Tips For Playing Horizon Zero Dawn

by

Tips For Playing Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn Tips: Like the lumbering, robotic beasts that patrol its world, conquering Horizon Zero Dawn is a massive undertaking that will put all of your abilities to the test. While it does a pretty good job of teaching you the basic controls, easing you into things nicely, it sometimes pulls the boar skin rug right out from under you as it doesn’t fully explain trading, combat, or those little perks that end up being quite handy.

I’m smitten with Horizon: Zero Dawn, a video game that hits the best notes of the “explore, kill, and collect” genre without becoming too leavened by busywork. It has a script on par with a fun sci-fi matinee, arguably the most polished visuals on a home console, and combat that amounts to more than shooting hundreds of dudes in the face. But I do wish I’d known more about the game’s idiosyncrasies before I played.

Tips For Playing Horizon Zero Dawn

Despite a lengthy tutorial prologue, many of Horizon’s most useful tips and tools are buried in the game’s opaque menus or mentioned offhand in text blurbs that appear on loading screens. I think my time with the game would have been better with a handful of pointers.

That’s why we’ve compiled 11 handy tips to start your journey into the wild. If you’re already confident controlling Aloy, but want to unlock the game’s deeper secrets, then here’s how to find all the Horizon Zero Dawn power cells to unlock Aloy’s secret armor and where to find all of the Horizon Zero Dawn vantage points. If you’re new to the game, check out some of the (spoiler-free) Horizon Zero dawn tips below, before diving deeper.

10 Best Horizon Zero Dawn Weapons
  • 8 SHADOW SHARP SHOT BOW.
  • 7 SHADOW RATTLER.
  • 6 LODGE BLAST SLING.
  • 5 BANUK CHAMPION BOW.
  • 4 BANUK POWERSHOT BOW.
  • 3 LODGE WAR BOW.
  • 2 IMPROVED ICERAIL.
  • 1 IMPROVED STORMSLINGER.

Even at level 47 (the recommended level for the Frozen Wilds is 30, and the level cap has been raised to 60) and with the most powerful weapons in the game at my fingertips, I had to stay on my toes.

Horizon Zero Dawn – Best Armor List
  • Shadow Stalward Heavy. …
  • Nora Silent Hunter Heavy Armor. …
  • Shield-Weaver Armor.

Horizon Zero Dawn Tips And Tricks

Aloy’s adventure can get pretty tough, so we’re offering you even more of our expert advice to help you get through it. Below you’ll find some of our top tips that will help you survive Horizon Zero Dawn and its DLC.

1. Talk to the merchants

Merchants are extremely useful in the game. You can talk to them to buy rare items, get new outfits, and shift unwanted scrap. They also sell maps that let you see where specific collectibles are located.
Pretty much every merchant has a unique set of items, so set aside some time to look at what’s on offer. You can find them in most major settlements and sometimes in the wild near campsites. Their presence is marked on the map by a pair of antlers.

2. Unlock all the campfires

You can only fast-travel to campfires you’ve already unlocked, so make sure to discover any that you see while you’re out exploring. Look out for the grey campfire icon at the top of the screen. If one appears, it means there’s a campfire right in that direction.
Unlocking campfires gives you more options for fast-traveling and will make backtracking in side quests far less tedious.

3. Complete Cauldrons

Cauldrons are optional dungeons found throughout the main campaign. There are four in total and they’re usually found dug into hillsides. You can finish them to earn XP and learn how to override different types of machines, so they’re definitely worth spending your time on. They will make some of the later challenges in the game significantly easier and give you some more creative ways to approach objectives.

4. Modify your equipment

The weapon system in Horizon Zero Dawn can be quite confusing, to begin with, but it’s incredibly useful once you get the hang of it. You can add modifications to your items to improve Aloy’s abilities, like stealth and damage resistance. So find a moment every now and then to change your gear and swap modifications out for new ones you may have picked up. It’s much easier to do if you keep on top of it.

Horizon Zero Dawn Combat Tips

Commercials sell Horizon as if it’s Assassin’s Creed with guns, explosions, and robot dinosaurs, but the game is slower than that marketing suggests. A three-hour-long prologue introduces Aloy; her father figures Rost; the politics of her tribe, the Nora; and the fundamentals of how to collect materials, hunt beasts, and craft ammunition and upgrades. The intro is leisurely for good reason: it needs to establish a narrative foundation enough to withstand innumerable sequels. Which brings me to my one big note…

RECALIBRATE YOUR EXPECTATIONS

This isn’t a traditional action game. It likes to think through its ideas and spend time with its characters.

And when the game does switch its emphasis from words to action, the combat doesn’t regurgitate the traditional formula of swapping between increasingly powerful guns. Much of the game’s weaponry is designed to suppress rather the damage. The rope caster lasso beats and pins them to the ground. A slingshot fires ice and electricity projectiles that stun and freeze on impact.

Read Also: Xcom 2 Tips And Tricks

If anything, the game punishes a guns-blazing attitude. The player is often outmatched and underpowered, and so the best path to victory involves scouting a battlefield, stealthily picking off weaker targets, and taking advantage of the weaknesses of the bigger beasts. It’s a more strategic and thoughtful game than it leads on.

PLAY HOW YOU LIKE

That said, you can choose to play as a brutal murder machine. If you find one method for downing a humongous rob-hawk to be tedious, try another. Maybe you should tie it to the ground. Maybe you should unlock the power to turn into an ally. Or maybe you should just pelt it with a half-dozen flaming wars. Even if your hunting methods seem to work well, there’s often a reward in questioning your strategic assumptions. How I approached a scrimmage at the end of the game was totally different than how I started it.

Horizon Zero Dawn Tips Reddit

FREE SAMPLE BOX AT EVERY TRADER

A number of helpful and sometimes free items are buried in the menus at trader stations. For example, under the “treasure box” window, every trader offers one free sample box. When you’re low on supplies in the first few hours, these freebies are lifesavers.

USE THE MAP TO LOCATE QUESTS

The game lets you select one quest and one waypoint at a time. On one hand, I’m glad it doesn’t let me litter the screen with icons egging me on in every direction. On the other hand, it’s a pain to walk a few miles, only to realize you passed a few side quest objectives on the way. The trick is to check your map before a long trip. All quests are marked on the map with diamond icons. Rather than select one long route to the main quest, I’d tie together a few sub-routes connecting secondary tasks.

Leave a Comment