Tips and Tricks - Horizon Forbidden West Guide - IGN (2024)

These are more than 100 essential tips and tricks, strategies, and secrets you need to know to succeed in Horizon Forbidden West. Whether it’s how to unlock powerful early-game weapons, how to take full advantage of the Mount system to receive free resources, or tips that make tracking down collectibles much easier, we have you covered in our comprehensive guide below.

Looking for something in particular? Click the links below to jump to each category:

• Quick Early-Game Tips and Tricks
• Essential Tips and Tricks
• Exploration Tips and Tricks
• Combat Tips and Tricks
• Essential Mid to Late-Game Tips and Tricks

Looking for a basic rundown of Horizon Forbidden West’s story, different markers on the map, and how the combat works? Check out the Beginner’s Guide - Basics and Features.

Quick Early-Game Tips and Tricks

• When starting out, pick up everything! In the early game, it’s crucial to build a healthy supply of resources and materials like medicinal berries, animal parts, and machine parts, which can be used to make ammunition, traps, and even craft upgrades to your gear. Should you have these resources on hand, it will make the game's early hours easier and much more convenient, as well as reducing the need to constantly seek out these Resources as you progress through the game.

• When picking up Resources, look for the list pop-up in the screen's bottom-left corner. Here, the number in brackets at the end represents your new total amount of that resource. So, for example, if a Ridgewood pickup ends in “(122)”, then you now have a total of 122 Ridgewood! You’re also told your pouch is full here, and those Resources have been sent to your Stash.
  

• The Stash is an all-new feature in Forbidden West that acts as a storage chest with unlimited space. As your inventory and pouches begin to fill up, any resources collected will automatically be sent to your Stash, which can be found at all major settlements, shelters, and other specified locations around the map. For those having trouble locating their Stash, you’ll commonly find it in the same area as Hunter merchants and Workbenches, so keep your eyes peeled!

• There are a lot of options in the Difficulty and Accessibility settings, which can even make looting rare parts easier. Check our full Difficulty Settings Guide
• When it comes to particular Settings, consider activating the Custom HUD Settings and turning Interaction Markers to Always On (found under “Player Misc”). This means the markers for Resources, Chests, and so on will always be displayed, making it much easier to tell where stuff is and if a machine/animal has something valuable.
• Whether or not you have markers permanently on, it’s helpful to learn their iconography. For example, triangular markers are for plants, rocks, and wood, while diamond-shaped ones are for machine parts and traps. The icon's color represents their rarity; in the case of objects with multiple items, the color reflects the object's rarest item.
• Consider setting Climbing Annotations to Always On, as it isn’t always obvious where the handholds are and what the best route up the surface may be. This setting will also help you reduce the need to continually ping your Focus

• When traveling down slopes, Slide to travel faster!
• Need Key Upgrade Resources such as Burrower Soundshells, Shellsnapper Shell Bolts, or even a Rollerback Hammer Tail? Head to Salvage Contractors to purchase unique upgrading resources at reasonable prices.
• Another technique for upgrading materials is using the “Create a job” function at the Workbench. This will generate a custom quest that will automatically point you to places where you can get the parts you need for the upgrade, saving you a lot of time!
• When scanning machines in the wild, any parts marked yellow will indicate you currently have a job created to obtain these items. Note, the job doesn’t need the quest to be active for this to appear.
• It costs 270 Shards to fully repair a Mount after reviving it from death (or 135 Shards if you’ve bought both of the Efficient Repair skills).
• Unlock unique Face Paints upon completing the Main Story and certain Side Quests. With up to 42 potential Face Paints to unlock and try on, there's a good chance you find something that suits your Aloy. Learn more at How to Use Face Paints - All Face Paints.

Essential Tips and Tricks

• To make the most out of your time and to avoid having to backtrack to the early areas of the game, it is highly recommended that you mainline three early Main Quests - Tap to Reveal - as they unlock handy tools that are needed to explore the many hidden nooks and crannies the game has to offer. See Blocked Paths - How to Unlock All Tools

• To avoid spoilers, here are the two tools you’ll receive for completing the Main Quests: Tap to Reveal
  • On a minor note, The Embassy also unlocks the Time of Day features in Photo Mode!
• At certain points throughout the game, you may need to detour and complete activities to level up and be strong enough to take on the Main Quests. Activities that give the most XP include (in descending order) Cauldrons, Tallnecks, Relic Ruins, Salvage Contracts, Rebel Camps, and Side Quests marked with green exclamation marks on the map. You can see the amount of XP an unlocked Quest or Activity will give you by going to your Quests log in the pause menu.
  
  • This same rule also applies to getting free Skill Points; the higher the XP, the more free Skill Points you’ll receive.

• Sides Quests and Activities unlocked further into the game will provide more XP than earlier sections. So, if you just need a quick XP boost, prioritize Quests found in the latest regions of the game you have unlocked.
• The level cap in Horizon Forbidden West is 50. Once you reach it, all further Skill Points must be earned by completing quests.

• Take the time to listen to rumors. Certain large establishments, such as Plainsong, will have spots where you can sit down and listen to a rumor. Much like in Ghost of Tsushima, these reveal points of interest on the map, from Cauldrons to Side Quests. So if you’re at the end of the game and trying to mop up things left to do, try visiting one of these spots to find what you’re missing!
• While you can now Mount a wider variety of machines, be conscious of their size. Larger mounts like Bristlebacks may not fit under low arches like in Plainsong. See How to Override and Mount Machines
• Despite being one of the larger mounts, the Bristleback can help you passively obtain resources. When not in use, it will begin digging into the ground, bringing up containers containing small amounts of Metal Shards.

• When in stealth, avoid calling your Mount – once it nears your location, it will attract the attention of any nearby machines.
• If you buy the Override Subroutines skill, you’ll gain the ability to set an Overridden machine to aggressive behavior rather than defensive. They may be more trouble than it’s worth, however: your Mount will follow you around and attack anything it sees, and you cannot change its behavior to defensive afterward.
• After a battle, be sure to search the entire area for any potential components that may have broken off during the fight. If you were fighting on a slope, don’t be surprised if some may have rolled away!

• Need Metal Shards quickly to craft ammo? Navigate to your inventory and disassemble valuables and other important resources to access metal shards quickly. With that said, unless it’s an emergency, you’ll want to avoid disassembling too many valuables and other key items from your inventory, as selling these items via Merchants will yield you a much higher return. For example, you’ll receive 20 Shards when selling an Ancient Black Bracelet to a Merchant, compared to just 10 when disassembling the item via your inventory.

• Visit Cooks to purchase meals that offer temporary but powerful boosts and restore effects. With meals ranging anywhere from common to legendary, expect to find meals that boost your maximum health, increase potion proficiency and weapon stamina, along with restore effects that can increase your health and stamina by up to 75%.
• Don’t be surprised if you’re not able to purchase items from Merchants straight away as you visit each new settlement. Instead, you’ll find that Merchants will require certain animal and machine parts unique to their region in most cases.
• Didn’t come prepared for a challenging Quest? Don’t stress, as the game provides an autosave just before starting a Quest, so if you’re struggling to take down a tough Machine, don’t hesitate to load into the autosave to allow yourself time to regear and adequately prepare for any upcoming battles. Boss Saves also serve the same purpose and are created just before boss fights.
• When using Silent Strikes, it’s important to note that it won’t always kill an enemy, especially if you haven’t unlocked the increased damage skills under the Infiltrator skill tree. So before going in for the kill, look for the skull icon when sneaking up on an enemy. If this skull appears, that means the stealthy attack will perform a killing blow.
• To have Aloy put away her weapon at any time, bring up the Weapon Wheel and then click R3 (push the Right Analog Stick into the controller until you hear a click). Then, when you pop out of the Weapon Wheel, Aloy will put her weapon away. It even works on her spear!
• When clearing certain Rebel Camps, such as Fenrise, be sure to check back in with them once you have traveled a far enough distance away. While you won’t need to physically return to the settlement – checking the map will suffice – you’ll notice that they’ll turn into a settlement that’s complete with merchants, Campfires, and Stash chests.
• If you're not using Traps or other pieces of Hunter's equipment, you can remove the ones you're not using! Hold Down on the D-Pad to bring up the Hunter's Menu. From here scroll through to the item you don't want and press Square to Change. You can then press X to unequip it from your selection! This also allows you to change the order of your equipment if you need to by using empty slots.
• When viewing your Inventory in the pause menu, you can press Options to change how a category is sorted. All categories can sort in Bulk or by Rarity, while some are exclusive, such as armor being sorted by their playstyle type.

Exploration Tips and Tricks

• While Question Marks can represent many different things, if you’re only interested in Collectibles like Vista Points, Relic Ruins, or Black Boxes, there’s a clever trick to showing only them on the map. When you zoom the map all the way out with every icon turned on in the map filter, the question marks that don’t vanish will always be for Collectibles!

• You’ll pick up Special Gear tools will allow you to clear various Blocked Path points and give you access to loot, including extremely desirable Coils and Weaves. Considering they involve zero combat, it’s a good idea to scout around and clear as many of these as you can find to prepare for the battles ahead.
  
• Don’t fret about remembering where you can use the new Special Gear you unlock, as when acquiring a new tool, all Blocked Path icons on the map that require that Gear will be updated. So, for example, when you pick up the Igniter, all relevant Blocked Path icons will be updated to Firegleam icons.
• When exploring the area around mission objectives, you may just find optional items that Aloy can examine, like Datapoints. While you won’t miss any key story beats, these items may add additional dialogue that those invested in the story may find interesting.
• After Aloy has collected the Ornament from a Relic Ruin, she’ll verbally mention she should explore more if you didn’t find all the loot there. When you find everything, she’ll mention that too!
• Forbidden West is inundated with unique dialogue moments, where characters react differently depending on whether you’ve met them or finished certain Quests. Unfortunately, it’s practically impossible to keep track of all the permutations. Still, in general, it’s a good idea to check in with your team after major events, as well as with characters who were involved with Side Quests you’ve completed or otherwise might know about.

• Get quick and easy supplies by looking for Old Barrels scattered throughout the open world. These red rotting storage barrels can contain valuable resources.
• If a chest seems out of reach, use your Focus to check if it has blue metal frameworks on it. If it does, this means that you can pull it to you with your Pullcaster!

• The best spots to find Greenshine are Sunken Caverns; however, as the name implies, these can be pretty deep. To fully explore them, Tap to Reveal
• Aloy’s underwater breath depletes quicker the faster she swims. Therefore, swimming at top speed drains breath the fastest while staying still will barely deplete the meter. Keep this in mind if you feel the need to stop and observe your surroundings underwater.
• The breathing meter, while swimming, is actually quite forgiving: when it fully depletes, you still have about ten seconds to surface for air.
• If you’re about to drown and would rather not lose all the items you picked up while underwater, Fast Travel! You’re still able to use Fast Travel Packs while swimming, letting you zip away to safety. If you do this to The Base, it’ll be for free!
• While swimming, if you’re using the Focus, you can still move with the left stick and use the ascend/descend controls!
• While underwater, using the Focus “pulse” will send a radar pulse across the environment, revealing its topology, which can help navigate through dark spaces like sunken caves. This will also highlight points of interest, like Resource containers and walls you can Pry Open, with a pink radar ping circle.
• Stumbled across a Vista Point Tower? Search the nearby area with Aloy’s Focus to find the exact location of the Vista Point – in most cases, you won’t need to search too far from the Tower. As you near the correct location, Aloy will begin to drop clues on where you should look.
• If you're in the middle of a Vista Point hunt but need to use your Focus for its normal functions, you can press Down on the D-Pad to put the preview away. Then, press Down again to bring the preview back up.
• When encountering areas covered in Blight, perform a quick scan of the environment, and you might just find fallen wildlife. Collecting these resources from fallen animals is a great and easy way to obtain wildlife resources without having to actively hunt them down.
• The Shieldwing isn’t just useful for gliding; it can also act as a safety parachute! Jump from a high spot, then deploy the Shieldwing shortly before hitting the ground to cushion your landing. It cuts down the time it takes to descend; however, be careful because the Shieldwing takes a moment to deploy!

• Platforming sections often have ladders to kick down, walls to destroy, or pieces of the environment you can move with the Pullcaster, which are there to reduce backtracking. If you’re partway through an expansive level section, remember to look out for these to avoid redoing large chunks of the level again!
• Like you would see in a Far Cry game, use animal skins and other parts to upgrade your satchel and quivers carrying capacity. Although animals are much more abundant in Forbidden West, you should still take the time to scavenge them as you pass by, especially if it’s an animal you don’t see very often!
• Rain and other weather conditions can drown out the sound of Aloy’s surroundings. During these conditions, it’s important that you pay extra attention to your surroundings; otherwise, you may get caught off guard.
• Unless it’s been mandated by the story, you can change the weather conditions by loading up a save: the weather is determined randomly whenever you do this.

• When stopping by Settlements and Shelters, keep an eye out for rare and valuable caches that are often scattered throughout the camps.
• Certain Old One's vehicles like cars and buses have panels that you can hit to open them, revealing boxes of loot. Use your Focus to highlight these panels in yellow!
• If you’re holding onto a wall handhold and the Grapple Point icon is active on screen, you only need to press X once: Aloy will jump off and automatically use the Pullcaster without the need to press X a second time!

Combat Tips and Tricks

• Always have a full medicine pouch. By default, Aloy can carry ten healing berries on her, and while medicinal plants are common throughout Horizon, it can be easy to forget to stock up! So make sure you pluck some off the ground as you travel between fights.
• Aloy also has a reserve pouch of medicine, displayed as a number just above the normal medicine count. You can quickly top up your medicine using your reserve pouch by holding Up on the D-Pad.

• If you can, Scan with the Focus before engaging in a proper fight. This allows you to locate and tag any machines, pin any components you may want to remove, see their scouting paths, and more. As you’ll quickly learn, it’s always better to go in prepared!
• Pre-existing machine corpses can still be used! In addition to salvaging them for resources like proper kills, certain machines like Bellowbacks will still have parts you can hit for explosive effects, essentially making them free traps.
• Use Aloy’s Dodge movement to create a moment of invincibility. Do note the Dodge move doesn’t need pinpoint timing; just dodging away, in general, is enough to prevent Aloy from getting hit by an attack when it’s close enough to hit her.
• At the start of a machine fight, you should use weapons and ammo with High Tear damage and use them to destroy a machine’s components. A large chunk of health is taken off whenever you do this, and certain parts will also disable specific attacks and functions. You can highlight components by scanning a machine with the Focus, but memorizing them will, of course, be faster. You can tear components off even faster with our favorite Valor Surge, Part Breaker.

• Once you’ve exhausted all components (or at least the easier ones to hit), switch to weapons and ammo with High Impact damage to take off more health when hitting a machine in general. This is a handy tactic if a machine has small, protected, or hard-to-hit components, like the Sunwing.
• On that topic, if a machine has large sacs of elemental material, like those on a Spikesnout or Bellowback, aim for them! They will often cause an enormous elemental explosion that will damage everything in a wide radius, including the target!

• Some machines in Forbidden West have components that will only explode when hit with specific elemental ammo. For example, Blaze Canisters like those on a Fanghorn will violently explode if you hit them with fire-based ammo.
• Try grouping up machines with the same type of canisters – this is best done using rocks before a fight – as once they are close together, shooting a canister will see it explode. This will cause a chain reaction to ignite and explode other machine canisters.
• Be careful to avoid areas in which machines deploy their radars. This behavior allows machines to temporarily disable your Focus while also detecting your location, even if you happen to be hidden from their sight.

• Dispose of Scrounger and Scrapper machines quickly! While they may appear harmless when salvaging machine carcasses, the longer they scavenge, the more likely they’ll steal valuable resources.
• Before traveling into the Forbidden West, stop by the Hunting Goods merchant and purchase a Fire Hunter Bow; it’ll come in handy for tackling some of the more powerful machines beyond The Daunt, which are weak against the fire element. With that said, you’ll want to make it a goal to eventually have access to weapons of all elemental types, as machines can be weak or immune to a wide variety of elements.
• Need a particular component from a machine? Make sure to target and break off the attached component before killing it; otherwise, the external component will be destroyed upon the machine's death.
  
  • This doesn’t apply if you’re playing on Story or Easy difficulty; however, in that case, the components can be looted from the machine after downing it.
• When attempting to remove a component, be sure to use a weapon or ammo that inflicts Tear damage. This will make tearing off components much easier.
• If you’re in need of a heavy weapon but couldn’t shoot one off of one you just killed, don’t fret! You can still shoot the weapon off the machine carcass and grab it that way.
• Tired of machines calling for reinforcements? Destroy or detach their antennas to prevent them from communicating with other machines.
• Be careful when hiding in locations that are scanned by Recon machine types. Equipped with unique sensors and a Radar ability that disables your Focus and detects your location, these machines are designed solely to seek out intruders and keep a watchful eye over other machines and specific locations.
• If you need to study the strengths and weaknesses of a particular machine, open up the Machine Catalogue via the Notebook in the pause menu, to find everything you need to know about a machine. Whether it’s their loot percentages, weaknesses, or Cauldron you need to visit to learn their Override, this handy Notebook has you covered.
• Since human opponents have no components, Tear Ammo isn’t as effective. Therefore, you should use other arrow types that deal more impact damage instead.

• Tired of running out of supplies to craft ammunition? Unlock the passive boost, Ammo Expert, under the Hunter Skill Tree, which will allow you to craft more ammunition from the same amount of resources. This skill can be upgraded twice, with the second upgrade providing a moderate increase in the amount you can craft in each set. See more Best Skills
• After a battle with machines, you can easily identify any knocked-off components by their bright blue sparks. Very handy if you don’t like having item markers on at all times.
• If you’re performing a melee combo that requires a pause in the middle, look for the glint that appears on the spear (you’ll also hear a sheen sound from your TV and controller). Then, hit the next button input right on this glint to successfully continue the combo.
• If one or more enemies are suspicious of you (or in the “yellow state”), a yellow icon with a? appears at the top of the screen. If you’ve lost them, a white ring will appear around the icon as they search for you: when this ring depletes, the enemies will give up and return to normal.
• There are no penalties for switching between difficulties in Horizon Forbidden West. So, if you’re looking for quick and easy machine parts, consider lowering your difficulty level to Story or Easy. Not only will you take down machines much quicker, but machine parts won’t disappear if you don't detach them first, unlike higher difficulties, which see machine parts destroyed if they weren’t broken off.
  
  • Don’t sleep on coils, especially those that offer a percentage chance of dealing instant elemental damage. So, if you’re running a weapon that focuses mainly on Impact, Tear, and Explosive Damage, pair the weapon with elemental-based coils to get the best of both worlds.

• Be aware of arrow drop when aiming. Despite not having a throwing arc, like Blastslings, arrows fired from bows do suffer from gravity over a distance. When aiming at your targets, you’ll want to keep this in mind, especially over long distances with Hunter and Sharpshot Bows.
• Prioritize when and where you use ammo types. More advanced ammo costs more resources to craft, and you can’t hold as many of them, so you’ll only want to use them when the situation demands it. For example, if your bow can fire normal arrows and Advanced Hunting Arrows, make sure you’re not using the latter if you’re only going to be shooting wildlife.
• Deploy the Shieldwing to break your fall and land cleanly when jumping into the Arena from the starting perch. If you don’t, Aloy takes a second or two to get up, which can hamper your advantage against the machines, who are instantly alerted to you as soon as you get close to the ground.
• Like in Frozen Wilds, you can tell an Apex machine from a distance thanks to their purple HEPHAESTUS cables, as well as their new black armor plating.
• Your difficulty setting and Aloy’s level determines how often Apex machines appear. So the best way to encounter Apex machines more often is to level Aloy up and bump up the difficulty setting a notch or two.
• Apex machines can never be overridden. While you can complete Cauldrons to unlock the ability to override many machines, you cannot do this with their black and purple Apex variants.

• You can ambush a machine convoy by parking your Mount in their way on the road. The convoy will stop and won’t attack your Mount, giving you the perfect opportunity to lie in wait and attack precisely the way you want to.
• While Rebels often wear masks to protect themselves from being killed with a single headshot, we’ve discovered that if you use Concentration, it’s possible to quickly shoot off their mask before landing a kill shot to the head. If you do this fast enough, the Rebel won’t have enough time to raise the alarm!
• Aloy’s shots cannot penetrate water, so be mindful when firing at submerged machines.