From swords to guns, each game has its own array of weapons you can use in their gameplay to neutralize enemies. However, characters like Lara Croft from Tomb Raider or Ellie and Joel from The Last Of Us have shown gamers that using a bow and arrow is a super-efficient way to kill things silently and, more importantly, from a distance.
In recent years, someone else joined the club of video game characters that prefer to use a bow to neutralize their enemies. We are talking about Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn, and since she uses a bow as her primary weapon, you should really learn the difference between all the arrows you have available and which ones work best against the specific machine you’re fighting off.
Different Arrow Types In The Game
The first thing you have to know is that there are nine different types of arrows in the game and that each bow has specific arrows that work with it. This means that you can’t use one arrow type with all the bows. So, there are three types of bows, and each one has three types of arrows it can shoot.
Hunter Bow
A very versatile bow that you should use at short to medium range, it also has short reload and drawback times, so keep that in mind. Perhaps one of the defining characteristics of the Hunter Bow is that you can inflict fire damage with it, an ability you’ll find yourself using a lot while playing the game.
Fire Arrow
- Cost to buy: 25 Metal Shards
- Crafted with: 2 Ridge-Wood, 5 Metal Shards, and 3 Blaze
Once you shoot one of these, they’ll deal a medium fire severity on impact plus low fire damage over time. As you’ll find out, many story-related machines are weak to this type of damage, especially those with Blaze canisters (like Freeze Bellowbacks or Sawtooths).
Hunter Arrow
- Cost to buy: 5 Metal Shards.
- Crafted with: 2 Ridge-Wood and 1 Metal Shards.
These arrows are inexpensive. But funnily enough, that feature comes with a price. You see, Hunter Arrows deal poor impact damage as well as low tear on impact. While they won’t help you deliver the final blow, you can use this type of arrow to wear down a machine and then use the good stuff to kill or immobilize it.
Hardpoint Arrow
- Cost to buy: 15 Metal Shards.
- Crafted with: 5 Ridge-Wood and 10 Metal Shards
While playing Horizon Zero Dawn, you’ll notice that some machines are heftier than others. With some of them, you’ll need to remove some parts first before hitting their weak spots. When dealing with those, you’ll have to use Hardpoint Arrows as they have a high tear on impact and deal medium impact damage, so they’ll remove these protective parts more easily.
War Bow
Sure, this bow deals relatively low damage, but its real strength is its capacity to deal elemental damage. This is super useful since some machines are weaker against a specific type of damage. The best way to use the War Bow is to use it to bring machines to a vulnerable state and then use high damaging arrows to kill them off. These are the types of arrow you can use with this bow:
Freeze Arrow
- Cost to buy: 30 Metal Shards.
- Crafted with: 10 Ridge-Wood, 5 Metal Shards, and 3 Chillwater.
Just as Fire Arrows deal Fire damage, Freeze Arrows deal freeze damage. This makes them especially useful against machines with Freeze canisters (like the Lancehorn) or those that are weak to Freeze damage (like the Fireclaw). One cool thing you can do with this type of arrow is freeze enemies, so you’ll gain some time to attack them with regular arrows and deal more damage.
Corruption Arrow
- Cost to buy: 60 Metal Shards.
- Crafted with: 10 Ridge-Wood, 5 Metal Shards, and 2 Metalburn.
You should use this type of arrow when you’re overwhelmed with a large group of enemies since it will “corrupt” the target, making it hostile against any other machine or human. This makes the target fight for you, giving you a good bit of leverage and giving you the ability to break an entire group of enemies without doing any extra work.
However, keep in mind that when it comes to these arrows, size matters, and you’ll need multiple shots to corrupt bigger enemies. Moreover, these arrows won’t work against machines that are already corrupted or against Daemonic Machines.
Shock Arrow
- Cost to buy: 15 Metal Shards
- Crafted with: 10 Ridge-Wood, 5 Metal Shards, and 5 Sparker.
As you can guess by its name, Shock Arrows deal Shock damage. This will not only harm the target, but it will also temporarily stun them, locking it in place and giving some time to the player in the middle of a battle. Moreover, these types of arrows are especially effective against machines that have exposed Power Cells (like the Behemoth) or against machines that have Shock vulnerability (like the Stalker).
Sharpshot Bow
You can’t have it all, and the Sharpshot Bow is the perfect example of that. While this bow is highly accurate in its shots, it has a slow firing rate. So you better use this one when you have some terrain between you and your enemy so you can do a little bit of sniping. These are the arrows you can use with this bow:
Harvest Arrow
- Cost to buy: 45 Metal Shards.
- Crafted with: 10 Ridge-Wood, 8 Metal Shards, and 1 Wire.
These types of arrows are ideal for removing machine parts. Not only will they do so with more precision than any other arrow, but if you manage to remove a harvestable machine part, it will give you more resources than it would have from looting the machine. So, in conclusion, use Harvest Arrows when you want to farm resources and not just quickly kill the machine.
Tearblast Arrow
- Cost to buy: 90 Metal Shards.
- Crafted with: 10 Ridge-Wood, 8 Metal Shards, and 4 Echo Shell.
Sure, these arrows are expensive, but they’re also very powerful. Tearblast Arrows use a sonic system to emit a blast that’ll deal massive tear damage. Also, it uses a compressed air blast that quickly strips the machine’s components and armor from human enemies. Moreover, you’ll have to use this one if you want to participate in the trials at the Sun Furrows Hunting Grounds.
A nice trick that the game doesn’t tell you is that you can use this type of arrow to knock most human targets off their feet, and while doing so won’t deal any damage to the enemy, it can give you a much-needed breathing room.
Precision Arrow
- Cost to buy: 20 Metal Shards.
- Crafted with: 10 Ridge-Wood, 8 Metal Shards, and 5 Wire.
Of all the arrow types available in the game, these ones are the ones that deal the most damage per shot and also travel the furthest. However, they have medium Tear damage. Use this one when you need to make a precise and powerful shot from a distance, similarly as you would use a sniper rifle in other games.