How to throw rocks in Horizon Forbidden West

Horizon Forbidden West has a simple, but effective stealth system, thanks to its implementation of rocks. Throwing rocks is an essential tool in this open-world game against the machines. Here’s how to do this action.

As you’re crawling among the tall grass, you may want to throw a rock to distract a machine from heading your way. To do that, select the rock on the UI (user interface) on the bottom left. Shuffle the equipable items with the left and right D-Pad buttons. Once you’ve picked the rocks, press down on the D-Pad to have Aloy grab one. Then, press R2 to fling a rock nearby a machine.

The machine will then leave its determined path to investigate the rock you have just thrown. The best position you want to be for this is to have the machine facing away from you. Once that occurs, sneak by pressing the square button and then R1 for a stealth attack. Depending on how strong you’ve made Aloy through her skill trees, it may cause a one-hit kill, especially on weaker machines from the early game. This will also work with human enemies as well.

You can find rocks on the pathways of Horizon Forbidden West. Simply scan by pressing the R3 button, and the UI will tell you where they are. It’s handy having gadgets like the focus every once in a while, but something as simple as a rock can drastically change an encounter (or lack thereof) when it comes to stealth.