Metal Shards are the primary form of currency in Horizon Zero Dawn, used to trade a variety of items from various merchants throughout the game. They are invaluable for getting weapons, armor and various other things to increase your prowess in hunting machines. Getting a sizeable amount can be tricky, especially if you don’t have the time and patience to grind out and save up on them. Below is a fast and efficient way of farming Metal Shards, though fairly in the middle of the game already.
(Click here to check out our Enemies List for information on various enemy drops in the game.)
Farming Metal Shards
You must have access to Merdian to do this. Talk to the Specialty Merchant there and purchase a Scavenger Light Box. Each costs 1 Processed Metal Block (click here to view our Resources List for every Resource obtainable in the game).
Next, head to the Campfire in the area indicated below.
From the Campfire, you need to go to a certain spot with 4 Scrappers guarding some Scrapper Resource Heaps where you will find Processed Metal Blocks. Head to the indicated area of the map below.
To get there from the Campfire, walk a good ways straight ahead by crossing the river. Proceed onward until you see the stone path slope upwards to your right (indicated below).
When you reach the area above, go right and up the rock slope. Then, follow the rock slow down. You’ll come up to a dirt path.
Just keep following it until you arrive at an overlook by the side of the stony edge of the dirt path. You’ll see 4 Scrappers in the area below.
You’ll need to kill them all and obtain Processed Metal Blocks from the Scrapper Resource Heaps. The overlook is a particularly good spot to snipe them all without having too much trouble with them. Just watch out for when they fire at you. After you’ve dealt with all of them, you can pick up all the valuable loot, but remember to pick up the Processed Metal Blocks that they drop to trade with the Specialty Merchant in Meridian.
After you’ve collected enough, go back to the Specialty Merchant in Meridian and trade the Processed Metal Blocks for as much Scavenger Light Boxes as you can. Then, start opening them up.
The Scavenger Light Boxes have varying contents, such as Wood Bundle or Fast Travel Packs, but you can easily get around 45 to 50 Metal Shards somewhat reliably from them. This makes it a very efficient way of farming Metal Shards in the game. On average, you can get around 800 Metal Shards in a minute doing this method.
This is a terrible farming method. Just saying… The scavenger light box often gives wood bundles, which can’t be sold, whereas everything from the scavenger dark box CAN be sold. I sold everything from 24 dark boxes and got almost 700 shards. Also, running the ravager control trials at the last hunting grounds and killing and collecting everything takes about 5 minutes or less and you can get about 1000 shards from one run after selling all unnecessary stuff.
how could this possibly only take 1 minute to do?
This might have been useful if the shots were in daylight
no shit, sherlock