Horizon Zero Dawn Catch-All

LarryC wrote:

The best mods are 50+% plus secondary and tertiary bonuses. Just saying.

Are they just REALLY rare (I had a pile of mods in the 40s but nothing higher) or do you have to farm them from very particular places?

Haha. I actually don't know. I do get purple drops from Ravagers and the odd Snapmaw, but those are low quality ones. The best purples drop from the toughest machines: Rockbreakers and Thunderjaws.

Having the skill to change out mods is really good too, you need to farm much less; I do not need three War Bows anymore.

One thing I am finding annoying is that it appears some quests only finish when you have them active? For example I'm still showing the hunter lodge trials even though I did them all to get the weapons. Same with the Tutorial quests. Is there a means around this (especially the trials I am not that jazzed about go through them all again)?

Flintheart Glomgold wrote:

One thing I am finding annoying is that it appears some quests only finish when you have them active? For example I'm still showing the hunter lodge trials even though I did them all to get the weapons. Same with the Tutorial quests. Is there a means around this (especially the trials I am not that jazzed about go through them all again)?

Yeah, sorry. With the Tutorials at least, I think it's a very intentional decision, to make you focus on learning to use your weapons. A completely justified but still frustrating and annoying decision.

I'm surprised by the hunter lodge trials though.

The tutorial missions aren't that bad, actually. I completed those just on my random jaunts around the map hunting whatever was unfortunate enough to be in my path.

Flintheart Glomgold wrote:

Having the skill to change out mods is really good too, you need to farm much less; I do not need three War Bows anymore.

One thing I am finding annoying is that it appears some quests only finish when you have them active? For example I'm still showing the hunter lodge trials even though I did them all to get the weapons. Same with the Tutorial quests. Is there a means around this (especially the trials I am not that jazzed about go through them all again)?

The hunter lodge trials semi-finish.
If you go to the objective details, you'll see they're updated with what your earned/completed for each trial.
I think they're always on, to allow you to do the trials again, if you so wish.

slazev wrote:
Flintheart Glomgold wrote:

Having the skill to change out mods is really good too, you need to farm much less; I do not need three War Bows anymore.

One thing I am finding annoying is that it appears some quests only finish when you have them active? For example I'm still showing the hunter lodge trials even though I did them all to get the weapons. Same with the Tutorial quests. Is there a means around this (especially the trials I am not that jazzed about go through them all again)?

The hunter lodge trials semi-finish.
If you go to the objective details, you'll see they're updated with what your earned/completed for each trial.
I think they're always on, to allow you to do the trials again, if you so wish.

I think this is right after looking at it again, I got all the rewards.

Last night I finished the bandit camps...

Spoiler:

I got to kill Nil last night: it was against how I've been playing but he was so annoying that I wanted to eliminate any possibility of seeing him in the game again except to kill him again.

I started this game last night. Hoo boy am I going to love this game - I'm completely bought into this story. I spent nearly an hour in the first level, making sure to experience everything. Blown away and have yet to do much of anything.

Looks like I only have main quests left and now I can get back to the storytelling. The main quest in this game is quite amazing and even some of the side quests are quite good (others have not deviated from the boring fetch or hunt and kill quests).

I picked this up a week or two ago when it dropped to $30 at Best Buy ($24 with GCU) and have put a few hours into it right now. I like it! I'm really impressed with the visuals--I was kind of worried that the praise I'd heard from it would be lost on me, as I own neither a PS4 Pro nor a 4k TV, but it still looks great regardless.

I really like hunting and foraging, though I'm concerned that I will mostly find things like the watchers to be annoying. I'm also finding stealth to be somewhat unintuitive--I understand generally that I can crouch in the high grass and how the stealth indicator works, but I have yet to understand how to break line of sight or otherwise sufficiently get away from an alerted enemy before stealth does me any good. I imagine I'll pick that up in time though.

I'm sure that, as with most open world games, I'm going to need to figure out what tasks are worth pursuing and what I should let alone, but for the moment I've done everything available to me. I left off last night right before the Proving, so really that just means I've completed a few quests and a few side quests. Very curious to see how things open up after this next mission and I enter the game proper (I'm assuming that's where this is going, anyway).

mrlogical wrote:

I really like hunting and foraging, though I'm concerned that I will mostly find things like the watchers to be annoying. I'm also finding stealth to be somewhat unintuitive--I understand generally that I can crouch in the high grass and how the stealth indicator works, but I have yet to understand how to break line of sight or otherwise sufficiently get away from an alerted enemy before stealth does me any good. I imagine I'll pick that up in time though.

Part of that is to be effective with stealth outside of the tall grass you'll need to get the stealth armor and upgrade it. By the end of the game I was able to sneak anywhere unless I crossed a machine's eyesight - it is much more evident at that level. At the beginning your stealth level is so low you do not really see it.

Horizon Zero Dawn Patch 1.30 Adds New Game+, Face Paint Options, Ultra Hard Difficulty, More: https://blog.us.playstation.com/2017...

Tried to get back into a second playtthrough on NG+/Ultra hard. Really wish they would add larger inventory. Took away my motivation really fast running around with no space.

Larger stacks would solve that problem pretty fast.

Yeah that too.

My weird desired inventory fix is that it was easier to throw away rocks... wish you could just delete them out of your inventory. I had a ton of boxes full of rocks that I couldn't open until I manually threw rocks, one at a time, to get rid of them.

Although any latecomers to the game reading this: it's a pretty good game when the criticisms get nitpicky, don't you think?

Anyway, I think the small inventory was a bit of a pain, but it got better when I considered it an impetus to stop hoarding and start selling and crafting. (Stop saving the good ammo!, I had to tell myself!)

I finished up the main quest last night, level 50, all cauldrons and most of the major side quests done. I have nitpicks, but they are relatively minor blips on a great overall game. The story and the wonderfully tuned combat system were undoubtedly the highlights for me. It's a rare game that actual makes the effort to both create an intricate and imaginative backstory and simultaneously tie up most loose ends by its conclusion.

Favorite weapon: Tripcaster, particularly mid-combat. There's something oddly satisfying about maneuvering just right so you can plant a blast wire perfectly under the feet of a monster that has just charged by after a well-timed dodge.

Favorite monster: Glinthawks. These majestic birds were a wonderful... it's hurting my fingers to continue this rubbish. Glinthawks are the internet trolls of the sky. I slapped on my tundra suit with extra frost resist anytime we were in the same zip code. I also put enough +Fire on my main bow to make them burn with a single arrow.

Actual favorite monster: Snapmaw. Thunderjaw and Stormbird are probably the more obvious answers here, but Snapmaws were a persistent threat that could always ruin my day if I got complacent around a few of them. One of my favorite combat discoveries was learning to shoot the otherwise difficult to hit frost sack on their throat right as they were rearing their head for a frost barrage. All of the explosions from bellow back tanks and blaze, shock, and frost canisters were extremely satisfying.

Fingers crossed for some new monsters in the upcoming DLC.

Just started the game this week for the first time and it's actually got me hooked. I still haven't gotten myself to stick with The Witcher 3, so I was worried that I would fall off the wagon on this game as well, but the original story has been way easier to engage with. Just killed that first Sawtooth last night, gonna get to the Proving tonight.

So holy balls, that Proving was intense. I knew something was up when I heard that ol' Final Fantasy 8 battle music kick in - what was it called...

Oh, right, "The Man with the Machine Gun".

They were really setting up some solid rivalry there between Bast and Aloy, so the Surprise Brutality actually felt like a surprise. This game continues to keep me hooked and provided I remember to play less of Let It Die, I think I see a wide multitude of hours going into this. Got my first Strider mount, climbed my first Longneck, and then rushed a Sawtooth encounter before promptly dying and putting the game down before work.

My only real complaint thus far is the climbing mechanics - they look cool when they work, but it's not always very clear as to where one can go with them. However, this is pure nitpicking - the climbing is a drop in the bucket compared to vast swaths of fantastic shiz jampacked in this post-apocalptic America (which speaking of, I found my first datalog transcript of the hyper-conservative 2060's Hannity/O'Reilly/talk radio personality whatshisname. lore 4 dayz y'all).

Exactly. Climbing in this game is... well, it's very limited, so this ain't a parkour game or anything. But the combat and the hunting are polished to a fine sheen. The atmosphere is nothing to sneeze at, either. It can be justifiable to run around just looking at the horizon.

LarryC wrote:

It can be justifiable to run around just looking at the horizon.

For zero reason, especially around dawn.

m0nk3yboy wrote:
LarryC wrote:

It can be justifiable to run around just looking at the horizon.

For zero reason, especially around dawn.

ALOY, SMALL FRY!

(...I ran out of referential puns...)

I hate games where the L+R buttons are so center to the gameplay. I have a disability where my right hand is 20% slower to react in my index finger and it gets tired easily. What makes people who made games not put in the option of remapping the controller. As it is, I am playing it on normal, then changing it over to easy/story when my hand gets locked up. Otherwise, I would be playing it on hard.

I am enjoying myself and I keep having to struggle with the controller. I'm sucked into the story.

Love that they added a story mode to the game. Not that I needed it for this game, particularly, but I wish more games would do the same - i'd have a hell of a shorter backlog of stuff to finish!

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds: The Kotaku Review

Horizon Zero Dawn was a terrific game. Guess what? Its new expansion, The Frozen Wilds, is also good.
The Frozen Wilds doesn’t revolutionize or even significantly expand on the best ideas introduced in Zero Dawn. It succeeds in a more straightforward way: by giving us more of an already fantastic game.

I'm torn. When I get Frozen Wilds, should I jump right in with my end-of-game save? Or should I start that new game I've been meaning to, so I encounter the new area organically? Leaning towards the new game.

I've been playing my NG+ for the last few days. Wanted to complete the game before Frozen Wilds, because I thought it would start after the end of the game, but not only is it mid-game content, it also add more skills you can take back to the old content = Perfect.

I've been thinking the same Agathos, but reading Shadout's information, I'm sold on this being an organic expansion of my NG+ "hard" run. Looking forward to being able to "forage/collect whilst mounted".

So it's just a bunch of side quests in a new area of the map?

And new creatures, and new skills, and new weapons. And apparently very pretty snow.