#hzd daytower

[robo-dino-puppy]

inatut

[horizon-forbidden-memes]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who killed the Corruptor near Daytower with no issue but got slaughtered by the Stormbird immediately through the Sundom gates at least six times. Even stealthing couldn't save me!!!

[loumauve]

a little more disorganised exploring

[thunderjawsandlightning]

Niloy November - Day 3: Fire

"Not my first firestorm", he'd told her, amidst the flaming buildings of Meridian Village and the Royal Maizelands. Behind him, the fire was raging – thatched-roof buildings going up in a crackle, upright timbers shivering beneath the roar of the flames, spitting embers that were crushed underfoot by both devil-machines and men.  Aloy gave pause for a moment, letting loose an arrow into the breast of the Longleg, before Nil stabbed into its wing-vents, downing the machine.  Shouting at her to go on ahead, to the path that called her further forward– and then she was gone, her hair whipping behind her, a wave of red disappearing into the fire.  The inferno was almost a beast unto itself, the heat whipping up gusts of air that prickled Nil’s skin and searing his eyelids as his eyes whipped around the battlefield, ever alert for a new enemy.  

The last time he'd been in a blaze this fierce, the sky had been choked black with smoke; the air filled with screams and war-cries of Nora Braves, and the clattering crash of a Carja gong and the sonorous call of a war-horn to signal maneuvers to the soldiers rushing down into the fray.  As the tall grasses and the triangle-shaped huts burnt in such a fury that made even the rocks ripple in waves, Nil could vaguely recall standing at the base of the ridge, the heat wafting up and licking across his face and snaking over his armour.  It was his first time in foreign lands, and the excitement and fervor of the skirmish began to take hold in his body.  The blood pounding in his ears, so loud it seemed to drown out the roar of the fires; a keening cry in his veins to stab-slash-parry-cut as Nora warriors emerged from the smoke with clubs and spears upraised.  

And after, in the calm and the quiet, Nil wiped his sword clean, seeing his own blood-spattered reflection in the blade.  As he stared at his own steely-eyed reflection, he became aware of a sound, reaching past the slowing, thundering tempo of his racing heart.  A ringing in his ears that would not stop, nor could the shivers that now washed over him quell the fire in his veins.  More, his body seemed to whisper to him.  More.

[aloy-the-desert-flame]

I always loved the towns and settlements in Horizon, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I took some time to photograph merchant stalls around the HZD. This is not a complete set, I'll take some more as I progress on the game :3

Pitchcliff

Meridian

Daytower

And not a shop per se, but a Nora mother cooking in Mother's Crown:

(looks like a leek cream soup ❤️)

I love the detail and variety of the stalls - all the food and craftsmanship of each tribe is just 👌🏻

[bluejaybytes]

just reached daytower. genuinely obsessed w this game now

YESSSSSSSSSS the power of getting through Daytower and to the rest of the game... unstoppable. Though hilariously as someone born and raised in the desert (Not reeeeally any of the states HZD takes place in, MAYBE a small snippet from Arizona but really not much), I love when games do these big "Look at how pretty our scenery is" moments for them because its like. Well you're not wrong they ARE beautiful but also This Is My Backyard

[ayaitch]

Daytower at dawn.

With the Balahn fanart I've seen lately, I wanted to go back and visit him for a nice picture, but apparently he disappears at some point. I am just at the final battle in HZD, so I like to think he heeded the Sun-King's call for all hands on deck and is in Meridian somewhere to help. While nursing my disappointment, I got this shot.

[theyloy]

[gaiasnewdawn]

[forbiddenwestern]

Sooo I’m playing HZD again from the beginning (no NG+) and I’m LOVING it

[h0riz0nstuff]

High Angle on Daytower in the Snow

[blogquantumreality]

A beautiful shot of Carja from the hill below Daytower in Horizon Zero Dawn.

[longleglens]

Daytower

[rayless-reblogs]

glitter

[hzdtrees]

Valleymeet

During my first playthroughs (and a half) Valleymeet was the place where Aloy met a few people belonging to other tribes, a bunch of machines in rather aggressive combinations, and I met a lot of pain.

I’d spent a lot of time exploring the nooks and crannies of the Sacred Land before I even considered making my way towards Daytower, but when I did, I was not prepared for what was waiting for me along the way. There are rather vivid, unpleasant memories tied to the lake past Hunter’s Gathering, since naive, new to HZD’s controls player-me (I do rather poorly when new to a game and take quite some time to learn, so even on lower difficulties I regularly run into problems) saw those two Sawtooths beyond that bridge on the right side of the lake and thought it would be a good idea to shoot them. Both. At once. With a million of Scrappers at my back.

As soon as I came to terms with that lake and its machine population, I decided to take the other turn up at the Hunting Grounds and see where the road leads. This brought me to what is one of my most hated and most loved areas of the entire game: the wind farm area, and the downed aircraft beyond. The broken, rusty remnants of the turbines in the light of the eternal full moon, with the occasional Sawtooth patrolling in between, was a view I could stare at for hours out of the safety of the red-tipped bush I’d hidden in. Also, but not only, because I didn’t dare to come out for a while. After all, there was a Thunderjaw ahead and it had just made spectacularly short work out of a couple of bandits. Surely now that it was done but barely warmed up, it would want to get rid of even more pesky humans that dared to tread on the ground it was patrolling. What if it spotted me?

The very first time playing, that was the point at which I turned around and took the long route back towards that lake, and vowed to never set foot into that valley again. I accidentally passed through it on my way to the Banuk camp up north, as the game’s pathfinding system doesn’t care about your personal preferences, but I just kept running before anything of note could spot me.

It took me until my NG+ playthrough, and then later again on PS4, that I actually took the time exploring the area, looking for datapoints and appreciating the scenery. Since NG+ starts you with all your experience, skills and equipment, I also took the time to knock at Dawn’s Sentinel’s gates before having been to Daytower, which resulted in the guards sending me to their superiors over at the other gate since they were under orders to not let anyone through. It’s a minor thing, but since the wind farm area is basically guarded by a higher-level enemy with the Thunderjaw roaming the lands, and while you can sneak past it, or even kill it while you’re low-level if you know how, I was delighted to see there was some dialogue addressing the issue of the closed border. For some reason, I’d somewhat expected the fort to simply be empty since you weren’t exactly supposed to end up there yet.

[firjii]

Meridian in HZD really is a brilliant use of visual scale because yes you’ve been to villages and even Daytower by that point in the game, but there are relatively few walls before you reach the city. There are a couple of gates and there are ruins, but everything else is visually pretty open. Even walled Nora settlements don’t really seem truly separated off from the world because either you can peek over the fences or glance through them. Carja forts like their walls and gates and tall vantages, but most of them are kinda just…randomly there, and some are easy to miss unless you happen to pass by.

And then you get to Meridian and it’s on the biggest. frickin. hill. they could find. Buildings are multilevel and decorated purely for decorative purposes (don’t get me wrong, the Nora like color and decoration and stylized things but it’s kinda incidental to function sometimes). There are lots of stairs and alleys. It’s frequently confusing to navigate - I have probably about 200 hours invested into various playthroughs and still get extremely lost there half the time. They have elevators. They have some sort of shit going on with waterways and maybe even basic hydroelectricity. They have crop land and a port. Even by IRL standards, it’s reasonably big.

And idk just as a player the first time you see it, it’s such an effective way to make you feel small and out of place. Imagine going from “living in a wee little hut and literally only allowed to interact with a couple of people for the first 18 years of your life” to “yikes there are like 100 people and no privacy at this party” to “WHAT IN THE ACTUAL HELL, WHY DOES OLIN LIVE IN SUCH A BIG HOUSE, WHAT EVEN ARE BUILDINGS.”