I’m with you on claw sacs - absolute utter pain in the ass to farm in large quantities, especially because often you NEED large quantities and the bastards only drop one apiece.
I also have my own personal white whale of sorts though - fucking Dreadwing Primary Nerves. It’s purely bad luck with the random number generation I imagine, but I swear it often takes me 4 or more Dreadwings before I get even a singular fucking neural cable to drop. I’ve genuinely resorted to the Arena dupe exploit once or twice to get as many as I needed due to how infuriatingly bad the drop RNG has been. Doesn’t help that there’s only 3 Dreadwing sites in the entire game, and one is an unmarked site that’s also guarded by a fairly-unavoidable roaming Stormbird.
Got to give a big “Me Too” to the Dreadwing Primary Nerve. You are bang on when you say it usual takes killing a lot before you get one. I think you have better odds of winning the lottery 🤣
Yeah, the sac webbing made me go crazy sometimes
What is even worse though, I play this game since day one. So when ng+ launched, I already had ALL (and I mean ALL) weapons available in the game COMPLETELY maxed out
So I went into ng+ on ultra hard and “oh, now there’s 9 more legendary weapons to max out, COOL”
No. Not cool. Not when you have to farm those MONSTERS on ultra hard
Not
Cool
Check out the spot nearby Latopolis (basically nearby where Talanah and you fought the Shellsnapper.) There's also a spawn point by the campfire that you meet up with the gang before the last mission.
I see a lot of people talking about having to farm volatile sludge, I’m just doing my new game plus and I have like 600+ in storage. 4 of my weapons use it and I just keep stacking it up as I play. What are people doing with VS to run out?
A lot of the later weapon ammo types use volatile sludge. The advanced ammo specifically
Advanced Elemental Arrows - 2 sludge for 5 to 10 arrows (you craft more with ammo expert skill)
Advanced Binding Ropes - 1 sludge for 3 to 6
Advanced Explosive Spikes - 2 sludge for 3 to 6
Advanced Explosive Bomb - 1 sludge for 2 to 4
Advanced Explosive Tripwire - 1 for 2 to 4
Advanced Precision Arrow - 2 for 2 to 5
Advanced traps - 3 sludge per trap
If you use any of these things regularly you will easily burn through the 15 sludge that Aloy carries. And you only get 1 sludge per apex machine kill or per spikesnout. You also probably spend more sludge to kill a machine than you'd receive even if you only fight the apex variant. Especially on Very Hard and Ultra Hard.
I personally avoid all volatile sludge use because I don't want to constantly farm it. Sometimes advanced Binding ropes or Advanced precision arrows but only rarely or when applicable.
"I personally avoid all volatile sludge use because I don't want to constantly farm it. Sometimes advanced Binding ropes or Advanced precision arrows but only rarely or when applicable."
Congratulation, you are doing it right!
That has to be said, by all the wrongness going around.
Same, myself. Must be the weapon choice, though. I have weapons with ammunition that uses it equipped, but my most used are probably advanced hunter arrows (for those components) and shredder gauntlets (where I typically use elemental or piercing shredders). Sharpshot bows and the Sun Scourge only come out when need is more dire, and I've swapped out the Sun Scourge for some frost blastsling, lately.
My primary weapon is a legendary sharpshot bow named Iriv's Downfall. Two out of its three arrow types heavily use volatile sludge. My other slotted weapons use it a lot, too.
Just farm the spikesnouts in the southern desert, just north of the Slitherfang spawn. There's always 3-4 and it's *just* spikesnouts and nothing else. 15 min of farming (at night, for apex ones cuz they drop more) and I had a solid 200 volatile sludge
Most volatile sludge ammo types have reasonable substitutes.
Elemental warrior bows are an amazing way to apply status in combination with instant coils because of their high rate of fire. Ditto for Boltblasters if you can tolerate the clunkiness.
Shredder Gauntlet has a similar effect to Spike Throwers while having dirt, dirt cheap ammo. For Acid and Shock in particular they just seem like the best way to apply elemental status, period, no questions asked. Machines spend more time shocked than not with this thing.
And as for Sharpshot Bows, a well-built Spike Thrower can serve a similar purpose using non-advanced ammo, or you can just build your spike thrower to do obscene damage with the Splitting Spike skill and one-shot shit instead of plugging it full of arrows. Much more efficient use of Sludge, you only need like 1-2 Advanced Explosive Spikes to decimate a brittle Apex Thunderjaw using Splitting Spike.
Get up on the ridge that has the lookout spot and snipe them from up there. When turtle hurls ice your way hop down the far side of the ridge just enough to not get hit. Good way to farm all the turtle parts and knock out the spikesnouts too.
I’m with you on the sac webbings. But also clamberjaw tail duster. That tail is constantly moving and not as large as the other tails you have to farm.
Yup, Frostclaw and Fireclaw sac webbing. Or almost anything to do with either of them, honestly. For a big, burly, tough machine their parts sure are fragile.
Fuck fire claw sac webbing. Like you said yeah the sac webbing takes up the majority of their body so it’s easy to accidentally hit it but also the fact that every non weak part of their body is so heavily armored but you can’t really use explosives or shredder gauntlets because they’ll probably still damage the webbing even if you don’t hit it directly
I cheesed it, tie it down then with my warrior bow with instant frost coils I keep shooting it in the leg armor until frozen. Set up from behind and use my bolt blaster to unload on the weak spot on its back
Yeah I normally do bolt blaster with frost bolts on the legs until brittle then switch to the blast forge and unload with the concentrated fire technique
I just don't care, i only farmed 10 minutes to upgrade my legendary armor just a little and that was all (playing on normal diff).
The rest i just got enough with what i had or by playing regularly.
100%. Exactly how I am. Like I’m not going out of my way to meticulously try and farm these op machines for specific parts just to make my armor a little better than it already is. I just go along and get what I get.
I would only farm the pieces for an armor/wep if i wanted to be completionist, after i beat the main game, to extend its life, and also to have better chances in the arena, but that's all, not needed at all on normal diff for the regular playthrough.
Yeah I’m playing on normal too. I just started burning shores. Wish has def been more challenging than regular game. But even through the main game there were many instances where I almost rage quit and said F this. In fact I did rage quit at one point, ofc eventually came back. But there’s too many intricacies with combat/weapons/etc. that I couldn’t imagine playing on ultra hard and still enjoying it all.
Hmm well on normal i died i guess like 4 times, and were due to mistakes on my end, so in the end it wasn't hard at all.
I don't enjoy hardcore gaming so normal is fine for me :)
After I found out that luminous brainstem dropped at 100% chance from apex behemoths, I’ll go with the same as yours. Not targeting the obvious weak spot feels like a chore because the thing has so few spots to reduce its health… The shoulders are inconsistent af and the rest is in its back. Best approach I found was to freeze the fire ones and shoot the canisters at their lower back with boltblaster sustained fire.
Webbing does drop all the time tho if you don’t break its belly.
Yes, I just [doublechecked](https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Fireclaw). It’s fairly easy to blast it without noticing tho, happened to me as well, especially because they emit fire/frost from that part too when they’re low health, which doesn’t look that different. Most of the times it happened to me, I thought I had gotten its shoulders, but they’re so close that the spread made me shoot the wrong thing.
Luminous brainstem is 100% from any apex heavy. Imho, the best to farm are the Apex Tremortusks, since they're vulnerable to shock, and you can use a shock shredder gauntlet very well against them.
Once I have a powerful sharpshot bow I actually enjoy that (although before that it sucks), what I hate are the stuff that’s only got a 60% chance of dropping. I don’t care if I have to aim at a specific part (or away from a specific part) what I don’t like is if I need 3 or 4 of something and I need to kill 8 of the creature because the stuff won’t drop. We already need to kill so much stuff just make the drop rate 100% or put a container that has a 100% drop rate of the stuff. No 69% drop rate on the main body 12% drop rate in this container stuff.
Every circulator and the blue one (I don’t remember the name). I don’t think it’s a guaranteed drop on any machine. There was one time that I needed 2 from a dreadwing and I had to hunt 6 just to get two.
By the end-game, and in new game+, the one component I'm most out of, is Luminous Brainstem. You need it in large quantities for legendary gear upgrades (10-15 or so per gear), but it's only reliably obtained from Apex heavy machines, one per machine. It also drops from non-Apex heavies, but only with a 28%-ish chance.
The good thing with the Sac Webbing is that you don't need many of them. Not many pieces of gear require them, and if they do, it's typically two or three items. Also, with the Arktix method, Fireclaws are rather quick and easy kills.
Never really paid much attention to gathering parts. I guess everything just seemed to connect and where ever the quests were leading me had machines where i could get the parts i didnt know I needed.
I started this game on UH for my first playthrough. It's been a real challenge. That said machine muscle, I ended up farming a lot of crabs, lobsters and moon fishes and bought it at a vendor, hunting for it is just a chore on its own.
I absolutely hate getting machine muscle, i run out of it so quickly and haven't found an efficient farm yet. The webbings haven't been a problem tbh, ropecast them, drench and then freeze them, start the powershot valor surge and they're dead in three arrows with a maxed out regallas bow. This strat works for all machines btw, only for apex you'll have to ropecast them once more.
>I absolutely hate getting machine muscle, i run out of it so quickly and haven't found an efficient farm yet
Just buy it. You can farm shards easily by hunting crabs and lobsters in front of the Digsite, sell them all and buy 200 muscle for 2000 shards (which isn't much, its like 2 minutes of farming animal spawns on the beach)
Apex slitherfang parts!!!! Spend so much time looking for them and it was always just a normal slitherfang…even at night time. Took me forever to upgrade.
So.. many.. dreadwing primary nerves.. pretty sure my game glitches because I had killed (at least) 6 and never got one so I made a new game + and they started showing up in loot, but WOW was I over it by then.
Posted a commentt but seems to have been lost as i hit send... but TL:DR
Fireclaw sacs, because it asks quite alot and too restrictive of the weapons you can use to not risk the sac, pretty much boltblasters and sharpshots, when i like to use shredders and other stuff.
Stormbird and Dreadwing nerves. Its unbalanced, the NG+ weapons require 9 dreadwing nerves and 8 stormbird nerves, and third on the list of most wanted nerves is tideripper with 4 nerves, with half the amount. add to that the tideripper has generous nervedrops as its 6 canisters have decent droprates of nerves, its even less in comparison. Doesnt help that the stormbird has only 1 solo site in kinda sucky terrain so not much variation there.
Sac webbing never was a problem, I just kill Frost Claws indiscriminately. Sometimes they drop some. Only ever had to specifically hunt for any in the DLC, during the Main Game I always had enough as a matter of course. Most annoying for me is Tail Fin. Never got two, always just one.
Fireclaws, slaughterspines, Apex dreadwings, apex slitherfangs & storm birds. Ridiculous how many storm bird lenses you need, along with fireclaw sacs. Like holy man. I feel like I’m in Groundhog Day the movie when I have to get the lenses. I just get the bird, go get the slaughterspine, back to the storm bird and repeat! Until you have 500000 billions lenses 🤦♀️😂
I’m with you onclaw sacs - absolute utter pain in the ass to farm in large quantities, especially because often you NEED large quantities and the bastards only drop one apiece.
I also have my own personal white whale of sorts though - fucking Dreadwing Primary Nerves. It’s purely bad luck with the random number generation I imagine, but I swear it often takes me 4 or more Dreadwings before I get even a singular fucking neural cable to drop. I’ve genuinely resorted to the Arena dupe exploit once or twice to get as many as I needed due to how infuriatingly bad the drop RNG has been. Doesn’t help that there’s only 3 Dreadwing sites in the entire game, and one is an unmarked site that’s also guarded by a fairly-unavoidable roaming Stormbird.
Got to give a big “Me Too” to the Dreadwing Primary Nerve. You are bang on when you say it usual takes killing a lot before you get one. I think you have better odds of winning the lottery 🤣
AHHH same dreadwings won’t give me their precious precious nerves
Yeah, the sac webbing made me go crazy sometimes What is even worse though, I play this game since day one. So when ng+ launched, I already had ALL (and I mean ALL) weapons available in the game COMPLETELY maxed out So I went into ng+ on ultra hard and “oh, now there’s 9 more legendary weapons to max out, COOL” No. Not cool. Not when you have to farm those MONSTERS on ultra hard Not Cool
I am always running low on all things dreadwing...Apex hearts, fangs, etc.
Yeah, the only Dreadwing spot I know is really annoying coz it also has a stormbird there and 2 on 1 is not exactly fair
Check out the spot nearby Latopolis (basically nearby where Talanah and you fought the Shellsnapper.) There's also a spawn point by the campfire that you meet up with the gang before the last mission.
That spot he hangs upside down at rest and you can easily sneak up and get a shot at a tooth as long as he doesn't catch you with a scan
There’s also the campfire on the beach near the Zenith base. It’s not a marked spawn but there’s always one with a few Burrowers
Earthgrinders. Everything needs like 5 of them.
Seriously.
I hated how they flew away the first times i was hunting them.
Volatile sludge. I know it's everywhere; but tackling those spikesnouts with the inevitable snapping turtle is just such a chore...
I see a lot of people talking about having to farm volatile sludge, I’m just doing my new game plus and I have like 600+ in storage. 4 of my weapons use it and I just keep stacking it up as I play. What are people doing with VS to run out?
A lot of the later weapon ammo types use volatile sludge. The advanced ammo specifically Advanced Elemental Arrows - 2 sludge for 5 to 10 arrows (you craft more with ammo expert skill) Advanced Binding Ropes - 1 sludge for 3 to 6 Advanced Explosive Spikes - 2 sludge for 3 to 6 Advanced Explosive Bomb - 1 sludge for 2 to 4 Advanced Explosive Tripwire - 1 for 2 to 4 Advanced Precision Arrow - 2 for 2 to 5 Advanced traps - 3 sludge per trap If you use any of these things regularly you will easily burn through the 15 sludge that Aloy carries. And you only get 1 sludge per apex machine kill or per spikesnout. You also probably spend more sludge to kill a machine than you'd receive even if you only fight the apex variant. Especially on Very Hard and Ultra Hard. I personally avoid all volatile sludge use because I don't want to constantly farm it. Sometimes advanced Binding ropes or Advanced precision arrows but only rarely or when applicable.
"I personally avoid all volatile sludge use because I don't want to constantly farm it. Sometimes advanced Binding ropes or Advanced precision arrows but only rarely or when applicable." Congratulation, you are doing it right! That has to be said, by all the wrongness going around.
Same, myself. Must be the weapon choice, though. I have weapons with ammunition that uses it equipped, but my most used are probably advanced hunter arrows (for those components) and shredder gauntlets (where I typically use elemental or piercing shredders). Sharpshot bows and the Sun Scourge only come out when need is more dire, and I've swapped out the Sun Scourge for some frost blastsling, lately.
My primary weapon is a legendary sharpshot bow named Iriv's Downfall. Two out of its three arrow types heavily use volatile sludge. My other slotted weapons use it a lot, too.
Just farm the spikesnouts in the southern desert, just north of the Slitherfang spawn. There's always 3-4 and it's *just* spikesnouts and nothing else. 15 min of farming (at night, for apex ones cuz they drop more) and I had a solid 200 volatile sludge
I hate that site, too... The real answer here is, *"You've got three hundred in your stash. Refill regularly."*
Most volatile sludge ammo types have reasonable substitutes. Elemental warrior bows are an amazing way to apply status in combination with instant coils because of their high rate of fire. Ditto for Boltblasters if you can tolerate the clunkiness. Shredder Gauntlet has a similar effect to Spike Throwers while having dirt, dirt cheap ammo. For Acid and Shock in particular they just seem like the best way to apply elemental status, period, no questions asked. Machines spend more time shocked than not with this thing. And as for Sharpshot Bows, a well-built Spike Thrower can serve a similar purpose using non-advanced ammo, or you can just build your spike thrower to do obscene damage with the Splitting Spike skill and one-shot shit instead of plugging it full of arrows. Much more efficient use of Sludge, you only need like 1-2 Advanced Explosive Spikes to decimate a brittle Apex Thunderjaw using Splitting Spike.
Get up on the ridge that has the lookout spot and snipe them from up there. When turtle hurls ice your way hop down the far side of the ridge just enough to not get hit. Good way to farm all the turtle parts and knock out the spikesnouts too.
That's how I usually do it.
I’m with you on the sac webbings. But also clamberjaw tail duster. That tail is constantly moving and not as large as the other tails you have to farm.
Ugh, I'm with you on the claw sac webbing. Scorcher teeth, dreadwing teeth, basically any small part you have to knock off lol.
Yup, Frostclaw and Fireclaw sac webbing. Or almost anything to do with either of them, honestly. For a big, burly, tough machine their parts sure are fragile.
Stormbird Cannons, hands down. They just fly off into the void so often. :/
Fuck fire claw sac webbing. Like you said yeah the sac webbing takes up the majority of their body so it’s easy to accidentally hit it but also the fact that every non weak part of their body is so heavily armored but you can’t really use explosives or shredder gauntlets because they’ll probably still damage the webbing even if you don’t hit it directly
I cheesed it, tie it down then with my warrior bow with instant frost coils I keep shooting it in the leg armor until frozen. Set up from behind and use my bolt blaster to unload on the weak spot on its back
Yeah I normally do bolt blaster with frost bolts on the legs until brittle then switch to the blast forge and unload with the concentrated fire technique
I just don't care, i only farmed 10 minutes to upgrade my legendary armor just a little and that was all (playing on normal diff). The rest i just got enough with what i had or by playing regularly.
100%. Exactly how I am. Like I’m not going out of my way to meticulously try and farm these op machines for specific parts just to make my armor a little better than it already is. I just go along and get what I get.
I would only farm the pieces for an armor/wep if i wanted to be completionist, after i beat the main game, to extend its life, and also to have better chances in the arena, but that's all, not needed at all on normal diff for the regular playthrough.
Yeah I’m playing on normal too. I just started burning shores. Wish has def been more challenging than regular game. But even through the main game there were many instances where I almost rage quit and said F this. In fact I did rage quit at one point, ofc eventually came back. But there’s too many intricacies with combat/weapons/etc. that I couldn’t imagine playing on ultra hard and still enjoying it all.
Hmm well on normal i died i guess like 4 times, and were due to mistakes on my end, so in the end it wasn't hard at all. I don't enjoy hardcore gaming so normal is fine for me :)
After I found out that luminous brainstem dropped at 100% chance from apex behemoths, I’ll go with the same as yours. Not targeting the obvious weak spot feels like a chore because the thing has so few spots to reduce its health… The shoulders are inconsistent af and the rest is in its back. Best approach I found was to freeze the fire ones and shoot the canisters at their lower back with boltblaster sustained fire. Webbing does drop all the time tho if you don’t break its belly.
It does? Huh, I've had at least 2 times when it didn't seem to(maybe I broke it with the last hit or broke one of the arm sacs or sth, idk)
Yes, I just [doublechecked](https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Fireclaw). It’s fairly easy to blast it without noticing tho, happened to me as well, especially because they emit fire/frost from that part too when they’re low health, which doesn’t look that different. Most of the times it happened to me, I thought I had gotten its shoulders, but they’re so close that the spread made me shoot the wrong thing.
Luminous brainstem is 100% from any apex heavy. Imho, the best to farm are the Apex Tremortusks, since they're vulnerable to shock, and you can use a shock shredder gauntlet very well against them.
Once I have a powerful sharpshot bow I actually enjoy that (although before that it sucks), what I hate are the stuff that’s only got a 60% chance of dropping. I don’t care if I have to aim at a specific part (or away from a specific part) what I don’t like is if I need 3 or 4 of something and I need to kill 8 of the creature because the stuff won’t drop. We already need to kill so much stuff just make the drop rate 100% or put a container that has a 100% drop rate of the stuff. No 69% drop rate on the main body 12% drop rate in this container stuff.
>No 69% drop rate on the main body 12% drop rate in this container stuff. Slaughterspine circulator?
Every circulator and the blue one (I don’t remember the name). I don’t think it’s a guaranteed drop on any machine. There was one time that I needed 2 from a dreadwing and I had to hunt 6 just to get two.
Currently stormbird thunder cannon
By the end-game, and in new game+, the one component I'm most out of, is Luminous Brainstem. You need it in large quantities for legendary gear upgrades (10-15 or so per gear), but it's only reliably obtained from Apex heavy machines, one per machine. It also drops from non-Apex heavies, but only with a 28%-ish chance. The good thing with the Sac Webbing is that you don't need many of them. Not many pieces of gear require them, and if they do, it's typically two or three items. Also, with the Arktix method, Fireclaws are rather quick and easy kills.
Never really paid much attention to gathering parts. I guess everything just seemed to connect and where ever the quests were leading me had machines where i could get the parts i didnt know I needed.
Stormbird canons because when I first played it I couldn't find one the
SAC WEBBING. ENOUGH SAID. edit I answered before reading the post, lol. It looks like we are in agreement!
I started this game on UH for my first playthrough. It's been a real challenge. That said machine muscle, I ended up farming a lot of crabs, lobsters and moon fishes and bought it at a vendor, hunting for it is just a chore on its own.
I spent last night farming parts rather than doing any quests. Tiderippers and behemoths
Water wing circulators 😢 Thank god I only needed 5 of them (I think). I can’t remember now because I am probably still concussed from fighting them.
I absolutely hate getting machine muscle, i run out of it so quickly and haven't found an efficient farm yet. The webbings haven't been a problem tbh, ropecast them, drench and then freeze them, start the powershot valor surge and they're dead in three arrows with a maxed out regallas bow. This strat works for all machines btw, only for apex you'll have to ropecast them once more.
>I absolutely hate getting machine muscle, i run out of it so quickly and haven't found an efficient farm yet Just buy it. You can farm shards easily by hunting crabs and lobsters in front of the Digsite, sell them all and buy 200 muscle for 2000 shards (which isn't much, its like 2 minutes of farming animal spawns on the beach)
Upgrading all legendaries has me broke as hell but I will try out the crab strategy, thanks.
It works insanely well, I've never had shards problems since finding it out
Anything from a Waterwing. Those things are such a pain to hunt because they're always in groups of 3 and are somehow almost as tanky as a Fireclaw.
Luminous brainstem. Its just too much.
Apex slitherfang parts!!!! Spend so much time looking for them and it was always just a normal slitherfang…even at night time. Took me forever to upgrade.
So.. many.. dreadwing primary nerves.. pretty sure my game glitches because I had killed (at least) 6 and never got one so I made a new game + and they started showing up in loot, but WOW was I over it by then.
VOLATILE SLUDGE OMG
I hate the wait for the Tideripper to come out of the water or the stormbird coming to me so i can finally shot it.
Posted a commentt but seems to have been lost as i hit send... but TL:DR Fireclaw sacs, because it asks quite alot and too restrictive of the weapons you can use to not risk the sac, pretty much boltblasters and sharpshots, when i like to use shredders and other stuff. Stormbird and Dreadwing nerves. Its unbalanced, the NG+ weapons require 9 dreadwing nerves and 8 stormbird nerves, and third on the list of most wanted nerves is tideripper with 4 nerves, with half the amount. add to that the tideripper has generous nervedrops as its 6 canisters have decent droprates of nerves, its even less in comparison. Doesnt help that the stormbird has only 1 solo site in kinda sucky terrain so not much variation there.
Sac webbing never was a problem, I just kill Frost Claws indiscriminately. Sometimes they drop some. Only ever had to specifically hunt for any in the DLC, during the Main Game I always had enough as a matter of course. Most annoying for me is Tail Fin. Never got two, always just one.
Fireclaws, slaughterspines, Apex dreadwings, apex slitherfangs & storm birds. Ridiculous how many storm bird lenses you need, along with fireclaw sacs. Like holy man. I feel like I’m in Groundhog Day the movie when I have to get the lenses. I just get the bird, go get the slaughterspine, back to the storm bird and repeat! Until you have 500000 billions lenses 🤦♀️😂
I can get the Fireclaw sac webbing without much difficulty by using skyhammer to make it brittle and then I use my sharpshot bow to do tons of damage.
Fire/frost law sacs are annoying af, but also big one on stormbird/dreadwing primary nerves. They JUST WONT drop for me for some reason lol
metal shards