Key Takeaway
You can find a bunch of Tiderippers swimming around in the thin lake south of the Dread Bluff Old World Site.
To find Tiderippers in Horizon Forbidden West, you’ll need to do a lot of swimming. There’s no other efficient way to get Tideripper Tail Fins, which are a high-tier upgrade component. Thankfully, there’s a great spot to find these machines.
Table Of Contents
The Location of an Unmarked Tideripper Site
In the southwest of the Forbidden West, you’ll find a large crescent-shaped lake. The nearest named location is the Dread Bluff Old World Site, which you need to explore during the Drown Hopes Side Quest.
Throughout this lake, you can find multiple Tiderippers. While you’ll be able to fight these aquatic machines at any point in the game, harvesting their components is a different story. More often than not, components that you tear off will sink into the depths of this lake, making them difficult to reach unless you can breathe underwater.
How to Breathe Underwater
You gain the ability to breathe underwater during the main quest called “The Sea of Sands”. This main quest is the one where Aloy must seek out Gaia’s Poseidon sub-routine in the ruins of what was once Los Vegas.
It’s also worth mentioning that you’ll need to fight a Tideripper during this quest. However, due to a weird bug, the components that you tear from this Tideripper may disappear after you defeat this amphibious robot. Furthermore, you can’t farm his one repeatedly, as it only appears once.
Tips for Tearing Components from Tiderippers
The only component that you need to tear off before destroying a Tideripper is its Tail Fins. If you don’t tear the Tail Fins off first, you won’t be able to get them. With that said, all other components that you can only get from Tiderippers can thankfully be harvested following this machine’s destruction.
How to Tear the Tail Fins off of a Tideripper
Due to Tiderippers spending most of their time in the water, it will be difficult to land a hit on their Tail Fins. Furthermore, Tiderippers will constantly be facing you when attacking, which gives you an even harder time lining up a shot on their Tail Fins.
As such, you’ll need to lure a Tideripper close to shore so that its Tail Fins will—at least partially—rise above the surface of the water. Be sure to highlight the Tail Fins when scanning a Tideripper for increased visibility.
The best weapons to use for tearing off Tail Fins are Hunter Bows and Sharpshot Bows. When you enter Concentration mode, lining up a shot with one of these bow types will give you the best chance of landing a hit on a Tideripper’s Tail Fins.
It’s advised to use a type of Hunter Bow that has Advanced Hunter Arrows or a Sharpshot Bow that has Tear Precision Arrows. Such ammo types have high tear damage and will give you the best odds of knocking free individual components.
How to Destroy Tiderippers Easily
Tiderippers are weak to frost and shock damage. As such, weapons that can inflict those elements are the best to use against this mechanical leviathan. With that said, most of the Tideripper’s weak points will be underwater, which will make landing a heavy blow pretty tough.
Target the Tidal Disc on a Tideripper’s Back
The easiest weak point to hit is the Tidal Disc on the back of a Tideripper. This large, round plate will always be above the surface of the water while the Tideripper is close to shore. The machine’s long neck will sometimes get in the way, but that’s not a huge issue to get around.
If you destroy the Tidal Disc, the Tideripper will no longer be able to shoot you with jets of purgewater—which is its main attack. Removing the ability of the machine to blast you with high-pressured water will make the battle go a lot easier.
Aim for the Horns!
After you’ve destroyed a Tideripper’s Tidal Disc, the next best place to attack is the machine’s head. While not a true weak point, Tiderippers take a decent bit of damage when hit in the face. For this reason, aiming for the horn-like drills on the front of a Tideripper’s head can let you decrease its health fairly quickly.
How to Capitalize on Frost Attacks
If you hit a Tideripper with enough frost damage, it will enter the brittle state. When it does, be sure to switch to a weapon that does a lot of impact damage. Brittle machines will take much more damage from this basic damage type.
What weapon you use to inflict frost damage doesn’t matter too much. Use your favorite. However, Blastslings are arguably the weapon type that can build up status effects quickly. As such, you should consider using a Blastsling with Frost Bombs while hunting Tiderippers.
The same can be said for weapons that deal impact damage. Any sufficiently upgraded weapon will do, so, again, use your favorite. If you’re impartial to weapon types, it’s recommended to try out a Spike Thrower. Such weapons, while slow to fire, can hit pretty hard—especially if you use one that can launch Explosive Spikes.
While the brittle state will not increase how much explosive damage is dealt, Explosive Spikes will always deal impact damage on a hit before exploding to deliver the explosive damage payload.
How to Capitalize on Shock Attacks
When you buildup shock damage on a machine, it will get temporarily stunned. The greatest advantage of doing this is that you can deliver a critical strike on a stunned machine. However, since you can’t attack in the water, this strategy isn’t viable when fighting Tiderippers.
Tiderippers will almost never fully leave the water. As such, if you stun one with enough shock damage, you won’t be able to perform a critical attack on it in most cases. For this reason, it’s best to only use shock attacks to stun a Tideripper and not bother going for any critical attacks.
When you stun a Tideripper this way, it would be best to switch to another weapon. As mentioned before, using a Spike Thrower at this point can be a viable way to deal a ton of damage.
