Horizon Zero Dawn: Beginner's Guide & Best Tips

So You Bought a Robot Dinosaur Game

Yeah, this game can be brutal at first. I remember my first ten hours—I spent most of them getting folded by a Watcher because I thought I could just Leroy Jenkins my way through a machine site. I couldn't. You can't. And that's exactly what makes Horizon Zero Dawn special. It looks like a Ubisoft open-world checklist, but it plays like a survival shooter where one wrong dodge means you're eating a 1000-pound Sawtooth to the face.

The world is gorgeous. The story actually made me tear up at the end, which I wasn't expecting from "girl with a bow fights robot dinosaurs." But let's be real: the opening hours are a slog if you don't know what you're doing. The game throws you into the Embrace, gives you a stick, and says "good luck." You're expected to figure out that stealth isn't optional—it's the whole point. The combat system is deeper than any trailer shows. It's not a cover shooter. It's a puzzle game where every machine is a unique puzzle, and your arrows are the solutions.

What's annoying? The climbing. Aloy can scale anything that's painted yellow, but the second you try to climb a normal rock face, she turns into a toddler who can't find a handhold. The weapon wheel stopping time is a godsend because the combat gets chaotic fast. And the resource grind early on? Absolute pain. I spent my first few hours hunting Foxes for their skins because I didn't realize you can just buy the good pouches from merchants. This guide is going to fix all of that.

Let's get you from "dying to a Strider" to "laughing at Thunderjaws."

Why You're Getting Your Teeth Kicked In

Let me guess. You saw the first Corruptor in the Proving, tried to trade shots with it, and got melted in three hits. Or maybe you're stuck on the Deathbringer at the end of the main quest. Maybe you're just frustrated that every fight feels like you're throwing pebbles at a tank. I've been there. I spent my first three runs trying to stack poison against the Stormbird and got destroyed every single time because poisons don't stack. The game never tells you that.

Here are the real pain points no guide admits:

• Resource starvation: You run out of Blaze, Wire, and Wood constantly if you're not looting smart. The game doesn't tell you that you can dismantle Sparker and Sludge from old mods for rare resources.
• First boss wall: The Corruptor fight right after the Proving is a skill check the game doesn't prepare you for. You're supposed to use Fire Arrows to overheat it and expose its core, not just shoot the glowing bits. And dodge sideways, not backward—its charging attack has a wide hitbox.
• Stealth is not a suggestion: The game encourages stealth early with the tall grass and silent strike. But I ignored it for the first five hours because I wanted to "feel powerful." You don't feel powerful at level 5. You feel like a pinata. Hug the grass, whistle to lure enemies, and use Silent Strike on isolated machines. It's a one-hit kill on anything smaller than a Longleg.
• Modding is confusing: You pick up a Purple Mod with +20% Handling and think it's amazing. But if you're using a Sharpshot Bow, Handling is nearly useless because draw speed is capped. You want Damage and Tear on that bow. I wasted 20 mod slots before I understood that.
• Machine weaknesses matter more than numbers: The Thunderjaw has 15,000 HP. A standard arrow does 40 damage. You do the math. But if you hit it with a Tearblast Arrow and strip its disc launcher, then use that launcher against it, the fight takes 30 seconds. The game does a terrible job explaining that the environment and machine parts are your real weapons.

The biggest rage-quit moment I've seen? The Hunter's Lodge trial where you have to kill a Ravager while taking no damage and only using fire arrows. That trial is pure BS because fire damage ticks slowly and the Ravager charges fast. The trick is to use Fire Arrows to set it on fire, then hide in the grass while the burn ticks its health down. It takes patience, not skill.

First Steps: What I Wish I Knew Before the Prologue Ended

Alright, boot up the game. You're little Aloy. You're going to fall into a ruin and find a Focus. This thing is your best friend. Use it every five seconds. It highlights loot, machines, climbable surfaces, and enemy patrol paths. I went through the entire first area without realizing you can tag enemies with R3. That's a massive oversight because tagged enemies show up through walls. I cannot stress this enough: press R3 on every machine you see.

When you get to Mother's Heart (the first real town), do NOT rush the main quest. You have three critical skills to unlock before you even think about the Proving:

• Silent Strike (1 point): The best skill in the game for early survival. One-hit kills any small machine or human. It turns every encounter into a stealth puzzle.
• Lure Call (1 point): Whistle to draw enemies into tall grass, then Silent Strike them. Rinse and repeat. This combo carries you through the first half of the game.
• Concentration (2 points): Slows time when you aim while jumping or sliding. This is your "I need to hit a weak point NOW" button. Get it immediately.

Buy a Carja Sharpshot Bow as soon as you can afford it. It's about 150 shards and it's the best weapon for the early game. The precision arrows have high damage and good tear. Use it to shoot the Blaze canisters on Striders and Grazers—they explode and kill the machine instantly. Farming Grazers this way gets you tons of Blaze and Metal Shards.

Loot everything. That sounds obvious, but I mean it. Pick up every Wood, Ridge-Wood, Blaze, and Wire. Your ammo is crafted from these, and you will go through arrows like candy when you fight Bellowbacks. When you run low on shards, hunt Foxes and Rabbits—their skins sell for 10 shards each and they respawn infinitely near the starting area.

Don't fight Watchers in groups. Watchers are the small, one-eyed scouts. In a group, they call reinforcements. Pick them off with a Silent Strike from the grass, one at a time. If you alert one, run away and hide in a bush until the alert meter drops. You'll get the rhythm eventually.

Expert Tricks That Made Me Feel Like a God

After 200 hours and three playthroughs, here's the stuff the game doesn't teach you but you absolutely need to know.

1. The Tearblast Arrow is your "I Win" button. The Sharpshot Bow has a special ammo type called Tearblast Arrows. These do almost no damage, but they strip off machine components with a single hit. A Thunderjaw loses its disc launcher in one shot. A Stormbird loses its lightning gun. A Behemoth loses its cargo container (which then explodes). Use this on every heavy machine. I killed my first Thunderjaw in under a minute by shooting off its disc launcher, picking it up, and unloading 8 discs into its face. Each disc does 350 damage. It's the highest DPS in the game.

2. Override machines early for free allies. The Override ability unlocks after the Maker's End quest. You can override Striders, Broadheads, and Chargers as mounts. But the real trick is overriding Watchers—they become your personal spotter. They'll mark enemies on your minimap and attack anything that gets close. It costs a Metal Vessel to override a machine, but Watchers are cheap. I used an overridden Watcher as a distraction for the entire Cauldron SIGMA run.

3. The Rattler is a trap weapon (mostly). The Rattler looks cool: it's a rapid-fire crossbow. It has terrible range, eats ammo, and does pathetic damage against armor. It's only useful for close-range fights against humans, which are rare. Don't waste shards on it. Save for the Frost Sling instead. The Frost Sling applies the Freeze status in two hits, which multiplies all damage by 2.5x. Freeze a Trampler, then hit it with a Hardpoint Arrow to the belly—it dies in three shots.

4. Ropecaster trivializes flying machines. Glinthawks and Stormbirds are nightmare fuel because they never land. The Ropecaster fires ropes that tie machines down. Three ropes to the body of a Stormbird and it crashes to the ground for 15 seconds. While it's down, you can shoot its chest core with Hardpoint Arrows for massive damage. I spent an hour trying to kill my first Stormbird without this. With the Ropecaster, it took 45 seconds.

5. Elemental statuses have hidden mechanics. Fire is good for burning health, but it's slow. Shock stuns enemies briefly, but doesn't work on machines with Shock protection (like Bellowbacks). Freeze is the best all-rounder because it debuffs armor and increases damage taken. Corruption turns machines against each other, but it's expensive and temporary. The most broken combo is Freeze + Tearblast + Hardpoint. Freeze the machine, tear off its weapons, then hammer it with high-damage arrows.

6. Fast travel is a privilege, not a right. You start with NO fast travel. You have to buy a Golden Fast Travel Pack from a merchant for 200 shards after the Proving. Do it immediately. The pack has unlimited uses. The cheap pack has only 10 uses and wastes your Metal Shards. I walked across the entire map three times before I learned this. Trust me, that 200 shard investment saves hours of running through forests.

The Five Biggest Noob Traps (I Hit Every Single One)

Mistake #1: Ignoring the Hunter's Lodge. The Hunter's Lodge questline gives you access to the Shadow Carja weapons, which are the best early gear. But you have to do the hunting trials. I skipped them because I thought they were optional filler. They're not. The Shadow Hunter Bow has 3 mod slots and does 25% more damage than the base version. The trials aren't hard—just annoying. Use the Ropecaster to tie down the target machine, then shoot its weak points. You'll get the best gear in the game before the halfway mark.

Mistake #2: Selling all your machine parts. You'll get Lens and Hearts from machines. They look like vendor trash. I sold every Bellowback Heart I found. Then I reached a Cauldron where I needed two of them to upgrade the Override ability. Each heart costs 500 shards from a merchant. Keep at least one of every Lens and Heart until you've finished the main story. The crafting and upgrade system demands them at the worst times.

Mistake #3: Using the wrong arrows. The Hunter Bow is your workhorse, but it has three ammo types: Normal Arrows, Fire Arrows, and Hardpoint Arrows. Normal arrows are almost useless after the first five hours. Fire arrows are for status application, not damage. Hardpoint Arrows are your primary damage dealers. They cost Shards and Wood, but they do 50 base damage with +30 Tear. I used Normal Arrows until level 20 because I didn't want to "waste" Hardpoint resources. That was stupid. Use Hardpoint for every fight. The resources are plentiful if you hunt a few Striders between quests.

Mistake #4: Standing still during combat. This sounds basic, but the combat system punishes standing still. Aloy has a dodge roll with generous invincibility frames. Most machine attacks have a 0.8 second wind-up where they pause before lunging. If you see a Scrapper lowering its head, dodge right at the moment it starts moving. I died to the Rockbreaker fight over and over because I ran in straight lines. Go sideways, not backward. And when in doubt, slide. Sliding triggers Concentration, which gives you time to aim.

Mistake #5: Over-leveling only health. The skill tree has three branches: Prowler (stealth), Brave (combat), and Forager (crafting). New players dump all points into health upgrades. Health is useful, but Concentration+ (extends slow-mo time) and Double Shot (fires two arrows at once when fully drawn) are vastly better. A fully drawn Hardpoint Arrow from a Carja Bow does 75 damage. Double Shot makes it 150 damage per shot. That's more effective than 50 extra HP. I respecced after dying to a Fireclaw and immediately noticed the difference.

FAQ: The Questions I Kept Googling at 2 AM

Q: Is there a way to respec skill points?
A: No. There is no respec in the base game. You get enough points to max every skill by level 60, but early mistakes are permanent. If you want to respec on PC, there are mods. On console, you're stuck. That's why I told you to prioritize Silent Strike, Lure Call, and Concentration first. Don't put points into Stealth Kill+ until you've got the core skills.

Q: What difficulty should I play on?
A: Normal is fine for first-timers. Hard makes machines bullet sponges—they have 2x health. Very Hard is for masochists and second playthroughs. I played on Normal and found it challenging enough. The game doesn't get easier on Easy; the combat system is designed to test you. The only thing difficulty changes is damage numbers and resource drop rates.

Q: What's the best armor in the game?
A: The Shield-Weaver Armor is the best for general use. You get it by completing all the Power Cell quests to unlock the Ancient Armory. It gives a full shield that absorbs 250 damage and recharges after 10 seconds. It's basically "easy mode." The Carja Blazon Heavy is a close second for fire resistance. The Nora Silent Hunter is best for stealth builds. But if you're struggling, go for Shield-Weaver first. It's located in a ruin near Ban-Ur.

Q: How do I get more inventory space?
A: Buy Pouches from merchants. They require Animal Skins and Bones. The Wolf Skin is needed for the Large Quiver. Hunt Foxes and Boars in the forest near Meridian. You need 4 Wolf Skins for the biggest pouch. The Resource Pouch (holds crafting items) needs Beaver Skins—those are found near rivers.

Q: Why can't I override machines I should be able to?
A: Override progression is tied to Cauldrons. Each Cauldron unlocks override for specific machine types. Cauldron SIGMA gives you Watchers and Striders. Cauldron RHO gives Scrappers and Sawtooths. You have to do them in order. Check your Notebook under "Cauldrons" to see which ones you've done. The final Cauldron, ZETA, unlocks Thunderjaws and Behemoths.

Q: The DLC The Frozen Wilds—is it worth playing before the end?
A: Play it after the main story. The DLC has Fireclaws and Scorchers that hit like trucks and have triple the HP of base game machines. The gear is amazing (the Banuk Striker Bow is the best bow in the game), but the difficulty spike is real. I went in at level 35 and got folded. Wait until you're level 45+ with end-game gear.