I’ve reached a point in Horizon: Zero Dawn where I have enough shards to start investing in something other than weapon upgrades and ammunition. And so, we turn to the question of Aloy’s attire. Early in the game, I picked up the Nora stealth armor, and when the opportunity presented, I upgraded that to the Heavy variant, and it’s been my daily driver. But it doesn’t really offer, well, anything, in terms of defense. I could use the two mod slots to provide some manner of reduction against one or two elements, but that doesn’t feel great either, since armor mods don’t seem very strong (or at least, the ones I’ve found haven’t.)
It seems like the optimal strategy is probably to get armors that have high defense against a single element and switch around, modding them to stack even more of that given element. But I can’t afford all of those outfits. So;
Which armor sets should I buy that will see the most use in the back half of the game? Which resistances should I seek to maximize, and how should I mod them?
(For reference, the main quest has told me to head to the Grave Hoard at my current point of progression.)
Best Answer
It depends on the area you are going to face.
I bought and invested in Protector armor, which works well against melee attacks and it's useful in different cases. I found long range protections quite useless.
Surely it's good to have fire-protecting and ice-protecting armors in late game. Elemental defences are situational, when facing specific machines they are a must-have in harder difficulties. As a side note, I prefer to maximize a singular element, instead of using more general mods. It's better to do something at best.
As @Mad Scientist is asking, the DLC area is strongly based on ice element, but fire-based machines are pretty common, too.