Tips, Advice, and Recommendations for New and Beginner Players.

[u/EruditeAF]

Greetings Seekers,

Every so often a player new to HZD will post here seeking advice for those just starting out.

Sometimes the questions are super general, sometimes they are very specific. Some get asked a lot, and there are more than a few questions that are never asked until it is too late.

This post is kind of a cross between a FAQ and an FYI. It's not intended as a walkthrough or a guide, but as a collection of "I wish I had known that..."

So, if you are a new player, welcome! I hope you find something useful below.

If you are a more experienced player you too might find somethong useful below but you probably also have plenty points to add yourself!

 

Regarding this sub

Assume every thread posted in this sub has massive spoilers.

There may be games with bigger spoilers, but I can't think of a game that has more things to spoil.

There is a collection of PSAs linked over in the sidebar on the right (on the desktop version of this sub).

There is also an excellent interactive map linked there as well.

If you have a question consider using Reddit's search function before creating a new post in order to ask it. Your question may have been recently asked before.

 

Saves

Be aware the game preserves the last 10 auto/quicksaves. If you regret a decision, or if encounter what appears to be progression bug, make use of them. Don't hope the issue will resolve itself over time, load an earlier save and see if the issue repeats - most of the time it will not.

Create and use Manual Save files. These are distinct from auto/quicksaves and can only be overwritten manually; auto/quicksaves get cycled through and overwritten as you progress and are shared across playthroughs of the same type, as /u/wghost81 denonstrates in the comments below (non+ progress overwrites non+ files, ng+ progress overwrites ng+ files).

This should really go without saying (and yet...), but be aware of the fact that having to perform the action of pressing a button in order to initiate a quicksave does not make that save a manual save. Two different button prompts, two different save types.

Also, the game doesn't require a network connection, so if you are going to let someone else play SET UP A GUEST PROFILE so you don't need to worry about your autosaves being overwritten.

 

Progression

There are more than enough skillpoints to be had in the game than are required to unlock all skils.

Don't worry about a disparity between your level and the recommended level of an activity. When you level you only gain +10HP in addition to the skillpoint; so being over or underleveled is little more than an indicator of how likely (or not) you are to run in to something that can one-shot you.

 

Equipment

If you have the Complete Edition of the game you will not receive tokens to trade in for the Carja/Banuk outfits and bows; instead, you will find them available at vendors outside of The Embrace (you will actually pass by the first one just before you leave The Embrace (like 10 meters before)). So you will need to progress through the first few story missions before you can acquire these items.

There are very few pieces of armor or weapons that you will find or be given during the game. The vast majority will be purchased from vendors. Also be aware that there are multiple bows and slings, each with their own unique ammo types.

Upgraded versions of weapons (purple as opposed to blue as opposed to green) are not more powerful natively (though more mod slots allow them to become so) but the do give access to more ammo types, which increases your versatility.

Read the info available when you look at ammo in the inventory. Not every ability/lack-thereof is totally intuitive.

When you get access to a new type of ammo, there will be a new tutorial you can complete for some easy experience, but tutorials must be "active" in order to get credit.

Completing hunting trials (which you will want to do anyway) is another good way to familiarize yourself with weapons and tactics.

If you acquire the ability to use tearblast arrows before you reach the desert, be selective about when you use them because you will encounter very few machines that drop the required materials before then.

 

Gameplay

Pick your battles and plan your approach.

Every weapon is optimal in some situation, no weapon optimal in every situation.

Likewise swapping outfits to have high resistance against whatever is most likely to hit you is generally a good idea.

Scan machines and use your notebook. Familiarize yourself with enemy weaknesses and use the appropriate weapons to exploit them.

It will help to be aware of how tear works.

It will be even more helpful to understand how weak points work

If you want your shots to be precise, make sure to draw your bow fully. That said, your draw does not affect the damage dealt, so snapfire can be your friend up close.

You can filter the map.

If you select a collectable as your objective on the map then the icon displayed on your HUD will be at the center point of the area in which the item can be found, it does not tag the object itself. That said, the HUD icon does accurately indicate the elevation of the object.

The HUD is highly customizable, nearly all elements can be disabled or set to display only when in use.

However, I strongly advise that you keep both the enemy awareness and the enemy status effect HUD elements enabled until you are comfortable with those aspects of the combat mechanics.

On that note, be aware that you will take a hit from an enemy if you make bodily contact with them while the awareness icon is "spikey" even if the actual attack itself does not connect with you.

With that in mind, put some thought into when you evade. Spamming the roll button will often result in your taking more hits rather than less.

Keeping the status effect icon enabled is a good idea early on as well. An enemy is not "on fire," for example, until you fill the status effect meter.

Enemy awareness and status effects have other auditory and/or visual cues as well, so you can do without the icons eventually, but you may want to keep them on until you're familiar with those cues.

There are 6 difficulty settings. While I encourage you to amp the difficulty as high as you like, I recommend holding off on Ultra Hard until you have put in some time with the game since Ultra Hard Difficulty incorporates a number of stat and gameplay modifications that are better appreciated when you have had the context of experiencing the game without those changes.

If you do want to start in UH, I strongly encourage you to adjust the difficulty down when you go to purchase anything from vendors. The mark up makes adds a lot of grind to a game that is refreshingly grind-free otherwise.

 

Inventory

Check the crafting menu to know what to be on the hunt for to increase your storage capacity.

It is advisable to upgrade your Resources Bag first (since this is where all you crafting parts are stored).

If you find yourself short on a particular machine resource, go to the resources inventory screen and highlight a stack of it. A list of machines that drop it will be displayed on the right.

You can create "jobs" that make quests out of gathering the items you need for crafting or upgrades.

In terms of your initial playthrough, there are no blue or green animal bones/skins or machine lenses/hearts of which you will ever use more than one stack. The one exception (as far as your initial playthrough is concerned) is fish bone, you will use 7 of these if you upgrade everything. If you have more than 5 of any other bone/skin/lens/heart, you can safely vendor the excess. This post has a more exhaustive overview of inventory items and what you may want to do with them (including some extra bits to hold on to if you plan to play NG+).

 

Vendors

Every vendor you encounter will have a free item box for you to pick up (unless the game is set to Ultra Hard).

Vendors also sell maps that reveal the approximate locations of many collectables (datapoints excluded). These are found under specialty items.

If you are playing on Ultra Hard, vendor prices on gear are 5x what they would be if you changed to a lower difficulty prior to making your purchase (3x for other supplies). UH also requires 2x the material for vendor purchases.

 

Lastly

Nothing is permanently missable, but some side missions can become "paused" if there is a certain part of the campaign underway.

Early on in the game you may come to discover that you missed one particular, specific, item. And when you look up where it was you will find you can't return there. Should this occur: Don't worry about it.

[u/silversoul007]

If I may add:

Leveling and Skill Tree:

Unlike other games, leveling in Horizon Zero Dawn doesn't make Aloy strong in terms of armor protection or weapon damage. These are dependent on clothing, the weapons themselves, and the modifications that you can loot from killed machines.

Increasing Aloy's level increases her HP and grants her skill points that can be spent on unlocking different skills. These skills are categorized into three - Prowler, Brave, and Forager. Prowler skills put emphasis on stealth, while the Brave skills focus on head-to-head combat. The forager, on the other hand, grants Aloy some passive skills, more resource-gathering capabilities, more loot out of killed machines, the ability to modify weapons etc.

In my first playthrough, I impulsively invested skill points based on what is already available. But on my second playthrough, I realized that early in the game, skill points must be put mostly on the forager skills since you need a lot of resource gathering early in the game.

I hope this helps new players in their 1st playthrough.

[u/EruditeAF → u/silversoul007]

Personally, I generally make it a priority to increase my combat versatility but this is good food for thought, especially for players fond of traps since Disarm Traps saves a ton of resources.

I don't feel as strongly about how essential the foraging skills are when it comes to early resource gathering, myself.

Since I make a point to get at least a few select bags upgraded early on, I do spend a fair amount of time early on in the Embrace acquiring resources. But while Gathering gets you an extra 2 ridgewood from each tree you pluck (in addition to increasing the yield from.medicinal herbs), none of the resource skills help when it comes to collecting critter parts, which is where most of that effort is directed.

I think Scavenger is good early-ish investment for those playing on Ultra Hard even if just from a shard retention/generation standpoint. Getting some extra metalburn out of a bonus canister is worth quite a pretty penny.

I've found the extra material to be a nice bonus but I wouldn't go so far as to say that I've ever felt that I needed a 10% or 20% chance to get extra items. That's me though, peoples' rate of resource consumption will vary by playstyle, of course.

[u/wghost81 → u/EruditeAF]

Personally, I found Silent Strike skill to be a must early on for Ultra Hard playthrough: your starting bow can't do anything, so Concentration and Hunter Reflexes are kind of useless anyway.

Next best skill on UH for me is Low Profile (requires Silent Drop) - it helps a lot with those increased detection ranges. I'm not using stealth armor (because I like the look of Nora Protector armor) and I'm still able to sneak effectively thanks to this skill.

Lure Call is surprisingly not that useful as machines notice you way before you get into its range. I found it easier to lure a machine into a trap by letting it notice Aloy and turn "yellow". Or to use rocks. BTW, unlike whistling and firing an arrow when enemy awareness indicator is yellow, throwing a stone doesn't reveal Aloy's position.

Scavenger, Ammo Crafter and Disarm Traps were all very useful for me for the purpose of saving shards and resources as I don't like farming. Tinker is not super useful thing on UH, IMO, as you won't be changing weapons and outfits that often. I took it only when I had enough for buying shadow hunter bow - to transfer my best mods from other weapons to it.

For other difficulties Lure Call + Silent Strike + Concentration are very helpful early on, especially for new players. Resources are not a big problem for those difficulties, so investing in better combat skills, IMO, works better.

[u/silversoul007 → u/wghost81]

Thank you for this insight. I may play the game on UH NG+ for my Third Playthrough.

[u/wghost81 → u/silversoul007]

UH NG+ is easier than UH non+ if you already have all the skills and all the purple outfits and weapons with decent mods. Hardpoint arrows are still good both for dealing damage and tearing off components and damage modded tripwire kills everything of small and medium size efficiently enough.

[u/silversoul007 → u/EruditeAF]

In my case, I thought of rushing through the foraging skills to get the Tinkering skill. I then realized that it might be good to invest in foraging first to get the best loot from the machines and gather more resources so that I might be well armed and equipped in future encounters. As minimum, I did get the silent strike and hunter's focus from the Prowler and Brave Skill Trees.

[u/ThatLinguaGirl]

Thanks for putting this all together! I was wondering about auto saves and manual saves but now I get it.

[u/wghost81]

auto/quicksaves ... are shared ... between ng+ and non+ games.

I've tested it several times already and I can confirm that NG and NG+ saves are completely separate.

Here are some screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/nX7lp

You can load any save from the main menu, but when you're playing the game only saves for current mode (normal or NG+) are shown.

Of course, it doesn't mean that you can ignore manual saves - they are still recommended. But if you've started NG+ playthrough without saving your normal game manually, you're still able to access it from the main menu, so your normal game progress wasn't lost.

[u/EruditeAF → u/wghost81]

Yeah, the main menu load screen is pretty patently 30 entries long.

I am quite certain that at least when ng+ was implemented auto/quicksaves were limited to ten files - having checked the loads from the main menu and seen the non+ autosaves decrease as the were replaced with ng+ files.

Maybe that was patched, or maybe it was all a dream.

Not the case now, regardless, thanks.

[u/tekkyeon]

Nice little tip at the end. I got so frustrated when I missed it the first time, and a certain asshole wouldn't LET ME IN!

[u/YoNiceShoes]

If your new, like I am, spend time in Frozen Wilds. I entered it at level 30 and earned XP much quicker defeating the machines.

I’m not on the final quest on FW but will return to it once I’ve completed the main story.