Getting started in Horizon Forbidden West — beginners tips and tricks

You will never run out of activities to enjoy. Horizon Forbidden West — to the point where it can feel overwhelming. There’s a vast open world, weapons and outfits to find, and a couple dozen types of machines to hunt. You can find resources, side quests, caves that you must override and gladiatorial Melee Pits in which to participate. There is also a whole world to save.

This is how it works Horizon Forbidden West beginner’s guide, we’ll give you the tips, tricks, and advice from more than 100 combined hours with the game — the things that we wish we knew back when we were starting starting out. We’ve got tips on climbing and navigation, resource management, machine combat, weaponry, and more.

Place climbing markers

Going in for a climb Horizon Forbidden WestIt’s a bit awkward. This only works on specific rocks and in particular locations. You can use your Focus to highlight climbable rock with yellow markers temporarily. Better yet, the Focus can be turned on to highlight climbable rocks with yellow markers. The Climbing Annotations are Always on Setting in Settings > Visual menu. This makes it much easier to play. And it looks cool, like it’s Aloy’s BluetoothFocusing on something in the world.

(While you’re at it, turn on the subtitles in Settings > Audio menu because there’s a lot going on, and half the characters sound like they deliver their lines through gritted teeth.)

The useful and confusing Pullcaster is still in your mind

Horizon Forbidden West’s first mission, you’ll craft a new tool called the Pullcaster. It’s a grappling hook that you’ll in specific situations like pulling covers off of vents or moving crates.

The problem is, there’s no clear on-screen reminder about how to equip it and, since you use it pretty rarely, it’s easy to forget how to use it (or that it exists). You can still aim by keeping your hands down L2Hit Triangle. The Pullcaster is now activated. You can switch back to your ranged weapons by hitting Triangle.

You can have lots of things at once.

There’s no shortage of stuff to pick up in Horizon Forbidden West. There’re healing berries, dye flowers, rocks, sticks, and supply boxes. And that’s not the mention all the machine corpses you’ll be looting.

Pick up all the items. When your packing is full, you will receive the excess to your mailbox. stash — a chest you can access in every village or shelter. This matters because there are a few things you’ll burn through quickly just by playing — especially medicinal berriesHealing and ridge-wood For crafting arrows.

You actually have 3 containers to store medicinal berries. pouch where you’ll pull for immediate healing, your Get your pack that you’ll use to refill your pouch, and your stashWhere the excess water goes, to replenish your Pouch as well as your Pack

You can refill your stock at the store

Image: Guerrilla Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

When you gather more than you can carry, those supplies go to your stash automatically, but that’s a one-way automatic trip. They won’t get drawn back automatically from your stash.

Whenever you see a stash — it kind of looks like a large, ornate treasure chest — open it and choose to All Categories Restocked. You can refill your most used items like traps, potions and resources. And since you’re picking up everything like we said above, your stash should always have plenty to refill your pack.

It is a challenge to solve machines

Scan any new machines you come across with your Focus. You’ll get a new entry in your notebook with a Ton of information on things like a machine’s strengths, weaknesses, and weaponry. All of this information gives you the solution to the puzzle of how to kill the machine — and, just as importantly, how to survive the encounter.

Image: Guerrilla Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

It is important to remember the Weak elemental damage types — this just tells you what elemental damage deals the most, well, damage.

Look for the following phrases as you scroll through all of these components: Attachable Attack Removal.

• Take it apartParts for machines tear damage does a few things: takes off a big chunk of health, gets you valuable upgrade materials, and sometimes gets you a heavy weapon to turn against the machine you’re fighting. The resources that you get from an attached component can disappear when the machine crashes without removing them.
• Attack Removal does what it says on the tin — it removes one of the machine’s attacks and fewer attacks means you’re more likely to survive.

ElementalDamage depends on how the weapon is used

There are many weapons available. Horizon Forbidden West Nine categories are covered (such as short-range, high rate-of fire warrior bows or longer-range sniping Sharpshot bows). Every weapon of a particular category does different damage. A warrior bow might deal regular damage, while a shock bow can do shock damage.

This is why there are so many slots on your weapon wheel — you’ll want multiple ways of dealing elemental damage (see above) to quickly take down machines. You’ll probably end up with multiples of the same category in your weapon wheel at the same time just so you have options for multiple types of elemental damage.

You can upgrade everything on a workbench but only enough to make it functional.

You can upgrade your weapons with ease workbenchIncreases their damage and unlocks coil slot. You might also be able to add another (or more) elemental type of damage. You can also upgrade your outfits to increase their stats, unlock mesh slots and gain additional skill boosts.

However, upgrading gear can be a costly and time-consuming process. As we mentioned above, you’ll also be finding a ton of other weapons beyond what you pick up early. Upgrading weapons a little is rarely a waste of time, but spending all the time and shards to upgrade early weapons and outfits fully probably is wasteful, since you’ll find something better soon.

Save all that upgrading effort for later in the game when you’ve got Extremely rare (purple) gear.

It’s easier to just explore than it is to assume.

Horizon Forbidden West’s vast open world is more than just beautiful landscapes. It’s filled with things to do. It’s also packed with things that you can’t do yet. Playing is part of the art Horizon Forbidden West It is about balancing your curiosity to discover every corner of The Daunt, and all that it holds with your drive to make the story more compelling. There is good news. These two things work together. You should definitely check everything. However, you can always return to it later.

It’s entirely possible to find things that you won’t be able to complete for a dozen hours or more. You wouldn’t want to know what they are. For now, take our general advice: If you can’t wrap your head around something in a few minutes, then let it go. Come back to it later, maybe after you’ve met a certain character who’ll reveal all or received an upgrade that’s just what you need.