Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide

Horizon Zero Dawn PlayStation 4 Trophy Guide and Road Map

This Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide was created to accompany my Platinum Trophy Review, check that out if you have a few minutes and are interested to know my thoughts on the Platinum Journey as a whole.

Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide: Before You Begin

There are just a few things to bear in mind before you head off on your merry way to the Horizon Zero Dawn Platinum Trophy, which I’ve listed below for convenience;

• No trophy is missable thanks to post-game free-roam, however, one trophy “All Allies Joined” can be temporarily missed, forcing you to replay a certain story mission if the requirements have not been met. For that reason, I advise that you follow the instructions in Phase One of this guide and stop all story progression once you have the mission “The Looming Shadow”.
• You can play on any difficulty you like with no consequences. I do, however, recommend playing on Normal difficulty or higher, to preserve the intricacies of the Combat System.
• I have created a Key Locations Guide and a Collectables Guide both of which will ensure you don’t struggle finding any items or locations you might need for the Platinum Trophy.
• Make sure you use your Focus when facing off against any new machine enemy. By hovering your cursor over a machine enemy whilst in Focus mode, you will scan them. This will log details about the machine in your Notebook under “Machine Catalogue” but also there is a trophy for logging the details of every single machine.

Looking for the Frozen Wilds DLC Trophies? We have a Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds Trophy Guide.

Phase One – Completing the Main Story until the mission “The Looming Shadow”

For this first phase, you will want to play the story and complete side content at any pace you personally find more enjoyable. However, to avoid additional headache, I recommend you stop any main mission progress at the mission “The Looming Shadow”.

This is because in order to earn the trophy “All Allies Joined” you will need to have completed 11 specific side-quests before starting the mission.

Don’t worry about that for now, anyway, we will come back to it in Phase 3. Note that even if you do complete “The Looming Shadow” the trophy is still obtainable, you will just need to play that mission again.

Unmissable Trophies

By simply completing the game’s main campaign, you will earn all of the trophies listed in, and so there’s no need to even think about them past “Finish the Campaign”. All story-related trophies are listed below, even if some of them won’t be earned until Phase Three of this Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide, so if you don’t have them all yet, don’t worry, they’re still totally unmissable as long as you complete the story in some capacity.

Phase Two – Completing All Horizon Zero Dawn Side Quest & Activity Trophies

I don’t particularly expect you to avoid all side-content until the main story is complete, that would ruin the game a little bit I think, but this is the best way to divide up the content. Think of Phase One and Phase Two of this Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide as perpendicular tasks that you dip in and out of at your leisure, at a pace which you find comfortable.

Note that not all side-quests are required for the Platinum Trophy, just a select few which are listed below their respective trophies below.

Also, Errands are entirely optional except for “Hunting for the Lodge” and “Deadliest Game”. However, errands do offer some excellent exp and fairly decent rewards. It’s entirely up to you if you want to take these on but I do recommend it, the world-building in Horizon Zero Dawn is fantastically well-done and the errands only help to exacerbate this.

Override all Tallnecks

To begin this phase of the Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide, you will want to find and override any Tallnecks which you haven’t yet done this for. The reason for this is that overriding Tallnecks will reveal side-quests and side-activity locations on the map.

Tallnecks are large machines found dotted throughout the game. Surprisingly, there are a mere six Tallnecks for you to find and override. Your first will become available after learning the Override technique and testing it on a Strider. You’ll then be gently nudged by the game towards discovering the nearby Tallneck in Devil’s Thirst.

Follow my Horizon Zero Dawn Key Locations Guide to learn where to find all six Tallnecks.

Side-Quest Storyline Trophies

When you first enter Sunfall as part of the main quest “Deep Secrets of the Earth”, there will be a cutscene in the throne room. During this cutscene, a woman named Vanasha will speak to you, asking you to meet with her later.

After the cutscene you will then have the “Traitor’s Bounty” side quest. In order to earn this trophy, you will need to complete this side quest as well as the next one in the questline “Queen’s Gambit”.

These quests are also needed for the “All Allies Joined” trophy.

In my opinion, Redmaw is one of the best machine fights in the whole game. In order to get the chance to fight this unit of a Thunderjaw, you’ll need to complete the Hunting Lodge questline which involves the following four quests:

• Hunting for the Lodge
• Hunter’s Blind
• Deadliest Game
• Redmaw

The questline starts at the Hunter’s Lodge in Meridian, which is in the southwest corner of the city.

These quests are also needed for the “All Allies Joined” trophy.

Full Blazing Suns at all Hunting Grounds

There are a total of 5 hunting ground locations in Horizon Zero Dawn and each will offer 3 trials for you to complete. You can use my Horizon Zero Dawn Key Locations Guide to see where each of these 5 locations can be found as well as which trials they offer.

The ultimate goal here is the trophy “Blazing Suns at all Grounds” as you cannot earn that without earning the other three Hunting Ground trophies as well.

Each of the three trials offered at any one hunting ground will be timed and depending on how well you do, you will be given a mark. These marks are essentially just bronze, silver and gold – with gold being “Blazing Sun”. These get much more difficult with time to the point that you’re better off attempting them post-game with fully upgraded gear and plenty of useful skills, otherwise you’ll struggle to earn a Blazing Sun.

Despite that, I do recommend doing as many of these trials as you can, because you’ll be given reward packs from the Keeper for completing each trial (better marks, better reward) and you’ll earn a lot of EXP so it’s worth at least attempting each trial once before moving on.

Clear All Corrupted Zones

Corrupted Zones are found all throughout the world of Horizon and are shown on the map as Cross icons with a Circle around them when you override the nearby Tallneck.

To clear a Corrupted Zone, you just need to enter the area and kill any corrupted machines, which will be obvious thanks to the red glow around their necks where they’ve been made corrupt.

Clear all 11 of these Corrupted Zones and you will have both of the trophies above.

Clear All Bandit Camps

Bandit Camps will be introduced to you as part of a sidequest from an NPC named “Nil”. Killing all enemies in a Bandit Camp will mean various outcasts and small groups will move in, along with merchants. You’ll also gain access to a campfire with which you can save and fast travel.

Find and clear out every bandit camp in the game and you’ll have both of the trophies above.

Climbing and overriding one of the six Tallnecks in the game will reveal the locations of all nearby Bandit Camps as blue skull icons on the map. You can use my Horizon Zero Dawn Key Locations Guide to find all 6 Tallneck locations as well as Bandit Camp locations if needed.

Clear all Cauldrons

Cauldrons are some of the most fun activities in the game, in my opinion. They’re essentially mini Zelda-like dungeons within which you’ll need to solve a few puzzles, defeat a few machine enemies and find your way to the Core.

The core can be overridden, giving you hypothetical control over the Cauldron (essentially a factory from which machines are “born”) as well as allowing you to override more machine types. For example, overriding the core in Cauldron Sigma allows you to override Grazers, Sawtooths, Lancehorns and Scrappers.

In order to override a Cauldron Core, however, you will need to kill a boss. The bosses are just normal machines, typically whatever would come across as a huge threat at that Cauldron’s recommended level, sometimes there will even be multiple and these fights can get incredibly tricky.

I recommend preparing for every boss fight by laying traps all around the arena before activating the boss fight.

You can use my Horizon Zero Dawn Key Locations Guide to find all the Cauldron locations. It also details which machines you will need to defeat during the boss fight as well as the overrides you will unlock for clearing each Cauldron.

Phase Three – All Allies Joined Trophy & Finish Campaign

As mentioned in Phase One of this Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide, you were not to complete “The Looming Shadow” until this phase, I’ll now discuss what to do next.

If you have already completed “The Looming Shadow” and do not have the “All Allies Joined” trophy, keep reading on as I will provide advice for that eventuality also.

Getting all Allies to Join Aloy

Since you’ve presumably completed a lot of the side-quests as part of the last phases, you may already have completed all of the requisites for this trophy, however, double-check by ensuring the following side-quests are all under “completed quests” in the “Side” tab of the “Quest” section in the Touchpad menu:

• Traitor’s Bounty
• Queen’s Gambit – Available once you’ve completed “Traitor’s Bounty”
• A Moments Peace
• A Daughter’s Vengeance
• Sun and Shadow
• Honor the Fallen
• Sunstone Rock
• Hunting For the Lodge (Errand)
• Hunter’s Blind – Available once you’ve completed “Hunting For the Lodge”
• Deadliest Game (Errand) – Available once you’ve completed “Hunter’s Blind”
• Redmaw – Available once you’ve completed “Deadliest Game”

Note that how you respond to dialogue prompts cannot affect the chances of you getting this trophy. As long as the side-quests are complete, you can piss off anyone you like and still get the trophy.

If the required Side-Quests above have been completed, you may begin “The Looming Shadow”. At the start of this quest, find and speak to Sun-King Avad and then Blameless Marad at the Palace of the Sun, you’ll then be given some optional objectives as well as the main objective “Rest before the Battle”. Once you go to bed for the night, the trophy will pop.

The Rest of the Story Trophies?

I just wanted to reiterate here, if you did indeed follow earlier instructions in this Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide and hold off on completing “The Looming Shadow” until this point, then you will still have two campaign trophies left. You’re now free to collect them, but as they are technically still unmissable I have kept them listed in the Unmissable Trophies list and saw no reason to move them.

Jump back to that list if you feel you need to cross-reference.

What if I completed The Looming Shadow?

This is perfectly fine, you will just need to replay the mission. Once you have completed every main quest and therefore the entire story, the post-game will take place just before this quest. This means you can go and begin it at any time by simply marking it as your active quest and then approaching the quest marker.

First, ensure that all necessary side-quests have been completed by using the list above, and then begin the quest again.

Phase Four – Misc Trophies and Enemy Cataloguing

You will earn a lot of the trophies in this phase of our Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide naturally through gameplay, so this phase is all about just double-checking which ones you still need so we can quickly check them off the list before continuing on with some of the more grind-y trophies.

Miscellaneous Trophies

All of the below trophies in this Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide, apart from one, are related to combat encounters.

The easiest way to farm out this trophy is by hunting down some Watchers. Press to enter focus mode, look at a watcher and then press to highlight their patrol route. Find some tall grass near the track and then hide in it by pressing to crouch.

Wait there until the Watcher approaches you and then press for a “Silent Strike” attack when the prompt appears on-screen. This will trigger a stealth kill animation, repeat this 10 times until the trophy is yours.

You will likely do this a lot throughout the game depending on how you play though, so you may not need to worry about farming this trophy out.

For this trophy you will first need to earn the Tier 2 “Prowler” skill “Strike from Above”. This skill will allow you to silently kill small machines and humans in a single attack. The enemy will need to be unaware of your presence and you’ll need to be on a ledge or hill above the enemy. A prompt will appear when all the prerequisites are met.

Use this skill to get just three silent kills from above and you’ll earn yourself the trophy!

It’s actually near-impossible to complete the story without earning this trophy. Often components will fall from Machines when you hit them with your spear and there are even skills which can increase the chances of this. But also, hitting Machine weakpoints with your arrows or using weaponry specifically built to knock components and armour off machinery will also cause a lot of components to drop off.

I’d argue you don’t need to even think about this trophy as you’ll earn it by having to fight hundreds of machines throughout the game.

In order to see which specific components can be knocked off of a machine and collected, you can use to focus on them and you’ll see any components highlighted with a yellow colour. Specifically aiming at these weakpoints to knock them off will increase your chances tenfold.

You can also get “Tearblast” ammo for sharpshot bows, which is amazing stuff. Simply land one of the arrows in a machine and watch as its armour and components come flying off.

This trophy is essentially the same as the one above, except this time we’re aiming for specific components. In my opinion, the best enemies to do this on are Ravagers but there are quite a few Heavy Weapons on Thunderjaw machines too. Essentially you just want to fire a Tearblast arrow or two onto their back within the vicinity of their heavy guns.

You will know when you have successfully knocked off a heavy weapon as you’ll be able to approach, pick up and use said weapon when it hits the ground. A yellow crosshair icon indicates a heavy weapon.

When you scan an enemy by looking at them with Focus active, you will see some quick info about them and their weaknesses on a floating information panel in the HUD. This info will change depending on which parts of the machine you are looking at and it will tell you if a machine has an elemental weakness such as Fire or Ice.

For this trophy you will need to find 10 machines which are weak to Fire or Ice and then kill them while they are burning or frozen. When you hit an enemy with a fire, ice, or shock attack a small icon will appear over their health bar, which will fill up more as you hit the enemy with more attacks of that element.

To inflict burning or freeze on an enemy you will need to hit them with Fire or Ice until that icon is filled. You’ll then see a cooldown bar around the icon indicating that the effect is wearing off, so you’ll need to kill them before this bar empties for the kill to count towards this trophy.

Do that 10 times and the trophy is yours.

Once you learn the ability to override machines by holding on a stunned or unaware machine, you will only be able to override Tallnecks, Watchers and Striders. In order to increase the number of machines you can override, you will need to override some cauldron cores.

As explained earlier in the guide, Cauldrons are large manufacturing facilities which serve kind of like dungeons, with a boss at the end. To find more Cauldrons, look for the triangular icons on your map, or use my Horizon Zero Dawn Key Locations Guide for information on each Cauldron’s location, boss, and override rewards.

And the award for most self-explanatory trophy title goes to…

In order to earn this trophy you’ll obviously want to get 30 headshot kills on human enemies. You can track the number of headshot kills you’ve successfully pulled off via the “Statistics” tab of the “Notebook” in the Touchpad menu. However, this number doesn’t seem to track correctly.

Either the actual stat is bugged, or it’s also tracking headshot kills on wildlife and perhaps even machines. Either way, when I finally popped this trophy, I actually had a Headshot stat of 38, not 30. So, if you see you’ve managed to pull off 30 headshots but you don’t have the trophy yet, fret not for you can simply keep on getting those headshots until your trophy eventually pops, which it will.

This trophy is incredibly simple and you’ll most likely earn it in the early moments of the game, before taking on the Proving. To apply a Modification, press the Touchpad to open the menu and then use and to navigate to the “Crafting” tab.

In the crafting tab, you’ll see a menu on the left-hand side allowing you to choose what kind of things you’d like to craft. The top two options are “Modify Weapons” and “Modify Outfits”, select either option and then press on a weapon or outfit to open the Modify menu.

In here, select an empty modification slot and you’ll gain access to a list of available modifications which can be used on your selected weapon/outfit.

Doing this for the first time will earn you the above trophy.

Enemy Cataloguing

All of the below trophies in this portion of our Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide, except for one, require that you Kill a machine of every type. The machines are categorised and thus for killing one of each machine type within each category, you’ll be able to earn all of the trophies below.

The other trophy requires you to scan every machine type at least once, so keep that in mind and work towards scanning machines whilst you play.

You can track which machines you have killed (and how many of each machine you have killed) via the “Statistics” section of the “Notebook” tab in the Touchpad menu. The stats are listed under “Machines Killed”.

NOTE: Corrupted Machines DO NOT count for the “All Machines Killed” trophies. For example, I was confused because I killed a few Red-Eye Watchers but the “All Recon Machines Killed” trophy wouldn’t unlock. This is because the only Red-Eye Watchers I had killed were Corrupted Machines. Luckily, Corrupt Machines also don’t show up in the “Machines Killed” stat, so you can use that to see if any Machine Kill has actually been tracked.

Corrupted machines do count for the “All machines catalogued” trophy, though, so you can freely scan a new machine into the catalogue even if it’s corrupt.

Acquisition machines are those which gather resources and are fairly common. They’re typically not aggressive unless approached too closely. To earn this trophy, you will need to kill the following 10 types of acquisition machines:

• Strider
• Grazer
• Scrapper
• Broadhead
• Lancehorn
• Trampler
• Charger
• Glinthawk
• Snapmaw
• Rockbreaker

Recon machines are simply those that act as lookout to try and ensure that the acquisition machines don’t meet any resistance. To earn the trophy you will need to kill all 3 of these recon machine types:

• Watcher
• Redeye Watcher
• Longleg

Combat machines are the ones which pack the biggest punch, those more based on the likeness of predators. In order to earn this trophy you will need to kill the following 5 types of combat machine:

• Sawtooth
• Stalker
• Ravager
• Thunderjaw
• Stormbird

Transport machines are those which were designed to transport large amounts of resources. In order to earn this trophy you will need to kill the following 4 types of transport machine:

• Shell-Walker
• Fire Bellowback
• Freeze Bellowback
• Behemoth

Cataloguing all machines is something which I mentioned in the “Before You Start” section as something you should be trying to do from the very beginning.

To scan a machine, you press to enter Focus mode and then look at the desired machine to begin scanning. After a short moment, information about that machine will be added to the Notebook under the “Machine Catalogue” tab.

You will need to fill this catalogue with information about every machine enemy, so be sure to scan everything you come across.

Note that if you have the DLC installed, the 5 “?” icons at the bottom of the catalogue (over the blue background) are not required for this trophy.

To help you, here’s a full list of all 26 machines in the order they appear:

• Watcher
• Strider
• Grazer
• Scrapper
• Red-Eye Watcher
• Broadhead
• Lancehorn
• Longleg
• Trampler
• Sawtooth
• Shell-Walker
• Fire Bellowback
• Freeze Bellowback
• Charger
• Stalker
• Glinthawk
• Corruptor
• Ravager
• Snapmaw
• Rockbreaker
• Behemoth
• Thunderjaw
• Stormbird
• Deathbringer
• Tallneck
• Corrupted Machine (any)

These are not missable as you can find them all again in the post-game.

Phase Five – Collectibles

You can get these collectibles whenever and however you like while working through this Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide. I’ve put together a Horizon Zero Dawn Collectables Guide which you can use to find the locations of all collectable items.

Collectable Trophies

Grazer Dummies can be found all across the Nora territory. The first 7 can be found right at the start of the game. Once you gain control of Adult Aloy for the first time you’ll start at the home which Aloy shares with Rost. Here, there are 7 of these Training Dummies for you to take down by hitting them with spear attacks.

You can use my Horizon Zero Dawn Collectables Guide to find them all!

Vantage Points are quite difficult to find as the locations aren’t marked on the map (even if you’ve looked directly at them) until you activate (collect) them. There are a total of 12 to find and you can use my Horizon Zero Dawn Collectables Guide to find out where they all can be found.

When you interact with a Vantage point by activating Focus , you’ll get a little preview of what the area you’re looking at used to look like. You can also press at this location to hear some lore about what you’re seeing too!

Find all 12 to acquire both of the above trophies.

Metal Flowers are intricate pods which are presumed to promote seed germination. Their locations are fairly distinct given the way that various flowers will grow around the collectable in a perfect triangle shape. These are the most plentiful type of collectable, with 30 to collect in total for the trophy.

You can buy maps from merchants which will show you the general area where you can find each one as a radius on the map, or you can use my Horizon Zero Dawn Collectables Guide for more pin-point information.

Banuk figures are left in offering atop intricate climbing challenges which can be identified for the distinct, painted, Banuk markings found on every nearby surface.

There are only a mere 6 of these to find for the trophy and you can buy a map detailing their approximate location from any merchant. Alternatively, use my Horizon Zero Dawn Collectables Guide for details of each figure’s location.

Ancient Vessels are found inside piles of “Ancient Rubble” which are usually found near ruined cities such as Devil’s Thirst or around settlements and camps.

Hold on a pile of Ancient Rubble to browse the contents and collect the “Ancient Vessel” within.

You can use my Horizon Zero Dawn Collectables Guide to find all 12.

The Shield-Weaver outfit can be found in the Bunker to the east of Mother’s Rise.

However, to access it you will need to find 5 Power Cells and bring them to the bunker, unlocking the doors which block you from getting the armour. Sadly you can’t just head out and grab these Power Cells, as the majority of them are only available during/after certain points in the main campaign. The last of them is not available until very near the end of the game, even.

You can use my Horizon Zero Dawn Collectables Guide to find out where and how to find these 5 Power Cells so that you can claim the outfit.

With all 5 cells in your inventory you will be able to power the puzzles which, when solved, will unlock the door and grant you access to the armour and therefore this trophy.

The armour is an excellent piece of equipment to have as it will essentially give you two life bars, one in the form of shields, allowing you take a few hits before your health is depleted. Very helpful for the penultimate story missions as well as the Frozen Wilds DLC content.

Phase Six – Reach Level 50

Aloy Level and Skill Trophies

It’s rather unlikely that you will need this stage at all. The amount of exp you will get from completing everything else in the game should be more than enough to reach level 50.

As for purchasing all of the skills, you will only need to reach level 43 before you can do this. However, if you have the Frozen Wilds DLC (which comes with most new copies of the game) then you might need to level up a bit more if you plan to buy some of the blue skills on the far right of the skill tree.

To clarify; only the skills under “Prowler”, “Brave”, and “Forager” count for this trophy. Skills under “Traveler” are tied to a different trophy in the DLC trophy list.

Plat Get!

With all of the trophies in this Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide complete you should, of course, automatically receive that one final base game trophy; the Horizon Zero Dawn Platinum Trophy:

Thank you for choosing PlatGet as your source for this Horizon Zero Dawn Trophy Guide, consider checking out our reviews and other guides!

Looking for the Frozen Wilds DLC Trophies? We have a Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds Trophy Guide.

Follow us on twitter @GetPlat or Instagram @platget for updates on new reviews and guides, as well as small anecdotes about our platinum journeys.