Frostclaw

"The lesson will be taught in due time, Aloy. Until then, we wait." This article contains heavy spoilers. Read ahead with caution.

Frostclaw
A huge acquisition machine that circulates cryogenic fluids for its attacks and defensive capabilities. Despite its size it is quick and deadly.
Size	Medium
Weight	Midweight
Class	Acquisition
Override	Cauldron EPSILON Cauldron CHI (HFW)
Machine Sites	1 2 (HFW)
Combat
Challenge Level	24 (HFW) 30 36 (Daemonic) 38 (Apex)
HP	2800 (HFW) 3750 (TFW) 4200 (Apex) 4763 (Daemonic)
Weakness	Fire Shock (HFW)
Strength	Freeze
Explosive Components	Freeze/Chillwater Sac (x2) Freeze/Chillwater Unit
Weak Points	Eyes Power Cell/Sparker (x2) Resource Container (x2, HFW) Glowblast Canister (x2, Apex)

The Frostclaw is a machine introduced in The Frozen Wilds, and a returning machine in Horizon Forbidden West and The Official Horizon Cookbook: Tastes of the Seven Tribes. It is an extremely formidable combat-ready machine, capable of highly damaging Freeze-augmented ranged and melee attacks.

History

While it's unknown when Frostclaws were first released, they can be found in the Cut and the Sheerside Mountains. A single Frostclaw can potentially be found in the Valley of the Fallen.

Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds

A Daemonic Frostclaw in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.

Aloy first encountered a Frostclaw in a valley along the pilgrimage route known as the Shaman's Path. Just before entering the valley, she glimpsed the huge machine at the bottom of a gorge that she had almost fallen into. As she approached the valley, she heard its roars, then saw it proper upon entering the valley. The encounter was complicated by the presence of a Control Tower, which would repair any damage the Frostclaw sustained. She prevailed, either neutralizing the Control Tower and killing the Frostclaw or slipping past.

The Snowchants Hunting Grounds uses Frostclaws as part of their trials.

As Aloy and Aratak had just completed the second leg of the hunting challenge that Aloy had mounted against Aratak for his chieftancy, they both found themselves up against three Frostclaws, which had killed the hunters who had been driving in their quarry. While Aratak fought bravely, it was Aloy who virtually singlehandedly killed all three Frostclaws, earning Aratak's respect, deference and voluntary relinquishment of his chieftaincy to her.

Aloy and Inatut were confronted by several machines, including Frostclaws, as the former was trying to save the latter from freezing to death at the Cloud-Shear.

Inactive Frostclaws being transported through Cauldron EPSILON.

As they were navigating the Firebreak facility to reach Cauldron EPSILSON, Aloy, Aratak and Ourea either fight and destroy or sneak past a Frostclaw. Within the Cauldron, the three of them saw several inactive Frostclaws being transported on an assembly line and can potentially release and destroy two more. As Aloy overrode EPSILSON's core, she gained access to the information needed to override Frostclaws.

Between Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West

While the circumstances of how are unknown, Aloy somehow lost the ability to override Frostclaws, as well as most other machines.

Horizon Forbidden West

While they were performing the March of the Ten, Aloy and Penttoh encountered and destroyed a Frostclaw in a blizzard.

The Arena offers fights against Apex Frostclaws, where the challenger has to destroy two Apex Frostclaws in one fight.

When she infiltrated Cauldron CHI and overrode its core, Aloy regained the ability to override Frostclaws.

After Aloy disabled the final Zenith lure in the Valley of the Fallen, a Frostclaw and two Apex Clamberjaws attacked her and Ivvira, where they destroyed them.

The Official Horizon Cookbook: Tastes of the Seven Tribes

While Milduf and Pentalla were hunting a goat in the Cut, they were interrupted by a Frostclaw. As it charged at Pentalla, Milduf took his griddle and slammed it against a cliff face, making a loud noise and cracking a layer of ice. Turning its attention to Milduf, the Frostclaw lunged at him, slamming into the cliff face as Milduf tumbled out of the way, narrowly escaping an avalanche that buried that Frostclaw. Pentalla was impressed, but the Frostclaw escaped with its plating now missing. The two now cornered, Pentalla slowed it down with a volley of arrows, and it was finally taken down by a group of Banuk. They later let Milduf keep the Frostclaw's head as a trophy, which he later named his eatery after: The Frostclaw's Head.

Appearance

Like the Fireclaw, the Frostclaw is somewhat ursine (bear-like) in appearance, movement, and locomotion. Its chassis resembles the body and has the gait of a grizzly bear. While they are extremely formidable and deadly, Frostclaws are smaller than Fireclaws, and have considerably less capacity to sustain damage. The head ends in a pointed, toothy snout with a three-mandible jaw housing a system of grinders. A pair of optical sensor arrays is located in the same position as a bear's eyes would be. Mounted on each forelimb are a pair of gear-like wheels. There is an armor-protected cryogeneration unit called a Freeze Unit on its chest, and two power cells are located on its upper back. Freeze Sacs, armored storage tanks containing Chillwater are built into its chassis, similar to Freeze Bellowbacks. However, while the Freeze Bellowback's tanks are prominently placed on its back and throat, the Frostclaw's Freeze Sacs are seamlessly built into its shoulders, are much more damage resistant, and generally have more armor.

Abilities

Like the grizzly bear, the Frostclaw is able to adopt both a quadrupedal and bipedal stance. In either stance it employs several fast, relentless and extremely damaging Freeze-based ranged attacks and Freeze-augmented melee attacks. While their capacity to sustain damage is substantially less than that of Fireclaws, it is still formidable. Despite their huge size, Frostclaws are quite fast and agile, able to run at high speed and easily spring up high embankments. Being Freeze-based machines, they are extremely resistant to attacks from weapons that utilize Freeze. Additionally, Daemonic Frostclaws also have all of the abilities of Daemonic Machines: considerably more durable armor and damage resistance, immunity to Corruption, and they cannot be overridden.

If given the opportunity, Frostclaws can rip off ropes attached to them by a Ropecaster if they haven't been fully tied down.

Stances

The Frostclaw can switch between quadrupedal and bipedal stances, each with different sets of unique melee and ranged attacks. The Quadrupedal stance is the default posture when roaming around undisturbed, affording greater agility and traversal options to jump up small cliffs and leap over gaps to chase Aloy across the environment. During combat, it will typically adopt this four-legged posture when far away, and make use of the improved mobility to close the distance. Most of its attacks while in this stance are melee-focused, repositioning itself with quick tumble-dodges to keep up the pressure, but it can use a long-ranged terrestrial attack of tunnelling Icicles which track Aloy's position across different elevations or behind cover and erupt directly beneath her feet.

In the Bipedal stance, the Frostclaw's mobility is severely limited but adds enough ranged attacks to compensate for this drawback. The Frostclaw tends to adopt this upright two-legged posture at close to mid-range, aggressively chaining together multiple claw slashes in a row and weaponizing the Freeze Unit on its torso to spew out streams of ice fragments. If Aloy retreats out of range of the Frostclaw's close-quarters attacks, it can scrape at the ground with its wrist-mounted grinders to lob frozen chunks of solidified dirt and rock in her direction or launch itself in the air and come crashing down back-first at Aloy's position to crush her under its massive weight.

Freeze Blades

Freeze Blades enhance the majority of the Frostclaw's melee-based attacks with extended range and additional Freeze damage per hit. These Blades are formed during the attack's start-up animation, and dissolve immediately once the move ends. Lingering Ice Patches are left behind and cover the ground whenever Freeze Blades are active, slowing down Aloy's movement and dealing residual Freeze damage when stepped on. Destroying the shoulder-mounted Freeze Sacs permanently disables the ability to generate Freeze Blades on the corresponding arm.

Icicles

The Frostclaw can summon Icicles as part of certain attacks which generate a small explosion as they erupt from the ground. The Icicles are surrounded by icy mist which damages upon contact but dissipates after a short period of time, while the Icicles themselves remain standing indefinitely and impair movement until shattered by Aloy's attacks or the Frostclaw itself. Destroying the Frostclaw's Freeze Unit removes the ability to produce Icicles entirely.

Ice Storm

After sustaining enough damage, the Frostclaw briefly encases its chassis in a protective ice coating and generates a freezing aura around itself which damages upon contact and negates severity build-up or currently applied status effects. This frenzied state is automatically triggered once the Frostclaw's total health reaches 70% of its maximum value and then again at 25%. Destroying the Freeze Unit permanently deactivates this special attack.

Weaknesses

Like all Freeze-based machines, Frostclaws are particularly susceptible to attacks from weapons that utilize Fire. However, if a Burn state is inflicted on them, they are able to surround themselves with an icy aura that instantly dissipates it. Furthermore, though they are extremely resistant to Freeze, they can in fact be frozen by a sufficiently powerful Freeze explosion. This can be triggered by destroying their Freeze Sacs or their Freeze Units. Additionally, destroying the Freeze Sacs located on its shoulders weakens the claw slash attacks and disables the Frostclaw's ability to augment them with Freeze, and destroying the Freeze Unit located on its chest disables the ranged terrestrial attacks. Provided both its Freeze Sacs and Freeze Unit have been destroyed, a permanent frozen state will be inflicted on the Frostclaw. Their power cells can be overloaded via strikes from Shock Arrows, triggering an electrical explosion that stuns them. This is the only way to electrically stun a Daemonic Frostclaw, given its high innate resistance to Shock damage.

Attacks

Horizon Zero Dawn

Quadruped Stance

Name	Damage Type	Primary Damage	Secondary Damage	Trigger Range	Description
Ice Spikes	Melee/ Freeze	125 each	25 Freeze per second	15m - 50m	Brings impaling ice spikes up out of the ground at enemy
Back Slash	Melee/ Freeze	150/75	25 Freeze per second	1m - 15m (front) 3m -15m (back)	Backhanded claw slash
Fury Slash	Melee/ Freeze	200/100	-	3m - 18m	Series of three forward claw slashes
Lunge Dive	Melee/ Freeze	200/100	-	3m - 18m	Charging forward dive at enemy
Back Crush	Melee	200	50 Explosion	8m - 11m	Charging backward dive at enemy
Lunge Slash	Melee/ Freeze	200/100	-	8m - 14m	Short-range rising claw slash

Biped Stance

Name	Damage Type	Primary Damage	Secondary Damage	Trigger Range	Description
Hail Storm	Freeze	145 per second	-	10m - 20m	Spews hailstones from Freeze Unit at enemy
Frost Blast	Freeze Melee	200/100	-	0m - 8m	Defensive radial cryo-blast
Grinder Scrape	Melee Freeze	125/75	-	15m - 50m	Scrapes chunks of solidified dirt and rock at enemy
Claw Slash	Freeze Melee	150/75	-	2m - 8m (front) 3m - 6m (back)	Up to 6 ice-augmented claw slashes
Frost Dive	Melee	200 Explosion	50 Melee	10m - 25m (front) 7m - 17m (back)	Charging backward dive accompanied by emerging ice spikes from ground
Frost Crush	Freeze Melee	200/100	-	6m - 13m	Bear-hug against Freeze Unit; if the Shield-Weaver is equipped, getting grabbed instantly depletes the shield

Both Stances

Name	Damage Type	Primary Damage	Secondary Damage	Trigger Range	Description
Frost Slam	Melee	200	-	0m - 5m	Defensively brings up ice spikes from ground in radial pattern
Ice Storm	Freeze	50 per second	-	-	Desperation defensive attack (employed upon sustaining 30% and 75% damage); cryo-aura around chassis damages enemy on contact; negates any severity buildup or current status effects applied

Horizon Forbidden West

Name	Windup Time	Stance	Damage	Lingering	Trigger Range	Description
Ice Spikes	Medium	Quadruped	75.5 Ranged 75.5 71 buildup	20/s 20/s buildup	15m - 65m	Shoves jaws into ground and sends out trails of ice that travels towards target, erupting into ice spikes.
Backhand Slash	Short	Quadruped	135.5 Melee 135.5 85 buildup	-	2m - 10m (front) 3m - 9m (back)	Raises on hind legs and slashes at target in a backhanded motion.
Fury Slash	Short	Quadruped	104.5 Melee 104.5 85 buildup	-	3m - 21m	Stands on hind legs and moves forward slashing at target three times. Desperation Attack
Back Crush	Short	Quadruped	Body: 339 Melee Explosion: 169.5 Melee	-	8m - 19m	Rotates 180o before slamming back into the ground, generating a shockwave on impact.
Lunging Dive	Short	Quadruped	169.5 Melee 169.5 100 buildup	-	3m - 21m	Dives at target while slashing with its claw. Generates shockwave on impact and when it tumbles.
Lunging Uppercut	Short	Quadruped	169.5 Melee 169.5 100 buildup	-	8m - 22m	Lunges a short distance while slashing in a rising uppercut motion.
Hail Storm	Short	Biped	100/s 35/s buildup	-	10m - 30m	Stands upright and walks toward target while spraying a continuous stream of Freeze fluid.
Frost Blast	Medium	Biped	180 Melee 180 80 buildup	-	0m - 8m	Vents Chillwater in all directions before unleashing a large blast around its body.
Grinder Scrape	Short	Biped	100 Ranged 100 45 buildup	-	15m - 65m	Scrapes ground with grinder claws and flings two frozen rocks at target. Rocks explode on impact and leave residual Frost damage areas.
Claw Slash	Short	Biped	135.5 Melee 135.5 85 buildup	-	1m - 16m (front) 3m - 13m (back)	Augments claws with Frost Blades and advances towards target while slashing up to 6 times.
Frost Dive	Medium	Biped	Explosion: 169.5 Melee Icicles (Explosion): 75.5 Ranged, 75.5, 150 buildup Body: 169.5 Melee	20/s 20/s buildup	10m - 35m (front) 7m - 24m (back)	Dives towards target and lands on it back, generating a large explosion and a trail of icicles.
Frost Grab	Long	Biped	120 Melee 280 90 buildup Crushed 17	-	6m - 19m	Grabs target with both claws before crushing them against its Chillwater Unit.
Frost Slam	Medium	All	Explosion: 169.5 Melee Icicles (Explosion): 75.5 Ranged, 75.5, 150 buildup	20/s 20/s buildup	0m - 5m	Slams ground with front legs, generating a shockwave on impact followed by a ring of icicles around its body.

Components

Horizon Zero Dawn

Image	Component	Information	Weakness	Strength
	Body	Hard outer casing to protect synthetic muscle and operational systems.	Fire	Freeze
	Freeze Sac	Destruction triggers a Freeze explosion, inflicts temporary Freeze state and disables Freeze-augmentation of claw attacks.	All	None
	Freeze Unit	Destruction triggers a Freeze explosion, inflicts a temporary Freeze state and disables all Freeze-based attacks other than claws.	All	None
	Power Cell	Sparker can be looted from this component. Shooting this component with Shock Arrows will trigger an explosion, electrifying anything in its radius.	Tear Shock	None

Horizon Forbidden West

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Variants

Image	Variant	Weak Vs.	Strong Vs.
	Frostclaw	Fire Shock	Frost
	Apex Frostclaw	Fire	Frost Shock

Frostclaw

Image	Name	Description	Attributes
	Body	Hard outer casing to protect synthetic muscle and operational systems.	None
	Chillwater Sac	Chillwater storage. Destroy to disable Frost attacks or leave intact to add loot to the carcass.	Explosive Attack Removal Persists When Killed Contains Resources If Intact
	Sparker	Shock storage. Tear off to collect this resource or shoot with a Shock Arrow to detonate.	Chain Reaction Detachable Contains Valuable Resources Destroyed When Killed
	Chillwater Unit	Destroy this unit along with its Chillwater Sacs to inflict a permanent Frost state and disable all Frost attacks.	Explosive Persists When Killed Contains Resources If Intact Key Upgrade Resource
	Resource Container	Storage container for valuable resources. Tear off to collect its contents.	Detachable Contains Valuable Resources Destroyed When Killed

Apex Frostclaw

Image	Name	Description	Attributes
	Body	Hard outer casing to protect synthetic muscle and operational systems.	None
	Chillwater Sac	Chillwater storage. Destroy to disable Frost attacks or leave intact to add loot to the carcass.	Explosive Attack Removal Persists When Killed Contains Resources If Intact
	Glowblast Canister	Glowblast storage. Tear off to collect this resource or shoot with a Plasma Arrow to detonate.	Chain Reaction Detachable Contains Valuable Resources Destroyed When Killed
	Chillwater Unit	Destroy this unit along with its Chillwater Sacs to inflict a permanent Frost state and disable all Frost attacks.	Explosive Persists When Killed Contains Resources If Intact Key Upgrade Resource
	Resource Container	Storage container for valuable resources. Tear off to collect its contents.	Detachable Contains Valuable Resources Destroyed When Killed

Loot

Horizon Zero Dawn

Sparker

1

Metal Shards

1

Wire

1

Machine Core - Medium

50

Luminous Braiding

30

Frostclaw Lens

26

Frostclaw Heart

52

Chillwater

4

Echo Shell

15

Horizon Forbidden West

• Frostclaw
• Apex Frostclaw

Body

• Metal Shards (100%)
• Piercing Spike (100%)
• Chillwater (100%)
• Frostclaw Circulator (42%)
• Machine Muscle (30%)
• Frostclaw Primary Nerve (28%)
• Medium Machine Core (27%)
• Braided Wire (21%)
• Sturdy Hardplate (11%)
• Metal Bone (10%)

Chillwater Sac

• Chillwater (100%)

Sparker

• Sparker (100%)

Chillwater Unit

• Chillwater (100%)
• Volatile Sludge (100%)
• Frostclaw Sac Webbing (100%)

Resource Container

• Braided Wire (81%)
• Sturdy Hardplate (68%)
• Medium Machine Core (26%)
• Blastpaste (25%)
• Frostclaw Primary Nerve (16%)

Body

• Chillwater (100%)
• Piercing Spike (100%)
• Metal Shards (100%)
• Luminous Brainstem (67%)
• Frostclaw Primary Nerve (67%)
• Apex Frostclaw Heart (67%)
• Volatile Sludge (50%)
• Frostclaw Circulator (42%)
• Machine Muscle (301)
• Medium Machine Core (27%)
• Braided Wire (21%)
• Metal Bone (11%)
• Sturdy Hardplate (10%)

Chillwater Sac

• Chillwater (100%)

Glowblast

• Glowblast (100%)

Chillwater Unit

• Chillwater (100%)
• Volatile Sludge (100%)
• Frostclaw Sac Webbing (100%)

Resource Container

• Braided Wire (81%)
• Sturdy Hardplate (69%)
• Blastpaste (26%)
• Medium Machine Core (25%)
• Frostclaw Primary Nerve (15%)

Gallery

See Frostclaw/Gallery

Trivia

• During development of The Frozen Wilds, Frostclaws were referred to as CryoBears.
• The Frostclaw was inspired by a bear-like machine that was cut from Horizon Zero Dawn.