Best Horizon Zero Dawn Mods

Horizon Zero Dawn is one of several PlayStation-exclusives now available on PC, allowing modders to dive in and create exciting new ways to play the game.

Although the selection is still rather limited at the moment, after some digging we managed to come up with more than ten unique mods that introduce new gameplay, graphics, and cosmetic options.

In this list, we’ll highlight the best mods for Horizon Zero Dawn on PC and walk you through each one’s features and functions.

We’ll be updating this list in the future as the game’s modding community puts out more mods, so make sure to check back and let us know if we missed any of your favorite ones!

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For a game as already gorgeous as Horizon Zero Dawn, it doesn’t take much to achieve fantastic quality visuals that benefit from more powerful PC hardware.

One of the best places to start is the game’s HDR, or rather Sony’s version of HDR that may work just fine for PS4, but doesn’t quite hold up on PC.

Created by Vanguard1776, Project Zero Dawn simulates HDR based on the “True HDR” method introduced with UE4, allowing for more subtle lighting effects that improve HZD’s visuals overall.

The way that rain looks in HZD isn’t that great, and can actually have an impact on gameplay performance due to how much it obscures, namely during night time or in dimly lit areas.

The Natural Rain mod from Dziggy clears up this issue by adjusting the rain’s appearance for a more natural look with reduced brightness and opacity, making it easier to see through.

While there are a bunch of options included for getting those rain drops to look just right, the creator recommends using Variant C, Medium Density first for the best results.

Messing with your character’s model is a tried and true approach to modding that can help spice things up and add a deeper level of customization than originally intended.

One of our most loved cosmetic mods is AlexPo’s Hair Colors. It offers ten different colors for Aloy’s beautiful hair, from white to black and everything in the middle.

This includes more natural colors such as light blonde, auburn, and gray, as well as pink, blue, and purple tips to give Aloy a bit more style.

Like many games, Horizon Zero Dawn includes a New Game+ mode that rewards players with new items and perks for multiple playthroughs on higher difficulty settings.

Related:Best Games with New Game Plus Modes 2023

If you don’t feel like playing through the same story several times, consider using Lupercalll’s Save File Game Plus mod to unlock new face paints, poses, focus effects, outfits, weapons, and more.

This adds an “Ultradifficult” save file to your game that includes all purple rarity weapons and armor but to avoid any potential compatibility issues, nothing from the Frozen Wilds DLC.

While traditional cheat codes have pretty much disappeared from video games, modding lets us recreate the feeling of messing around with a game’s files to do all sorts of cool stuff.

Marcus101RR’s Cheat Table mod makes that dream a reality by giving you the option turn on God Mod, give yourself infinite ammo, buffs, and even teleport Aloy to different points in the world.

There’s a lot more tools than just those, but they should all come in handy if you ever get stuck, or if you’re looking to capture photos and gameplay footage without having to fight enemies.

At the top, we recommended a graphics mod that improved the quality of Horizon Zero Dawn’s HDR lighting but here we have a much more stylized reshade to give your game a more realistic look.

Created by Saldax, the Natural Clover ReShade aims to improve the visual quality of HZD with color and brightness corrections while also making the overall image quality much sharper.

This includes reduced fog effects for more visibility and hue adjustments for a better, more natural look that’s most noticeable during in-game nights.

If you’ve gotten tired of playing as Aloy and want to change things up, give xRaq’s Model Swap Library mod a try, which adds 16 secondary characters to play as including Talanah, Sylens, Helis, and more.

While mods like this are prone to graphical glitches, users report little to no issues regarding texture clipping or pop-in, even during dialogue and cutscenes which retain Aloy’s original facial animations.

The quality of the models are all on par with Aloy, and as a bonus, the mod includes a skip button that lets you breeze right past all of the intro logos at the start of the game.

Storage space tends to be a problem in most RPGs, including Horizon Zero Dawn, so we’re thankful that modders like julianovento7 are here to help us make some more room for all those consumables.

10X More Inventory Space does exactly what it says on the tin, multiplying the default storage space by ten to ensure you can carry a lot more resources before having to stop at a seller.

Note that the mod factors in the game’s normal resource exchanges, meaning if you want to get higher values, you’ll have to obtain the next upgrade.

Slow motion, or bullet time as it’s commonly referred, is a unique ability that gives Aloy time to aim her shot while jumping with the bow and arrow.

For some players, it’s an extremely valuable tool but for others, it can throw off the pacing and momentum of combat.

With AlexPo’s Slow Motion Tweaks, you can adjust how fast or slow the game moves when aiming mid-air, including turning the feature off completely.

Along with inventory space, ammo count in Horizon Zero Dawn is limited to how much Aloy can hold by default, though you can increase this amount via in-game upgrades.

However, with astonerii’s Ammo Upgrades Times 3 mod, you can increase the ammo stack amount even higher, 90-180 for various arrow types and 36 for bombs and whites.

It’s the kind of upgrade you’ll be glad you have in the heat of battle and can reduce the number of times you have to stop for a resupply.

There’s a growing demand for aiming using motion controls in games where you shoot things, with the best examples being Nintendo’s colorful shooter Splatoon and Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Since Aloy uses a bow and arrow and can slow down time while firing mid-air, it seems only natural to throw in gyro aiming as well, which you can do on PC using Charmics’ Gyro Aiming Guide mod.

It includes PC-compatible gyro-aiming profiles for Sony’s DualShock 4 controller and on the mod page you can find step by step video tutorials walking you through the process of setting everything up.

If you spend enough time on any game’s map, you may eventually get a desire to peel back the curtain and see how far you can push the boundaries of where you can go.

This is especially true for Horizon Zero Dawn’s open-world, which offers seemingly infinite vistas and sprawling locales to explore.

Thankfully, modder Me1ton has created a cheat engine mod/guide for how to Boundary Break in HZD, allowing you to teleport to the highest mountains, previously inaccessible camps, and the developer test area.