12 hidden mechanics Horizon: Zero Dawn never tells you about

This should be called 12 mechanics so obvious that Horizon Zero Dawn never needed to tell us about them

"You won't be able to take out a sawtooth or a bellowback with just your bow" - If you can't take out a sawtooth or a bellowback with just your bow in this game you're doing something wrong.

Did you know: if you jump in horizon zero dawn there’s a cool mechanic called gravity they never tell you about which will make you come back down.

You can literally learn most of this stuff before Aloy even becomes and adult

Tip: enemies can kill you. Avoid this by killing them.

I have a real tip for this game. There's no limit to the amount of reward boxes you can carry, so you can use them to hoard extra resources, and only take out its contents if you need them. You can even open them to check what's inside, without taking it. This saves inventory space, since your resources would otherwise take up slots.

"pick up everything" me with 10,000 ridgewood

One that no one is saying: while only specifically stated for the watchers and chargers, all machine eyes are vulnerable points

13: you cannot play if you don't turn on your console You guys will thank me later

The real tips: #1: The only requirement for Strike From Above is to be above your enemy, so you can use it in and out of combat. Literally standing on a steep hill, you can jump in the air to activate it. Also it works on rocks and other things that put you in an elevated position. #2: You can do a Light spear attack mid-air, or cancel it by rolling. You can't do either with Heavy strike. #3: In combat, breaking the enemy's line of sight (LOS) for 1 second will allow you to return to stealth mode. If your stealth points are high enough you can go around a tree and crouch to lose enemies, even if you're not standing in bushes. In bandit camps you can hide behind/below wood structures or stand above them to go back into stealth. The main reason I use this is to trigger Silent Strike. #4: You don't have to press triangle to get on your mount. You can just jump on it. #5: This isn't hidden, but I'm putting it here because you forgot all about it: Dismount Strike. Like Silent Strike its a one shot kill and can be used at anytime. #6: Listen to Aloy's verbal cues. She has cues for exploring, and some when you approach NPCs, or what armor to put on. Example: when climbing high places, she'll say, "ok...don't look down". If you look down she'll say "Damn it!"

I’m a bit late, but here’s some tips I have that I found helpful in my game: For rope casters, use as many handling cores as possible. When in tense situations, and need to rope down an enemy real quick, the handling cores will allow you to quickly tie them down. Thunderjaws have a core/heart covered by a panel on each side. Breaking off these either of these panels will expose the core, and allow for significantly increased damage. This is already obvious. However, tearing off a disc launcher and roping the TJ down, you can have it sit still for a second or two whilst you pummel its core with its own discs, dealing payloads of damage. Tripcasters don’t break sneak, since the wires are considered traps. Knowing this, you can lay down many blast wires in one spot on a machine’s path and wait patiently until it destroys itself. These are probably really obvious, but I discovered them on my own, so whatever.

One of my favorite "actual" hidden mechanic that almost no one talks about is: Once you started riding the mounts through a path/road, they can follow the paths themselves without you stirring them, although not perfect in some areas, but at least you'll have time to rest your fingers and just look around the beautiful scenery while travelling for a long time.

Remember that pushing the joystick forward will make you move forward. Also don't forget that you need a controller to do so

wait the enemies drop loot? this changes everything.

Here are a few tips. Get triple arrow early, especially if you jumped right into a higher difficulty. Once you have at least double arrow, you can hold aim and press reload to add a second (and later a third) arrow to your shot, amplifying each shot's damage or status effect. This only applies to your different bow weapons. I use one of each. Get the tinker skill. You can switch mods out for new ones without losing them, zo you can sell them later. Speaking of mods, specialize each of your weapons. Aloy has a variety of tools she can deploy against her foes, and you need to give them all a specific purpose. Specializing your war bow for freeze and your sling for shock, for example can be quite helpful (particularly in the war bow case with triple arrow). Stuff about tear... don't put tear on your sniper bow. The tearblast arrows have a fixed tear effect that doesn't improve with mods. Stack damage and handling instead. However, tear mods do work on your ropecaster, which helps pull parts off machines. But the more tear you stack, the less time you jave that machine tied down for, due to the improved tear strength. Keep this in mind with the ropecaster and maybe use more ropes than necessary on larger creatures so you can pull off more parts and keep them down longer. Stuff about frozen wilds weapons... They do lower base damage than the shadow/lodge variants of the same weapons when not fully drawn, or arrow spamming. But overdraw them, and the reticle changes, indicating you will do bonus damage, and this bonus is a lot of damage. Stacked with triple arrow, you can freeze and then one shot a stalker with a precision shot, even on ultra hard (with good mods, at least. You should have good ones by then anyway). It took me until my ultra hard run to find the value in triple arrow, and it truly is a gamechanger, particularly with overcharged banuk bows.

Ah yes using your focus is a “hidden mechanic”. It definitely doesn’t tell you that you can use it at the start

Here’s a good tip If you die to a powerful enemy, the loading screen will give you tips on how to better combat them

im sorry but what is this, how is "merchants have cool stuff" a hidden mechanic, how is "rolling" a hidden mechanic, how is "enemies drop a lot of loot" a hidden mechanic? im not even bashing the game, those are literally normal mechanics that every game has.

This comment section is more helpful than the video. Also, the game limits how many traps you can put in one small area, so spread them out.

Surprised I didn't see this one called out either. You can fast travel to settlements as well, not just campfires