Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores Guide – All New Skills

Eighteen new Skills, including six Valor Surges, have been added to Horizon Forbidden West with the release of The Burning Shores DLC, three for each of the six Skill Trees, and costing a total of 72 Skill Points. Learning them all should be easy enough to accomplish with all of the DLC content conferring large amounts of Skill Points via main and side quests, and doing so will also net you a nice Silver Trophy.

Warrior

Warrior Skills include:

• Warrior’s Vigor, a Valor Surge that empowers you to deal increased damage with your spear and Warrior Bows, while also gaining health from any damage dealt
  • Level 1 (0 Skill Points) +30% Damage, +3% Health Gain Per Strike
  • Level 2 (3 Skill Points) +60% Damage, +6% Health Gain Per Strike
  • Level 3 (5 Skill Points) +100% Damage, +10% Health Gain Per Strike
• Warrior’s Instinct (2 Skill Points) which enhances your ability to identify weakened enemies and the duration for which they stay knocked down
• Elemental Spear (2 Skill Points) with which you can inflict elemental damage using your spear by attaching elemental capsules from your Hunter’s Kit

Trapper

Trappers Skills include:

• Trap Mines, a Valor Surge that is activated by a unique mode in your Focus and allows you to equip and throw a mine that splits into several explosive traps upon hitting the environment.
  • Level 1 (0 Skill Points) deploys 4 traps each of which does 350 damage
  • Level 2 (3 Skill Points) deploys 4 traps each of which does 400 damage
  • Level 3 (5 Skill Points) deploys 10 traps each of which does 450 damage
• Smoke Bomb Heal (2 Skill Points) which steadily restores health when enveloped within the cloud from a Smoke Bomb
• Ropecaster Expert (2 Skill Points) to immediately re-tie down a machine that has recovered from a tied-down state by shooting another rope, but only once per machine.

Hunter

Hunter Skills include:

• Hunter’s Mark, a Valor Surge that is activated by a unique mode in your Focus and allows your next few shots from a Hunter’s Bow to mark your targets, raising the likelihood of inflicting critical damage, and further enhanced by destroying a target’s components to cause a bonus damage-dealing explosion.
  • Level 1 (0 Skill Points) increases critical hit chance by 10% and does +100 Component Destruction Damage
  • Level 2 (3 Skill Points) increases critical hit chance by 20% and does +200 Component Destruction Damage
  • Level 3 (5 Skill Points) increases critical hit chance by 30% and does +400 Component Destruction Damage, plus killing a mark causes 600 Shock damage to any other marked targets as well
• Gilde Targeting (2 Skill Points) slows down time and allows you to quick draw your weapon if you aim during a glide. Also unlocks the ability to fire the Specter Gauntlet mid-glide.
• Machine Grapple Strike (2 Skill Points) unlocks the Grapple Strike ability to use on knocked down machines

Survivor

Survivor Skills include:

• Defy Death, a Valor Surge that is activated by consuming a special potion, enhancing your combat capabilities through increased damage output, but reducing your maximum health to critical levels. Once finished, health is restored only up to the critical level.
  • Level 1 (0 Skill Points) increases damage by 15%
  • Level 2 (3 Skill Points) increases damage by 30%
  • Level 3 (5 Skill Points) increases damage by 50%, plus status effects are cleared and a 30% damage resistance is applied for 5 seconds
• Low Health Stamina (2 Skill Points) confers faster weapon stamina regeneration when at a critical health level i.e. under 25%
• Shield Drop (2 Skill Points) unlocks the ability to craft and deploy Drop Shields.

Infiltrator

Infiltrator Skills include:

• Berserk Blast, a Valor Surge that is activated by connecting a special module to a spear, instantly triggering a potent explosion that makes all enemies in proximity to go berserk
  • Level 1 (0 Skill Points) creates a 20m blast radius with a 30 second effect
  • Level 2 (3 Skill Points) creates a 30m blast radius with a 42 second effect
  • Level 3 (5 Skill Points) creates a 40m blast radius with a 60 second effect, and all targets receive 10 damage/second in addition to being confused after the effect ends
• Sharpshot Expert (2 Skill Points) reduces the inaccuracy of Sharpshot Bows while walking or crouching
• Stealth Resonator (2 Skill Points) enables silent strikes to generate Resonator energy quicker and deal increased damage when a spear is maximally charged

Machine Master

Machine Master Skills include:

• Override Overdrive, a Valor Surge that is activated by a unique mode in your Focus and causes all overridden machines to send arcs of electricity at enemies in proximity, deal increased damage, receive more damage over time, and explode when they die.
  • Level 1 (0 Skill Points) causes 50 arc damage every 2 seconds, 50% more damage, and explodes with an 8m radius
  • Level 2 (3 Skill Points) causes 50 arc damage every 2 seconds, 100% more damage, and explodes with an 8m radius
  • Level 3 (5 Skill Points) causes 50 arc damage every 2 seconds, 150% more damage, and explodes with a 16m radius
• Flying Grapple Launch (2 Skill Points) which enables the ability to grapple launch from astride flying mounts
• Resonator Refill (2 Skill Points) instantly energize a spear for a Resonator Blast, by overriding a machine

The new Skills are all at the very bottom of their respective Skill Trees, which means you will have to unlock the pre-requisite Skills from the base game first, if you haven’t already!