How to defeat the Apex Slaughterspine in Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores

The Burning Shores expansion has brought a bunch of new content to Guerrilla Games' open-world action-role-playing title Horizon Forbidden West. The changes include a fresh area for you to explore, new weapons to unlock, quests to undertake, and some really terrifying new machines — such as Horus, the Metal Devil.

While the recently added machines like Bilegut and Stingspawnare are the highlights of Burning Shores, this expansion is also home to some returning mechanical monsters from the base game. One example in this regard is the Slaughterspine that Aloy will have to go up against as part of the DLC's main story quest.

This foe is easily among the most powerful machines in Horizon Forbidden West and a very challenging enemy in the base game. While the Slaughterspine that you fight in the base title is the standard variant of that machine, the one in this DLC is a much more powerful Apex variant.

Here's a comprehensive guide to help you easily and efficiently defeat that version of the Slaughterspine in Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores, including tips on how to avoid its most damaging attacks, elemental weaknesses to exploit, and more.

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Tips on how to easily defeat the Apex Slaughterspine in Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores

You come face-to-face against the Apex Slaughterspine in the main story mission For His Amusement, where this machine serves as a final boss encounter. Much like any other Apex machine variant, this entity comes at a much higher level (64), which makes it one of the toughest enemy foes in the DLC — only second to Horus, the Metal Devil.

While the moveset of the Apex Sluaghterspine is basically the same as its standard variant, this more powerful version is much more aggressive and uses its most damaging attacks (plasma projectiles) way more often. The Apex Slaughterspine has the following move that you need to be mindful of:

• Plasma barrage, where the machine raises its tail to launch multiple plasma projectiles on the ground that deal massive damage.
• Tail swipe attack that the Slaughterspine can instantly follow up with a plasma barrage.
• Claw swipe attacks that the Slaughterspine can follow up with a tail swipe dealing a ton of damage.
• Stomping attack that can deal a lot of damage but is fairly easy to predict and dodge.

While the number of plasma-based attacks you might be subjected to can be quite intimidating, this Slaughterspine has quite a few elemental weaknesses that you can use against the machine to weaken it and eventually defeat it. This foe is weak to two key elemental affinities: Frost and Purgewater.

The elemental weaknesses of Slaughterspine in the Burning Shores DLC (Image via Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores)

The best way to tackle the Apex Slaughterspine is to use weapons like the Blastsling or the Warrior Bow to inflict elemental damage on the machine as quickly as possible and follow it up with melee attacks or ranged attacks, preferably with Sharpshoot Bows and Spike Thrower.

This enemy is quite agile for a machine its size; thus, you can employ adhesive ammo (using Blastsling with adhesive elemental) to slow it down. This will make it easier to target the foe. The Burning Shores DLC's Apex Slaughterspine is a formidable opponent; however, with proper weapons and knowledge of this machine's weaknesses, you can easily defeat it.