I've been playing Horizon Zero Dawn while in a party with a friend playing it as well. While he went and did a lot of side quests in the valley, I explored and cleared the Corrupted Zones as I found them.
By the time he started doing these, he was roughly 7-8 levels higher than I was when I had done them. He encountered a couple Corrupted Glinthawks and a Corrupted Snapmaw in the Corrupted Zones in the valley, which surprised me as I encountered neither of these when clearing the same Corrupted Zones.
Are Corrupted Zones randomly populated or are the Machines generated dependent on something like player level at the time they're encountered?
Best Answer
Per game, the corrupted zones are all in the same areas, with the same levels tied to each zone.
In an end-game state, with all corrupted zones cleared, the answer is NO, corrupted zones will not populate/repopulate randomly. The player can encounter all corrupted zones at all levels. Once these zones are cleared, they do not regenerate.
However, groups of corrupted machines are still found around the world. These tend to be random events that occur, and in my experience, the most common is a group of corrupted insert machine type here fighting a group of bandits or Shadow Carja.