HZD: The Frozen Wilds – The Forge of Winter Side Quest

The Forge of Winter is a Side Quest in Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds DLC and the final Quest for this Expansions’ storyline. This walkthrough shows how to complete it.

Recommended Level: 50
Location: Cauldron Epsilon
Requirement: having finished Firebreak
Quest-Giver: automatically obtained
Reward: 16.670 XP, 7 Bluegleam, 1 Box, 1 Skill Point, Epsilon Overrides
Trophy: Conquered the Mountain

Objectives:

• Explore the Cauldron
• Help Aratak and Ourea cross the Antechamber
• Activate the Console
• Explore the Cauldron
• Help your Allies cross the Production Area
• Explore the Cauldron
• Activate the Console
• Explore the Cauldron
• Help your Allies cross the Recycling Area
• Activate the Source Node
• Restore CYAN
• Go to the Cauldron Core
• Destroy or Override the Control Tower
• Kill the Fireclaw
• Destroy or Override the Control Tower (depending on how long the fight lasts)
• Override the Cauldron Core
• Escape the Cauldron
• Return to Ourea’s Retreat
• Talk to Aratak
• Talk to CYAN

This quest directly starts after finishing the previous one and is set inside the Cauldron Epsilon. Most of this mission is quite similar to the main game’s Cauldron puzzles. “How do I get up there?” and “How can I come across this gap?” are the most frequent questions you will be faced for the first half of this quest. Find some of the answers below.
Some general advice: If it is yellow, you can climb it and it will usually lead you where you need to go.
Briefly, after descending into the Cauldron, you’ll have to find your first way across a gap to override a device which will clear the path for your companions, Aratak and Ourea. This one is fairly simple: Climb up the structure below and make a jump for one of the floating boxes.

Our ride on the crate will be interrupted shortly after the first gap, due to a faulty mechanic device, which gives us an electric shock. To deactivate it, Aloy needs to climb the wheel shown below.

This enables us to override the faulty device and we can continue our journey on one of the floating boxes over the second gap afterwards. The first of many of these.

Jump on one of the crates and drop down after passing over the second big gap. After this, we can override a second device to form a bridge for our companions. You will need them to proceed through the pink wires which can also be seen below.

In the next area – after defeating a few smaller machines – we need to go around the room clockwise and will find this opportunity to climb up.

After continuing our designated path for a while, we will enter this part of the Cauldron, where we need to rappel down from the left platform.

Once down, head around the big structure counterclockwise and head up the way shown below.

The next part of this puzzle will include several of these elevator’ish structures. The path is pretty much self-explainatory. Take the elevators to reach higher ground and continue on.

After having taken a few of the elevators, Aloy needs to get to the adjacent platform with the big wheel with the green eye in the middle.

Once you have overridden another device, the camera will turn over and you will see the scene depicted below. Start your journey at the arrow and continue until you will reach the platform in the circle (also seen another two pictures below, with the small lootable pyramide-container).

While climbing, you sometimes have to wait a little for the platforms to align and make your jump.

This is another view on the aforementioned platform you need to reach to continue.

Once you have finally reached the platform and followed it’s path, Aloy can jump on another floating box to override yet another device to build a bridge for our friends. Drop down in the area marked on the picture below to do so.
This will conclude the climbing section of this quest.

Now it’s puzzle time again. We need to solve yet another one of the data-flow-puzzles. Use the screenshot below for the solution to this riddle (the arrow indicates the last turn you have to make).

Once the puzzle is solved we can finally reach the Cauldron’s Core. To remove its protecting dome, override or destroy the tower circled below.

Of course, it can’t be that simple. We will now face the Fireclaw for the first time. And it’s pretty big and stronger than anything we’ve faced before. As you can assume, it deals fire-damage and is immune to it – so it’s time to grab all of our weapons with ice-damage to maximize our damage.

Depending on how long the fight lasts, you will need to shutdown more Towers. You have to shoot them, because your overriding will very likely be interrupted by the big guy in the room. Once the towers pop up, deal with them right away, because they heal the machine – and we certainly don’t want that. At some point or another he will finally go down and we can now override the core and watch the cutscene.

Things went not exactly as planned and we have to escape the Cauldron. The largest part of it will just be a cutscene. At the end, we will land outside in the snow and are at least safe from all the fire that we’ve encountered before.
Aratak now wants to meet at Ourea’s Retreat – fast-travelling over the is the most efficient way, as it has it’s own camp-fire to travel to.

Inside, we will spot Aratak talk to CYAN, the AI which now has been saved from the corruption of the Daemon thanks to us.
Now we have to talk to CYAN and Aratak to continue – the order doesn’t matter. Exhausting all dialogue options with CYAN will take over 20 minutes, but gives us some interesting insight in the DLC’s and the main games stories and how they connect.

After having talked to both CYAN and Aratak, this quest – and the storyline of the DLC will end. We will get our well-deserved Conquered the Mountain-trophy as well.

Our actions of this quest unleashed another danger, though. It will be dealt with in an upcoming errand.