Horizon: Forbidden West provides its players with a variety of different ways to tackle its many combat encounters. Aloy’s time in the reimagined American frontier can be an absolute blast with the right combination of skills and equipment, allowing her to take on both machines and humans alike.

With her trusty bow and an entirely revamped spear, Guerilla Games’ latest open-world allows its players to truly get creative in their approach. The addition of Valor Surges brings another layer of customization to the table and can present a potentially overwhelming amount of choices for creating unique builds.

And with brand new weapons like the Shredder Gauntlet, Spike Thrower and so much more, combat in Forbidden West quickly goes beyond the scope of its already ambitious prequel!

A Wilder West

The Western part of Aloy’s future America can be a dangerous place. But with six distinct skill trees for players to engage with, Aloy can soon go from being hunted to becoming the ultimate predator. What’s more, you get to vary your tactics based on the kind of playstyle you would like to adopt.

Do you prefer to get up close and personal with your enemies? Unlike Zero Dawn, this is a perfectly viable approach to combat! The Warrior skill tree gives you a plethora of incredible ways to bring the fight to your enemies. The Hunter skill tree lets you use your bow to devastating effect as well, allowing you the freedom to balance melee and ranged combat in ways that can leave even the most dangerous machines at your mercy.

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Perhaps a stealth approach is more your style? The Trapper, Survivor, and Infiltrator give you the scope to make sure that your enemies literally do not know what (or who) hit them. You could also choose to get the machines over to your side, with the Machine Master skill tree that redefines the scope of what overriding machines in-game can do.

Horizon: Forbidden West certainly takes what made Zero Dawn great to the next level, and lets you experience its improvements in a way that feels unique and fun!

How to Respec in Horizon Forbidden West

With a ton of content in its sprawling open world, it’s entirely possible to unlock every single skill at your disposal in Horizon: Forbidden West. However, your initial time in the Western frontier may require you to think carefully about which skill trees you may want to improve.

However, with the release of patch 1.14 in June 2022, reallocating your skill points is not only feasible but exceedingly simple as well!

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All you need to do is pull up the skill tree by pressing down on your controller’s touchpad. From there, use the shoulder buttons to navigate to the skills menu. Once you’re there, simply press the Options button on your controller.

Upon pressing the Options button, you will be greeted with a confirmation screen – ensuring that you do not trigger the respec by accident! Simply press the corresponding button to proceed.

You are now ready to reallocate your hard-earned skill points, and explore new ways to bring the fight to your enemies!