Horizon Forbidden West Metal Flowers Guide: How To Cut Vines And Access Hidden Areas

gamespot.com:

Early in Horizon Forbidden West, you'll find yourself closed off from reaching certain places by tangles of strange green vines. The vines always flow from a nearby machine--a boxy piece of metal that your Focus refers to as a «metal flower.» You'll find yourself running into these metal flowers in a few places in the open world without the ability to deal with them, or to get the loot and secrets they consistently hide.

Fortunately, there's a solution to clearing the vines of Horizon Forbidden West and claiming the stuff they wall off from you. To access the metal flowers and clear the vines, you'll need a special hacking protocol for your spear, similar to what Aloy uses to Override machines. You'll get that ability from a specific place in the world, but only once you've advanced to a particular point in the game.

Here's everything you need to know about how to deal with metal flowers and their vines, and when you can expect to get your spear upgrade. Note that this post contains some extremely light spoilers for when things will happen in the game's main story, so if you want to uncover everything yourself, stop reading now.

Like the ability to explode walls covered in Firegleam, you'll eventually unlock the upgrade for interacting with metal flowers by working through the main quest of Horizon Forbidden West. The upgrade comes at a specific point, however, and you can prioritize unlocking it if you're willing to brave some tougher areas earlier in the game.

You'll get the metal flower upgrade from the Greenhouse, the location where Aloy finds the Demeter subordinate function for Gaia. The Demeter mission is one of three you can complete once you've completed the main quest mission «The Eye of the Earth» and