Before you dive into Horizon Forbidden West, it’s crucial to know what to expect. The sequel expands on the foundation of the first game in many ways, but it also brings a couple of quality-of-life updates you should learn as soon as possible. Our Horizon Forbidden West tips are a great starting point for Aloy’s new adventure.

If you’re in need of more help, we also have guides covering the missions list and how long the game is, how to unlock the glider, the complete list of skills, how free fast travel works, and a Cinnabar Sands walkthrough for your first Tallneck.

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Horizon Forbidden West Tips

1. Focus on the Main Story Up Until Death’s Door

Horizon Forbidden Dawn doesn’t take long to open up and start introducing all sorts of side activities to lose yourself into — but I can’t recommend you enough to resist the exploration urge and focus on the main story until Death’s Door.

This is the fifth main quest, and depending on your difficulty of choice, it’s only a couple of hours until you reach this point. Once you get to The Embassy, finish the quest to get into Death’s Door. From here on out, the map opens up even further and you also obtain the Shieldwing, which is essential.

2. You Need Items for Anomalous Growths and Metal Flowers

If you stumble upon an Anomalous Growth while exploring and get hit with a Missing Tool Needed message in Horizon Forbidden West, don’t fret. You just need to progress through Death’s Door in the main questline first. Completing this quest rewards you with the Igniter for your spear.

Similarly, Metal Flowers require the Vine Cutter. You can obtain the tool during the Seeds of the Past main quest.

3. Remember to Manual Save in Campfires

Quick saving conveniently takes only a few seconds. But if you’re as paranoid about your save as I am, make sure to do a manual save every now and then. If you do a quick save, this will overwrite one single save each time. With a manual save, you can go ahead and create separate files.

4. You Don’t Need To Dive Into the Water To Loot Every Time

If the water is low enough for you to see the loot icon above it, it means you don’t need to dive underwater to grab the supply box or whatever is lying underneath. Of course, if you’re close to a lake or any other big surface, it’s encouraged to explore underwater as much as possible. But sometimes you can get away with a quick interaction.

5. You Can Craft on the Go

Like in the first game, you can craft ammunition for your weapons as you perform other actions. It doesn’t matter if Aloy is running, swimming, or descending in mid-air — you can just hold L1 and craft as many ammunitions as you like. The game will enter slow motion as you do it, and unless you get attacked, it won’t be interrupted.

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6. Broken Cars Aren’t Just for Scenery

One of the Horizon Forbidden West tips you should keep in mind is that cars aren’t just an asset in the scenery. If either the hood or the trunk of the car is closed, that’s a sign that there may be loot inside. Approach either side and open it with R2 to find a crate.

7. You Can Set Everything To Toggle Instead of Hold

If you head over to the Settings menu, under the General section, you will find an option to circle between Toggle and Hold for most actions. You can just choose one or the other for everything, or customize it for each individual action, which is super helpful.

8. You Don’t Recover Traps After Placing Them

The game teaches you to dismantle traps early on, but it doesn’t clarify that you don’t actually get your own traps back. Instead, you’re going to get materials. Keep this in mind before placing a trap in case you’re low on resources and battle isn’t over yet.

9. Activate Climbing Annotations

You will quickly grow tired of scanning the environment in search of a climbable ledge. For this, I recommend activating Climbing Annotations in Settings – Visuals. This automatically displays every surface that can be interacted with, making climbing infinitely more intuitive.

10. A Quick Arrow Can Interrupt Incoming Attacks

This varies depending on the machine you’re facing, but sometimes, shooting a quick arrow has the chance to interrupt an imminent attack. It’s not always necessary to aim at weak points to get out of trouble!

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11. Loot Everything, There Is a Stash Now

You should always be pressing Loot All, as Horizon Forbidden West has an actual stash for your materials. If you’ve met the carrying size limit of a particular item, the spares are automatically saved into your stash — you don’t have to do anything.

The stash can usually be found in settlements. Of course, you can also store armor, weapons, and other items inside, so knock yourself out.

12. You Can Set Material Hunting As Active Quests

Want to upgrade your quiver or any other tool? Well, the requirements usually involve tracking down specific materials or even hunting wildlife. It’s not always super clear where to look for them, but you can set the material search as an active job. This way, the game automatically lets you know whenever you’ve gathered one of the required materials, and what else you’re missing. With so many menus and upgrade paths to keep track of, believe me — you shouldn’t underestimate the feature.

13. If You Take Down an Enemy’s Part, Make Sure To Actually Loot It

Following Monster Hunter rules, another one of our Horizon Forbidden West tips involves machine parts. There are times when a quest may ask for you to gather a specific part, which has to be detached from the enemy. That being said, you won’t loot said part if you only loot the main body — so don’t forget to grab any valuable materials from the part itself, too.

14. There Is Health Generation, But You Have to Unlock It

By default, Aloy doesn’t regenerate her health when she’s not taking damage, but you can unlock the mechanic via the Survivor skill tree. You can get it fairly on, and while it only works under a certain situation (whenever Aloy is below 25% health), it’s definitely useful.

15. Get Resonator Blast

This is a neat ability from the Warrior skill tree that you can get early on. With Resonator Blast, you can do the following sequence: Attack an enemy using melee attacks to build up energy on your spear, follow up with a heavy attack (R2), and then shoot an arrow to deal a ton of damage. It quickly became a go-to for me whenever I had to deal with human enemies.

16. Merchants Become Available During the Main Quest

If you happen to get into a settlement but can’t interact with any of the merchants, don’t worry — you just need to unlock them first. Progress through the main story up until To The Brink, which is the third quest. At one point, Aloy has to talk to Ulvund after hunting the machines in order to blow the whistle. After the following cutscene, you’re granted access to merchants across the world.

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17. Make Sure To Sell Items

Speaking of merchants, make sure to actually sell the items you’ve been gathering during your travels. Whenever you open the merchant screen after talking to one, you can clearly see which items are specifically for selling purposes. Get rid of them whenever you have the chance, as they can pile up pretty quickly.

18. You Can Buy Back Items From Any Merchant

If you happen to sell an item that you didn’t intend to, it’s possible to buy it back from merchants. In fact, you don’t have to talk to the same merchant again — any of them gladly displays the items you’ve recently sold.

19. You Can Loot While on Top of a Mount

As we reach the end of our Horizon Forbidden West tips, here is some short but helpful advice: You don’t have to hop off from your mount to loot objects (even crates!), so make the most out of this.

20. There Is No Shortage of supplies

Herbs, branches, rocks… the world is your oyster, and it’s filled with resources. As I mentioned earlier: Don’t be afraid to grab as many items as you can. It takes some time until you can upgrade your quiver and overall inventory capacity, so it’s best to just grab as much as you can and replenish your ammunition as you’re traveling.

Horizon Forbidden West Tips Guide - 20 Things the Game Doesn't Tell You

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