https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2983436504

Touching the towers is committing suicide, it spawns some 5-8 watchers to go with the big guy being let out(not even sure I could beat the big guy alone, considering he one shots me), that's not a winnable fight, so obviously not what I'm supposed to do, been all around the room though and there's nothing else here intractable that I can find at least.

Don't you have any traps, bombs, slings, or a trip-caster?

You climb one tower, until you override it, its just a tower. So, do it once and die. Fine, you now know where the support enters the arena, opposite a tower. I put blast trip lines across the various openings surrounding whatever robo-critter is being made. Eight I believe.

I also kill the watchers before doing anything else. Back to the plan, after placing the explosive trip wires I put several shock ones as well. I like putting a few around the tower base I use. They will rush to you, so you know exactly where they will go.

I also drop several arrays of shock-bombs, proximity-mines, and the sensitive ones that explode if damaged. Last thing, make sure you are ready. Have full hunter's quivers, both kinds. Practice running the route, once or twice; The tower lowers itself, so jump back, let the watchers pour out, and die (with luck) then - start running. What type of damage is the robo-critter susceptible to? Have that ready, the ones that react to fire are my favorite because a Caja Hunter's bow is pretty fast, with a full quiver of fire arrows is a lot of damage, don't forget you can craft them between shots.

Now, run. Run as fast as you can, let it make an attack move, dodge roll to one side, come up shooting, then Run Rinse, burn, run, heal, run, burn and repeat. You might need to use slings to get shock/frost/blast into play once your carefully laid out traps are all triggered.

Good Luck

I ran all the way to the back of the room. There it is an kind of platform with sort of walls on it (kind of live a V shape). The low "wall" is high enough for you to hide behind (no need to crouch) and you can blast the damn big guy without him hitting you at all.. Even the Watchers got confused

It totally is possible to enter a caudron too early, as in encountering something you cannot handle well at your level or with the kind of equipment you have. When that happens, your only option is to load a save from before entering the cauldron.

Prep with bombs and Tripcaster
Change equipment. If you have the tinker (I think?) skill modify weapons and gear specific for the machine.

EDIT: Link for tips, easier than writing it all myself
https://www.ign.com/wikis/horizon-zero-dawn/Cauldron_SIGMA

The problem with these tips, are that they assume the "fight" is even close to survivable, about 3 seconds after the tower has been interacted with I'm surrounded by watchers and have been force fed a fireball(or fire wave, it filled my screen with fire) there's no time to take cover in some corner of the room, and since watchers two shot me, being cornered isn't a great plan to begin with, the traps may slow the watchers down a bit, but they'll never kill them, luring one of the first two watchers away from the shield and converting it may give me an extra second, as the big guy is just going to insta kill it, if it doesn't instantly fry itself on that shield.


It really feels like the dev team never bothered to hire a tester.

Originally posted by joridiculous:

I ran all the way to the back of the room. There it is an kind of platform with sort of walls on it (kind of live a V shape). The low "wall" is high enough for you to hide behind (no need to crouch) and you can blast the damn big guy without him hitting you at all.. Even the Watchers got confused

I'll look for this at some point, see if it actually helps, though my last attempt I didn't even get off the tower before the big guy had killed me(she wasn't even done with the line about how the machines weren't going to let her mess with the place). Fully done with the game for now.

Again: the cauldrons are totally optional and you can do them out of order or at an inappropriate level. The second cauldron I tried happened to be the one with the Thunderclaw and I was nowhere near ready for that. So I tried a couple of times, eventually gave up, reloaded a save from an hour or maybe two earlier and came back later. Big deal.

Originally posted by charly4711:

Again: the cauldrons are totally optional and you can do them out of order or at an inappropriate level. The second cauldron I tried happened to be the one with the Thunderclaw and I was nowhere near ready for that. So I tried a couple of times, eventually gave up, reloaded a save from an hour or maybe two earlier and came back later. Big deal.

This is something newbies need to pay attention to

This game comes with the Frozen Wilds DLC, I don't recall the lvl on the PS4 but I doubt it is over 20. A trip there will definitely bump up your gear. But some of it can be pretty tough.

The hunter trials are recommended (yes, by myself) because figuring out how to pull them off requires thinking outside the box. They aren't soul crushers like the Cauldrons can be.

The DLC, the Cauldrons, the hunter trials, and the Carja challenges are all optional
If they crush you, ignore them. There isn't a requirement to only do them in NG. NG+ favors the player, imo.

A trip caster and dodging makes short work of this tbh. I think I did this relatively early (level 10 or so) this week

Once I got the watchers down, I constantly zapped the beatle with shock trip wires. Worked like a charm for me. The riposte takes a good chunk of HP from those.

]the Cauldrons

While not required, they're super viable because of the unlocks it will give you.

I will correct my self I used blaze as well

Originally posted by GamingWithSilvertail:

A trip caster and dodging makes short work of this tbh. I think I did this relatively early (level 10 or so) this week

Once I got the watchers down, I constantly zapped the beatle with shock trip wires. Worked like a charm for me. The riposte takes a good chunk of HP from those.

]the Cauldrons

While not required, they're super viable because of the unlocks it will give you.

I agree they are valuable.
I overrode a Scrapper not long after I finished the first Cauldron. Can't ride them, and it doesn't stay friendly for long though.

Originally posted by dcy665:

Originally posted by GamingWithSilvertail:

A trip caster and dodging makes short work of this tbh. I think I did this relatively early (level 10 or so) this week

Once I got the watchers down, I constantly zapped the beatle with shock trip wires. Worked like a charm for me. The riposte takes a good chunk of HP from those.

While not required, they're super viable because of the unlocks it will give you.

I agree they are valuable.
I overrode a Scrapper not long after I finished the first Cauldron. Can't ride them, and it doesn't stay friendly for long though.

You have a perk for that.

https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Combat_Override%2B

Eitherway, What I mean by shock, you effectivbely stun lock.

I dont know on what difficulty you're on but I am on Hard.

https://clips.twitch.tv/HonorableOpenPonyHeyGuys-xCuD55AjqdWDhlPS

Use your rope caster to immobilize the Bellowback. Afterwards, blast sling the Watchers, then (if it's a fire Bellow) freeze him and shoot his back with a bunch of arrows until it explodes. Afterwards, he'll basically burn to death.

Easiest way to deal with basically any machine is to rope them down, freeze them, arrows or bombs until dead.

Originally posted by uni790:

The problem with these tips, are that they assume the "fight" is even close to survivable, about 3 seconds after the tower has been interacted with I'm surrounded by watchers and have been force fed a fireball(or fire wave, it filled my screen with fire) there's no time to take cover in some corner of the room, and since watchers two shot me, being cornered isn't a great plan to begin with, the traps may slow the watchers down a bit, but they'll never kill them, luring one of the first two watchers away from the shield and converting it may give me an extra second, as the big guy is just going to insta kill it, if it doesn't instantly fry itself on that shield.

That cauldron has a recommended level of 8. You are at 13.
Provided you have spent your points semy-reasonable, and gatherd and crafted some gear, you should be more than up for that fight.

Blast trap does 120 damage, detonation blast trap 160.
Watcher has 90HP. If it doesn't one-shot it, it will at least put it near death.

-Combine blast traps and shock wires at the entrances with force fields.
-Set a trap out of criss-crossed shockwires at some place to lure the bellowback into.
-Drink a fire resistance potion just before overriding the pillar.

Once the bellowback is shocked, shoot the big sack on the back. preferably with hard-point or precision arrows.

Freezing it also works well.

If all else fails, drop the difficulty level.

abuse the blast trip-wires

Drop a billion traps, watch everything explode. There is no trap limit and you can reclaim them after.

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Drop a billion traps, watch everything explode. There is no trap limit and you can reclaim them after.

There is a limit on the number of deployable items.
It's afaik 30 traps or 15 tripwires, as a tripwire counts as two items.

Also, reclaiming traps requires a skill a player at lv 13 probably won't have yet.