If you burned through Aloy's western frontier by sticking strictly to golden quest markers, you missed Guerrilla Games' coolest hidden content: a secret three-part God of War scavenger hunt that rewards you with Kratos's actual face paint, an entire unmarked casino penthouse buried beneath the neon sands of Las Vegas, a sly nod to The Legend of Zelda etched into rusted Old World scrap, and an emotional mountaintop developer tribute you can only spot if you take your Sunwing mount to its absolute ceiling. Now that Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition on Steam lets us push rendering distances and field of view to their outer limits, finding these out-of-the-way treasures is more satisfying than it ever was on console.
Tracking down these oddities isn't just about bagging cheeky pop-culture screenshots for your desktop wallpaper. Many of these hidden spots stash away high-value Greenshine Slabs, ultra-rare Elite Coils, and unique cosmetic face paints that don't appear in standard shop inventories or quest logs. If you love tracking down off-the-grid treasures—much like digging up uncharted caches in our Everspace 2 secret locations and hidden rewards guide—this tour of the western frontier's best-kept secrets will show you exactly where to look, what gear you need to break inside, and why each location is worth your time.
The God of War Totems: Unlocking Aloy's Mark of War Face Paint
Guerrilla packed one of their most celebrated PlayStation cross-promotions into three tiny, completely unmarked wooden carvings dubbed the Totems of War. Unlike standard collectibles like Vista Points or Black Boxes, these totems do not ping your Focus scanner with bright purple tracking beacons until you are literally standing right in front of them. Collecting all three unlocks the legendary Mark of War face paint for Aloy, which paints Kratos's iconic crimson ash stripe across her eyes and cheeks.
The first figure is the Totem of War, representing Kratos himself. Head into the snowy jagged peaks north of the Greenhouse research complex (where you do the Demeter main quest). Look for a half-collapsed cabin tucked into an icy hillside. Embedded squarely in a frozen pine trunk just behind the shack is a miniature Leviathan Axe. Scan the trunk with your Focus to reveal a faint tracking trail leading up a snowy rock face into a tiny cave niche, where the carved wooden ghost of Sparta sits waiting.
The second carving is the Totem of Youth, representing Atreus. You'll find this one in the far western archipelago on the Isle of Spires (the ruins of post-apocalyptic San Francisco). Head to the southwestern edge of the island, near the rusted highway bridges that plunge into the Pacific. Look for an ancient, half-submerged school bus resting on a mossy concrete platform. Clamber onto the elevated steel framework above the bus, and you'll find the miniature wooden boy gripping a carved bow sitting neatly on a rusted metal beam.
The final pair is the Totem of Brotherhood, depicting Huldra brothers Brok and Sindri. Head south of the Jagged Deep Rebel Camp to a shallow, murky marsh where an aggressive Widemaw often patrols. In the center of the swamp, look for an ancient rusted pickup truck half-drowned in mud. Embedded in the truck's front grill is a silver hammer. Use your Focus to ping the immediate muddy island right beside the vehicle; sitting inside a hollowed-out tree stump are the twin dwarf figures. Once you have tucked all three into your inventory, head to any major Tenakth settlement like Scalding Spear or the Memorial Grove, visit the local Painter (like Zokkah), and you can apply the Mark of War for a fistful of metal shards.
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View on Steammoz Store →The Submerged Las Vegas Ruins: Stanley Chen's Secret Penthouse
Once you finish the stunning "Sea of Sands" questline and drain the subterranean floodwaters of Dunehollow beneath the Stillsands, most players grab Poseidon, chat with Morlund's hot-air balloon crew, and immediately fast-travel away. Doing so means walking right past one of the richest, creepiest environmental storytelling caches in the game: the forgotten VIP suites of billionaire visionary Stanley Chen.
To reach this hidden casino vault, fast-travel back into the Dunehollow subterranean entrance elevator. Drop down to the main casino strip floor, ignite your Focus, and face the towering ruined structure styled after an ancient holographic pyramid. Along the eastern wall of the dry basin, you'll spot several yellow climbing handholds that lead up through the shattered glass framework of an executive high-rise. You will need your Pullcaster to rip down a rusted vent cover high on the wall to create a grapple point.
Prying your way through that maintenance duct leads you into an opulent, dust-covered penthouse lounge untouched for a thousand years. Inside, you'll find:
- Audio Datapoint "The Big Win": A hilarious and grim recording of a desperate high-roller spending his final night on Earth during the Faro Plague.
- Two Pristine Greenshine Slabs: Crucial crafting components required to upgrade Legendary bows and armor sets to their maximum fifth tier.
- A Master Loot Chest: Guarantees a high-tier purple weapon coil (often an Overdraw Damage +15% or Melee Follow-Up +25% coil depending on your player level).
The interior architecture here features custom Old World art assets you won't see anywhere else in the desert basin. If your frame rates stutter while rendering the complex lighting effects inside Dunehollow's neon caverns, tweaking your volumetric fog and screen-space reflections will instantly stabilize your frametimes, similar to how we tune demanding open-world engines in our Far Cry 6 GOTY settings guide for max FPS.
Pop Culture Cameos: Zelda, Killzone, and Tsushima in the Wilds
Guerrilla's developers love dropping nods to their studio history and industry contemporaries. Because the PC port supports wide aspect ratios (21:9 and 32:9), panning your camera around rusted vehicle chassis and forgotten bunkers makes spotting these subtle graphical Easter eggs a blast.
Tucked away in the scorched canyons of No Man's Land, near a rusted convoy of Old World military tanks, you can find a tribute to The Legend of Zelda. Approach the southernmost canyon wall where a pair of Scrappers usually feed on machine carcasses. If you inspect the rusty passenger door of an upturned civilian vehicle buried beneath the red dirt, you will find three interlocking golden triangles—the unmistakable Triforce—scratched into the weathered paint alongside a small tally counter. It's a gracious tip of the hat to Breath of the Wild, which launched alongside the original Horizon Zero Dawn back in 2017.
Guerrilla also didn't forget the gritty first-person shooter franchise that put them on the map. Deep inside an underground Faro Automated Solutions storage cache in the northern hills above the Daunt, you can find a heavily damaged weapon crate. Tucked inside the foam lining is the distinct, angular receiver profile of a Helghast StA-52 Assault Rifle from Guerrilla Games' Killzone franchise, complete with its glowing red circular sight lens shattered across the floorboards.
Over on the foggy, redwood-covered coastal cliffs north of Tide's Reach, you can discover a silent tribute to Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima. At the edge of a sheer cliff overlooking the ocean sits a miniature wooden shrine surrounded by fallen red maple leaves, accompanied by a small golden fox statue perched on a mossy boulder. If Aloy stands next to the shrine and plays her ocarina-like flute animation in Photo Mode, the environmental wind kicks up violently, sweeping scarlet leaves around your screen in classic cinematic Kurosawa fashion.
Complete Secret Locations and Easter Egg Matrix
To help you check off every hidden oddity without aimlessly scouring thousands of square miles of digital wilderness, here is the complete breakdown of the best secret spots, their required traversal tools, and what goodies you walk away with:
| Secret Location / Easter Egg | Map Region / Landmark | Required Traversal Tool | Hidden Reward / Loot | Difficulty to Find |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Totems of War (Kratos) | Greenhouse North Mountain Ridge | Standard Climbing Claws | Progress toward Mark of War Face Paint | Hard (No Focus marker) |
| Totem of Youth (Atreus) | Isle of Spires (Southwest Coast) | None (Requires climbing) | Progress toward Mark of War Face Paint | Medium |
| Totem of Brotherhood (Brok/Sindri) | Jagged Deep Swamplands | Focus Pulse (Must ping truck) | Unlocks Mark of War at any Face Painter | Medium |
| Stanley Chen's VIP Penthouse | Dunehollow (Submerged Las Vegas) | Pullcaster & Diving Mask | 2x Greenshine Slabs, Epic Weapon Coils | Hard (Behind hidden duct) |
| The Triforce Car Door | No Man's Land (Southern Ravine) | None | Unique World Lore Datapoint | Very Hard (Tiny detail) |
| Ghost of Tsushima Fox Shrine | Cliffside North of Tide's Reach | Shieldwing Glider | Cinematic Photo Mode Effect | Medium |
| The Patrick Munnik Memorial | Mountain Peak West of Plainsong | Sunwing Mount (Wings of the Ten) | Holographic Horizon Memorial Tribute | Hard (Extreme altitude) |
| Sunken Underwater Bomber | Bay South of San Francisco | Diving Mask (Water breathing) | 3x Ancient Valuables, Legendary Weave | Hard (Deep oceanic shelf) |
Just like organizing your loadout for the toughest challenges in our guide to hunting hidden rewards, clearing these spots systematically will net you enough high-grade upgrade materials to max out your favorite gear sets before tackling Ultra Hard difficulty runs.
Hidden Bunkers: Farming Greenshine Slabs and Legendary Coils
Beyond cosmetic gags and developer cameos, the Forbidden West holds several sealed Old World military installations that do not have associated quests, yet contain some of the highest-stat weapon coils in the entire PC release. To get inside these, you must progress the campaign until you unlock the Igniter (to detonate red crystalline Firegleam) and the Vine Cutter module (to clear out metallic flower roots).
The best unmarked bunker is located halfway up the jagged mountain spine separating The Daunt from the Plainsong basin. High on an unmarked snow-covered shelf, you'll encounter a rusted blast hatch sealed shut by an ancient hydraulic lock. You don't need a keycode; instead, turn around and scan the rock wall opposite the hatch. You'll spot a Firegleam cluster nestled inside a fissure. Igniting it blows open a subterranean crawlspace that lets Aloy drop directly into the sub-basement below the locked doors.
Once inside, you'll have to navigate through flooded elevator shafts using your Diving Mask. Watch your footing: this bunker is wired with functional tripmines left behind by long-dead security automated units. Disarm them with your Hunter Bow from a distance, or use Aloy's Infiltrator skill tree perks to slide beneath the laser grids cleanly.
At the bottom of the installation lies an executive server room guarded by a lone, dormant Stalker. If you take down the machine quietly with stealth strikes from behind, you can loot the central safe to claim:
- +15% Critical Hit Chance Coil: An absolute must-have gem to slot into Legendary Hunter Bows like the Death-Seeker's Shadow or the Sun Scourge.
- Close Range Damage +25% Coil: The definitive modifier for Warrior Bow and Boltblaster builds that shred machines at point-blank range.
- Large Machine Cores & Luminous Brainstems: Rare monster parts that save you dozens of hours of repetitive Tremortusk and Slaughterspine farming.
If you encounter bizarre rendering hitches or camera clip bugs while sliding through these cramped underground bunker hallways, you might be pushing your VRAM buffer too hard. We see this exact behavior when players push texture pools beyond hardware limits in other sprawling games, which we covered in our ELEX PC fixes that stop crashes and rescue FPS. Dialing down anisotropic filtering by one notch and utilizing DLSS or FSR Quality mode frees up the overhead you need to keep dark, reflective underground corridors buttery smooth.
Aerial Secrets: The Patrick Munnik Memorial and Off-Map Perches
Once you complete the late-game story quest "The Wings of the Ten" and learn to override the majestic Sunwing, the entire vertical design of the Forbidden West opens up. The PC release shines here: with the field of view slider set to +15 or +20 and the Level of Detail (LOD) pushed to Very High, you can spot distant geometry, mountain campfires, and unusual environmental details from hundreds of meters up in the sky.
The most touching secret in the entire game sits on an isolated, razor-sharp mountain spire just west of Plainsong, high above the cloud layer. You cannot climb this peak on foot—the rock faces are completely sheer and lack any yellow climbing grips. Mount your Sunwing and fly straight up into the freezing stratosphere until you spot a tiny clearing adorned with glowing purple flowers and a wooden memorial bench overlooking the sunrise.
This location is the in-game memorial dedicated to Patrick Munnik, the beloved Lead Producer at Guerrilla Games who tragically passed away in 2019 during the development of Forbidden West. When Aloy lands here, she can interact with a holographic display that projects a serene poem honoring his impact on the team, while an exclusive ambient musical track plays in the background. It is a quiet, profoundly beautiful space that shows the humanity woven into the fabric of this massive game world.
While you have your Sunwing airborne, fly toward the jagged southern rim of the map near the Valley of the Fallen. Perched on a cliff edge barely inside the playable boundaries, you can locate an abandoned Tenakth sniper nest that Guerrilla's QA testers used to benchmark asset streaming. On the wooden deck sits an ancient Old World coffee mug labeled "Best Boss," surrounded by dozens of spent blast sling bombs and an untouched supply chest packed with Blastpaste and Volatile Sludge.
Digging into the secret corners of PlayStation Studios' PC library proves that world design is about so much more than just ticking icons off a crowded map checklist. Whether you are hunting Kratos's totems to terrorize the Tenakth clans in red-and-white warpaint or exploring deep oceanic trenches with your diving mask, taking the time to stray off the beaten path turns a great open-world shooter into an unforgettable journey. Pack extra wire, upgrade your Pullcaster, and keep your Focus scanner humming—the Forbidden West still has plenty of surprises left to uncover.