The Daemonic Thunderjaw is Horizon Zero Dawn‘s most threatening enemy and one which most players have died to dozens of times. One player just killed it in 12 seconds.
Reddit user BLACK-_-HAND, a Horizon Zero Dawn fan with a history of quickly defeating challenging enemies, made a post to the Horizon series subreddit on March 26, 2022, showcasing what they claim is a new world record. The included clip is just 28 seconds long, and the time from the Daemonic Thunderjaw’s first appearance to its death is only 12 seconds. BLACK-_-HAND also made a point of including another stipulation in their world record: this particular clip showcases the Daemonic Thunderjaw in Ultra Hard mode, Horizon Zero Dawn‘s hardest difficulty option. Despite the added challenge, BLACK-_-HAND’s clip shows them defeating the Daemonic Thunderjaw without taking a single point of damage.
This is not BLACK-_-HAND’s first attempt at setting the Daemonic Thunderjaw record. In July of 2021, they made a similar effort, although it took them roughly 30 seconds at the time. In the comments of their more recent post, they’ve outlined the strategy they used to whittle that 30 second time down to their record-setting 12 seconds. The robotic dinosaur takes 2.5x damage when frozen, so BLACK-_-HAND starts by freezing it. From there, exposing the heart of the monster reveals a weak spot that takes 4x damage compared to the rest of its body. Firing on the exposed heart with triple arrows, a high-powered unlockable weapon, deals about 525 damage at its base, which quickly expands to extremely high damage output.
Horizon Zero Dawn players are no strangers to skill-based or ridiculous challenges. In January of 2022, one Horizon Zero Dawn fan used the game’s machine override ability to pit 50 smaller enemies against one Thunderjaw. Attempting to down dangerous enemies quickly (or using absurd means) is a common challenge for fans of other games too — take, for example, the Elden Ring players who finished the entire game without leveling up or the Minecraft player who completed a full speedrun without looking at the screen.
BLACK-_-HAND’s Daemonic Thunderjaw kill, like many similar challenges in video games, is a display of system mastery. The challenge demands a comprehensive understanding of the enemy’s behaviors, as well as the systems which make killing it feasible.
Players who want to try their hand at taking down BLACK-_-HAND’s record can play Horizon Zero Dawn on Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4 or its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, on PlayStation 4 and 5.
Source: Reddit