In Horizon Forbidden West, Aloy is more capable than ever. On top of her unbeatable archery and free-climbing skills, she has tons of powerful melee, stealth, and machine riding abilities to unlock.

But at the start of the game, it’s tough to know what’s the most useful and what to prioritise.

However, it’s worth noting that you get skill points for completing quests as well as leveling up. This means by the end of your journey in the Forbidden West, you will have unlocked most, if not all, of the skills and abilities on Aloy’s skill trees.

Therefore, don’t agonise too hard over which nodes to pick or worry about wasting points. Some are definitely worth it more than others, but you will eventually have absolutely everything you could want or need.

Aloy’s skill trees are divided into three types of nodes: regular skills, active skills/weapon techniques, and Valor Surges.

Regular skills are passive buffs to Aloy’s abilities. Things like increased healing from berries, greater melee damage or more effective stealthing.

Active skills are abilities that must be consciously activated during battle. These are things like advanced melee combos and ranged weapon abilities that can be activated at the cost of weapon stamina which replenishes over time.

Finally, Valor Surges are extremely powerful abilities which can be activated from the weapon wheel after your Valor meter has been charged through “tactical play”. You gain new Valor Surges by picking up the nodes in a triangle around the Surge.

Which skills should you unlock first in Horizon Forbidden West?

Across your time with Horizon Forbidden West, you will probably accumulate enough skill points to grant access to everything you need.

However, especially in the early game, some of the skill trees are better to unlock sooner than later.

Each tree focuses on one aspect of Aloy’s skillset, as well as a couple of the weapons she can add to her arsenal.

In the beginning, you should spend your first skill points on either the Hunter or Survivor tree and buy the Concentration boosts and Potent Medicine skills.

Concentration is where you can use slow motion to line up shots on weak points more easily, whereas Potent Medicine is a pure upgrade to the healing skills you will use in almost every battle through the whole game.

From there, it’s best to mix-and-match the best skill nodes from each tree whenever you feel like they will be useful.

While the Warrior and Trap trees don’t seem very useful at the start of the game, once you’ve unlocked a few nodes it really increases the power level of their respective systems.

As a rough guide, I would recommend unlocking skills in roughly the following order:

• Hunter
• Survivor
• Infiltrator
• Warrior
• Trapper
• Machine Master

Don’t feel like you have to unlock every single node in one tree before you move onto the next though. Prioritise picking up the best skills from each tree and go from there.

What are the best Hunter skills in Horizon Forbidden West?

• Concentration +
• Deep Concentration
• Concentration Regen
• Ammo Expert
• Sustained Burst (Boltcaster Skill)

Ranged combat and the humble Hunter Bow will probably be your primary weapons throughout your adventure in Horizon Forbidden West, so it makes sense to prioritise those skills.

The most important thing in Horizon’s combat is scoring critical hits on weak points. Anything which makes that easier is very strong.

Being able to use Concentration more often for longer does not just make taking down tough machines easier, but makes scavenging their rarest materials a less difficult task, too.

What’s more, the Sustained Burst Boltcaster skill on the right of the tree is easily the best in the whole game. It unloads an entire clip of bolts at once, pretty much ensuring you inflict a status condition or a massive amount of damage on whatever target is unlucky enough to be on the receiving end.

What are the best Survivor skills in Horizon Forbidden West?

• Potent Medicine
• Low Health Defense
• Medicine Capacity
• Potion Proficiency
• Plant Forager

Surviving in the Forbidden West isn’t easy and you will constantly be chowing down on healing berries to stave off an untimely end.

Buffing healing effectiveness and the amount of berries you can hold should be among one of the first skills you pick up.

Outside of these vital pickups though, the rest of the skill nodes aren’t that great. If things are going well for you, Aloy should never need the low-health boosts.

This extends to the techniques too. You’re better off unlocking more skills or spending points on techniques in the Hunter or Warrior trees.

What are the best Infiltrator skills in Horizon Forbidden West?

• Silent Strike +
• Stealth Ranged
• Low Profile
• Quiet Movement
• Focused Shot (Sharpshot Bow Skill)

Despite becoming less effective as the game progresses - mostly because Silent Strike just tickles large machines - there are plenty of opportunities to employ stealth in Horizon Forbidden West.

Max out your Silent Strike damage early to get the most use out of it. While making it harder for enemies to detect you, it lets you scan, plan out attacks, and generally come out on top a lot more easily.

High-damage Sharpshot Bows are good for starting off a fight with a bang, immediately taking a large chunk out of almost any machine.

What are the best Warrior skills in Horizon Forbidden West?

• Resonator Blast
• Nora Warrior
• Melee Damage
• Critical Strike +
• Resonator Buildup
• The Destroyer
• Energy Surge

Melee can seem quite weak in comparison to the flashier ranged weapons in Horizon, but it’s actually one of the best ways to deal with human enemies.

The combos, particularly Nora Warrior, are actually very good. They're easy to pull off and pretty powerful, even during the later game.

I didn’t use Warrior Bows very much since it always felt like I had better options, so their active skills aren’t essential.

What are the best Trapper skills in Horizon Forbidden West?

• Quick Trapper
• Skilled Salvager
• Trap Limit
• Quick Wire (Tripcaster Skill)

Traps are deceptively good in Horizon. They do massive damage, and are particularly good for dealing with huge machines that are difficult to damage through other means.

Once you’ve buffed the speed you can set traps down, they become a lot more useful in the heat of battle.

Tripcasters and Ropecasters, however, were some of my least used weapons and therefore didn’t need active skills as much, but Quick Wire is a nice pickup eventually.

What are the best Machine Master skills in Horizon Forbidden West?

• Mounted Defense
• Machine Damage
• Heavy Lifter
• Mounted Archer

The Machine Master tree is very niche, and probably the one you will want to leave until last. Not only are the skills the least useful, but Spike Throwers are very good even without additional active skills.

What are Valor Surges in Horizon Forbidden West?

You can think of Valor Surges as Aloy’s ultimate abilities. They’re tide-turning trump cards which help you overcome even the greatest of odds.

To unlock a Valor Surge, you need to collect the three surrounding nodes around the Surge, then equip it by holding down Square.

You can then further upgrade each Valor Surge by putting 3 and then 5 more skill points into it.

To activate a Valor Surge in battle, bring up the weapon wheel by holding L1, then press R1. You can call on a Valor Surge when the purple bar in the bottom right hand corner of the screen glows a stronger purple.

What are the best Valor Surges in Horizon Forbidden West?

• Ranged Master

Likely the first Valor Surge that you unlock is also one of the best.

The buff to arrow damage is always useful, while the health regeneration can either take some of the pressure off your berry reserves or act as one final source of healing in a pinch.

Once upgraded, the meter for this Valor Surge is huge, so you can get a lot of usage out of its damage boosting potential while keeping your health topped up too.

• Radial Blast

Despite not looking all that powerful from the description, the Radial Blast Valor Surge has a ton of extremely useful applications.

It sends out a damaging wave of electricity, like the ones used by Ravagers and Leaplashers, which chew through enemy health bars while also giving them a big dose of shocked status.

Once upgraded to full, Radial Blast does a huge amount of damage which can help you to brute force late-game arena battles, boss fights, and encounters where you’re facing off against multiple tough enemies.

There's more to building out Aloy than just skills, for advice on the best gear, here's our full Horizon Forbidden West guide.