Horizon Forbidden West Key Upgrade Materials: Where do I find Burrower Soundshell and other machine parts?
The key ingredients
Key upgrade materials are vital to upgrading Aloy’s equipment in Horizon Forbidden West, but it’s not always obvious how to snag them.
Rare machine parts like the Burrower Soundshell require a little more effort to acquire, as well as some strategy.
Remember, when you’re trying to remove machine parts, your best bet is tear damage. This is mostly commonly associated with Sharpshot Bows, but comes on a range of normal Hunter Bows too.
How do I find Key Upgrade Materials in Horizon Forbidden West?
When you’ve located a machine, hold R3 to activate your Focus and scan it.
Press the d-pad directional buttons to cycle through the different machine parts and the key upgrade material will be clearly marked. This means the part is commonly used as part of upgrading your gear.
Press Triangle to tag the marked part in purple - which is actually much harder to see if you’re colorblind like me - then focus tear damage on that part to rip it off the machine.
You can then pick it up from the ground after the fight.
While a lot of key upgrade materials come from the beak or tail tip of a machine, some can be more hidden - either underneath the machine, or covered by armor.
When this happens you can either blast off the armor with explosives, rip it off with tearblast ammo, or use tear damage in the regular way to expose it.
Where do I find Burrower Soundshell in Horizon Forbidden West?
One such key upgrade material is Burrower Soundshell, which is obtained by shooting the glowing area at the front of a Burrower’s long neck.
This is often easiest to hit when a Burrower has just spotted you and is trying to raise the alarm. As it raises its head, enter Concentration and line up a shot with the glowing, scanned area.
Take the shot, and if a purple resource node pops off, then you know you’ve got Burrower Soundshell.
Alternatively, I found one inside of a supply cache during the Deep Trouble sidequest in the mine to the northeast of Chainscrape.
For more on where to find things west of the wall, here's our full Horizon Forbidden West guide.