Horizon Forbidden West Guide for better Gameplay

Horizon Forbidden West is in the house and it is super fantastic ! These are some of the highlights of the game:

• Beautiful and expansive open world
• Customizable gameplay
• Compelling and engaging story and plot
• Improved gaming mechanics

In case you haven’t started playing the game or even if you have started playing the game, we would suggest you to put it on hold and read this article. Here we are going to give you some tips and tricks, that shall help you better your gameplay experience if you use them.

1. STOCK YOUR FAST TRAVEL PACKS

Horizon Forbidden West map is huge. Travelling from one place to another is quiet time consuming, and to be honest, a little annoying as well.

While the open world of the game is beautiful that you would love to explore but after a point travelling may start getting on your nerves. You can find these campfires all over the place that you can fast travel from for free (provided you’ve visited them before), but the increased number doesn’t really make up for the sheer vastness of the landscape.

Keep your fast travel packs stocked up from traders, so in these moments you can get back and complete whatever epic quest you are on with haste.

2. KEEP YOUR INVENTORY FULL

One of the most amazing new additional features to the Horizon Forbidden West is the stash: a chest in every settlement that contains everything you pick up but are unable to carry because of pack limits. 

Some of the easiest material that you are likely to find are ridge-wood sticks and metal shards, which, you should actually stock up, as the arrows in the game are not unlimited.

But probably the most important item are medicinal berries. Much like Zero Dawn, Machines can wipe out your health fast and once you get further and further out into barren deserts, they become hard to find. Having a big stash of these will be very helpful in the latter stages of the game. Especially when the difficulty spikes.

3. DON’T MISS THE LADDERS

Well this is one trick that in maximum situations goes unnoticed and which results in sending you back a long way.

With the new climbing mechanics and the grappling hook, Guerilla Games has added some great platforming sections that combine with some unique puzzles for additional depth to the exploration. 

As you complete each big section, the devs would give you a way to get back up there easily in case you make some error. In some sections, this is a ladder you can kick down. You’re going to want to look for those, as if you do fall off without lowering the ladder, you have no choice but to make the embarrassingly slow walk back to the beginning of that section to do the whole thing all over again.

4. MAKE BEST USE OF YOUR GRAPPLING HOOK

The grappling hook in Horizon Forbidden West may not be as great as the hook in Halo Infinite, but it does act as an advantage in tactical combat and in goin around places in the massive open world of the game

During combats this grappling group turns out to be most effective. While engaging with some aggressive machines you may want to get some time off to refill your ammunition or health. This grappling hook may help you to evade the attacks of some giant machines and sometimes may also help you to get to a high point to buy you some time and think of a strategy to defeat your enemy.

Most areas of combat will feature at least one of these, so always be on the lookout for a circle and dot for these ledges and poles.

5. DO TRY MACHINE STRIKE AND MELEE PITS

Horizon Forbidden West is all about big size machines, and these machine strikes are lethal and can cause immense damage. To counter those you may want to have some extra skills and weapons with you.

For that you could kill some time in the Melee Pits, which give you access to learn special moves and combos, plus a safe space to practice against the variety of human enemy types in practice mode. The challenges are a big source of XP, as you fight increasingly difficult battles to get each pit master token. 

Simply put, if your plan is to just hammer on through the main campaign, think again. These distractions are both a helluva lot of fun and a fast track to improving your stats.

6. FIND YOUR ENEMY’S WEAKNESS

Horizon Forbidden West has carried forward one critical and essential aspect of Horizon Zero Dawn, and that is to scan your opponent, find out their weak spots, elemental weaknesses and any bits you can tear off.

For example, a Clawstrider’s tail enables them to pull off some pretty devastating attacks. Using precision arrows to take this out removes a key part of its arsenal, at which point you should move over to shock-based weapons to expose its elemental weakness.

Once you start examining your enemy before striking instead of just facing it head on, everything starts to get a whole lot easier.

7. PICK TWO VALOR SURGES AND SWITCH BETWEEN THEM ON THE FLY

One of the biggest new additions to the reinvented skill tree, and one that many Zero Dawn experts may forget about, is Valor Surges. 

Personally, I used them once at the beginning when the tutorial told me to do so, and then completely forgot about them until about 60% of the way into the story. Combat was hard as nails at that point, and once I remembered, it was a breath of fresh air. In total, you have six surges:

• Critical Boost: Delivers huge melee damage increases
• Elemental Fury: Increases elemental and trap damage
• Ranged Master: Increases damage from ranged attacks
• Toughened: Increases health restoration and provides an overshield to absorb damage
• Stealth Stalker: Activates a stealth cloak and triggers a radial blast, damaging enemies in the radius
• Part Breaker: Deals more damage to machine components and weak spots, alongside chaining damage to enemies within 15 meters.

In terms of which are the best, answers vary greatly depending on what publication you read. Personally, I focussed heavily on Warrior and Hunter, but the answer comes in a pair. Why? Because you can switch Valor Surges on the go and, while there’s a recharge time that’s based on you hitting critical attacks and weak spots that give you Valor points, you can chain these together strategically.

For me, I used the Hunter surge to pick off some enemies from a distance, then get in close and activate Warrior for some additional melee damage. You can see other effective pairings too: Infiltrator and Trapper, Warrior and Survivor, Machine Master and Hunter. Each combination will individualize your approach, but ensure you choose wisely.

8. BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS

Be cognizant of your surroundings, otherwise you will just roll into a wall without actually rolling anywhere and be victim to one of the many deathly attacks without anywhere to go.

9. UPGRADE AND SPECIALIZE

Pay close attention to the way you play and be choosy about what parts of the skill tree and what weapons you upgrade first.

For me, as I said above, I used some ranged attacks and followed up with melee to finish them off. This requires a lot of elemental damage and some sharpshooting, alongside increasing the damage of your spear and upping the healing effectiveness of medicinal berries.

I focussed on these and this led to a more effective Aloy when the tough got going. Whatever way you plan to play, be it sneakily or with traps, be sure to place emphasis on upgrading these.

10. WEAPON TECHNIQUES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THEY FIRST APPEAR

You will find four types of upgrades in the skill tree of Horizon Forbidden West:

• The Valor surges
• Passive boosts (upgrades to your stamina, health, technique speeds and amount of damage)
• Weapon techniques (unlock new moves with pre-existing weapons)
• Active skills (tie attacks together nicely with additional damage)

Try getting grip over weapon techniques. Then pair them with their corresponding weapons with some added skills. Soon you will become an unstoppable force.

Ensure you tailor your techniques to your play style and you’ll be golden.