Horizon Zero Dawn has quite a big skill tree with 44 unlockable skills. That tree is divided into the Brave, Prowler, Traveller, and Forager groups. Unlocking skills enhance Aloy’s direct combat prowess, stealth manoeuvres, resource gathering, mounting, and more. You’ll receive only one skill point for every level up, so don’t waste them on the more superfluous skills that are seldom useful. These are some of the best skills in Horizon Zero Dawn you should unlock sooner rather than later.
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Herbalist
Healing yourself with freely available flowers picked up in the wild is something you’ll often need to do in Horizon Zero Dawn. Herbalist is one of the best skills in Horizon Zero Dawn because it doubles the size of your medicine pouch, enabling you to carry twice as much flowery health replenishment into combat. You’ll depend less on potions when you’ve unlocked Herbalist, which will save you resources.
Herbalist costs two skill points to unlock. You’ll also need Healer unlocked to unlock this skill. Healer speeds up medicine healing to further enhance health replenishment in combat.
Silent Stike
Silent Strike is one of the best skills in Horizon Zero Dawn to have for killing small robots and humans. It only costs one skill point to unlock and enables you to instantly kill small robots and humans with stealth attacks. You can take down many small robots and almost all human foes nice and quietly by sneaking up on them from behind with Silent Strike. This makes the stealthy approach much more potent in Horizon Zero Dawn.
Silent Strike on the skill tree
Strong Strike+
Strong Strike+ is a skill that makes Silent Strike considerably stronger. Unlocking this skill increases the damage of your Silent Strikes by 30 percent. Thus, you’ll inflict somewhat more damage on medium-sized machines with this skill unlocked, enabling you to get even bigger opening hits on them.
This skill costs three points and is further down the tree. You’ll need to have unlocked Silent Strike, Strike From Above, and Strong Strike to get this one. Unlocking the cheaper Strong Strike also increases strike damage by 15 percent, amounting to a combined 45 percent increase in Silent Strike damage.
Strong Strike+ on the skill tree
Knock Down
Knock Down is one of the best skills in Horizon Zero Dawn because it enables Aloy to knock down robots with heavy spear attacks with much more regularity. This is very useful in open combat since the robots get knocked down to the ground for a while, enabling you to get further hits in before they can get up again. Unlocking this skill is one of the best ways to enhance your spear for close-range combat.
Knock Down costs three skill points, and you can’t unlock it immediately. You’ll need to unlock the two Precision skills first. Those skills increase the regularity with which you can knock off machine components and armor with light spear attacks. The three skills combined considerably enhance Aloy’s proficiency with the speaker, making you all the stronger for close-range scrapping.
Knock Down on the skill tree
Lure Call
Lure Call is a great skill to combine with Silent Strike you can immediately unlock. This enables you to lure the nearest enemy toward Aloy with a whistle. It’s extremely useful for luring humans or robots toward you in long grass from which you can execute Silent Strikes. Thus, unlocking Lure Call makes it easier to kill more enemies from long grass with Silent Strike.
Double Shot
Bows are essential throughout the game for destroying bigger robots, hunting animals, and fighting humans from a distance. Double Shot is one of the best skills in Horizon Zero Dawn for enhancing bow combat because it effectively doubles the strength of your arrow attacks. It enables you to simultaneously fire two arrows at the same target, amounting to a 100-percent damage increase. You can even kill some weaker human enemies in one bow attack with Double Shot when utilizing the highest-damage arrows, which is useful for stealth combat.
Double Shot on the skill tree
Double Shot costs three skill points, and you’ll need to have the Heavy Lifter and Concentration skills unlocked to obtain it. Although Heavy Lifter does nothing to enhance bow combat, Concentration can be useful for firing arrows. It enables you to slow time when aiming, making it easier to hit moving and smaller targets.
Hoarder
Hoarder is one of the best skills in Horizon Zero Dawn on the Traveler tree. Unlocking this skill increases inventory resource slots by 20 percent. So, it enables you to carry more resources and will help to ensure you don’t run out of inventory space. This skill isn’t essential during the early game, but many players will probably need more inventory slots for resources in the second half of Horizon Zero Dawn.
Hoarder on the skill tree
Hoarder’s Traveler skill tree is only available in the Frozen Wilds DLCs. It’s available within the Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition for Windows PC. Hoarder costs three skill points, and Expert Carver and Shard Salvager are two prerequisite requirements for unlocking it.
Critical Hit
Critical Hit is a cheap combat skill that should be among the first you unlock during the early game. This is among the best skills in Horizon Zero Dawn because it enables you to inflict high-damage attacks on knocked-down enemies on the ground. It’s a great skill for combining with Knock Down, as that enables you to knock down robots more often to pull off high-damage critical hit attacks with greater regularity.
Critical Hit on the skill tree
Those best skills in Horizon Zero Dawn are invaluable for Aloy’s quest to save the world from Hades. Most of them will considerably enhance your combat proficiency, and Hoarder will enable you to carry a wider variety of resources for crafting and purchases. Unlock all of them to give you the edge in Horizon Zero Dawn.
