Horizon Zero Dawn Catch-All

I'm on "The Looming Shadow," got my Shield-Weaver Armor, own every weapon and outfit, got max carry capacity on everything, done just about everything in the Frozen Wilds, so there's nothing left for me but to buy all the collectable maps and get them. I'm clearly sucking the marrow from this game. A bit disappointed in myself for only finding one vantage naturally, but oh well.

Taken down my first Thunderjaw. Woot.

That's a good feeling. Congrats!

Hunting in this game feels so crunchy. It doesn't have the Diablo 3 loot loop like Monster Hunter, but the actual hunting and combat mechanic is totally top notch.

The combat in HZD is much more me. Granted I've only played the monster hunter demo, and I don't think I ever fully understood one of the weapons I tried, but with HZD everything is so fluid and you are changing your strategy moment to moment. I love that chaos.

Here are a few fun fights

Monster Hunter world is my first ps4 game on my shiny new ps4 pro, but HZD is second on my list to play. Last of Us Remastered, HZD, and MHW are why i bought the console.

I gotta say, from watching that video, i can't see your description of the combat applying to HZD and not MHW. I would suggest that it's simply a matter of finding a weapon or few that you really get the feel of and enjoy in MHW because they all play so radically differently.

I've been playing strictly Insect Glaive in MHW and i can't see how i could describe it as anything other than extremely fluid controlled chaos with constantly changing tactics based on monster and place of combat.

Seems like they both have a lot to offer, but based on that i think you could really enjoy MHW with a bit of tooling around with different weapons.

Fuzzballx wrote:

Monster Hunter world is my first ps4 game on my shiny new ps4 pro, but HZD is second on my list to play. Last of Us Remastered, HZD, and MHW are why i bought the console.

I gotta say, from watching that video, i can't see your description of the combat applying to HZD and not MHW. I would suggest that it's simply a matter of finding a weapon or few that you really get the feel of and enjoy in MHW because they all play so radically differently.

I've been playing strictly Insect Glaive in MHW and i can't see how i could describe it as anything other than extremely fluid controlled chaos with constantly changing tactics based on monster and place of combat.

Seems like they both have a lot to offer, but based on that i think you could really enjoy MHW with a bit of tooling around with different weapons.

Yeah, I don't think the demo did a good job of selling me on the game. Going in it felt like returning to an MMO I used to play but could no longer remember what everything did or what role things in my inventory had. As I say I just could not get the hang of the weapons. I'd think I'd sussed one out but then it would still seemed to have a mind of it's own.

What's the timed nature of the hunts like? Being restricted to twenty minutes for a hunt really got to me. I hate being timed in general but I can put up with it if it's generous enough.

I do think you might be right, in that, if I could go in and stick with the game until it clicks (which, when I think about it, I had to do with HZD to a lesser extent) I would probably enjoy it.

Far as i can remember all the main quests were 50 minutes, which was way more than enough time for me. In optionals sometimes they start getting lower, but most quests have plenty of time.

In the investigations which are like, optional optional quests, they come in a variety, 15 minute, 30 minute, and 50 minute.

I've yet to see it be an issue, you get so many investigations you can't possibly do them all, you end up clearing them out. If a 15 minute timer isn't your thing, throw them out, do 30 and 50 minute ones. I don't even notice the short ones being more rewarding.

If you start running into your quests being hard to complete in 50 minutes, i just means you need to go farm some upgrades from stuff you've already beat that's easier to kill for a few hunters. I stopped at a couple points and did 4 to 10 farm missions to farm a new weapon and to farm an entire set of specific armor. Then progression was much easier again.

The only thing i'll warn against is trying to hunt monsters in "expedition mode" early on. Expedition mode is really more about research and gathering. You can hunt monsters in expedition mode but your rewards for doing so are very low compared to investigations or quests, and the monsters are likely to leave the expedition map before you kill them when it's early in the game and you're not killing so fast.

You'll understand the mode differences as you get into it, but timers shouldn't be an issue. If you're having any issue with them, you stop and farm better gear. I just naturally did that and never had a quest timer run out in the game. Way into end game now.

edit: reading this thread between these posts of mine is making really really excited to go ahead and start on HZD now. This game looks amazing.

That's brilliant. Many thanks Fuzzballx.

The only thing with HZD is that it can appear to be a bit of a typical open world at first but the more you play and get into the fights with wildlife the better it gets.

I'm interested in more hot takes on Horizon Zero Dawn combat vs Monster Hunter combat. I'm intrigued by Monster Hunter and I know I wouldn't have given it a thought before I played Horizon Zero Dawn.

I'm squarely in the midgame in Monster Hunter World playing with Sword and Shield and Light Bowgun. Interested in Bow and Heavy Bowgun.

Strategically or stat-wise, Monster Hunter World is a deeper game with spreadsheets of data and loads of loot. There's a fair bit of gear-locking and stat growth, so your average end-game geared character will reliably ROFLstomp everything in Low Rank without much practice, skill, or knowledge.

There's a fair spread of monsters, but there are repeats, as in HZD, and they're beautifully rendered and animated.

But they're relatively boring bullet sponges. There's a weak area. There's an armored area. Sometimes that changes. That's about it. Monsters have a normal and a rage mode. As the name suggests, much of the entertainment comes from tracking the monster, unlocking Hunter's Note guides, gearing up, and then beating the monster in staged encounters.

HZD's machines are an order of magnitude more tactically interesting. Most of the machines won't have areas weak to damage when you encounter them. You're supposed to create those openings with your weapons and then exploit them when you do. Machine behavior can be radically different depending on how you take it apart. This is because of a different ethos in design. In Monster Hunter, you wear down the creature, but it becomes stronger as it nears death. In Zero Dawn, you take apart machines, and the more parts you disable, the weaker and more ineffectual it becomes until you finally render it inoperable.

MHW has Armored Parts and Weak Parts. HZD's machines have that, too. In addition, you have specific parts that are susceptible to damage, tear, shock, fire, or whatever element is indicated.

Finally, MHW is about fighting more or less a single monster. Sometimes they clash, but it's a fairly simple affair without much you can anticipate or plan, and it's random. In Zero Dawn, all the machines are constantly hostile and they're all out to get you. In addition, encounters with multiple machine enemies are the norm, not the exception. So you have to engage with the machine composition and positioning on the map even before your first attack. If you get ganked from behind by a Behemoth, there's a pretty good chance you made a mistake.

I'm getting close to finishing the game. I think I'll play through it again on a higher difficulty.

There is a free theme and avatars coming out tomorrow.

They've sold 7.6 million units. Whoo!

Higgledy wrote:

I'm getting close to finishing the game. I think I'll play through it again on a higher difficulty.

Ultra Hard was surprisingly easy, as long as you're fine with running away a lot. Even the final Thunderjaw wasn't too bad once I found a rock I could hide behind without it or the human goons being able to reach me.

Higgledy wrote:

I'm getting close to finishing the game. I think I'll play through it again on a higher difficulty.

There is a free theme and avatars coming out tomorrow.

They've sold 7.6 million units. Whoo!

The two hardest settings are definitely a blast to play. With the higher HP pool, there's a real point to deploying all your different tools on a particular machine or group of machines, where they'd otherwise fall over from a single attack on the lower settings. In Ultra Hard, the health bar is taken away so you can concentrate on the graphics and the hunting. If you're good enough, you won't really need the bar, you can tell how much damage you're doing from how the machine looks and what attacks you've done already.

Thanks.

Can you play the DLC via New Game Plus? I over shot it in my first play though (I want to buy it when it's on sale and I was still unsure about the game when it was last discounted.)

Yes, I believe the DLC just slots into any playthrough, including NG+. However, if you're a strict completionist, you'll want to get the special coils in the DLC before going into NG+ so you have the full 2 copies of each. I don't, but some people get bent all over that.

Not much gets me bent. Thanks for the reply.

I need to get back to this. I stalled out and jumped back to PC games. Now I've been away for over a month and it may be hard to jump back in.

It's worth trying again. It's an incredible game once it clicks. I don't think the combat options are too complicated. If I were you I'd just throw myself into a few fights with robots. That's were the fun lay for me (see's an excuse to post two more videos and takes it.)

There is a spoiler for a fight at the end of a quest chain in that first one.

I need to get back to this and finish up the DLC, hopefully I still remember how to play.

It really doesn't take too long to get up to speed. There was an eight-month gap between my finishing the game and my doing the DLC, and I didn't have any problems. The DLC does have one fight early on that lets you know they've seriously upped the danger of the machines, but if you play the Bravely Brave Sir Robin way, as I do, you'll find you can actually just run past it.

I started the DLC towards the end of my playthrough so I'm a little ways in already.

IMAGE(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4753/25799768167_63ceb1714a_h.jpg)

I love stat charts, and that is some awesome data.

Yeah, that's some awesome stats there. I love how there is an obscene amount of Watcher kills that the bar has to go all the way to the top.

After a long hiatus, I played a bit more of this today. To get back into the swing of things I just looked for some of the collectibles that were in the area I was near. I think I'm level 19 and the main quest line that I'm on recommends level 12, so I should probably get back to that.

One thing I noticed. I ran into a level 15 corrupted sawtooth (or is it sawback?). The thing killed me like 3 times. It didn't look like my fire traps or fire arrows were really doing a lot of damage even though they are weak to fire. I had to set a trap, lure it in, boom, then shoot it with some fire arrows and retreat until it went back to its area. I had to repeat this 4 or 5 times.

Should I be doing more damage than this? Is it possible I have outdated equipment? I did have some +fire and +damage mods on my weapon.

If it's weak to fire, it means it's easier to apply the burning status and it does more damage. The fire arrow itself won't do that much damage. It's not really a damage dealing sort of weapon. While the sawtooth is burning, you er, don't get hit. Wait for the burning status to go down. Fire arrows won't reapply the status while it is on. Then repeat.

It shouldn't take that many status applications to kill it. Maybe 3?

I feel like it took more than that. So should I set it on fire and then switch to a higher damage weapon?

Yeah, pretty much. At that point in the game, I think you're going to want to strip armor using Tearblast and then target the unarmored portions with Precision arrows. Or use a blast sling, that works, too. Blast doesn't care about armor and also tears off armor as well.

I second using Tearblast, I always tear blasted the heck out of them then just shot em up with arrows, while it isn't the most efficient method, it worked =/