New Game Plus - Horizon Forbidden West Guide - IGN (2024)

New Game Plus was added to Horizon: Forbidden West in Update 1.14 on June 2nd 202. New Game + allowing players to replay the game with all of the skills, equipment and resources from a save that has completed the game's story. In addition, there are new items that can only be found in a New Game + playthrough.

Use the links below to jump to a specific section:

• How New Game + Works
• What's Added in New Game +?
• Preparing for New Game +
• What Do You Start New Game + With?

How New Game + Works

New Game Plus in Forbidden West is a way to replay the entire game whilst keeping everything you earned and unlocked from a previous playthrough, allowing you access to more of the world from the get-go and giving you all of your equipment from the beginning (making it a great way to complete the game on the Ultra Hard difficulty). Here's how it works:

• To begin New Game +, you'll need to have completed the full story of Horizon: Forbidden West by completing the Singularity Main Quest. You do not need to complete the Burning Shores DLC if you have it.
• Return to The Base and locate the white-and-gold Far Zenith spire in the middle room, near Erend's spot, then interact with it to get a prompt to move to New Game +.
• You'll be briefly returned to the main menu to choose your difficulty again.
• When you create a New Game + save, the game will automatically make a special Backup Save of the original playthrough. You can only have one Backup Save at a time.
• New Game + uses the normal Autosaves and the Fast Travel Quick Saves. Manual Saves will still need to be done at Campfires, which use the existing five slots taken up by "Normal Game" Manual Saves. The game does not create a Manual Save at the start of New Game +.

After choosing the difficulty, you can choose whether or not to Replay or Skip the Tutorial quests:

• If you choose Replay Tutorial, you'll begin at the very start of the game and play through the Reach For The Stars and The Point of the Lance quests.
  • Aloy will be reverted to her starting loadout: Aloy's Spear, the Hunter Bow, and the Nora Anointed outfit. These will all be unupgraded, and the Nora Anointed outfit will have the default dye.
  • You will be temporarily locked out of all other Inventory items, including Coils and Weaves, Tools and Traps, Resources, and Special Gear like the Shieldwing, Diving Mask and Vine Cutter. These will be returned to you once you begin the To The Brink quest again.
  • You will however retain all unlocked Skills, Collectables, Datapoints, and the Spear buffs from The Enduring. Aloy will also start with the equipped Facepaint from the original save.
• If you choose Skip Tutorial, you'll begin at the opening credits where Aloy departs Meridian, leading into the To The Brink quest where Aloy first enters The Daunt via the gondola. You will have all of your Inventory items from the original save (detailed below), as well as the XP earned for completing Reach For The Stars and The Point of the Lance.

What's Added in New Game +?

• Once Aloy reaches The Daunt, Quests will award Champion's Tokens, which are used to buy equipment exclusive to New Game +. The amount you get varies depending on what it is, but are almost always tied to the amount of Skill Points they award. For example, The Enduring Errand gives 3 Champion's Tokens because of this.
• Champion's Tokens can be used to purchase new Weapons and Cosmetics. You'll need to earn 125 Champion's Tokens to buy all these new items:
  • 8 Legendary Weapons: Available after completing To The Brink to unlock Hunter merchants. There's one for each type (except Ropecasters), and each costs 10 Champion's Tokens. They are available at most Hunter Merchants in the game.
  • 4 Outfit Dyes: Available after completing The Embassy, allowing access to Plainsong. Each is black-and-orange and cost 5 Champion's Tokens. There's one for each tribe, except Oseram which already have the similar-looking Forgeflare Dye.
  • 5 Face Paints: Available after completing The Eye of the Earth, allowing access to Scalding Spear, the Bulwark and Thornmarsh. Each costs 5 Champion's Tokens and are themed around the Quen (and are unique to the Quen facepaints from the Burning Shores).
• If Aloy has reached the Level 50 cap (or Level 60 with the Burning Shores DLC installed), you'll be able to earn "Ghost Levels" every 100,000 XP. These have no rewards.
  • Completing Quests still awards Skill Points, allowing you to max out your Skill Tree without playing Machine Strike.

Preparing for New Game +

Due to the way New Game + works, you'll want to consider doing some preparations before you start it.

• Play the Burning Shores DLC. In addition to continuing the story, the Burning Shores DLC offers several Legendary Weapons exclusive to the region, and all of them have superior core stats compared to the New Game + Legendary Weapons. It will also give you more Quests and activities to fully upgrade Aloy to the level cap and purchase more Skills.
• If you're playing on an especially high difficulty, you'll want to consider acquiring Legendary Weapons and Legendary Outfits that suit your playstyle, then fully upgrade them.
• Upgrade all of your Pouches, or at the very least the ones for things you use regularly. Better Pouch upgrades will require you to strike out further West to get the required animal parts, but starting New Game + will lock you to the Eastern-most third of the map for several hours at least. If you don't want to go hunting, Cooks will sell animal parts for Shards.
• Try and upgrade all your Skill Trees. Even if you avoid playing Machine Strike, you'll get enough Skill Points to purchase almost everything, and completing Quests in New Game + will give you the Skill Points needed to fill out the rest.
• If you want to fully upgrade the New Game + Legendary Weapons as soon as possible, you should also consider gathering the Resources needed to fully upgrade them as soon as you get them. Being Legendary Weapons, they require parts from machines like Tremortusks, Tiderippers and Dreadwings, many of which do not appear on the map until you complete the Main Quest mission they debut in. We provide Resource lists for these weapons on their dedicated page.
• If you're particular about cosmetics, make sure you've applied your Outfit Dyes and Facepaints as you want them. You'll be locked out of changing these for several hours into New Game +.

What Do You Start New Game + With?

Here's a list of all of the things you begin a New Game + save with:

• All of your Weapons, Outfits, Coils and Weaves, Tools, Ammo, Resources and Strike Pieces are retained (including everything in your Stash).
  • Any upgrades made to the starting Hunter Bow are reset, in order for you to progress the To The Brink quest by upgrading it.
  • Any quests that end with Aloy gaining a new Weapon or Outfit, such as A Bigger Boom, do not add a second one in your Inventory. Superior Caches will have Weapons and Outfits in them, but you cannot pick them up if you already got them in a previous playthrough.
  • The melee upgrade from completing The Enduring Errand is also kept.
  • All Pouch Upgrades are remembered too.
• All Special Gear is retained, including the Pullcaster, Shield Wing, Igniter, Diving Mask and Vine Cutter. This allows you to access almost anything right from the beginning of the game.
• The Sunwing Override is retained, however Aloy does not start with one assigned to the Sunwing Call, and so needs to Override one first. This locks out flight until you complete The Eye of the Earth Interlude Quest, since Sunwings are only found West of The Base. Even then, there will be restrictions on where you can fly on the map (see below for more details).
• All previously collected Datapoints and Collectables can still be viewed as normal. Their icons are greyed until you collect them again, allowing you to keep track of them for 100% completion in the new playthrough. Datapoints also regain their circular icons when Aloy gets close to them.
• All entries in the Machine Catalogue, Character Bios, and Tutorials are kept, as well as Statistic information (including playtime).

There are, however, a few things that are NOT remembered:

• All progress in Hunting Grounds, the Arena and Gauntlet Run races will be reset.
• Any Quest Items you still happen to have in your Inventory will be removed.
• Aloy will not retain any of her non-Charger/Sunwing machine Overrides. They must be acquired by completing Cauldrons like the first time around, including crafting Corrupted Overrides at The Base.
• The map is also not remembered, and will be re-fogged just as it was at the start of the game.
• The map is overall completely reset, such as Blocked Paths caused by Firegleam, Metal Flowers and those underwater. This allows you to pick up even more of certain resources, such as Mods, Weaves, Greenshine and Brimshine, by collecting them a second time.

Finally, a few features will still be locked behind story progression as they were in a normal game:

• Purchasing any Weapons and Outfits, as well as selling things from your Inventory, can't be done until you complete To The Brink.
• Outfit dyes cannot be changed until you complete The Embassy, allowing passage to Plainsong where the earliest Dyer is.
• Similarly, Face Paints cannot be changed until you complete The Eye of the Earth, allowing passage to Tenakth territory where you can find Painters in The Scalding Spear, the Bulwark and Thornmarsh.
• Any areas located West of The Base cannot be accessed until you complete The Eye of the Earth.
• Flying on Sunwings is locked until completing The Eye of the Earth, as there are no Sunwings to be found East of The Base and Aloy doesn't start New Game + with one assigned to the Sunwing Call.
  • You will not be able to fly close to The Greenhouse or the Isle of Spires until you unlock full access into them, in order to prevent sequence breaking. Gliding won't work either; Aloy will stop against an invisible wall if you try this.
  • You can fly over the Memorial Grove, but just like in the normal game you won't be able able to jump off the Sunwing into it.
  • While you can land on the Tallneck in The Shining Wastes, you cannot Override it to reveal the map until the story requires you to during The Wings of the Ten Quest.