Horizon Forbidden West’s 1.09 Patch Makes Looting So Much Better

100 per cent completion fixes and performance boosts headlined last week’s update for Horizon Forbidden West, which is fairly understandable. However, it means the best thing about patch 1.09 isn’t getting the praise it really deserves. In fact, the change wasn’t even mentioned in the patch notes! If you dive into the game’s options, there’s now a toggle that removes Aloy’s animation for picking up healing items, plants, and wood out in the open world.

If you decide to skip the animation, the process of picking these items up is vastly sped up, meaning you can collect more in a much shorter space of time. The Twitter video below demonstrates what happens, but effectively, you are hitting the Triangle button and the resource is being automatically placed in your own inventory. Simply run past them whilst spamming the button and you’ll collect them all instantly.

Opting not to skip the animation means Aloy will crouch down for a split second and have to individually pick up every single healing item, plant, and piece of wood you wish to loot. That’s nice for immersion, but when you’re 20 hours into the game, you just want to pick them up as quickly as possible and move on, right? This new toggle allows for that.

To find the option, pause the game and select Settings. At the bottom of the General tab, you’ll find the “Pickup Animations” toggle. Set them to “Off” and they’ll be a distant memory for the rest of your playthrough. Now watch your collection of healing items balloon!

Do you wish you had this option when you played through the game? Curse its absence in the comments below.