Horizon Zero Dawn

[Speckle]

JohnStitch said:

That cauldron with the Thunderjaw took me ages - it killed me so many times, that was the hardest part of the game for me (so far anyway, still got to finish it)

My game is currently saved at a campfire just next to that cauldron and is the first thing I plan to do tonight. Although, with my shiny new armour I may just stand in front of him like Billy BigBalls and try to mele him to death

[TheGroover]

Speckle said:

My game is currently saved at a campfire just next to that cauldron and is the first thing I plan to do tonight. Although, with my shiny new armour I may just stand in front of him like Billy BigBalls and try to mele him to death

I did that cauldron a couple of nights ago. First time I'd had to take on a thunderjaw (I've been doing as many side missions as possible all tallnecks, clearing bandit campus etc etc) and surprised myself by only needing 2 goes at it. It's all in the strategy!

[Doofus]

Speckle said:

I assume you've switched the difficulty to easy? If not, that would be the best place to start which would hopefully make things more enjoyable for you.

One of the things I found extremely useful is repeatedly scanning an enemy during a fight (using focus with R3) to highlight theiry weakspots, it makes them far easier to hit. Regardless of whether you're using the most effective element/arrow, hitting the weakspots will always ldo greater damage. I would also recommend upgrading your primary hunter bow to the shadow (purple) version. That will give you the hardpoint arrows which are a significant damage upgrade over the standard arrows without having to alter your playstyle.

As mentioned before, the shadow sharpshooter bow is also a must for the tear blast arrows, they will make things much, much easier to kill. Both are definitely available once you get to Meridian.

You also need to get used to crafting more ammunition during the fight so stocking up on resources is essential. I am forever running out of arrows and having to make more on the fly. Also, don't forget you can change your loadout mid fight if you think different weapons might be more effective.

I found the doubleshot and tripleshot skill upgrades are also a massive help, although it took me a while to remember to notch the 2nd and 3rd arrows in the heat of battle. You can literally triple your damage with effectively the same single shot (although you have to craft more arrows this way). Also make sure you've upgraded the concentration skill and never forget to use concentration (R3) to assist your aiming in a fight.

Trip wires can be effective in large open areas but, you ahve to either be very quick to deploy them or create enough space between you and your foe. Always lay a few rather than just one. Overall though, I found the sling and the war bow to be more effective weapons.

Is there a particular machine type you're struggling with?

Honestly, I don't exploit the weaknesses anywhere near as much as I should (ie. firing freeze arrows at freeze cannisters to blow them up) but, that just means the fights will last a little longer.

Hope this helps a bit.

Edited by Speckle on Thursday 20th April 10:06

Thank you for that. I have difficulty on normal rather than easy, because I'm not a girl I can and do craft more ammo on the fly, but eventually, I run out of resources. That ticks me off too, because I don't know what resources I need to make arrows, apart from wood, and I've got half a forest load of that, but often, I still can't make any arrows. Then all of a sudden, I can, and I have no idea what it was that I picked up to make that happen.

I sailed through the first few hours (I'm about level 14 or 15, I think) without too much trouple, and then all of a sudden the difficulty ramped up really steeply, and I got stuck. I suspect that I should have learned more stuff earlier on, and that may be due to my trait of rarely playing side missions - in any game, not just this one. Those might be where I could have gained armour, experience and skills.

I also find it really tedious talking to people, so I rarely bother. Why can't they just tell you what they're going to tell you, rather than have you choose in which order you will ask the questons (which are never the questions I want to ask)?. I don't really know what I need to buy from merchants, so I don't do much of that either.

I'm my own worst enemy, I know. I think I need to find a map with the cauldrons on it, and go and do some of those, just to give me a bit of enjoyment again, because I'm not enjoying the main game at the moment. If I can't complete the cauldrons either, then I'll just give up. Like I did with The Last Of Us. Although that wasn't difficult to give up because it scared the crap out of me...

[TheGroover]

Doofus said:

Thank you for that. I have difficulty on normal rather than easy, because I'm not a girl I can and do craft more ammo on the fly, but eventually, I run out of resources. That ticks me off too, because I don't know what resources I need to make arrows, apart from wood, and I've got half a forest load of that, but often, I still can't make any arrows. Then all of a sudden, I can, and I have no idea what it was that I picked up to make that happen.

I sailed through the first few hours (I'm about level 14 or 15, I think) without too much trouple, and then all of a sudden the difficulty ramped up really steeply, and I got stuck. I suspect that I should have learned more stuff earlier on, and that may be due to my trait of rarely playing side missions - in any game, not just this one. Those might be where I could have gained armour, experience and skills.

I also find it really tedious talking to people, so I rarely bother. Why can't they just tell you what they're going to tell you, rather than have you choose in which order you will ask the questons (which are never the questions I want to ask)?. I don't really know what I need to buy from merchants, so I don't do much of that either.

I'm my own worst enemy, I know. I think I need to find a map with the cauldrons on it, and go and do some of those, just to give me a bit of enjoyment again, because I'm not enjoying the main game at the moment. If I can't complete the cauldrons either, then I'll just give up. Like I did with The Last Of Us. Although that wasn't difficult to give up because it scared the crap out of me...

If you go into the crafting menu it shows you what resources you need to craft anything.
Talking to people is how you get the side missions, it's not really avoidable if you want to do them, and they really are worth doing if only for the skill points, XP and\or rewards you get.
What to buy from merchants really depends on what you're after. Other than the obvious weapons and armour as an example I wanted to buy a Shadow Warbow, for which I needed a trampler heart. I killed a bagful of them, but never got a heart drop so ended up buying one from a specialist merchant in Meridian.
Some of the cauldrons are quite tricky so you're going to need to work out what to use when, it's part of the fun of this game!

[Speckle]

Doofus, it sounds like you've ended up in a harder area than your level can handle by skipping everything but the story. Have you upgraded your weapons and armour at all yet or, do you still have the green stuff?

Metal Shards are the main currency in the game, and are also used to make arrows alongside ridge wood.

If I were you, I would head back to the Hunting Grounds (bottom right of the map) and do the grazer challenge. Don't worry about completing it succesfully though. Stealth kill some of the grazers and then shoot the blaze cannisters off their back. Do that with as many of them as you can be bothered with and then go back up the the head Hunter dude and sell the excess blaze to merchant. Then abandon the trial and do it again.

If you have harvester arrows to shoot the blaze cannisters (shadow sharpshooter bow ammo) even better as that'll give you 24 blaze per grazer rather than 8 which makes things much quicker. Oh, and don't forget to stock back up on blaze before you leave.

Eventually, this will give you enough currency to buy any weapon or armour you desire as long as you have the right machine part addition

[Speckle]

Doofus said:

If you shoot something, and a flame or a bolt of lightning or something shows up in a circle above it, that's supposed to mean it's weakened or something. Seems to make fk all difference though.

Just noticed this comment, I thought the same initially. What I subsequently realised is that the circle only means that they are starting to be effected. You have to keep hammering them with the same element until the circle is full for the element to be in full force.

Same with the ropecaster actually. Whilst a few ropes will limit the movement of your foe, if you keep spamming them with ropes until the circle is full, then they'll actually go down.

[JohnStitch]

I think I've only actually used the ropecaster about twice - and that was just when checking out what it does - I always forget I've got it as I'm too busy throwing bombs and shooting arrows....As for the Tripcaster, I usually use that when I've got a Thunderjaw to contend with - Just fire a load of them in the same place and then get it to run through them, that usually knocks a load of health off of them

[Speckle]

Ropecaster is my go to weapon for big enemies after the tear blast arrows. Thunderjaw I usually tear off the disc launchers, rope 'em up and then kill them with their own weapons like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=333Cglb8WBU

(Sorry, I have an addiction to uploading gaming clips to youtube despite being a decidedly average gamer)

[chris watton]

Just had the Horizon Zero Dawn guide book arrive, cripes it's thick, and very heavy at 653 pages!

[Doofus]

Yes, I've upgraded my weapo s and armour, although what I have is probably inappropriate for what I need.

I got the chance to arse about in the hunting fields a while back, but I just thought "If I can't kill any of these bds when I need to, why would I waste time doing it for 'fun'?"

Sounds like I have no choice though...

Thanks all for the encouragement. I'll give it a rest for a week or so, and then come back to it, hopefully refreshed, bushy-tailed and bloodthirsty

[chris watton]

I spent ages doing the 'Death From The Skies Kill the Glinthawks Side Quest', but couldn't manage to defeat the boss super Glinthhawk a the end, so I decided to travel back to the beginning and do as many side quests and errands as I can.
I am trying for the Shield Weaver Armour but cannot find the second power cell...

[Speckle]

chris watton said:

I spent ages doing the 'Death From The Skies Kill the Glinthawks Side Quest', but couldn't manage to defeat the boss super Glinthhawk a the end, so I decided to travel back to the beginning and do as many side quests and errands as I can.
I am trying for the Shield Weaver Armour but cannot find the second power cell...

The second one is quite annoying. It is in the All Mother temple but, if you don't know to look for it at the point in the game when you organically walk through the temple, you will probably miss it if you're not one to explore every area thoroughly. After that, the temple is inaccessible (the gates to town are closed after the Proving) until after one of the main quests later in the game - I think it is called 'return to the Nora'.

I think there are ways you can glitch through the gates (google will help) but, I never tried any of them so cannot confirm whether or not they're easy to do.

I took on the Zeta cauldron this morning and, decided to try tripwires as someone on here said they worked well against Thunderjaws. I may have taken this theory to extremes and laid as many blast tripwires as I had resources for (I have 3 x purple damage mods on my tripcaster too), plus a whole load of blast traps. Seemed to work pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhO2brKrO_s

You'll have to forgive all the faffing about in my menu....I was looking for a shadow ropecaster which I eventually realised I haven't actually bought yet!!

[TheGroover]

Speckle said:

The second one is quite annoying. It is in the All Mother temple but, if you don't know to look for it at the point in the game when you organically walk through the temple, you will probably miss it if you're not one to explore every area thoroughly. After that, the temple is inaccessible (the gates to town are closed after the Proving) until after one of the main quests later in the game - I think it is called 'return to the Nora'.

I think there are ways you can glitch through the gates (google will help) but, I never tried any of them so cannot confirm whether or not they're easy to do.

I took on the Zeta cauldron this morning and, decided to try tripwires as someone on here said they worked well against Thunderjaws. I may have taken this theory to extremes and laid as many blast tripwires as I had resources for (I have 3 x purple damage mods on my tripcaster too), plus a whole load of blast traps. Seemed to work pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhO2brKrO_s

You'll have to forgive all the faffing about in my menu....I was looking for a shadow ropecaster which I eventually realised I haven't actually bought yet!!

That's pretty much how i did it, except without the fancy armour!

[Speckle]

TheGroover said:

That's pretty much how i did it, except without the fancy armour!

The fancy armour wasn't a factor, the only damage I took was when I jumped to the ground - the thunderjaw didn't hit me with anything.

I did discover earlier though, that the armour isn't necessarily a ticket to total invincibility...I inadvertently stumble across a corrupted zone with the 2 rockbreakers and, on the first attempt got absolutely nailed! Was flattened by one of them which not only broke through the armours defences, but also took my health down to about 10%. No sooner had I stood up and before I even had the chance to press the 'meds' button, the other one did exactly the same thing! Boom......dead

[TheGroover]

Yeah, i saw you never got touched interesting that's it's not the invincibility it's touted as though, still have to have a bit of finesse!

[Oakey]

Speckle said:

The second one is quite annoying. It is in the All Mother temple but, if you don't know to look for it at the point in the game when you organically walk through the temple, you will probably miss it if you're not one to explore every area thoroughly. After that, the temple is inaccessible (the gates to town are closed after the Proving) until after one of the main quests later in the game - I think it is called 'return to the Nora'.

I think there are ways you can glitch through the gates (google will help) but, I never tried any of them so cannot confirm whether or not they're easy to do.

I took on the Zeta cauldron this morning and, decided to try tripwires as someone on here said they worked well against Thunderjaws. I may have taken this theory to extremes and laid as many blast tripwires as I had resources for (I have 3 x purple damage mods on my tripcaster too), plus a whole load of blast traps. Seemed to work pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhO2brKrO_s

You'll have to forgive all the faffing about in my menu....I was looking for a shadow ropecaster which I eventually realised I haven't actually bought yet!!

People keep getting hung up on missing the second power cell but it's utterly pointless to dwell on it as you can't get the final cell until the Gaia Prime mission, before which you return to All Mother anyway which gives you another opportunity to pick up that second cell.

[Speckle]

TheGroover said:

Yeah, i saw you never got touched interesting that's it's not the invincibility it's touted as though, still have to have a bit of finesse!

Yeah, it definitely isn't the 'God mode' on switch that I keep reading it is but, it does give you the confidence to be a bit more aggressive in situations where you might normally be more stealthy. You also don't need to worry as much about the smaller machines when fighting the big ones.

You basically get 2 free hits where you'll take no damage after which the armour needs time to reset (takes about 5 seconds). If you get hit within that 5 second window like I did, you'll take normal damage.

Edited by Speckle on Friday 21st April 14:12

[Mikeyjae]

I have just got the Platinum Trophy, which took me around 55 hours in total. Its the second platinum I have since Far Cry 4.

If any body else is planning on trophy hunting then other then the main mission the hardest trophy I found to collect was; get all blazing suns in the hunting lodges. The rest just takes alot of fast travelling collecting metal flowers, vantage points etc.

I didn't have the special armor when I completed the main mission and for what its worth I am glad I didn't as the special armor is too over powered. Without the armor I was careful fighting machines and planning attacks. Once I obtained the special armor I just found myself near invincible. While I was mopping up the trophies I pretty much went face to face to with all machines wearing the armor including Thunderjaws.

Still this is one of my favourite games on PS4 maybe my favorite.

Don't know what to play now. Maybe back to online COD, MW1.

[Speckle]

Mikeyjae said:

I have just got the Platinum Trophy, which took me around 55 hours in total. Its the second platinum I have since Far Cry 4.

If any body else is planning on trophy hunting then other then the main mission the hardest trophy I found to collect was; get all blazing suns in the hunting lodges. The rest just takes alot of fast travelling collecting metal flowers, vantage points etc.
.

Good work! I'm currently working towards platinum and doing the blazing sun hunting trials. I've done 3 of the Hunting Grounds so far without too much trouble but, knowing my luck, they were probably the easy ones!

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday trying to clear all the weapon tutorials I had amassed, thinking they would count towards the platinum. Turns out they don't make any difference so, a bit of time wasted. Was quite good fun though.

I'm thinking I might switch back to regular armour for the final mission (which I'm leaving to be the last thing I do in the game) safe in the knowledge that I'll have the shadow weave armour as backup if it all goes tits up...

[chris watton]

I am about half way through and still thoroughly enjoying the experience (although not so much the underground levels, where it's quite hard to see). I am still crap with the controller and aiming at moving targets (like the flying mech variants), but the game is so beautiful to play and look at, I don't care.

I am sure I will play this again once complete. haven't been so much into a game since Rome Total War!