Fireclaw

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"*You have been warned!*"
This article, Fireclaw, contains MAJOR SPOILERS. -
Should you read the article without prior knowledge of the material, it will spoil a *significant* plot point, which can negatively affect your experience.

“
What the heck is that?! We're going to fight that thing in front of us?
Yes, *that* thing.
”
—Asta and Zoro Roronoa, Unity Force Missions: Horizon Zero Dawn, Chapter 10.

The **Fireclaw** is a machine introduced in *The Frozen Wilds*, and a returning machine in *Horizon Forbidden West*. Like its twin machine the Frostclaw, this huge, ursine machine is classed as an Acquisition Class machine. However, their main purpose is as a hunter-killer unit for deployment against humans. It is an extremely formidable combat-ready machine, capable of highly damaging Fire-augmented ranged and melee attacks.

## History

Fireclaws were created by the AI HEPHAESTUS at Cauldron EPSILON, in the Banuk region known as The Cut. Given that the Frostclaw is similar in appearance and design, they may have served as an inspiration or prototype for Fireclaw design. As previously outlined, Fireclaws are the first and only known anti-human hunter-killer machines. Apparently satisfied with their capabilities and suitability for this purpose, HEPHAESTUS began preparations to mass-produce thousands of them. However, it was only able to produce and release a small number of them before EPSILON's destruction.

A Daemonic Fireclaw was used by HEPHAESTUS as the primary defense of the cauldron's core against an expedition that infiltrated the cauldron. The expedition, composed of the Nora huntress Aloy, the Banuk shaman Ourea, and the erstwhile Banuk chieftain Aratak, prompted HEPHAESTUS to deploy the Fireclaw when Aloy attempted to access the core. The machine proved extremely effective against the three expert hunters. In addition to its highly formidable combat abilities, HEPHAESTUS spontaneously generated Control Towers to repair any damage the Fireclaw sustained mid-battle. While the party ultimately prevailed against it, their incursion was too late to prevent HEPHAESTUS from releasing the aforementioned small number of Fireclaws from the Cauldron into The Cut. Due to the extreme danger that they posed to the region's residents, Aloy hunted and destroyed five of them, engaging two in tandem with Aratak. While Fireclaws are still present in the Cut, only one or two can now be found in the region, both at remote sites. This significantly reduces the threat they pose.

Despite the destruction, HEPHAESTUS was able to escape, and had saved the Fireclaw's blueprints. Within a few months, Fireclaws were now across the world, mainly inhabiting forest areas, like the bear it was based on.

Aloy and Talanah would find Amadis fighting a Fireclaw when they searched for him in the Forbidden West. After Aloy reclaimed POSEIDON, she would search the remaining "bloodchoke" river left that tarnished Thornmarsh's waters, finding a rebel dam gaurded by rebels with an overridden Fireclaw. The rebels also used an overriden Fireclaw to guard their outpost in Bonewhite Tear.

## Appearance

Like the Frostclaw, the Fireclaw is ursine in appearance, movement, and locomotion. Its chassis resembles the body and has the gait of a short-faced bear. HEPHAESTUS modeled the Fireclaw and Frostclaw after the long-extinct animal, which was native to the region during the time of the Old Ones. The head ends in a pointed, toothy snout with a three-mandible jaw containing a system of rollers. A pair of optical sensor arrays is located in the same position as a bear's eyes would be. Mounted on each forelimb are a pair of gear-like wheels. There is an armor-protected fire generation unit, known as a Fire Unit, on its chest, and power cells are located on its lower back. Fire Sacs, armored storage tanks containing Blaze, are built into its chassis, similar to Fire Bellowbacks. However, while the Fire Bellowback's tanks are prominently placed on its back and throat, the Fireclaw's tanks are seamlessly built into its shoulders and are much more damage resistant. Furthermore, while the Fire Bellowback and Freeze Bellowback are identical in all respects except for their respective elements of Fire and Freeze.

## Behaviour

Like most large machines, Fireclaws are solitary and almost never seen in groups. They are only known to be found in The Cut; the region's geography prevents them from entering nearby territories, such as the Nora Sacred Lands to the south. However, they can be found around forest regions in Horizon Forbidden West, notably near Thornmarsh.

As previously stated, Fireclaws have a secondary purpose as acquisition machines, and are classified as such. They can be frequently seen mining soil for mineral resources at their respective sites, in the same manner as Tramplers. They also scavenge destroyed machines, like Scrappers or Glinthawks.

## Abilities

Like the short-faced bear, the Fireclaw is able to adopt both a Quadrupedal and Bipedal stance. In either stance it employs fast, relentless and deadly fire-based range attacks and fire-augmented melee attacks. Its capacity to sustain damage is rivaled only by four other known machines. Its damage resistance is even greater than that of these machines, particularly against explosives.[2] Even if one of its flammable liquid tanks is punctured and explodes, the blast damage is minimal. Furthermore, Daemonic Fireclaws share the immunity of all Daemonic Machines to Corruption and Override, as well as a high resistance to Shock. If they are put into a Freeze state, they can melt themselves free by creating a cloud of fire around themselves, provided that their Fire Unit is intact. Additionally, they are quite agile in spite of their size, able to run and jump with surprising speed. If given the opportunity, they can also rip off ropes attached to them from the Ropecaster if they haven't been fully tied down.

### Stances

The Fireclaw can switch between Quadrupedal and Bipedal stances, each with different sets of unique melee and ranged attacks. The Quadrupedal stance is the default posture when roaming around undisturbed, with enhanced agility and traversal options to spring up lower cliffs and leap over gaps to chase Aloy across the environment. During combat, it will typically adopt this four-legged posture when far away, and make use of the improved mobility to close the distance. Most of its attacks while in this stance are melee-focused, repositioning itself with quick tumble-dodges to keep up the pressure, but it can also use two long-ranged terrestrial attacks of small clustered lava-spewing geysers or a single volcano which shoots out burning rocks in a radius.

The Bipedal stance severely limits the Fireclaw's mobility but adds enough ranged attacks to compensate for this drawback. The Fireclaw tends to adopt this upright two-legged posture at close to mid-range, aggressively chaining together multiple claw slashes in a row and weaponizing the Fire Unit mounted on its torso to spew out streams of burning flames. If Aloy is out of reach from the Fireclaw's close-range attacks, it can scrape at the ground with its wrist-mounted grinders to lob molten chunks of solidified dirt and rock in her direction or launch itself in the air and come crashing down back-first at Aloy's position to crush her under its massive weight.

### Rock Shield

Once its maximum health has dropped to the 60% mark or below, the Fireclaw gains the ability to tear out a large circular slab of rock from the ground as a makeshift shield against incoming projectiles or bludgeon weapon. It's still possible to damage exposed limbs and potentially induce a Stagger state that forces it to drop the rock. There are three follow-up attacks that the Fireclaw tends to perform while it's currently holding a Rock Shield at different ranges: an advancing charge to close the gap, a descending overhead slam at close-range, and a long-distance hurling throw. The rock deals Fire damage and generates lingering Fire Patches upon impact, which can be permanently disabled by destroying the Fireclaw's Fire Unit.

### Fire Storm

After sustaining enough damage, the Fireclaw ignites its chassis and generates a fiery aura around itself which damages upon contact and negates severity buildup or currently applied status effects. This frenzied state is automatically triggered once the Fireclaw's total health reaches 70% of its maximum value and then again at 25%. Destroying the Fire Unit permanently deactivates this special attack.

### Weaknesses

As a fire-based machine, Fireclaws are naturally susceptible to Freeze attacks. However, their damage resistance renders subsequent attacks in this state much less effective than on other machines, and their size makes inflicting a Freeze state on it a lengthy process; even high-powered Freeze weapons, such as the Icerail, take several seconds to do so. Destroying the Fire Sacs located on its shoulders disables the fire augmentation of melee attacks, and destroying the Fire Unit located on its chest disables the ranged terrestrial attacks, exploding and inflicting a temporary Burn state, but this state causes minimal damage and quickly dissipates. Provided both Fire Sacs and Fire Unit have been destroyed, a permanent Burn state will be inflicted on the Fireclaw, eventually killing it. However the machine's tough armor plating makes this difficult, and its high capacity to sustain damage endures a lengthy period of time elapses before it is destroyed.

The power cells located on its upper and lower back have little protective armor, and can be overloaded via Shock Arrows, triggering an electrical explosion that stuns the machine; indeed this is the only possible way to electrically stun a Daemonic Fireclaw.

### Attacks

#### Both Stances

Melee
100 Fire per second (Fire Patches)
 **Fire Storm** | Fire

## Trivia

* Depending on the player's progress in the game, Aloy could technically be the first known member of the Hunters Lodge to take down a Fireclaw, which is arguably a more worthy game than Redmaw, the latest Sunhawk trophy. However, since the the Lodge's custom only allows Hawks to be promoted to Sunhawk, the feat would not be likely to affect her rank.
* Before the first encounter with a Fireclaw, HEPHAESTUS can be heard chanting a series of orders. This is HEPHAESTUS constructing the Fireclaws.
* During *The Frozen Wilds'* development, Fireclaws were referred to as LavaBears.
	+ Adding onto this, footage of an out-of-bounds developer testing area shows that another name for the Fireclaw was InfernoBear.
* The Fireclaw is the only machine seen to date with red armor plating. The exact significance of this is unclear, though it may be as simple as it just being the default appearance of its upgraded armor.
* Based on the evidence to date, real bears are among the animals that have not yet been reintroduced by the terraforming system (at least in the area of North America seen in-game) for reasons unknown. However, it is suspected that GAIA focused only on "prey" animals that could be a food source for humans, and did not introduce strong predators like bears that could be a threat to both humans and their food sources.
* During combat, Fireclaws can sometimes be spotted running a 'paw' across their face, as if wiping away blood or mucus.