I enjoy playing the most in lesser light situations. Dusk and night time are the best IMO. Super bright daylight makes focusing a little more difficult, at least for me.

One thing I figured out recently that has helped is to set jobs for every weapon and upgrade that you don't have enough resources for. That way you get notifications when you've got the resources and can go back to the workbench or merchant to buy/upgrade the weapons. You can also go back into the jobs tab and figure out what you want to do next, then it highlights the area of the map where you can secure the necessary resources. Sometimes I'll get sidetracked from the main story or side quests and just start wandering around for animals and try to harvest what I need. I just cleaned up my weapons cache, now I'm trying to get what I've got improved. Could use some better coils for weapons, don't have many good ones right now.

FatZilla said:

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Cromagnum said:

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About the only weapon I don't use much is the boltcaster. It's very clunky since you have to manually reload it, and craft ammo for it, and if you get out of synch with that you end up pantsed in a fight when you need it right then.

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Faster reload attachments is what i put in mine i think, will have to check again. I think it helped the last time i used it.

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It's not so much that it loads slow. Let's say you already burned through your magazine, or most of it. You have to make damn sure you have a full stock of ammo already made in your inventory. If you only have 5-6 bolts and reload, it takes the same time to reload as completely full.

It's super confusing when trying to use your mag dump perk to rapid-fire and not starting fully loaded. And then if you get touched by anything while shooting, you have spent all of your stamina for nothing.

Does anyone play strike? Seemed kinda boring, so I quit after the tutorial.

Do yourself a favor and DO NOT skip the ending credits! Amazing!

mickeyrig06sq3 said:

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Does anyone play strike? Seemed kinda boring, so I quit after the tutorial.

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I tried, but am holding off until later in the game when I get better pieces. I usually get my ass handed to me as there is no consistent strategy that I have figured out. I barely managed to beat the first girl who teaches you after several tries.

Sniped an Apex Thunderjaw from atop a mountain, didn't think I was equipped to take one from the ground yet.

Max Power said:

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Sniped an Apex Thunderjaw from atop a mountain, didn't think I was equipped to take one from the ground yet.

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I've killed that one when it wasn't an Apex one. I found another one about 20 levels higher elsewhere that I left the hell alone for now.

Finished the game. Now at level 50. Dropped down to story mode difficulty to farm shards and parts to level up all the weapons. I don't want to leave the game. I want DLC now! Ha!

When you start leveling up legendary weapons and armor you will need Apex machine parts. Travel to a campfire and move time to nighttime. Apex machines spawn more at night. Rinse repeat!

Best suggestion i found was to make every upgrade i need a "job" using the workbench. Its so much easier to track my upgrades now and the map shows me suggestions on where to hunt for the parts i need if i have been to the area before.

Apex Fireclaws are the devil.

But it did lead me to discover that Drill Spikes using the Vindicator's Spike Thrower is insanely OP.

mickeyrig06sq3 said:

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Apex Fireclaws are the devil.

But it did lead me to discover that Drill Spikes using the Vindicator's Spike Thrower is insanely OP.

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wait until you have to take down one without destroying their sac (belly) so you can nab the parts for legendary upgrades. It's like a 10 minute arrows to the legs fight!

atmhockey said:

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mickeyrig06sq3 said:

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Apex Fireclaws are the devil.

But it did lead me to discover that Drill Spikes using the Vindicator's Spike Thrower is insanely OP.

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wait until you have to take down one without destroying their sac (belly) so you can nab the parts for legendary upgrades. It's like a 10 minute arrows to the legs fight!

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That's what put him in the devil category. After dying a dozen times, I read about the Vindicator. I went and finished the quest to get it, upgraded it a few times, then dead fireclaw on my next fight.

atmhockey said:

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Finished the game. Now at level 50. Dropped down to story mode difficulty to farm shards and parts to level up all the weapons. I don't want to leave the game. I want DLC now! Ha!

When you start leveling up legendary weapons and armor you will need Apex machine parts. Travel to a campfire and move time to nighttime. Apex machines spawn more at night. Rinse repeat!

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Thanks for that tip. I was going nuts trying to get these parts.

Now on to the maw. The end of the first round where they give you your weapons is a pain. It's all the weapons I don't normally use. I may end up dropping the difficulty to get past that.

mickeyrig06sq3 said:

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Apex Fireclaws are the devil.

But it did lead me to discover that Drill Spikes using the Vindicator's Spike Thrower is insanely OP.

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Fireclaws, the best/worst thing to come out of The Frozen Wilds DLC. Relentless and difficult, can hit you from basically anywhere on the screen once you've engaged one. I passed a Fireclaw site recently, I steered clear since I don't think my weapons are up to par yet. I was able to take down a Slaughterspine, fun, but I still enjoy fighting Thunderjaws the most. I think I need to get the scuba system, whatever it's called, so I can get some fish and upgrade some things. Salmon appear to be the only fish I can get, the fish off the coast don't get hit by my arrows.

Max Power said:

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mickeyrig06sq3 said:

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Apex Fireclaws are the devil.

But it did lead me to discover that Drill Spikes using the Vindicator's Spike Thrower is insanely OP.

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Fireclaws, the best/worst thing to come out of The Frozen Wilds DLC. Relentless and difficult, can hit you from basically anywhere on the screen once you've engaged one. I passed a Fireclaw site recently, I steered clear since I don't think my weapons are up to par yet. I was able to take down a Slaughterspine, fun, but I still enjoy fighting Thunderjaws the most. I think I need to get the scuba system, whatever it's called, so I can get some fish and upgrade some things. Salmon appear to be the only fish I can get, the fish off the coast don't get hit by my arrows.

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You can just swim up to the fish and hit the collect button. No need to shoot them.

FatZilla said:

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You can just swim up to the fish and hit the collect button. No need to shoot them.

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Definitely something they should have covered in a tooltip

mickeyrig06sq3 said:

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FatZilla said:

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You can just swim up to the fish and hit the collect button. No need to shoot them.

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Definitely something they should have covered in a tooltip

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I spent 20+ minutes triangling sea bass just to get a bone for a pouch upgrade!

Well I guess I need to get back to the beach.

Also, had to do some Bellowback parts farming yesterday, much tougher than I expected. You can't just hit them with bombs/exploding spikes or the sac webbing is destroyed. Having to just kill them with arrows was pretty intense. At one point I was fighting a Fire Bellowback, I had already killed one of 2, and it went berserk. A continuous raining of fireballs that I couldn't escape and it killed me. I couldn't run/roll/dodge my way to safety and it was getting off a new fireball once a second.

I...hate...the...Maw...

It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't charge you for each attempt. I'm just quitting and loading from a save each time, but it's an annoying delay to do that. I'd be bankrupt by now otherwise.

I wish there was a middle ground for Easy Loot. I don't mind detaching parts, but when they fly 100 yards away, and don't highlight until you're right next to them, it's a tad annoying. I had a Slitherfang throw its part so far that when I went to pick it up, I hit the despawn distance; since it's tide to the part, it vanished when I was about 10 yards from it.

Man, i bought H:ZD a few months ago and played a little bit then kind of let it sour. Got back into it long enough to learn the controls again and Im having a great time. Hope to beat it so I can get the sequel a little later.

Make sure you also play The Frozen Wilds DLC, it's outstanding. It will give you experience with the Frostclaws and Fireclaws which are the most difficult machines from HZD. I haven't had to fight either in HFW yet but I know they're on the map, I just don't want to tangle with them yet. Fireclaws are tough to kill and really aggressive so going in underpowered isn't a good idea.

I just got to the cut earlier today. Seems like im a little underleveled for the DLC by a few levels. might have to revisit later.

New tips I learned over the last week

1. You can organize potions/traps. I may have just missed the tooltip, but I hate that I had a ton of things to try to scroll through in the middle of the battle. Hold down, hit square. You then just hit X to unequip. Sometimes it's buggy, and you have to equip, then unequip.

2. For the black boxes. If you want the final reward, buy all of her inventory. The new dialogue will occur when you talk to her again.

3. You can fast travel to the base, free of cost from, anywhere on the map; no need to use a campfire or bedroll.

4. Powershots fills up your selected ammo, it doesn't just give you free shots.

5. Using a partial Valor bar will use the corresponding valor talent value. So if you have 2 bars of valor filled, you will activate level 2 valor perk.

6. You can call your friend mid-glide and when you're swimming. You don't have to be on land.

7. Strike from above does significantly more damage than your standard ground based silent strike.

8. Already been said above, but using triangle to capture a fish while swimming vs trying to arrow them from above the water.

You can craft bedrolls by holding down on dpad and selecting it. Its super cheap, some game meat and some wood. I fast travel everywhere now, even to close by locations.

Faced my first Dreadwing last night @ level 29. THAT was a tough fight

With the splitting spike (blast) I can one hit normal tremortusks, thunderjaws, slaughterspines and dreadwings now at level 50. I hope that DLC allows for a higher level cap and maybe an all Apex all the time. Two hit fire/frost claws and shell snappers if I don't need to source and item that is destroyed when killed.

atmhockey said:

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With the splitting spike (blast) I can one hit normal tremortusks, thunderjaws, slaughterspines and dreadwings now at level 50. I hope that DLC allows for a higher level cap and maybe an all Apex all the time. Two hit fire/frost claws and shell snappers if I don't need to source and item that is destroyed when killed.

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On what difficulty setting? I don't see how you could 1-2 shot the big boys on Very Hard.

Cromagnum said:

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atmhockey said:

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With the splitting spike (blast) I can one hit normal tremortusks, thunderjaws, slaughterspines and dreadwings now at level 50. I hope that DLC allows for a higher level cap and maybe an all Apex all the time. Two hit fire/frost claws and shell snappers if I don't need to source and item that is destroyed when killed.

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On what difficulty setting? I don't see how you could 1-2 shot the big boys on Very Hard.

On Story and Easy. Sorry should have said that upfront. Farming shards and parts and then moving back to hard/very hard for the challenge

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Loving the spike thrower, especially the very rare one with the drill spikes. Pretty much guaranteed to put the big machines on the ground if you hit them in the legs with it. Like both skills for it (splitting vs the one that explodes).

Cromagnum said:

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Loving the spike thrower, especially the very rare one with the drill spikes. Pretty much guaranteed to put the big machines on the ground if you hit them in the legs with it. Like both skills for it (splitting vs the one that explodes).

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Head to the SW, there's a great one from a quest. I wish they had put it on the legendary spike thrower. Then again, the raining spike ability with explosive spikes is very nice

mickeyrig06sq3 said:

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Cromagnum said:

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Loving the spike thrower, especially the very rare one with the drill spikes. Pretty much guaranteed to put the big machines on the ground if you hit them in the legs with it. Like both skills for it (splitting vs the one that explodes).

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Head to the SW, there's a great one from a quest. I wish they had put it on the legendary spike thrower. Then again, the raining spike ability with explosive spikes is very nice

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This is the one I'm using. Don't remember where I got it.

Cromagnum said:

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mickeyrig06sq3 said:

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Cromagnum said:

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Loving the spike thrower, especially the very rare one with the drill spikes. Pretty much guaranteed to put the big machines on the ground if you hit them in the legs with it. Like both skills for it (splitting vs the one that explodes).

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Head to the SW, there's a great one from a quest. I wish they had put it on the legendary spike thrower. Then again, the raining spike ability with explosive spikes is very nice

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This is the one I'm using. Don't remember where I got it.

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Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of. I hate that they said "Rare" and "Very Rare". Guerilla, Purple=Epic, just accept that most of us are WoW programmed.

If you get the legendary and then throw up a bunch of explosive modifiers on it, you'll one shot most of the machines out there. There was a video floating around of another build and the guy was doing 7k hits on a Thundermaw with a sharpshot bow, braced shot, and a ton of +stealth damage modifiers.

Cromagnum said:

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mickeyrig06sq3 said:

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Cromagnum said:

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Loving the spike thrower, especially the very rare one with the drill spikes. Pretty much guaranteed to put the big machines on the ground if you hit them in the legs with it. Like both skills for it (splitting vs the one that explodes).

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Head to the SW, there's a great one from a quest. I wish they had put it on the legendary spike thrower. Then again, the raining spike ability with explosive spikes is very nice

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This is the one I'm using. Don't remember where I got it.

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Salvage contract in the SW of the map. You'll get it while doing the salvage side quest for the legendary armor.

About to finish the OG game. I have really enjoyed it, but my only complaint is that weapons customization and unlocks weren't really ever critical to progressing in the game. I played on hard for some of the beginning, but switched to normal after. Maybe that's why. Most of my gear is not the greatest and I didnt feel like I had to have every armor suit for different situations like I would in a game like Breath of the Wild. I didnt feel like I had to ever use any of the traps or shock arrows or ...really anything but the hardpoint arrows once I got a really jacked bow.

I end up having a bunch of random mods, a bunch of metal scraps left over, and mostly medium tier gear and had no problem finishing the game.