Horizon Forbidden West - Ultra Hard (New Game) - Arena (Skilled) Ring of Fire

The Arena is seriously hard, probably the hardest Horizon content. I dislike nearly everything about its design, particular the way it costs at least 3250 Metal Shards, and that's assuming you use save scumming to make sure you win each challenge on your "first attempt". Given this game's already demanding farming requirements, this is just vulgarly unnecessary.

That said, there are a few tricks that will allow you to spam your way through many of the challenges even on Ultra Hard, although it will mean putting the Arena off until so late in the game that you essentially can't use any of the Legendary rewards, rendering the whole thing a pointless "grind for the sake of grinding" ordeal. In other words, if you can beat the Arena to get the reward, you could have beaten the rest of the game so easily the rewards don't give you anything.

The one saving grace to the Arena is that any resources you consume are restored after an encounter. This means you need to develop a strategy that leans in hard on burning the most expensive gear possible. This is going to mean Spike Throwers, Blastsling Bombs, Traps, Potions, and Smoke Bombs spammed as much as possible.

Spike Trap is a powerful move, especially in conjunction with a maxed-out Skykiller. It can either be used in a traditional trapping method or simply used as a more powerful direct attack against enemies. By using Large Stamina Potions you can really pump out damage with Spike Trap, especially against Brittle enemies, so having a maxed out Sun Scourge with all Ice +15% Coils is also a plus.

For armor I like the level 4 or 5 Utaru Winterweave. This armor has great defenses, but more importantly raises your Smoke Bomb capacity to 12. These are extremely abusable in the Arena and you should probably be using one every time the cooldown is up. I've put my usual Low Health Defense +2 and Low Health Ranged +2 weaves on my armor, but I'm not really finding it safe to operate at low health during most Arena challenges so I might should rethink this. Maybe a Low Health Regen +2 instead of Ranged, at least, to try to buy as much survival potential as possible. It would also be better to use the Tenakth Vanquisher at max level, but I'm not going to use any Arena rewards since I can't assume the order you might purchase things.

The most annoying aspect of this challenge for me is just that the Scorchers start too far away from you for as tight as the time limit is. Other than that, I miss this first Scorcher with half of my attacks or this should have went much faster. A single shot from the level 5 Sun Scourge will Brittle a Scorcher, so definitely leverage that for quick kills.

Due to the progressive reward system, t's after this challenge (halfway through, 10/20) that you can finally afford your first Legendary Weapon as an Arena prize. I would probably recommend going for The Blast Forge first, since it's hugely helpful for farming Fireclaws and Slaughterspines.