Mount and Machine Glitches
General
This article contains a variety of Mount and Machine Glitches for Horizon Zero Dawn, most of these are too brief or general to have an article of their own, and so they are collected here. Most of the glitches do not have uses in runs, but may be useful in the future or for general exploration of the game and its mechanics.
Glitches and Mechanics
Mounts in Settlements
Mounts that have made their way into settlements will behave strangely, as they will ignore the collision of walls, roofs, and occasionally floors. This can be abused to start the Flying Mount Glitch, seen lower in this article. Getting a mount into a settlement is currently only known to be possible in Brightmarket (using shock traps or a slow device such as a poorly performing PC or PS4 with an HDD) and Mother's Watch (using a climb up the side of the mountain that surrounds the settlement).
Flying Mount Glitch
The Flying Mount Glitch allows you to titularly fly your mount. While flying, the mount will use its off-road speed, meaning it will not be as fast as it can be. A mount can fly when it leaves a high flooring from a settlement (see Mounts in Settlements). Once flying, the mount will not be able to go up or down, unless it gets close to any object with collision, such as a tree, rock or house. If it gets close to one of these, the mount will snap to the object, and no longer be capable of flying, unless the object is within another settlement.
Originally, it was possible to trigger a flying mount glitch anywhere by fast travelling while the mount was hopping up or down, but this has been patched.
Invisible Walls and Mounts
Mounts are able to ignore most invisible walls, and, in some cases, regular walls. This can be seen in for example Maker's End Early or in the Southern variant of Early Embrace Escape. If you happen to be riding a mount, you will simply continue to ride with it. This property does not apply to "You can not enter this location" walls, as the mount will not ride through these. An exception to this can be read in the Combined Conditions section of this article.
Aloy will also be able to get onto a mount even if it is on the other side of an invisible wall, and in some cases, a regular wall.
Mount Yeets
Mount Yeets are a glitch which throw Aloy across the map at high speeds and cause strange effects. For a full explanation, check the main Mount Yeets article.
Mount/Machine Clipping
There are several methods of clipping through objects using mounts or machines. One of these is Push Clipping. Another is a form of clipping found by everydayaussie, where you can get Aloy onto a mount through an object such as a tree, then cancel the animation of Aloy getting on with tearblast arrows. This will, if done correctly, put Aloy in the object.
Mount Spawning
When calling a mount with the "Call Mount+" skill, the mount will randomly spawn outside your field of view. It is therefore advantageous to look in the direction you do not want the mount to spawn in. The "Call Mount+" skill will only spawn a new mount if there is no already overridden mount within ~200 feet. As a result, runners will occasionally bomb their mounts to turn them into regular machines again in order to have a more advantageous spawn nearby.
Combined Conditions
If a mount happens to be in the Flying Mount Glitch state, it will actually be able to ignore "You can not enter this location" walls. An interesting side effect is that Aloy will actually be left behind in a seated position, while the mount will remain under your control. If you reach the other side of such a wall, Aloy will gradually drift back onto the mount.
Trivia
- Mounts used to have even more related glitches, but most were patched. An example of this is being able to sit onto a non-overridden machine by blasting a mount with tearblast arrows while getting onto it.
- Of the glitches and mechanics mentioned above, none have uses in speedruns. An exception is mount yeets, which are only used in a single category extension, Smack%.
- Mounts are severely hated by runners due to their often unpredictable behaviour.