How to Get Echo Shells in Horizon Zero Dawn

In Horizon Zero Dawn, you’ll come across a variety of different resources that help you craft useful items. While you may already know how to find resources and components such as Ridge-Wood and Wire, you might be wondering how to get Echo Shells. In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about them.

Below, we’ll cover everything from what enemies drop Echo Shells to what they’re used for. We’ll also share a good farming location if you want to get them quickly. 

What are Echo Shells?

Echo Shells are an incredibly useful resource that you’ll need if you plan on crafting various items. According to the in-game description, Echo Shells are used for the following:

• Crafting ammunition
• Crafting items
• Trading with Merchants
• Selling for Metal Shards

Particularly, upgrading the Potions Pouch requires a handful of Echo Shells, which will come in handy when dealing with the game’s tougher enemies. Aside from that, you’ll need Echo Shells when constructing Tearblast Arrows and the Forgefire Ammo Pouch (available as part of the Frozen Wilds DLC).

In short, Echo Shells are an extremely important item that you’ll need to look out for and possibly farm to ensure you’ve got the best gear. 

How to Farm Echo Shells

Farming in RPGs is necessary at times, depending on what you’re trying to craft. In Horizon Zero Dawn, you don’t actually need to farm for Echo Shells, but doing so will certainly make your life easier — especially early on.

One great (but boring) way of farming Echo Shells is to visit the Campfire in the image above. It’s just south of a Ravager site in the middle area of the map. 

When you spawn, head north, and you’ll see a group of Shell-Walker Crates, which has a chance of containing Echo Shells, along with a lot of other useful items.

To effectively farm Echo Shells, follow the steps below:

• Run over to the crates
• Grab what you can
• Run back to the Campfire
• Quicksave
• Go into options and press “Restart from save”
• Rinse and repeat

The spawn rate for Echo Shells isn’t amazing, but it’s a fairly consistent method that granted us a handful every few runs. While doing this, you’ll likely gather Metal Shards as well, which you can sell to merchants for Echo Shells, so make sure you do this after a while.

There are other crates around the map that you can use this method on, but we like the location above since the crates are so close to the Campfire. 

A less effective (but more fun) method of farming is to take down certain enemies that have a chance of dropping Echo Shells. We had the most luck with Longlegs, but the following enemies are reported to drop Echo Shells, as well:

• Behemoth
• Longleg
• Rockbreaker
• Stalker
• Stormbird
• Thunderjaw

All enemy types can be spotted on the map, so just do a quick search to find their locations. You can scan an enemy beforehand if you aren’t sure which is which, since different enemies tend to travel in packs.

Don’t Want to Farm? No Problem

The nice thing is that you don’t have to farm to get your hands on Echo Shells in Horizon Zero Dawn. If you loosely prioritize taking out the list of enemies above, you’ll already be off to a great start without having to farm.

Better yet is that if you simply play the game, you’ll stumble across lots of Metal Shards, which can be sold to Merchants for Echo Shells. It takes 50 Metal Shards to get 50 Echo Shells on Normal difficulty, while Ultra Hard Mode requires 150. 

You can sell most items you stumble upon for Metal Shards, too, so there are lots of ways to eventually get your hands on Echo Shells by simply playing the game. 

You should have everything you need to know about Echo Shells in Horizon Zero Dawn. For more Horizon coverage, make sure you take a look at the hub page here, where you’ll find a slew of guides to help you get through the game.