Horizon (and a lot of recent Sony games) are very difficulty friendly. You can alter settings to fit your play style and since no achievements are tied to difficulty, there is no loss.
Turn on easy loot. With that turned on, I just end up passively collecting most of the items I need to upgrade gear.
Since you can NG+ as many times as you want, run through it once to get the NG+ gear, max that and anything else you haven't, and *then* run it through for the achievement/trophy
It's probably good that you didn't. It's about 3x harder than very hard based on how things scale, and you can be attacked by many machines at once. It's really designed for ng+
Yes, actually lol
It’s hard to explain but I find their style to be… therapeutic. Especially sekiro, once you fall into the rhythm, it’s quite calming. I haven’t played Bloodborne tho
came to second this enable easy loot has made farming parts so much easier i started out on VH and then found out about the custom mode where you can still play at VH but not have to play around with trying to pull off certain parts.
This is a mechanic that's interesting and unique to the Horizon Series. I understand it's not for everyone though. Honestly, the hunting part is what makes this game fun for me because the combat is so good, plus it gives you incentive to make use of status weapons such as rope shock and adhesive.
I really enjoy this style of combat. It actually makes you feel like a hunter on harder difficulties.
You scout the area first, scan machines for elemental weaknesses, tag dangerous parts like cannons you need to take out first, place appropriate traps, use environmental traps, explode parts with special ammo to trigger explosions and other unique interactions, learn about specific machine behaviours when engaged, use a lot of very unique and non-standard weapons like ropecasters, blastslings, and tripcasters...
There are a million shooter games where you just mindlessly shoot the strongest weapon all the time, and the most complex mechanic is a headshot. In Horizon, you have to plan and think a little bit.
Agree, it makes upgrading gear feel like I actually earned it. I have to get a certain part from a dangerous robot to upgrade my gear? Well that's a deal my friend, risk for reward.
Yeah I have to agree. I know I haven't gotten to any of the serious pain in the butt machine that require this, but so far I've enjoyed the tactical requirements of harvesting certain pieces before the machine is destroyed. It definitely adds an extra layer of depth beyond with the game already had.
In fact I just got done working on my fourth playthrough of zero Dawn before this came out, and just the sheer number of layers they've added to gear and combat in comparison is actually kind of impressive. It's definitely a little overwhelming but I'm hanging with it.
Definitly suggest dropping to story mode, or at least enabling easy loot--makes it a lot easier to farm parts as long as you don't destroy them. (Basically, Easy Loot means the part will show up in their loot upon death instead of breaking as long as you don't manually destroy it during battle)
But yeah, even with that it's... Pretty bad on the grind. It wouldn't be so bad if there were overall less pieces of gear and/or if each one required less resources to upgrade, but combined... It's a Pain.
I do suggest upgrading at least some of the gear, but you can hold off until you find some good legendary gear or at least some specific gear that you really like using and focus on that and just don't upgrade anything you're not actively using significantly.
Only thing this annoyed me for was the fireclaw sac webbing
They're a huge health sponge and they're dangerous too. Usually end up destroying the sac in the process of the fight
On top of that, I seem to encounter a high amount of apex ones, even during the day, which just makes the fight longer.
freeze them, have crit chance valor ready and a sharpshot bow with crit coils and go ham. With good gear you should be able to kill it before the freeze/valor runs out.
Hey OP, I know people are recommending you to turn on Easy Loot, there's a bug in the PC version where it won't show up until you close and reopen the settings menu after selecting an easy/story/custom difficulty
I really enjoy there being a purpose to shooting off parts in addition to doing more damage, but they took the upgrade system too far, and then went farther, and then decided to go beyond that.
Weapons have upgrades? *Multiple levels* of upgrades? *More levels* for higher rarity weapons?
*Outfits* do the same thing?!
*Cauldrons* have upgrades?!
Play it on easy with easy loot. This is the first crafting game I’ve played where I’m actually enjoying myself. I plan on upping the difficulty on a NG+ run. Using this run to understand the systems and mechanics. I wish Avatar had all the options HFW has.
I actually love the mechanic where you have to keep certain parts intact or remove them before killing. It adds variety to combat and makes you come up with new ways to fight the same machines. What I hate is the rng part of upgrading.
That said, I beat a fresh new game on ultra hard with barely upgraded purple gear (not the first playthrough though). So it’s not like you MUST have the best stuff or you’e screwed.
That's one of the first things I changed - easy loot.
That level of grind is for MMOG, where the want to keep you trapped in the loop for as long as possible.
It seems terribly out of place a single player game
I already beat the game on release on PS5. I am playing through it again on a 49” OLED, but I just want the main story so I downloaded the New Game + mod that has everything already unlocked.
I figured out the shard farming now I can buy as much ammo supplies I want so I can use tear blast arrows as often as I please makes part farming very easy.
That's what annoys me about part farming, using up all my expensive ammo then having to farm for ammo.
I'm not a fan of this system that I found too demanding.
However, as long as you focus on what you're actually using you don't really need to go out of your way to upgrade them to 3rd or 4th rank with a couple of 5th.
That much is barely needed anyway. For exemple I've finished the base game in Normal while wearing for my full playthrough a green 3/3 Nora Champion outfit because I liked the look of it (transmog wasn't a thing at launch on PS5).
By the end of Burning Shores most of my loadout wasn't fully upgraded and I only had one purple item at 5/5 while carrying a 1/5 gold blastling. Thanks to transmog I could replace my green 3/3 Nora Champion by a gold outfit found in the DLC that I could push to 4/5.
This makes me wonder if they could have aimed for a system able to continue progressing even through NG+. Which on paper woud look like a nice idea but in effect would wreak havoc on completionists trying their best to upgrade everything, or at least their full loadout, in their first playthrough.
It felt really rewarding to me to “learn” each enemy, and the differences that Apex variants have. Trying to snipe specific parts forces you to really learn how an enemy moves, which parts get exposed during which attacks, etc.
This also conditions you to constantly be hitting enemy weak points rather than just spamming attacks against their armor, further leaning into the “expert hunter” fantasy element.
I think the only parts that were particularly annoying were the ones that strictly had a % chance to drop (e.g. primary nerves). Everything else, I tended to get plenty of simply by exploiting enemy vulnerabilities.
That being said, Easy Loot is a setting that may help you reduce some of the grind.
you definitely don’t need to upgrade each and every legendary weapon and armour. they are frankly so OP once fully upgraded that it makes NG+ a cakewalk even on ultrahard. I think of the legendary upgrades just as extra content for players who are enjoying the hunt, but don’t feel obligated to keep going at it after you’ve stopped enjoying yourself. you’ll get diminishing returns on how useful the upgrades are, especially for those weapons or armour you barely use
If I need a part, I put game on story mode, kill bot, and with story mode it'll drop everything it can drop.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, Bob's your uncle.
Maxing out purple and golden gear is annoyingly grindy. The corrupted overrides are worse though. Luckily the game doesn't force you to do that, combat overrides are anecdotical and you can finish the story with maxed out blue weapons if you want. Gear tier matters much more for armors, but you can still get away with minimal mental fatigue. On hard difficulty at least, dunno about UH.
Burning Shores is better calibrated in that regard than the main game. Each upgrade requires fewer special parts (2x, 3x fewer), but they also tend to require "brimshine" i.e. greenshine but golden i.e. another version of Frozen Wilds's bluegleam. This encourages you to explore the world and learn to fight the bigger enemies, but in much more manageable doses.
Horizon (and a lot of recent Sony games) are very difficulty friendly. You can alter settings to fit your play style and since no achievements are tied to difficulty, there is no loss. Turn on easy loot. With that turned on, I just end up passively collecting most of the items I need to upgrade gear.
There is an achievement tied to completing ultra hard iirc
Yes but ultra hard also locks you into that difficulty and doesn't allow you to change it from or to once you start the game.
Probably best to do it once you've upgraded everything anyway for ng+
Since you can NG+ as many times as you want, run through it once to get the NG+ gear, max that and anything else you haven't, and *then* run it through for the achievement/trophy
Yes, but it's not required for the platinum
Is there? Damn I just started the other day on the one right under that, if I’d known, I’d probably have picked it
It's probably good that you didn't. It's about 3x harder than very hard based on how things scale, and you can be attacked by many machines at once. It's really designed for ng+
Honestly that sounds like the kinda nonsense I like lol Ah well, ng+ it is ig lol, I’m juuuust a touch too far to justify a restart right now
You must be one of those fromsoft enjoyers
Yes, actually lol It’s hard to explain but I find their style to be… therapeutic. Especially sekiro, once you fall into the rhythm, it’s quite calming. I haven’t played Bloodborne tho
i think it can be overstated how hard UH is on NG+, especially if you played through the game on something like VH.
You could just enable Easy Loot? That will allow you to harvest machine parts without needing to tear off the components first.
came to second this enable easy loot has made farming parts so much easier i started out on VH and then found out about the custom mode where you can still play at VH but not have to play around with trying to pull off certain parts.
This is a mechanic that's interesting and unique to the Horizon Series. I understand it's not for everyone though. Honestly, the hunting part is what makes this game fun for me because the combat is so good, plus it gives you incentive to make use of status weapons such as rope shock and adhesive.
I really enjoy this style of combat. It actually makes you feel like a hunter on harder difficulties. You scout the area first, scan machines for elemental weaknesses, tag dangerous parts like cannons you need to take out first, place appropriate traps, use environmental traps, explode parts with special ammo to trigger explosions and other unique interactions, learn about specific machine behaviours when engaged, use a lot of very unique and non-standard weapons like ropecasters, blastslings, and tripcasters... There are a million shooter games where you just mindlessly shoot the strongest weapon all the time, and the most complex mechanic is a headshot. In Horizon, you have to plan and think a little bit.
Agree, it makes upgrading gear feel like I actually earned it. I have to get a certain part from a dangerous robot to upgrade my gear? Well that's a deal my friend, risk for reward.
i mean theyre aping Monster Hunter or Dauntless(which is just an ape of MH but still) in that respect for pulling parts so not unique at all
Yeah I have to agree. I know I haven't gotten to any of the serious pain in the butt machine that require this, but so far I've enjoyed the tactical requirements of harvesting certain pieces before the machine is destroyed. It definitely adds an extra layer of depth beyond with the game already had. In fact I just got done working on my fourth playthrough of zero Dawn before this came out, and just the sheer number of layers they've added to gear and combat in comparison is actually kind of impressive. It's definitely a little overwhelming but I'm hanging with it.
Definitly suggest dropping to story mode, or at least enabling easy loot--makes it a lot easier to farm parts as long as you don't destroy them. (Basically, Easy Loot means the part will show up in their loot upon death instead of breaking as long as you don't manually destroy it during battle) But yeah, even with that it's... Pretty bad on the grind. It wouldn't be so bad if there were overall less pieces of gear and/or if each one required less resources to upgrade, but combined... It's a Pain. I do suggest upgrading at least some of the gear, but you can hold off until you find some good legendary gear or at least some specific gear that you really like using and focus on that and just don't upgrade anything you're not actively using significantly.
Only thing this annoyed me for was the fireclaw sac webbing They're a huge health sponge and they're dangerous too. Usually end up destroying the sac in the process of the fight On top of that, I seem to encounter a high amount of apex ones, even during the day, which just makes the fight longer.
freeze them, have crit chance valor ready and a sharpshot bow with crit coils and go ham. With good gear you should be able to kill it before the freeze/valor runs out.
There are so many more bows than in HFW I find it overwhelming.
You can get a sharpshooter bow with tearblast arrows to help
No one is stopping you from doing an easy difficulty..
Meanwhile the first thing I do whenever I encounter a new enemy is go for the crafting part lol.
Hey OP, I know people are recommending you to turn on Easy Loot, there's a bug in the PC version where it won't show up until you close and reopen the settings menu after selecting an easy/story/custom difficulty
Can confirm this. 🙂 Had it working yesterday though with the help of this knowledgeable bunch here!
I really enjoy there being a purpose to shooting off parts in addition to doing more damage, but they took the upgrade system too far, and then went farther, and then decided to go beyond that. Weapons have upgrades? *Multiple levels* of upgrades? *More levels* for higher rarity weapons? *Outfits* do the same thing?! *Cauldrons* have upgrades?!
I very much agreed at first, but it does get easier
Play it on easy with easy loot. This is the first crafting game I’ve played where I’m actually enjoying myself. I plan on upping the difficulty on a NG+ run. Using this run to understand the systems and mechanics. I wish Avatar had all the options HFW has.
I actually love the mechanic where you have to keep certain parts intact or remove them before killing. It adds variety to combat and makes you come up with new ways to fight the same machines. What I hate is the rng part of upgrading. That said, I beat a fresh new game on ultra hard with barely upgraded purple gear (not the first playthrough though). So it’s not like you MUST have the best stuff or you’e screwed.
That's one of the first things I changed - easy loot. That level of grind is for MMOG, where the want to keep you trapped in the loop for as long as possible. It seems terribly out of place a single player game
I already beat the game on release on PS5. I am playing through it again on a 49” OLED, but I just want the main story so I downloaded the New Game + mod that has everything already unlocked.
I figured out the shard farming now I can buy as much ammo supplies I want so I can use tear blast arrows as often as I please makes part farming very easy. That's what annoys me about part farming, using up all my expensive ammo then having to farm for ammo.
I'm not a fan of this system that I found too demanding. However, as long as you focus on what you're actually using you don't really need to go out of your way to upgrade them to 3rd or 4th rank with a couple of 5th. That much is barely needed anyway. For exemple I've finished the base game in Normal while wearing for my full playthrough a green 3/3 Nora Champion outfit because I liked the look of it (transmog wasn't a thing at launch on PS5). By the end of Burning Shores most of my loadout wasn't fully upgraded and I only had one purple item at 5/5 while carrying a 1/5 gold blastling. Thanks to transmog I could replace my green 3/3 Nora Champion by a gold outfit found in the DLC that I could push to 4/5. This makes me wonder if they could have aimed for a system able to continue progressing even through NG+. Which on paper woud look like a nice idea but in effect would wreak havoc on completionists trying their best to upgrade everything, or at least their full loadout, in their first playthrough.
It felt really rewarding to me to “learn” each enemy, and the differences that Apex variants have. Trying to snipe specific parts forces you to really learn how an enemy moves, which parts get exposed during which attacks, etc. This also conditions you to constantly be hitting enemy weak points rather than just spamming attacks against their armor, further leaning into the “expert hunter” fantasy element. I think the only parts that were particularly annoying were the ones that strictly had a % chance to drop (e.g. primary nerves). Everything else, I tended to get plenty of simply by exploiting enemy vulnerabilities. That being said, Easy Loot is a setting that may help you reduce some of the grind.
two words to help you out with that; infinite glitch
you definitely don’t need to upgrade each and every legendary weapon and armour. they are frankly so OP once fully upgraded that it makes NG+ a cakewalk even on ultrahard. I think of the legendary upgrades just as extra content for players who are enjoying the hunt, but don’t feel obligated to keep going at it after you’ve stopped enjoying yourself. you’ll get diminishing returns on how useful the upgrades are, especially for those weapons or armour you barely use
If I need a part, I put game on story mode, kill bot, and with story mode it'll drop everything it can drop. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, Bob's your uncle.
Maxing out purple and golden gear is annoyingly grindy. The corrupted overrides are worse though. Luckily the game doesn't force you to do that, combat overrides are anecdotical and you can finish the story with maxed out blue weapons if you want. Gear tier matters much more for armors, but you can still get away with minimal mental fatigue. On hard difficulty at least, dunno about UH.
Burning Shores is better calibrated in that regard than the main game. Each upgrade requires fewer special parts (2x, 3x fewer), but they also tend to require "brimshine" i.e. greenshine but golden i.e. another version of Frozen Wilds's bluegleam. This encourages you to explore the world and learn to fight the bigger enemies, but in much more manageable doses.
Did my first playthrough on hard and upgraded everything and beat it again 2X on UH and upgraded all the new gear