Horizon Zero Dawn Crafting Guide

Horizon Zero Dawn – Gathering Resources for Crafting

Crafting is a central mechanic in Horizon Zero Dawn as it will ensure that you’re always ready for any fight and that you can carry all the items you need on your journey. Of course, in order to make anything useful you’ll need to have the proper resources in order to make the items you want/need. There are several types of items you can craft while playing and they fall under:

• Ammo
• Carry Capacity upgrades
• Traps
• Potions
• Travel

Each one requires a very specific set of resources in order to create, so you’ll need to do a lot of gathering in Horizon Zero Dawn before you begin crafting. Resources can be found in nature (from animals and plants), in supply crates, treasure boxes, looting machines, looting humans, as quest rewards, and from merchants.

All merchants will have one free treasure box for you that provides a sample of what they offer, but you can also purchase a select number of specific resources from each. These usually include bundles of wood (needed for the crafting of many ammo types), and different robot components such as Blaze Canisters and Wire.

Nature will give you plants and wood that you can pick up simply by walking up and pressing Triangle. Each type of item can only be stacked a certain amount though with wood being able to be in stacks of 250, while plants can only be carried in stacks of 25.

Animals offer up bone, skin, and the various types of meat you can find in-game (which are required for crafting upgrades, creating potions, and trading). Meats stack up to 25, while bones and skins only stack up to 5. Bones are green drops and Skins are Blue drops. Blue drops are very difficult to come by so you’ll want to head to an area with the animal you want and farm for some time.

Robots provide Metal Shards, Wire, Lenses, Robot Hearts, different canisters (Blaze, Chillwater, Echo, etc.), Machine Cores, and Braiding. The canisters are needed to craft ammo with different elemental effects such as Fire Wires, Ice Bombs, and explosive arrows. Hearts and Lenses are used for trading and will be required to obtain certain armors and weapons. Shards serve as currency as well as a crafting resource, used to create arrowheads and bomb shells. Most robot resources are carried in stacks of 50 with the only exceptions being green and blue drops which are only carried in stacks of 5.

Humans can carry anything as they’re just like you. They don’t often have much, but they’re always worth looting, especially for ammo resources.

Now that you know how to get the different types of resources, it’s time to get to the crafting. 

Horizon Zero Dawn Crafting

Crafting works in two ways while playing Horizon Zero Dawn, either through the menu or on the fly while you’re out exploring the world. Any craftable item can be created under the crafting menu when you press the touchpad on the PS4 controller. However, ammunition also gives you the option of crafting it on the fly, even if you’re in the middle of a tough fight, by letting you pull up a quick menu that slows down time.

Crafting Ammo

If you want to do this without pausing Horizon Zero Dawn, simply hold down L1 then cycle over to the ammo you want to craft using the right thumbstick. Once highlighted, hold down X to craft a set of that ammo. If you continue to hold down X, it will continue to create more until you’ve reached the max you can carry. Each weapon allows you to craft a specific amount of ammo from one resource bunch. For instance arrows start with a base of ten each time, while bombs only let you craft two. This can be upgraded with the Ammo Crafter skill under the Forager tree.

Crafting ammo in the Horizon Zero Dawn menu requires you to select the weapon type by choosing its quiver, then selecting the type of ammunition you want. When highlighted, hold X like you would when crafting in the wild.

Crafting Traps and Potions

Under the crafting tab in the menu you’ll find an option for Traps & Potions. Clicking this will give you three options.

Traps: These require Wire, a Metal Vessel, and the elemental component that provides the effect you’re looking for.

Health Potions: Health Potions are made of meat. Normal ones use rich and fatty meat while Full Health Potions required rich, fatty, and bony meat. They heal 150 and all health respectively. Health Boost Potions, which increase your health by 150 for a period of time, require only fatty and bony meat.

Resist Potions: There are four types of resist potions in Horizon Zero Dawn and they’re each made out of a plant that corresponds to the element you’re trying to resist:

• Fire Resist – Fire Kiln Root x3
• Shock Resist – Shock Wax Root x3
• Freeze Resist – Freeze Rime Root x3
• Antidote – Corruption Glaze Root x3

Crafting Carry Capacity

These are required to boost the amount of each item you can carry. The different satchels and quivers are unlocked as you obtain access to the corresponding weapon or item. The upgrades have levels, each boosting the capacity by a set amount until you reach the max amount. This is where skins and bones really come into play, as well as large amounts of wood and Metal Shards. The resources required change with each upgrade, so make sure to farm all the animals to have a wide selection of bones and skin.

Crafting Travel

You can craft a Fast Travel Pack in the crafting menu of Horizon Zero Dawn for 15 Ridge-Wood, 1 Fatty Meat, and 1 Bony Meat. We recommend saving up for a Golden Fast Travel Pack instead which costs 50 Metal Shards, 1 Fox Skin, and 1 Fatty Meat and provides unlimited fast travel.

For more on Horizon Zero Dawn, make sure to check out our wiki.