Horizon Forbidden West Guide
Guerrilla Games2022PS5, PCAction RPGRating: 88
Horizon Forbidden West is an action RPG by Guerrilla Games. Players control Aloy as she explores the Forbidden West, a post-apocalyptic America ruled by robotic dinosaurs. The game features improved combat, underwater exploration, and a vast open world. A technical showcase for the PS5.
🏹 Combat Tips
- Focus scan: Scan machines to find weak points and components
- Tear off components: Use tear damage to remove armor and weapons
- Elemental weaknesses: Each machine has specific weaknesses (fire, frost, shock, acid)
- Use traps: Tripcasters and ropecasters are extremely powerful
- Override machines: Turn enemies into allies
💡 Always target the glowing weak points first — they take bonus damage.
⚙️ Best Weapons
- Hunter Bow: All-purpose, upgrade early
- Tearblaster: Removes components quickly
- Ropecaster: Tie down large machines
- Boltblaster: High DPS for boss fights
- Shredder Gauntlet: New weapon, great for elemental buildup
🗺️ Exploration Tips
- Climb everything: The Pullcaster lets you reach new areas
- Underwater: Unlock the diving mask for underwater areas
- Relic Ruins: Puzzle dungeons with great rewards
- Cauldrons: Override new machine types
🎯 Component Tear Chart
- Thunderjaw: tear both disc launchers first - they detach and become heavy weapons you can pick up and fire
- Stormbird: the chest cannon and the two wing engines; shock the engines to ground it, then tear the cannon
- Slaughterspine: plasma vents along the spine - purgewater first, or your shock arrows do almost nothing
- Shellsnapper: the shell plates rotate; wait for the gap and hit the core between rotations
⚡ Purgewater Beats Elemental Armor
- Western machines carry elemental plating: fire, frost, shock and acid resistances
- Land one purgewater arrow first - it strips every resistance for roughly ten seconds
- Then stack the matching element; a frost arrow on a soaked machine freezes it in two hits instead of six
🏹 Loadout and Skills
- Hunter Bow: full draw only - partial draws lose about half damage and most of the tear
- Sharpshot Bow: Braced Shot is the best single-target skill for its stamina cost
- Ropecaster: tie a heavy machine down, then walk behind it for free weak-point hits
- Rush Concentration, Braced Shot, and the Valor Surge that refills health on a tear
- Traversal: Pullcaster for crates, Shieldwing to glide off any ledge, sunwing override to fly