Horizon Zero Dawn Still Hard on Easy

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• #1

I had picked up Horizon: Zero Dawn about a year ago and enjoyed it for some time. Due to open world fatigue (I had played Zelda just before) I put it down right around the time I entered the giant city. On a whim I picked it up again recently and for some reason it's stupid hard. I don't know if it's because I'm out of practice, but the game feels legitimately bugged. I just have done a TON of side activities before because I'm way over levelled for the main quest. I'm at level 26 and I'm trying to do a quest called Maker's End that is level 14. I should be able to do it handily, right? Well, no. For some reason everything kills me in like one hit, and I can't kill anything in one hit unless it's a stealth attack. I can't take on groups of enemy's at all without dying so my only option is to sneak around the base and do stealth kills. If I try to shoot someone with a bow I need a headshot or else they won't die, and if I don't land that second shot then the whole base is alerted. If I get spotted by anyone it's game over as the entire base, including multiple machines and humans just rush me and I die immediately.

Again, I'm 12 levels over what is recommend for this mission. And the crazy thing is that I was originally playing the game on hard! I knocked down the difficulty to normal and I still can't make any progress. Do enemies scale in this game? Am I forgetting a major gameplay element? Do I just suck? This doesn't feel like the normal difficulty for this game at all.

• #2

I played the game on Easy and had no problem finishing it...

• #3

No, git gud OP

Move around more and utilise trap weapon and sling, anything exploding is op

• #4

I would advise just playing on easy and just power through the story. The side quests aren't really worth finishing, either.

• #5

This forum is better than this post.

OP, it can be a challenging game. I struggled with it because I like to go in hard but patience, stealth and strategy were required instead. I'd knock it down to easy, or watch that part of the game on a video walkthrough for inspiration.

• #6

Something's wrong with your game if you're getting killed so easily on Normal difficulty.

• #7

You've played a lot longer than I have, but I thought it was just really clunky. Also, analog aiming with no gyro is outdated, imo.

• #8

It's a challenging game for the first third but after learning what to and getting some upgrades it shouldn't be difficult. Make use of traps, weak points, elements weaknesses.

• #10

The game can occasionally be a bit punishing, especially if you're not trying to tackle a problem by the very specific method the game wants you to do. Try tinkering around with your weapon load out, doing the research to see if the enemies have a specific elemental weakness. Invest in upgrades/gear that assist with stealth. Use different weapons that may be more efficient for the task at hand.

I had tremendous difficulty with the game in spots, and each time I found I needed to step away - reconsider my approach - and try again with a new strategy.

• #11

Didn't think the game was hard until I played the DLC.

• #12

I remember the combat being a little difficult for me in the beginning of the game, but once I got some different types of weapons and took the perk upgrade to let myself carry more health, it felt much easier

• #13

hide in bushes and stealth kill: the game.

• #14

You do have potions in addition to your medicine pouch. Those help. Makers end is a reasonably hard part of the game though. A lot of fighting against human enemies. There are checkpoints though. Make sure you're using the terrain to only ever expose yourself to one enemy at a time once the alarms start up. If you have the midair time dilation skill, abuse it by spamming jump constantly while aiming. You'll get it.

• #15

Like someone mentioned its challenging in the beginning but around after 1/3 of the game it levels off and got alot easier for me especially after i got a certain thing tht made me almost invincible.

• #16

Hmm. Make sure you're using a variety of equipment, and have you been getting better armor sets to replace the initial one? I beat the game on hard and it was challenging, but I don't remember it being that difficult really.

• #17

Also, if you have the strike from above skill, abuse that by constantly running above things or even just luring them below a rock or a little hill, then do the attack. It's op. So long as a camp is just humans and watchers that's my bread and butter, on UH in particular.

• #18

Game is too easy, if anything. Experiment with different playstyles and/or upgrade your armor.

• #19

Levels don't matter as much as having the right equipment and knowing how to exploit enemy weaknesses. The game gets progressively easier as you gain equipment and better weapon mods.

Are you paying attention to what enemies are weak to and where you need to shoot them? Are you buying armor that boosts your stats in ways helpful to the situations that are challenging you?

I never got through a base without alerting everyone and I just killed everyone by avoiding close combat and avoiding getting surrounded. That applies to robots, too. No matter how strong you are you don't want to be surrounded or badly outnumbered.

Figure out weakpoints and elemental weaknesses for robots and for humans use your strongest arrows that do physical damage. If you're dying in one hit figure out what you can do to boost your defense.

• #20

Fire arrows are way more useful than they first appear. Also - pay attention to the weakness and weak spots of machines.

• #21

hide in bushes and stealth kill: the game.

Stealth Archer build: the game

• #22

Also if you play the game like it's a normal action game where location specific damage doesn't matter, it's going to take you longer to down enemies. The game wants you to analyze the enemies and shoot their weak points.

• #23

On average I think it's a pretty easy game to be honest, it definitely has one if the easiest very hard modes I've played in a while. The thing is it can be quite hardv in the beginning if you don't play the right way. You really need to utilise most of the weapons in your kit and figure out the weaknesses for all the individual machines by scanning them.

Being overlevelled doesn't mean a whole lot since all it does is give you a marginal health boost. Even at max level some machines can gut you in one to two hits. Now ultra hard in the expansion? That's extremely difficult.

• #24

I would advise just playing on easy and just power through the story. The side quests aren't really worth finishing, either.

Disagree. The Lodge, Petra, Nil sidequests are worth it, among others.

• #25

Aloy's pretty squishy. But on the other hand, stealth is OP. Hide, trap, snipe, override, ambush, etc.

• #26

i found it's one of those games you need to work yourself into the 'rhythm' of combat. not embarrassed to admit i had to crank down to Easy at the beginning just to get the game started, but after getting acclimated i put it back to normal without problems.

• #27

Its all about strategy. Do you have certain outfits for certain enemies? weapons that focus on certain enemy weakness? are you utilizing traps? HZD's combat is ingenious in that it requires actual planning and utilizing your many options to take down machines than just rushing in with a barrage of arrows. I'm playing on Ultra Hard on NG+ and while challenging I'm still taking out enemies with ease due to making use of all my tools and knowing the strengths and weakness of each machine.

• #28

I played on Hard thinking there would be a trophy for it only to find out half way through that there was no difficulty trophy.

Got gud, tho...

• #29

Its not hard game but you cant go like rambo and kill anyone on medium. You gotta use jump above and one kill features.

Its not exactly easy game. One kill melee buttons and stealth helps you a lot. Sometimes you should just ride your dino and skip enemies because its pretty repetitive game already.

• #30

Pretty sure it's you because I've never had that trouble playing on Hard, never mind Normal.

You're probably just rusty after not having played it in a long time.

• #31

Maybe your gear is not leveled up.

You can buy better Bows and armour that do more damage and resist certain attacks. You also should be crafting items like traps and setting them up as it makes some fights easier.

• #32

I remember complaining to myself that this game was too easy, I was playing on hard and was only using my staff for the most of the time. I remember stunning and criticals was easy to get.

• #33

1)mobility

2) aim for weak spots

3) use right type of arrows

4) lay traps

Personally never really needed to tie something down unless it's freaking massive. Also, anyone who says it's stealth kill the game. Try that on a sawtooth on anything above easy and see how that goes

• #34

I don't think it's especially hard, but it's not a one-button-win kind of game either. I find it strange you say that everything is killing you in one hit, but other than that bit, I can offer some general advice:

- Upgrade / max any skills that contribute to slow motion aiming
- Use the right tools for the right robots (trip fast moving bots, blow up flammable parts, and always try to burst the armor that surrounds weak spots in general)
- Don't even waste ammo / time / aiming effort shooting random parts of the bot - it's all about exploiting weaknesses
- For humans the best bet is the multi-arrow shot to the head, it's like several headshots in one and it's guaranteed to kill
- Melee more or less blows unless you're attacking the smallest robots who can be knocked over, or you've specced into specific melee skills

• #35

Disagree. The Lodge, Petra, Nil sidequests are worth it, among others.

Finally someone said it. Whenever someone says the sidequests are no good I wonder if they only did the side stuff in the tutorial area and basically skipped all other side quests

• #36

Fire arrows work good on everything

Tearblast arrows on big robots with turrets makes them easy to kill once you use it on them

Simply never use normal arrows ever again after getting sharpshooter arrows

Cryo ball also works on everything

The game is easy

• #37

Maybe your gear is not leveled up.

You can buy better Bows and armour that do more damage and resist certain attacks. You also should be crafting items like traps and setting them up as it makes some fights easier.

The better bows don't actually increase damage output directly. Each quality bump gives you one more arrow type on the weapon and one more mod slot to play with. The higher level protector and arrow breaker armour can be a real boost though.

• #38

I just started the Frozen Wilds DLC and oh boy the *spoiler* machines there.....whoa it's been a ramp up in difficulty for me

• #39

I played on Hard thinking there would be a trophy for it only to find out half way through that there was no difficulty trophy.

Got gud, tho...

Same. Really got annoyed with that. Hopefully God Of War has some trophies for its hardest difficulty.

On topic though, I would make sure you analyze your target and work with the weak points. I remember the bellowbacks would give me such a tough time but when I realized their tanks were basically explosive, I would take them down in a fraction of time! I just finished the DLC with the same tactic after not playing sincerity it released. Excellent addition to an incredible game. Keep at it OP!

• #40

I had picked up Horizon: Zero Dawn about a year ago and enjoyed it for some time. Due to open world fatigue (I had played Zelda just before) I put it down right around the time I entered the giant city. On a whim I picked it up again recently and for some reason it's stupid hard. I don't know if it's because I'm out of practice, but the game feels legitimately bugged. I just have done a TON of side activities before because I'm way over levelled for the main quest. I'm at level 26 and I'm trying to do a quest called Maker's End that is level 14. I should be able to do it handily, right? Well, no. For some reason everything kills me in like one hit, and I can't kill anything in one hit unless it's a stealth attack. I can't take on groups of enemy's at all without dying so my only option is to sneak around the base and do stealth kills. If I try to shoot someone with a bow I need a headshot or else they won't die, and if I don't land that second shot then the whole base is alerted. If I get spotted by anyone it's game over as the entire base, including multiple machines and humans just rush me and I die immediately.

Again, I'm 12 levels over what is recommend for this mission. And the crazy thing is that I was originally playing the game on hard! I knocked down the difficulty to normal and I still can't make any progress. Do enemies scale in this game? Am I forgetting a major gameplay element? Do I just suck? This doesn't feel like the normal difficulty for this game at all.

Do you have purple bows?
Are you using slowdown effectively?
What weapons are you using?
Are you aiming for weak spots?
What upgrades do you have?
Can you notch multiple arrows?

• #41

This really does sound like a bug to me, honestly--the 'getting killed in one hit' thing in particular. I never found the game overly challenging--on Normal, I thought the difficulty curve worked well up until I hit the desert area, at which point new machines stopped seeming like as much of a threat, so I did something I very rarely do and turned it up to Hard, and even that eventually got really easy again once my equipment was OP enough.

I'm genuinely not very good at most games, and not the 'git gud' sort either, so if you're struggling that much, I really do think there might be something wrong with your game. Try cycling the difficulty maybe?

I beat it on Hard without any issues. A few deaths but nothing really frustrating. It's all about tactics and utilizing the proper gear. Make sure you're using the slow motion skill which comes in handy, and a fully upgraded Ropecaster makes just about every machine in the game extremely easy to kill, even if there's multiple ones.

Yeah, my three purple handling mod ropecaster trivialised pretty much everything, so I actually stopped using it unless the situation felt appropriately urgent, narratively. (So, big story missions and such.)

• #42

You have to utilize what the game offers, you will not win if you run and gun. You need to shoot to dismantle the machines, take off their weapons and reduce the effectiveness of their abilities. Also, when you can, prepare by setting up traps beforehand. Going by your post you are use to games like Zelda with more simplistic combat where you just hack and slash your way through, while Horizon is built around someone small that is not as powerful as her enemies taking them down with precision.

• #43

Make sure you have a sharpshot bow for easy stealth headshots and then for corruptors the ropecast and blast sling make quick work of them.

• #44

I beat it on Hard without any issues. A few deaths but nothing really frustrating. It's all about tactics and utilizing the proper gear. Make sure you're using the slow motion skill which comes in handy, and a fully upgraded Ropecaster makes just about every machine in the game extremely easy to kill, even if there's multiple ones.

• #45

I played on Hard thinking there would be a trophy for it only to find out half way through that there was no difficulty trophy.

Got gud, tho...

There is a trophy for playing the game on Ultra Hard. It was added in one of the later patches.

• #46

it's a game that does not lead to through increasing your character's abilities and effectiveness throughout the campaign. it's up to you to purchase weapons and outfits, equip the right mods and bring the right tools to each fight. the combat is heavily reliant on elemental and weakpoint damage.

• #47

it's a shoot the weak spots type of action game. once you start doing that it's actually way too easy.

scan enemies before combat, shoot their weak spots and pay attention to elemental weaknesses.

also, use the ropecaster

• #48

Yo I got through the mission. Thanks Era. I don't know if it's from the advice in the thread or because it was a bug that got resolved after I rebooted the game, but thanks for the advice either way.

• #49

I mostly stealth my way to the plat, engaged where i have to, try that. Before you ask, i use the proving ground to hit max level. But yes game can be hard if you are more of a laid back type of player.

• #50

Did you forget you can slow time by pressing focus? I forgot that when I had put it down for some time.

Also put everything in break arrows and try to get the upgrade where you shoot multiple arrows at once.

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Source: https://www.resetera.com/threads/is-horizon-zero-dawn-supposed-to-be-balls-hard.36385/

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