Horizon Zero Dawn: Corruption - how to fight?
Last update: 06 August 2020
In this chapter you can find information on corrupted zones. It also has the general tips for fighting the corruption and how to neutralize or corrupted zones.
General information
Starting from the quest called The Womb of the Mountain you will face machines that are Corrupted. Each one of those machines keeps their natural feats such as weapons or attacks and shields but they are vulnerable to fire.
What is more, in corrupted zones you can find the areas of corruption. If you stay for a moment in that area, Aloy's corruption bar will start to fill up, dealing damage to the heroine. You can reduce it by an armor with particular attributes and boosts.
During the game you can come across single corrupted machines but in general they are met in the 11 corrupted zones. The zones are marked on the map by crossed out circles. Two of them are neutralized during the campaign which is a mandatory activity but the rest of them can be found during your "free time".
When you override a Tallneck, all zones in a given region become visible.
How to fight with the corruption?
The most important thing is a good assessment of the situation. You must know that corrupted machines use more melee attacks than the "healthy" ones. It is worth it to self-assess your chances against a few Behemoths before you attack them.
Since machines wants to ram you it is a good idea to find a place where they can't reach you. The higher and farther the better but notice that your range attacks are less effective. This means that you should find a balance.
You should have one armor of your choice which has all the best modifications that grants you resistance to corruption. When it comes to regular machines there is a small chance that those modifications will ever be useful. Because of that you shouldn't use the best armor. Use the set that already has a resistance to corruption and keep on changing modifications, using those that are better than the previously used ones.
The same goes for weapons. One slot in your bow should be saved for fire damage. Remember that corrupted machines are invulnerable to normal damage unlike the regular ones. By using a weapon with no fire element you can still destroy some of machine's armor or weapons but the damage is severely reduced. A good choice is to set a machine on fire when it is close to corrupted zone. This can spread the fire over a large area and can cause an explosion.
By defeating the last corrupted machine you clear the area. From now on you can only face regular machines in this area.