Horizon Zero Dawn Skill Guide: The Best Skills in Every Tree

Prowler Tree

Horizon Zero Dawn Skill Guide: The Best Skills in Every Tree

There are quite a few skills to choose from while playing Horizon Zero Dawn, and that can make it difficult to know where to place your hard-earned points. To make life easier, we’re going to list the best skills in each tree to help you build the best possible Aloy without having to reach level 50. Let’s start off with the Prowler tree.

Prowler skills revolve around stealth, letting you use the world around you for better cover while allowing you pull of powerful attacks against enemies unaware of your presence.

Silent Strike – This skill costs only one point and should be one of the first abilities you unlock while playing Horizon Zero Dawn. It allows you to pull of a powerful sneak attack on any enemy that can’t see you. It kills smaller machines and humans that aren’t marked as leaders in one shot, allowing you to quickly reduce a nearby threat.

Silent Drop – You make sound as you move through the world, which can interfere with stealthy movement. There are a lot of times when you need to drop down from a roof or a rock with nearby enemies. This lets you do so without raising any alarms while also putting you in position for a silent strike.

Leader Strike – You’ll have to unlock strike from above and below as well as Silent Strike (a total of six points) before you can access this three point skill. It’s worth it, though, especially for the later game, as it allows you to instantly take down the bigger human enemies, including those that carry the powerful weapons.

Strong Strike + – This is a three point skill that is preceded by Balanced, Hunter Reflexes, and Strong Strike. It greatly increases the damage to all strike attacks, allowing you to take down large machines instantly and to do much more damage to the biggest enemies.

Dodge Prowess – Dodging in Horizon Zero Dawn can often be very wild, often sending you off ledges or out of attack range. This skill allows you to do a short or long dodge so you can better control your placement on the field. 

Brave Tree

Horizon Zero Dawn Skill Guide: The Best Skills in Every Tree

The brave tree is all about combat, increasing the power of certain attack and allowing more time for others to help prevent you from being overwhelmed. This most likely won’t be a your primary tree, but it’s a perfect supplement to the others. It’s best skills are as follows:

Heavy Lifter – For two points, you can up the speed at which you can move while carrying a heavy weapon. Those are the weapons that kill most things in one hit and can easily take down large machines that you find on elite humans and bigger robots.

Concentration + –  We’re just gonna go for the whole first column of the Brave tree. Concentration + is a three point skill that you unlock after Concentration and Heavy Lifter. It allows for a much longer period of concentration (slowing down time) while you aim your bow, which makes hitting crucial weakspots on larger enemies much easier.

Fast Reload – Another three point skill, and one that’s able to be unlocked right after Concentration +. It allows you to draw another arrow much quicker, meaning you can get off more shots before your enemy is able to catch on.

Critical Hit + – Critical Hit + lets you do even more damage against a downed enemy. You won’t need this early on, but once Tramplers, Thunderjaws, and Rockbreakers become more common, you’ll be thankful you unlocked this skill.  It will cost you two points.

Double Shot – Some of you may be wondering why Double Shot and not Triple Shot, and it all comes down to how many points you’re willing to spend. Both skills cost three points, and you need double to unlock triple. If it’s that important to you, you can dump the points, but there are other expensive skills that you may find more worthy. Double Shot provides plenty of extra damage in Horizon Zero Dawn and I personally found it to be enough while I allotted my other skill points elsewhere. 

Forager Tree

Horizon Zero Dawn Skill Guide: The Best Skills in Every Tree

The Forager tree is all about taking advantage of the world around you, which makes life a lot easier in Horizon Zero Dawn. It’s no surprise that this tree offers up some of the most absolutely best skills in the game.

Lure Call (arguably most useful in game) – This should be one of the first skills you unlock while playing the game, if not the first, and it’s only one point. It’s simply a whistle, but one that works unlike any other we’ve ever seen. It will only draw the closest enemy to you. If there’s more than one the same distance away, only one will approach. This allows you to easily take out whole groups of machines or humans one by one.

Healer – Healing using herbs is great, as you just tap up on the d-pad and watch your health fill up. Sometimes it moves a bit too slowly, though, so speeding it up with this one point skill makes life a whole lot easier.

Ammo Crafter – You will always run out of ammo, especially late in the game. There’s no question about it. Crafting it becomes expensive later on as you run through your resources, so being able to craft more than usual from the same amount of supplies is a godsend. It’s a three point skill, but it’s completely worth it.

Combat Override + – Overriding machines is a skill you unlock fairly early in the game. It lasts for a decent amount of time, but sometimes you just need more. This makes it so that they will remain under your control until they die.

Call Mount + – This is a three point skill that you should only invest in if you hate walking around. Still, it’s one of the best as it provides you with a mount whenever you need one. Just tap down on the d-pad while the mount icon is highlighted, and a random machine will walk up to let you ride it. Infinite horses… and deer… and other mechanical animals.

Disarm Traps and Tinker – If you like changing mods for every situation or laying down tons of traps that often don’t get triggered, these are two skills to definitely consider. Both require three skill points to unlock, and you need to unlock Disarm Traps before Tinker becomes available. The first one allows for you to reuse traps and tripwires that weren’t triggered in battle. The second lets you swap cores and weaves in your equipment without destroying them.

Those are all the best skills in Horizon Zero Dawn. For more on the game, check out our wiki.