow arrows and the Precision arrows.\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/kqxyg813t5d61.png?width=247&format=png&auto=webp&s=c915fa345b74f1eedfa2b0014d48b55f91ada9f0\n\nThe Sling also requires 2 crystal braiding. It's good if you don't have the double and triple arrow notch skills. It's a good way to deal elemental severity but if I were you, I would switch to the War Bow and get the double and triple arrow skill ASAP, it's much better in my opinion.\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/0dc4s6x3t5d61.png?width=273&format=png&auto=webp&s=c99666c46447c83258b228818b54a4de8093eb73\n\nThe Rattler also requires 2 boar, rabbit and fox skins. It's good mess-around fun but it's range is like...10 meters, it's actually sad. Might be useful against human enemies, but I never liked it even for that. It doesn't even come close to the Sling or War Bow when it comes to elemental severity.\n\nSome people sayd that it is effective and so I went ahead and tried it against a bunch of enemies, and it is definitely more effective than I first concluded. Still, I don't think it stands up too well against the Sling and the War Bow because you need constant fire to be effective with it, which is hard to achieve when you're fighting a serious fight because you will need to dodge, reload and craft a lot of ammo in the meantime, because it eats thru ammo SO fast. Also, the Rattler uses more chillwater to operate because it does significantly less elemental severity per ammo pack. So it's not as bad as I first thought, it's usable, but just barely, and you will struggle with it in some fights for sure.\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/l09c1js4t5d61.png?width=307&format=png&auto=webp&s=976f866354fb2b08a8c805f6c48b45a9d3915823\n\nThe Tripcaster also requires 2 Scrapper hearts. It can be used to REAAAALLLYY cheese the game (mostly referring to the Carja variant). You can simply spam a bagillion tripwires in one spot and kill a giant machine with it in an instant, just by luring it to you...it's overpowered as f\\*ck. If you're looking to not cheese your way thru the game with it, I have a few tips for you, even tho I barely ever used it. You can shoot trips (I'll call the stuff it shoots \"trips\" I guess) as close to an enemy as you'd like without ever getting spotted, meaning you could set up a big course which you could simply run thru, with the machines behind you, in order to kill them all. It can also be used as a backup last resort by making an area with multiple shock traps for example, that would shock any enemy that comes close. You should only upgrade it with 1 single damage type in mind (simple damage, fire, shock etc) to max out your efficiency. Haven't used this thing since I finished that one Nora hunting trial just outside of the Sacred Lands that requires it.\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/zhmw25p5t5d61.png?width=315&format=png&auto=webp&s=8173c2575542a7e1b73c90c18e128bf105872e08\n\nThe Blast Sling also requires 2 Lancehorn hearts. It uses a f\\*ckton of resources but can also deal a f\\*ckton of damage, especially early game, having more than 2x the DPS of the Hunter Bow if we don't count the Tear, which usually accounts to nothing anyway. Upgrade it with a mix of damage and handling, the more damage you put on it, the less blaze you will use. Hitting components with hardpoint arrows is still much better, from my experience.\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/ov55zpc9t5d61.png?width=235&format=png&auto=webp&s=beca975b969660aa131a1b821975b66e3de0d35e\n\nThe Tearblaster also requires 2 Thunderjaw hearts. It's going to cover all of your Tear needs but is closer-range than the tearblast arrows. I think you can get it from a quest but I've no idea which one, but I don't think you should buy it, just find it.\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/8padyg7at5d61.png?width=295&format=png&auto=webp&s=79b4fc797081d47022186e22ea4fef12b66e6fe7\n\nThe War Bow also requires 2 Trampler hearts. It's awesome. I will dedicate a section to it in the TACTICAL COMBAT section to talk about how I've been using it. I wouldn't reeaaaally bother with the green version but the shadow version is amazing, even more so the Banuk one, I'm going to say that you should upgrade it focusing on one single damage type + handling.\n\nhttps://preview.redd.it/6nowclzat5d61.png?width=324&format=png&auto=webp&s=bc02e73e870d9502e84ec3791899e9bba501aad2\n\nThe Ropecaster also requires 2 Snapmaw hearts and is arguably the most underpriced shadow weapon. It's probably the best utility weapon in the entire game, even the green version is amazing and worth buying. Upgrade it with full handling as it can't do any damage. This one gets a dedicated section in TACTICAL COMBAT as well.\n\n**Outfits**\n\nShort Version: Elemental protection outfits are okay. Someone mentioned them in a comment saying they are not too bad so use them if you really feel like it, but I would strongly recommend avoiding them until you have shards just laying around.\n\nLong Version: I tried the freeze protection armor paired with freeze protection potions against glinthawks which almost completely negated their freeze attacks, so yes, the armor is hecking effective, but I let myself get hit by one of their claw attacks and I took a LOT of damage, it nearly killed me (should've been 360 damage but I think I got hit twice by the same attack which happens very often from my experience, especially with melee attacks, which is also a big reason why I recommend melee protection above all else), whereas taking a hit from one of their freeze attacks with no protection potion would've dealt around 120 damage only, and I think only 30 with a potion. Pair all of this with some more annoying small machines roaming around like striders or watchers and you've got yourself an ass-whoopin' if you're wearing elemental protection. The thing with elemental protection is that it is extremely specific all of the time, and elemental attacks are more often than not weaker or rarer than melee and ranged ones.\n\nIt was also mentioned in the comments that we can always switch outfits mid-fight, which is true...but let's be honest, that's borderline an exploit. Imagine switching your outfit every time before being hit, we would be nearly invincible against every single attack machines could throw at us. Feel free to buy whatever outfits you want and switch them around like that but I will neither do it myself nor endorse it.\n\nThe stalwart armor is only ever useful against watchers...yay...(correct me if I'm wrong)\n\nThe Silks armor is...meh...I don't understand it.\n\n[Also requires 2 Shell-walker hearts](https://preview.redd.it/9gcxesiet5d61.png?width=270&format=png&auto=webp&s=c676b58bd8a847795981b7ddb8b158a0ab540a8c)\n\nThe melee protection outfits are great in my opinion, and you should have one with you to equip right before fighting machines. I think you should get these ones over the ranged protection outfits because in a gameplay scenario, the moment you will be the most vulnerable will be when you are within melee range, not when far away. Upgrade it with further melee protection.\n\n[Also requires 2 crystal braidings](https://preview.redd.it/71csum1gt5d61.png?width=259&format=png&auto=webp&s=76ca0cd357980d5087677888207d04e3821231d2)\n\nThe ranged protection outfits are best against human enemies since they seem to mostly attack you with arrows. Upgrade it with further ranged protection.\n\n[Also requires 2 Bellowback hearts](https://preview.redd.it/i9iuzk4ht5d61.png?width=317&format=png&auto=webp&s=38aff6d664c33e7ae6222a0679529f90677b8408)\n\nThe stealth outfits are by far the most useful as long as you pair them with an upgraded silent strike and you fight in areas where there is enough cover. They can also be useful to completely avoid fights, especially when hunting for meat, or picking plants, or scavenging thru ruins. Ignore every other stat and boost stealth with mods. Be warned that not every fight you will need to get thru will allow stealth as a viable option, especially cauldrons. They get a dedicated section in the TACTICAL COMBAT segment.\n\nShield weaver is an outfit you can find in the game. It protects against all types of damage but often needs to recharge between hits and can be obliterated by chip damage (like the shots from a ravager cannon). The game rewards you with enough power cells to get it by finding them in main quest locations. I highly recommend this outfit, it seems balanced in comparison to other top-tier armor but looks awesome and features some nice interactions with certain things, especially in The Cut.\n\nIn the end I highly suggest getting a stealth outfit and a melee protection one (or shield weaver), picking the one that you see fit before every fight, although you could probably get thru most of the game with just stealth.\n\n# TACTICAL COMBAT\n\nI will talk about specific combat strategies in this segment.\n\n**Stealth**\n\nEarly game, stealth is extremely useful if you simply sneak around and silent strike enemies. All small enemies die in one hit from this attack, medium and large ones will take more, and I think huge ones can't even be effectively attacked with silent strike.\n\nMid game, stealth gets interesting. First of all I recommend getting as much stealth as possible and Strong Strike +. What you'll need to do is:\n\n1. get close\n2. silent strike the enemy\n3. run away and break LOS until they lose awareness of you and their icon turns yellow\n4. insert an override of another machine if you can\n5. repeat\n\nThis is amazingly shown in [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFwYvNGyGxA&ab_channel=Violin-TGames) by Violin-T Games. (It works very well on UH too, don't worry) You can combine this with placing down some blast trips every now and again to create some absolute chaos among enemy machines.\n\nI also fully and highly recommend stealth when dealing with bandit camps, I've done every single bandit camp in the game using stealth. Also, don't panic if they see you, just get out of sight and find another attack angle.\n\nLate game, you will use stealth to avoid fights you are no longer interested in so it is still very much worth having, it's even useful for some quests that allow you to bypass enemies completely.\n\nAlso, if you ever have two targets in the same spot, you don't need to break stealth to take them down. All you need to do is get as close as you can, headshot one of them and immediately silent strike the other, works every time as long as you crouch before you silent strike.\n\nOn that note, it seems that sometimes you can't silent strike if you're standing, same with critical hits, but I found that if you try to do them while sliding or crouching, it almost always works.\n\nNOTE: In order for enemies to lose awareness of the player, the player not only needs to break LOS but also get at least \\~(5-10) meters away from the enemy, but this distance varies greatly proportional with enemy size! u/Crasp27 said that we don't need to be farther than \\~10m, but I've tested this even further and I got the same result. Even if the enemy is directly behind a huge wall and I'm standing still, he doesn't lose awareness of me until I move away. I did this by tying down a machine next to a wall and then walking behind said wall.\n\n**The mighty ropecaster**\n\nSo usually, you shoot machines with it until they are down completely, which is cool and all BUT, you can attach only one rope to them and it will STILL limit their movement to the distance from which you shot.\n\nHere's an example: you're fighting a scrapper and you shoot a rope into it from 5 meters away. Now, the scrapper's range of motion is limited to 5 meters away from where you shot it from! So even tho he's not down, if he wants to move farther away, he will have to stop attacking and dodging in order to get rid of your rope, giving you PLENTY of chance to shoot at it's components and anihilate it, with ONE single rope! So, the best strategy is to shoot from as close as possible then run to force them to take time to break the rope while you shoot them, then repeat!\n\nFurthermore, if you shoot enough ropes into it to bring it down completely, you can override it too! (Assuming you have the override for it unlocked)\n\nAlso, while they are downed, don't rush to critical hit them, because critical hits instantly take them out of the downed state. Do damage by other means until the down timer nearly runs out, then, when it's nearly out, critical hit them. THEN, after they break the ropes, you can actually critical hit them a second time right before they get up, dealing an absolute TON of damage by the end of this process, by using nearly no resources.\n\nThe Ropecaster can also be used to take machines out of combat so you can focus on one single machine at a time.\n\nThe Ropecaster has a tear stat, too, and it works in more specific ways than usual, which is beautifully detailed in [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/horizon/comments/6oc83g/how_tear_works/) by u/EruditeAF. The jist of it is that ropes do tear against components every 10 seconds and when they break, they do another round of tear. If the rope does enough tear to a component that it falls off completely, the rope disconnects too. I'm pretty sure this is the same against armor not just components. Honestly? I would recommend leaving tear as low as possible on it, so the ropes stay in for the longest amount of time possible, limiting the movement of machines.\n\nThe ropes break if used on Rockbreakers that then tunnel down so they aren't very effective against them, but they are very effective against others like Stormbirds. The Stormbird's heart that I took down not long ago is trembling in my pocket while hearing this!\n\n**The War Bow**\n\nYou will need the Tinker skill to make your War Bow as versatile as possible, but even without it, it can be a great weapon.\n\nBefore entering combat, know your enemy, and I'll give you an example:\n\nYou're about to fight Tramplers, which have a body weak to Freeze and Power Cells on their backs (no, these are NOT the power cells you need for shield weaver, by the way).\n\nSince they have power cells on their backs, upgrading shock would be suboptimal.\n\nIf there are smaller machines around them, which you can corrupt with triple notched corruption arrows, you should max corruption on your War Bow (note at the end of this section) to corrupt these machines so they can help you.\n\nIf there aren't smaller, easily corruptable machines around, use freeze + handling mods to maximize freeze severity which will enable you to do enormous damage.\n\nNOTE: corrupted machines will often attack the player if they shoot at the machine more than once, that's why I recommend using triple shot.\n\nIf you do not have Tinker unlocked, I recommend using mods that upgrade freeze and handling. Also, if you have a Banuk War Bow, holding it down all the way not only doubles whatever insignificant damage it does, it also doubles elemental severity.\n\n# SITUATION-SPECIFIC TIPS\n\n1. Setting Glinthawks on fire causes them to crash to the ground (They don't get stunned tho). But I still prefer tying them down with the Ropecaster.\n2. This one requires an example: let's say we're fighting Fire Bellowbacks which have a chassis strong against fire. They also have blaze canisters tucked away behind some armor plating in their undercarriage. You might think setting these on fire is useless since they are strong against fire, but the damage from these can still mean a lot in a fight. This can apply to a LOT of machines.\n3. If you destroy a Trampler's processing core, the fire status effect that it creates will NOT run out, meaning that the machine dies after some time no matter what.\n4. Even after you down a machine, you can still use it's components to create AOE effects of freeze, fire and shock, although I haven't been able to take guns off of downed machines during my tests. Some of the hand-placed wrecks contain elemental components that can't be set off, though. This also applies to elemental components that have been shot off.\n\n# EXTRAS\n\nAlso, thank you in advance for any suggestions, upvotes, comments or even awards, I appreciate y'all!\n\nI removed the edit markers to keep the structure of the post.\n\nAll of the following have added something to this guide, either in a comment or a sepparate post: Violen-T Games (YT video), u/A_Dragon, u/Crasp27, u/vegan_cookies5, u/EruditeAF, u/unnecessaryrioting, u/fishling.\n\nHonestly, turns out there's more info about the game out there than I first thought, but I swear to God I couldn't find it without the people mentioned above.\n\n# And that's it! As I said, I will probably add more to this, but for now, here's your HZD best bae:\n\n[Those manly hands tho](https://preview.redd.it/eobl9rwkt5d61.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=21c1e1c6d7a15d5c58f2c5e5db7f85a79046a98b)",
"url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/l3kv5p/the_ultimate_horizon_zero_dawn_guide_containing/"
},
"comments": [
{
"body": "*saves for future reference*"
},
{
"body": "Also saving for later. Thanks so much for putting this together!",
"replies": [
{
"body": "You're welcome, I enjoyed making it a lot! Looking forward to adding other people's suggestions in there, there must be so much I missed."
}
]
},
{
"body": "The rattler is actually one of the most broken items in the game (second only to tripcaster). I didn’t find this out until much later when I was struggling with certain challenges. \n\nIt’s the fastest way to kill stalkers (I had to use it on the trial to get a blazing sun), and very effective against any large enemy that wants to stay close to you. \n\nTying enemies down with the rope caster then rattling them to death is a very simple strategy that is effective against almost every machine. \n\nI also disagree that the elemental armors aren’t worth buying. You should definitely hold off until you have money to spare, but cold/fire can be particularly useful against some of the more annoying enemies. Yeah, potions work, but it’s honestly easier in most cases to just don an upgraded armor and not have to worry about it. \n\nIt might be a good idea to mention that you can switch out weapons/armor (from your menu) mid combat as well. It took me some time to realize this. \n\nI agree with just about everything else.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I will try the rattler with that specific strategy in mind next time I get the chance. And about the trial that had us kill stalkers, I did it with just the Shadow Hunter Bow I think, with the ropecaster to help me out. Nowadays I just stun stalkers with the War Bow then shoot their weakspots, they're honestly easy prey this way.\n\nI agree with you about the armors, but the thing is, I NEVER had money to spare during my playtrough xD There were always MUCH better weapons and outfits to buy and since my prices were the UH ones I was always behind when it came to equipment. I remember entering the Carja territory with 1 single blue item and almost exclusively green mods lol, even tho I pretty much completed the area outside of the sacred lands.\n\nI'll look more into these, thanks for the info\n\nEDIT: Excusively for reference's sake, what difficulty do you play on?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I usually had the stealth armor on 99% of the time so it’s true that one is definitely the best. \n\nThat’s interesting I always had a lot of money. But maybe that’s because I always did full territory clears. \n\nI played on one less than the hardest I believe.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Your difficulty is why, the prices are 5x higher on UH in comparison to Very Hard or something ridiculous like that xD\n\n[https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty](https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty)\n\nbut I still agree with you, if you have money and know that you'll be fighting specific enemies, elemental armor might be worth it, especially against something like glinthawks or stormbirds",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I found it most useful against the glinthawks. It turned them from very annoying to mildly irritating.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "GOD these are horrible in a fight...like...you can take them out if just a few shots but if you don't they screw you over so incredibly bad it's crazy....I once had one knock me into a Stormbird dive attack with his dumb ice bomb attack xD\n\nLet's just say I didn't need a burial after that\n\nAnd also, THEY MOVE LIKE THEY'RE DANCING DUDE! I can't hit them sometimes! The weird movement patterns combined with the constant flapping makes them dodge almost all of my arrows, until I get pissed and tie them down",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Yeah I think they are definitely one of the most annoying enemies in the game. Not necessarily the hardest, but in the right situation they can be very tricky to deal with.\n\nThe hardest enemy is still the rockbreaker, I don’t care what anyone says about the thundermaw, it’s so much easier to deal with. \n\nI don’t know how I would have dealt with the dual rock breakers if a behemoth convoy didn’t come along to draw their fire. I got really lucky.\n\nI guess I did find a nice perch across from a river they couldn’t cross, but it was still difficult to damage them.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "agreed, it seems that the best way to fight them is to take out their claws as soon as possible, and whenever they go underground you should stand completely still so they can't hear you\n\nEDIT: I agree tho, thinderjaw's are easy prey in comparison to rockbreakers and stormbirds",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Do you know if the pink arrows (idk the english name, i shoot them with the Banuk powershot bow) work on the rockbreaker claws? I heard they arent working at UH difficulty against thunderjaws so im curious and Not that eager to find out myself against those 2 :D Also thanks for the guide,awesome work",
"replies": [
{
"body": "These are tearblast arrows but yes, they should work on the rockbreaker claws since I know the Tearblaster works against them, and operates by the same principle, I've used it a lot against them and actually it seems to be the one and only way to kill them (unless you consider sitting at range and sniping them, which isn't fun).\n\nBy the way, they work against thunderjaws, I've used them, but they can require more than one successful hit to tear off components especially if you don't use the double / triple shot.",
"replies": [
{}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "I’ve been playing for a week, this is a great guide! Thanks so much!",
"replies": [
{
"body": "awesome!"
}
]
},
{
"body": "Charged damage values of Banuk variant bows aren't all double the standard variants across the board, there's actually a notable variance. Related to that, the under-charged value of the Banuk variants is substantially lower than the standard variants even. \n\nAlso, you do not actually need to be further than 10m from targets for them to lose awareness of you so long as you are out of LoS and silent. \n\nPretty comprehensive and useful guide on the whole. \n\nAre you aware of the power of fire arrows from correctly modified hunter/striker bows? Essentially, a mix of fire & damage coils is more effective than fire coils alone, as with just fire coils the damage multiplier can only reach +150%, but with a combination it can potentially reach +525%.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "wait, so the fire effect can receive a damage boost from damage mods? I didn't know that\n\nfrom my experience, you do need to be a wee bit far away from mobs to lose sight, countless times I've stood right behind a rock close to a bellowback after silent strike and he didn't drop his red awareness at all. it was the same with some sawtooths against a ruin wall and also some scrappers but I will add a mention in the Stealth section\n\nI will retest all the banuk vs shadow stuff too",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Horizon Reddit analysed the Banuk Vs shadow stuff a couple years back but the useful data did eventually make it to the wiki, where the Banuk variants have both their charged and under-charged values listed, if that helps. \n\nAs for the fire, yeah. Damage understandably doesn't help to inflict the *status* effect, but the damage of the status effect and the arrows themselves is *very* affected by damage. \n\n(Damage / 100 + 1) x (fire / 100 + 1) = multiplier. \n\nWhere damage & fire are the total values of inserted coils.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "[deleted]",
"replies": [
{
"body": "On the pages of the weapon in question, such as [https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Hunter\\_Bow](https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Hunter_Bow)\n\nDown in the weapon stats table, damage (or elemental severity) is displayed in each block starting at story and ending at UH, with numbers in brackets being the underdrawn values in the case of Banuk variants.\n\nI don't think the fire damage info has yet made it to the wiki. The wiki info is a compilation of information that has slowly (very slowly) made its way there from sources like the Brady guides and threads from the Horizon reddit."
}
]
},
{
"body": "you're right, adding some damage helps, although the numbers seem to be randomised to some extent so it's hard to tell...but also, what the hell, havent used fire in so long so I didn't realise it does so little damage! I just tested it against some chargers and the average damage from a Shadow Hunter Bow with a mix of damage, fire and handling seems to be around something like 20....what the hell? I can do SO much more damage if I just spam hunter arrows into the enemy...too bad I don't think I can test it against corrupted machines because there are 0 left in my world xD I gotta start a NG+...\n\nyou were also right about the banuk weapons, so thank you for your contribution to this, I edited the post!",
"replies": [
{
"body": "It's been a while since I played the game, but I recall using triple-shot fire arrows on glinthawks specifically to start them on fire, which causes them to crash to the ground, where I could beat them up with melee attacks.\n\nWhile the fire damage helped, it was the crashing to the ground weakness that was my main motivation. I don't think this is mentioned in your guide. Same goes for freeze and the slow/damage bonus effect.\n\nIf I didn't read carefully enough and this was mentioned, my apologies. :-)\n\nI did think it was odd that you didn't rate the triple-shot skill as OP, and had it conditional. I found that to be a very valuable skill to grab early on in a second playthrough to make fights much easier right from the beginning of the game.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Man I've founght 1 million glinthawks in my life and haven't found that out, I'll go test it then come back and edit the post if that's still so because that can be very useful."
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "The one thing I use the Harvest Arrows for (and it is the ONLY use I have found for them) is farming Blaze.\n\n1) Stealth kill a Grazer.\n2) shoot off the Blaze canisters with Harvest Arrows\n3) collect 6 Blaze per container instead of 1\n\nOh. And many thanks for this guide!",
"replies": [
{
"body": "wait WHAT????\n\nUSING HARVEST ARROWS YIELDS THAT MUCH MORE RESOURCES??? I didn't bloody know that! Jeez man thank you, I'll look into them myself in this case with the first chance I get\n\nyou're much welcome! I enjoy working on this a lot",
"replies": [
{
"body": "The most broken mechanic is the first hunting ground. Any time you start a trial it respawns all of them. At 24 Blaze per grazer you get what 240 at least? Rinse and repeat. I think someone said it is potentially 10k in shards per hour if you just sell it all.\n\nOn my Game+ run now forcing myself NOT to do this, although I do go back there to restock on Blaze when I need it. But limiting myself to just the one cycle, no fake respawns by cheesing things",
"replies": [
{
"body": "I used that thing to take down machines too, it's kind of fricked up that they respawn right away"
}
]
}
]
}
]
},
{
"body": "Awesome guide, Thanks!",
"replies": [
{
"body": "my pleasure"
}
]
},
{
"body": "Awesome guide! What loadout/weapon wheel combination do you recommend for most encounters? Also, should I use the Lodge War Bow or the Banuk Champion Bow? Thanks.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "great questions\n\nmy build used:\n\n* One Banuk Striker Bow upgraded with mostly damage and handling\n* One Banuk Striker Bow upgraded with fire stats and handling\n* The best Ropecaster I could get my hands on\n* One Banuk War Bow that I would modify according to need as described in the guide\n\nThis should also be listed in the guide itself in the form of images for more details.\n\nThis is by far not the best loadout HOWEVER, if you are looking to have fun instead of absolutely stomping your enemies, this is a good loadout. If you are looking to stomp your enemies, I don't have an exact loadout for that but, in ascending order of effectiveness:\n\n* Using heavy weaponry of any kind is extremely effective (weapons dropped by shadow carja or machines, any of them are good). Knock them down using any Tear weapon and use them.\n* The Precision Bows are also crazy good and can one shot certain medium machines with the right skills and loadout, those being the skills marked in white and a lot of damage/handling.\n* The Blast Slings are extremely overpowered. Upgrade them and you will destroy everything with them.\n* The Tripcaster is by far the most OP thing in the game since it can literaly one shot ANYTHING, it doesn't use mountains of resources unlike the blast slings, and it takes pretty much 0 skill to pull off. Just spam traps in an area that is as small and long as possible and lure your opponents there.\n\nOutfits are really down to preference but I recommend you stick to stealth / melee protection / shieldweaver. It's really down to you.\n\nStealth is best used in cluttered areas like jungles and you will have to run around a lot to perform hit&run attacks.\n\nThe other 2 are more relaxed as you will only need to switch between attacking and dodging.\n\nOut of the two bows you mentioned, I'd use the Banuk variant because it is much more resource efficient if you manage to pull it all the way back before releasing the shot. The All Banuk equipment benefits from having the double and triple shot skills mentioned in the guide.\n\nHowever, if you're looking for raw combat effectiveness, I'd use the Shadow / Lodge War Bow and spam arrows without holding at all before releasing each shot. These will use much more resources.\n\nYou can even step it up another notch and use the elemental Slings, but these use so many resources that you will need to farm blaze / freeze / corruption on the regular so I wouldn't recommend them.\n\nHope I didn't miss anything.\n\nCheers!\n\nEDIT: I did forget to mention the Tearblaster. You should also replace your current tear weapon with this one as soon as possible. It's really good, however, I should tell you that it's a bit finicky. For best results with it:\n\n* the tearblaster shoots large AOE attacks that upon impact, knock down components in ONE hit, no matter what (correct me if I'm wrong). They also tear off components AROUND the area where they hit, so if you hit a piece of armor with it, it's very likely that a LOT of armor in that area of the machine will get torn off instantly.\n* HOWEVER, those AOE attacks could get cancelled if they hit the chassis of a machine or any other obstacle.\n* For best results, try to hit the target component using the EDGE of the AOE attack of the Tearblaster to avoid hitting the main chassis of the machine. I.E shoot as far away from the main chassis while still keeping the target component inside the AOE.\n\nThis technique should obviously only be taken into consideration when trying to tear off a component that is not facing you. If you're trying to tear off the armor on top of the shock weapon on the chest of a Stormbird, hit it directly, but you might need to try a few times because the machine's head might get in the way in the same way as described above.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Thanks for the long reply! This will help my game a lot.",
"replies": [
{
"body": "if ya need anything else im here, I'm still watching this thread",
"replies": [
{
"body": "Ok so I did my own testing, and found out that the icerail modded for max freeze is really really good when paired with something that does tons of damage to frozen machines, like the banuk striker bow. I think I will put a Banuk Striker, Icerail, and Tripcaster for cheesing the big boys in my loadout but I'm not sure of what to put in my 4th weapon slot. I was thinking that I could put a Powershot or Tearblaster for tear, or I could put something elemental. I tested the blast sling, but it seems a lot more efficient to use the Hunter Bow especially when enemies are frozen. What do you think?",
"replies": [
{
"body": "That icerail is going to eat thru your freeze and I honestly forgot it even existed\n\nbut yea that's also a really easy to use loadout, you should have o trouble killing anything"
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}
]
}