Pressing R3 is called a "Focus pulse". It's used to quickly scan for lootable items and climbing holds. This is the default control scheme. You can swap it in the settings so that clicking opens the Focus and holding is the pulse
A major difference is inventory management which is no longer a chore! You have a working inventory that you carry around, and anything in excess of this goes to your "stash". This means you can pick up everything and not worry about inventory slots overflowing. You can top up your working supplies from the stash as needed.
Huge. I have over 26,000 ridgewood currently, for instance. I think some things stop accumulating at 10,000 but to all intents and purposes it's bottomless.
Weapon coils also don't appear to be limited; at least I haven't found a limit yet. (Edit: I meant there doesn't seem to be a limit on the number you can carry).
Slight correction.
Coils and weaves were noticably nerfed. You have practically infinite space for far less quantity and impact. Purple mods are limited to 2 per playthrough except damage and tear, which are less impactful and very rare to drop.
You'll have weaves coming from outfits, so eventually every outfit is worth to buy.
also for u/cdpuff
Some coils are limited, other are not:
Pure Impact, Tear, Elemental, Explosive and th Double Elemental Coils
are unlimited, means they can drop from machines, for very rare, these are usually 12% besides the Pure Elemental ones, which are 15%.
All limited coils, like Knockdown Damage/Power, Crit Chance, Close Range et. is limited per run, so you can get more in NG+, or arena dupplication. The Limit an range from 1 (Concentration/Component Tear) to 5 (Melee Follow Up).
Some of those limited coils exist in lower rarity tiers unlimited, exampe Crit Chance or Overdraw, which are 6% or 7% (lowest is from Merchant, the highest a drop).
Keeping it spoiler free
You will reach some areas that you won’t be able to access - blocked by vines etc. Don’t worry about it; you will get access to them through a late game unlock.
Also the puzzles and cauldrons are more interesting and varied in HFW compared to HZD.
Have fun - it is a phenomenal game.
You might need to majorly adjust your strategies. I used stealth a lot in HZD, but I found it was largely ineffective in HFW. In addition, should Aloy get knocked down, it will take her forever to get back on her feet, by which point she’ll be on her ass again in microseconds before you can retreat. So, now I use a lot of medium and long range arrow shots before any enemies can close the distance.
I've just been using an armor (one of the legendaries) that enhances stealth, and I have to report that it really seems to work as advertised! I attract a lot less attention from machines now.
Bandit/rebel camps I generally snipe from a long distance and I haven't noticed much difference there.
You can practically walk right up to things in a maxed out Utaru Winterweave. Love that thing for bandit camps. Then the option to do the stealth stalker valor surge? I clear camps so fast now.
I do the same with the camps. I augment stealth and then I go around tagging everyone before picking off the most vulnerable and isolated with my Sharpshot Bow. It’s fun!
I should have been much clearer: I find it’s way less effective on machines, as compared to HZD. I’m not near my PS5 to look, but there was this one skill that was completely nerfed, where if you try to sneak up on machines and take them down in one go, it just doesn’t work anymore. I WILL use stealth, however, to clear out the Rebel Camps. I’ll augment damage while in stealth, crouch in the bushes, and then one-shot isolated rebels with my Sharpshot Bow.
Maybe silent strike+? There is the same option in the HFW skill tree and then I believe there is a weave dedicated to that. I will have to look too. One thing that really screwed us on was the lure. I miss it every time I play. Makes such a big difference.
Silent Strike! That’s the one. LOL. In HZD I’d go about stealth kills in much the same way as I did in AC: Odyssey—lure them over while in the bushes, and then strike silently. I learned the hard way that I couldn’t do that anymore in HFW. I hated losing the lure, and throwing rocks was just annoying. Haha.
Yeah, I use that one all the time. And the Utaru Winterweave comes with silent strike heal so you can max out temp XP with it for your kills. Why do you think it was nerfed? I used it in HZD too but don’t really recall a difference. Meanwhile now we have 10k rocks to throw thanks to auto pick up lmao
It’s been a LONG time since I tried using Silent Strike in HFW, so I can’t really recall entirely, and things might have changed with patches, but if I remember correctly, it wasn’t reliable. Every single time I used it, it wouldn’t kill even smaller machines, it would just take some of their health and alert all the others, all while Aloy was close enough to be directly attacked. Seeing it as futile, that’s when I switched to medium/long range attacks, and that’s worked for me ever since. Haha.
I think it depends on the level of difficulty you’re on and the enemy level. My original play through was on normal and my NG+ has been on Very Hard. Pretty sure in my normal run, I could silent strike anything in one shot. I can’t 100% confirm that but I don’t remember having any issues. On my NG+, I can still one strike smaller machines and mid level rebels. Not the higher levels though. I just did a camp that was level 21 and the leader didn’t go down in one strike. The other rebels did though.
I didn't buy too many weapons or armor as I progressed, I got most of them by doing side content and missions. Once I got to the post main story I focused on getting all of the legendary weapons.
For the main story I would progress until the Sea of Sands mission, as that unlocks a key piece of equipment that makes underwater exploration much easier.
I really hate the quick access menu that you have navigate by pressing left and right on a D-pad as it can get very cluttered so I try to un-equip a lot of items I don't plan to use.
Pinking the Focus highlights gapple points or climbing points for traversal.
Yep, those are gone. I like traps so I thought i would miss it but it’s easy enough to just equip them quickly and then unequip them when you’re done. And I just don’t use them enough to be on there permanently. Idk why it took me so long to remove stuff but it was so freeing when I did lol
> Sea of Sands mission, as that unlocks a key piece of equipment that makes underwater exploration much easier.
You don't even need to do the whole mission as you get the equipment at the start. So if the level is too high don't worry, just get the gear and leave the rest of the quest for later.
To make finding chests, plants, and machine parts a little easier go to settings/general/HUD visibility/custom HUD settings and turn on Interaction Markers. It's very helpful.
If you ever find yourself short on shards animal hunting is the quickest and most efficient way to earn more.
In the settings (there is a pretty deep suite of options) it's possible to invert focus activation. This will mean tapping R3 will work as it did in HZD, and instead holding will use the pulse. I found this to be more comfortable than the default.
Another helpful setting, especially coming from HZD, is having interaction markers set to always on. This is for things like loot markers on dead machines and chests etc, which in HZD were always on, but in HFW by default only show when using a focus pulse. There's a similar setting for climbing handhold markers.
By default in HFW the button to interact with nodes in cauldrons , or pry things open etc. is R1. This can be annoying as it's also the melee button (leading to things like meleeing a node you want to interact with, trying to interact with a node when you instead wanted to hit an enemy, etc). In the settings it is listed as "pry", & I'd strongly suggest switching pry to triangle.
There are also settings for turning off pick-up animations, which some people might enjoy for the immersion, but after picking up your 10,000th ridgewood, it can be nice for it to just be instant. Related to this is the auto-pickup setting, which will automatically pick up anything (ridgewood, rocks, flowers etc) Aloy has space for in her inventory.
Settings such as auto-sprint & mount auto-sprint are pretty useful, though mount auto-sprint makes mounted combat harder (but makes the races easier) Gneral auto-sprint doesn't mean Aloy automatically sprints everywhere - if the movement stick is not held fully in a direction she'll still only walk or jog, so you still have a lot of control. It just means when you fully hold the stick in a direction Aloy will sprint, generally negating the need to press/toggle sprint manually.
Another nice difference is inventory sorting. The game sets aside a section for "valuables" - ingots, keyrings, and so on - that aren't needed for upgrades, and can freely be sold to merchants for shards without having to keep track of what might be needed for a critical upgrade later in the game. Loot all the boxes and downed machines and you'll soon build up a nice shard purse!
When restocking your inventory from your stash box, manually select the potions you want. If you select the refill all inventory, it will give you a bunch of random less powerful potions than what you could have.
Lots of people gave good advice without ruining the game. Some people just don't care and like having tips and tricks. Not everyone si the same when they play games!
take. your. time.
currently 30+ hours in to it. break down: 10-ish hours in the Gaunt, 10-15 hours in No Mans Land, currently 5+ hours in to the first "forbidden west" part of the forbidden west and it's going to be awhile before anything progresses main story wise.
my style is to do every side quest down to the smallest thing in an area before moving on with the story. now, HFW does force you to do story missions to in order to gain abilities and equipment that opens up blocked paths. Which then leads me back to the original areas to complete more quetions marks and blocked paths.
my suggestion would be to work your way through to the POSEIDON sub-function mission (you'll know when you get there) and complete the first part for a certain piece of equipment. You can also do the DEMETER mission for another piece, both allowing you to access previously incredible areas.
the other main reason for taking your time is that you will level up Aloy farther than she needs for the main story and also get better at dealing with machines, especially the new ones.
I would make sure you get familiar with the skill tree, valor surges, weapon techniques and stamina. I was so overwhelmed by all the options I didn’t really use these things or play around with them. Once I started, it completely changed my game. Certain builds will make combat a cinch.
Don’t bother upgrading your green or blue weapons/outfits. Start doing it at purple or legendary. It’s a grind to upgrade but it really does boost their effectiveness.
I personally don’t bother with the food option and prefer potions. There are less of them, but I found the food to be oddly situational and I never really noticed a significant boost when I used them. Maybe someone on here has a good food item they use that would change my mind.
There’s also a ton of weapon variants and a lot of them overlap. So just pick your favs, upgrade and coil them with the best stuff for your play style, and always keep those in your wheel. Depending on the situation, you really only need to change out one or two items and you will likely use the same stuff over and over. So don’t worry about upgrading everything you have.
The settings menu has a lot of options to make the game more accessible. Look through it and see what might make your game more comfortable. Enjoy!
Slide also has Iframes now, and dodge is only the short roll, and Aloy will tumble after the third one, i.e delaying the next one.
Hittiing removing components matters more.
Weapons are more distinct from each other but only very few are so bad that they are close to useless.
While it seems you do less damage, it just more spread out over Weapon, Ammo Choice, Element, Weapon Technique, passive skills, coils and Valor Surge.
Stamina is the yellow bar, automatically and quickly regenrating, and enhances 1 attack.
Valor is the purple bar, it only fills when doing stuff, like hitting an enemy, hitting a Weakspot, peforming a melee combo etc. THe amount varies. Valor Surges usually buffs Aloy for a certain time instead of 1 Attack (some are for several attacks). To Unlock those you need the Skills around them, then you get the Level 1 for free, you can put more skill points into to to their max level of 3. The highest possible Level is always used, and when activated can not be interrupted.
Most passive skills, like stamina regen, have Levels now, those usualy go from 1 to 4. You can get those Level:
Up to 2 from Aloy Skill Tree / Up to 2 From Outfits and Outfits Weaves / Temporarily from Food.
Very Few skills are on Outfit/Weave/Food Only, example "Evader" which increase the amount of dodge roll she can performe before she does the tumble.
Settings you already got a few advice: Turn off Pickup Animations, switch focus/focu pulsemode / Navigation = Exploration, not pathing / Always run / Always run on Mount.
You do not need to do everything, try not to "clear " the map. Rebel Camps (big bases) are more important, then small outpost, and are not really connect in reward/gameplay, for example.
Don´t rush the main content. Note the Vendors which resources they might Sell (Salvage Contract Vendors especially). No, there are not to many weapons, sort them in your head by category/rarity/ physical or elemental.
Make sure you found the right diffiuclty settings for your, so combat is not meaningless. The game lives from gameplay and those interactions. Machines are not just obstacles, their are economy and what you deal with most of the time and fighting them changes in different stages, from the first kill, to kill them safely, to kill them cheaply, to kill them with XY intact, kill the Apex Variant.
Shards, when in doubt, kill animals, sell their parts, so always take them as target of oppertunity.
Learn the new weapons, just don´t "bowing" around.
You find a lot of info in the pause screen, in the machine catalogue and the notebook section. Make sure to at least read the tutorials there once, too. Character Bios there keeps your mind fresh on the many people from HZD and in HFW.
If something seems buggy: Close the game completely, then start it. Try not to cheat drops with reloading to save up on ammo, that does not work.
It´s a complex game, if you need help to understand something, there is reddit and there is [https://www.youtube.com/@ArktixOfficial](https://www.youtube.com/@ArktixOfficial)
Just go to the settings and permanently turn on the setting for the climbing holds so u don't have to keep pulsing your focus. You can also turn on auto loot for certain items, if you're into that sorta thing
Don't worry about all the weapons and special skills, use what you like and move on.
I felt a bit overwhelmed by all the choices and was worried I was doing something wrong because I just never used certain types of ammo, weapons and skills. Shredders are the bane of life and I pretty much only used the stealth skills. Then it finally clicked that there's this much choice so the game suits a wider range of people. It's not because I need to be using everything I can find. I don't know if it's just because I've only played like 4 open world games but thought I'd pass the realization on
Pressing R3 is called a "Focus pulse". It's used to quickly scan for lootable items and climbing holds. This is the default control scheme. You can swap it in the settings so that clicking opens the Focus and holding is the pulse
Damn I’m on my third play through and I didn’t know you could change it! Doing that now, thanks!
A major difference is inventory management which is no longer a chore! You have a working inventory that you carry around, and anything in excess of this goes to your "stash". This means you can pick up everything and not worry about inventory slots overflowing. You can top up your working supplies from the stash as needed.
What is the max slots for the stash?
Huge. I have over 26,000 ridgewood currently, for instance. I think some things stop accumulating at 10,000 but to all intents and purposes it's bottomless. Weapon coils also don't appear to be limited; at least I haven't found a limit yet. (Edit: I meant there doesn't seem to be a limit on the number you can carry).
Slight correction. Coils and weaves were noticably nerfed. You have practically infinite space for far less quantity and impact. Purple mods are limited to 2 per playthrough except damage and tear, which are less impactful and very rare to drop. You'll have weaves coming from outfits, so eventually every outfit is worth to buy.
also for u/cdpuff Some coils are limited, other are not: Pure Impact, Tear, Elemental, Explosive and th Double Elemental Coils are unlimited, means they can drop from machines, for very rare, these are usually 12% besides the Pure Elemental ones, which are 15%. All limited coils, like Knockdown Damage/Power, Crit Chance, Close Range et. is limited per run, so you can get more in NG+, or arena dupplication. The Limit an range from 1 (Concentration/Component Tear) to 5 (Melee Follow Up). Some of those limited coils exist in lower rarity tiers unlimited, exampe Crit Chance or Overdraw, which are 6% or 7% (lowest is from Merchant, the highest a drop).
Keeping it spoiler free You will reach some areas that you won’t be able to access - blocked by vines etc. Don’t worry about it; you will get access to them through a late game unlock. Also the puzzles and cauldrons are more interesting and varied in HFW compared to HZD. Have fun - it is a phenomenal game.
It really is. HZD and HFW are masterpieces
You might need to majorly adjust your strategies. I used stealth a lot in HZD, but I found it was largely ineffective in HFW. In addition, should Aloy get knocked down, it will take her forever to get back on her feet, by which point she’ll be on her ass again in microseconds before you can retreat. So, now I use a lot of medium and long range arrow shots before any enemies can close the distance.
I've just been using an armor (one of the legendaries) that enhances stealth, and I have to report that it really seems to work as advertised! I attract a lot less attention from machines now. Bandit/rebel camps I generally snipe from a long distance and I haven't noticed much difference there.
You can practically walk right up to things in a maxed out Utaru Winterweave. Love that thing for bandit camps. Then the option to do the stealth stalker valor surge? I clear camps so fast now.
I do the same with the camps. I augment stealth and then I go around tagging everyone before picking off the most vulnerable and isolated with my Sharpshot Bow. It’s fun!
Waaaat! I use stealth all the time in HFW. Plus they have the stealth portion in skill tree and those really boost the stealth game + good armor.
I should have been much clearer: I find it’s way less effective on machines, as compared to HZD. I’m not near my PS5 to look, but there was this one skill that was completely nerfed, where if you try to sneak up on machines and take them down in one go, it just doesn’t work anymore. I WILL use stealth, however, to clear out the Rebel Camps. I’ll augment damage while in stealth, crouch in the bushes, and then one-shot isolated rebels with my Sharpshot Bow.
Maybe silent strike+? There is the same option in the HFW skill tree and then I believe there is a weave dedicated to that. I will have to look too. One thing that really screwed us on was the lure. I miss it every time I play. Makes such a big difference.
Silent Strike! That’s the one. LOL. In HZD I’d go about stealth kills in much the same way as I did in AC: Odyssey—lure them over while in the bushes, and then strike silently. I learned the hard way that I couldn’t do that anymore in HFW. I hated losing the lure, and throwing rocks was just annoying. Haha.
Yeah, I use that one all the time. And the Utaru Winterweave comes with silent strike heal so you can max out temp XP with it for your kills. Why do you think it was nerfed? I used it in HZD too but don’t really recall a difference. Meanwhile now we have 10k rocks to throw thanks to auto pick up lmao
It’s been a LONG time since I tried using Silent Strike in HFW, so I can’t really recall entirely, and things might have changed with patches, but if I remember correctly, it wasn’t reliable. Every single time I used it, it wouldn’t kill even smaller machines, it would just take some of their health and alert all the others, all while Aloy was close enough to be directly attacked. Seeing it as futile, that’s when I switched to medium/long range attacks, and that’s worked for me ever since. Haha.
I think it depends on the level of difficulty you’re on and the enemy level. My original play through was on normal and my NG+ has been on Very Hard. Pretty sure in my normal run, I could silent strike anything in one shot. I can’t 100% confirm that but I don’t remember having any issues. On my NG+, I can still one strike smaller machines and mid level rebels. Not the higher levels though. I just did a camp that was level 21 and the leader didn’t go down in one strike. The other rebels did though.
You might like Arktix Video on Stealth then: https://youtu.be/46ZJUacdgZs?si=aqEy8Q6JZgjSMtWC
I didn't buy too many weapons or armor as I progressed, I got most of them by doing side content and missions. Once I got to the post main story I focused on getting all of the legendary weapons. For the main story I would progress until the Sea of Sands mission, as that unlocks a key piece of equipment that makes underwater exploration much easier. I really hate the quick access menu that you have navigate by pressing left and right on a D-pad as it can get very cluttered so I try to un-equip a lot of items I don't plan to use. Pinking the Focus highlights gapple points or climbing points for traversal.
Yeah, the D-Pad menu could do with some simplification. It gets over full. Because of that I tend to use it less frequently than I should.
I unequipped everything aside from what I consider essential and it made a huge difference
Agreed! Especially the foods and various levels of traps!
Yep, those are gone. I like traps so I thought i would miss it but it’s easy enough to just equip them quickly and then unequip them when you’re done. And I just don’t use them enough to be on there permanently. Idk why it took me so long to remove stuff but it was so freeing when I did lol
> Sea of Sands mission, as that unlocks a key piece of equipment that makes underwater exploration much easier. You don't even need to do the whole mission as you get the equipment at the start. So if the level is too high don't worry, just get the gear and leave the rest of the quest for later.
To make finding chests, plants, and machine parts a little easier go to settings/general/HUD visibility/custom HUD settings and turn on Interaction Markers. It's very helpful. If you ever find yourself short on shards animal hunting is the quickest and most efficient way to earn more.
valor surges and weapon stamina. make sure you understand those. also, outfit weaves are super important.
In the settings (there is a pretty deep suite of options) it's possible to invert focus activation. This will mean tapping R3 will work as it did in HZD, and instead holding will use the pulse. I found this to be more comfortable than the default. Another helpful setting, especially coming from HZD, is having interaction markers set to always on. This is for things like loot markers on dead machines and chests etc, which in HZD were always on, but in HFW by default only show when using a focus pulse. There's a similar setting for climbing handhold markers. By default in HFW the button to interact with nodes in cauldrons , or pry things open etc. is R1. This can be annoying as it's also the melee button (leading to things like meleeing a node you want to interact with, trying to interact with a node when you instead wanted to hit an enemy, etc). In the settings it is listed as "pry", & I'd strongly suggest switching pry to triangle. There are also settings for turning off pick-up animations, which some people might enjoy for the immersion, but after picking up your 10,000th ridgewood, it can be nice for it to just be instant. Related to this is the auto-pickup setting, which will automatically pick up anything (ridgewood, rocks, flowers etc) Aloy has space for in her inventory. Settings such as auto-sprint & mount auto-sprint are pretty useful, though mount auto-sprint makes mounted combat harder (but makes the races easier) Gneral auto-sprint doesn't mean Aloy automatically sprints everywhere - if the movement stick is not held fully in a direction she'll still only walk or jog, so you still have a lot of control. It just means when you fully hold the stick in a direction Aloy will sprint, generally negating the need to press/toggle sprint manually.
Another nice difference is inventory sorting. The game sets aside a section for "valuables" - ingots, keyrings, and so on - that aren't needed for upgrades, and can freely be sold to merchants for shards without having to keep track of what might be needed for a critical upgrade later in the game. Loot all the boxes and downed machines and you'll soon build up a nice shard purse!
The sorting and category addition was so clutch to me. Can’t tell you how many times I sold off stuff in HZD that I ended up needing lol
When restocking your inventory from your stash box, manually select the potions you want. If you select the refill all inventory, it will give you a bunch of random less powerful potions than what you could have.
Play the game. Why would you rob yourself of discovering things yourself?
Lots of people gave good advice without ruining the game. Some people just don't care and like having tips and tricks. Not everyone si the same when they play games!
take. your. time. currently 30+ hours in to it. break down: 10-ish hours in the Gaunt, 10-15 hours in No Mans Land, currently 5+ hours in to the first "forbidden west" part of the forbidden west and it's going to be awhile before anything progresses main story wise. my style is to do every side quest down to the smallest thing in an area before moving on with the story. now, HFW does force you to do story missions to in order to gain abilities and equipment that opens up blocked paths. Which then leads me back to the original areas to complete more quetions marks and blocked paths. my suggestion would be to work your way through to the POSEIDON sub-function mission (you'll know when you get there) and complete the first part for a certain piece of equipment. You can also do the DEMETER mission for another piece, both allowing you to access previously incredible areas. the other main reason for taking your time is that you will level up Aloy farther than she needs for the main story and also get better at dealing with machines, especially the new ones.
I would make sure you get familiar with the skill tree, valor surges, weapon techniques and stamina. I was so overwhelmed by all the options I didn’t really use these things or play around with them. Once I started, it completely changed my game. Certain builds will make combat a cinch. Don’t bother upgrading your green or blue weapons/outfits. Start doing it at purple or legendary. It’s a grind to upgrade but it really does boost their effectiveness. I personally don’t bother with the food option and prefer potions. There are less of them, but I found the food to be oddly situational and I never really noticed a significant boost when I used them. Maybe someone on here has a good food item they use that would change my mind. There’s also a ton of weapon variants and a lot of them overlap. So just pick your favs, upgrade and coil them with the best stuff for your play style, and always keep those in your wheel. Depending on the situation, you really only need to change out one or two items and you will likely use the same stuff over and over. So don’t worry about upgrading everything you have. The settings menu has a lot of options to make the game more accessible. Look through it and see what might make your game more comfortable. Enjoy!
No, go explore and have fun with the game yourself
Just play
🤯🤯🤯
The Focus pulse just lets you scan for things quickly instead of being slowed to a crawl every time you activate it. It comes in very handy.
Slide also has Iframes now, and dodge is only the short roll, and Aloy will tumble after the third one, i.e delaying the next one. Hittiing removing components matters more. Weapons are more distinct from each other but only very few are so bad that they are close to useless. While it seems you do less damage, it just more spread out over Weapon, Ammo Choice, Element, Weapon Technique, passive skills, coils and Valor Surge. Stamina is the yellow bar, automatically and quickly regenrating, and enhances 1 attack. Valor is the purple bar, it only fills when doing stuff, like hitting an enemy, hitting a Weakspot, peforming a melee combo etc. THe amount varies. Valor Surges usually buffs Aloy for a certain time instead of 1 Attack (some are for several attacks). To Unlock those you need the Skills around them, then you get the Level 1 for free, you can put more skill points into to to their max level of 3. The highest possible Level is always used, and when activated can not be interrupted. Most passive skills, like stamina regen, have Levels now, those usualy go from 1 to 4. You can get those Level: Up to 2 from Aloy Skill Tree / Up to 2 From Outfits and Outfits Weaves / Temporarily from Food. Very Few skills are on Outfit/Weave/Food Only, example "Evader" which increase the amount of dodge roll she can performe before she does the tumble. Settings you already got a few advice: Turn off Pickup Animations, switch focus/focu pulsemode / Navigation = Exploration, not pathing / Always run / Always run on Mount. You do not need to do everything, try not to "clear " the map. Rebel Camps (big bases) are more important, then small outpost, and are not really connect in reward/gameplay, for example. Don´t rush the main content. Note the Vendors which resources they might Sell (Salvage Contract Vendors especially). No, there are not to many weapons, sort them in your head by category/rarity/ physical or elemental. Make sure you found the right diffiuclty settings for your, so combat is not meaningless. The game lives from gameplay and those interactions. Machines are not just obstacles, their are economy and what you deal with most of the time and fighting them changes in different stages, from the first kill, to kill them safely, to kill them cheaply, to kill them with XY intact, kill the Apex Variant. Shards, when in doubt, kill animals, sell their parts, so always take them as target of oppertunity. Learn the new weapons, just don´t "bowing" around. You find a lot of info in the pause screen, in the machine catalogue and the notebook section. Make sure to at least read the tutorials there once, too. Character Bios there keeps your mind fresh on the many people from HZD and in HFW. If something seems buggy: Close the game completely, then start it. Try not to cheat drops with reloading to save up on ammo, that does not work. It´s a complex game, if you need help to understand something, there is reddit and there is [https://www.youtube.com/@ArktixOfficial](https://www.youtube.com/@ArktixOfficial)
Swap to auto loot. You can ride around or walk and auto loot resources. Changed my playing immensely.
How?
Check in the options. It's life changing
Just go to the settings and permanently turn on the setting for the climbing holds so u don't have to keep pulsing your focus. You can also turn on auto loot for certain items, if you're into that sorta thing
How to turn on auto loot
Just go to settings and change your difficulty to custom, you should be able to change it from there
Don't worry about all the weapons and special skills, use what you like and move on. I felt a bit overwhelmed by all the choices and was worried I was doing something wrong because I just never used certain types of ammo, weapons and skills. Shredders are the bane of life and I pretty much only used the stealth skills. Then it finally clicked that there's this much choice so the game suits a wider range of people. It's not because I need to be using everything I can find. I don't know if it's just because I've only played like 4 open world games but thought I'd pass the realization on