"...I'll send scouts ahead. Our force will assemble at the cliff above Red Echoes. We will launch our attack from there."

"I can help scout."

"Alright."

Excellent!

Uh, which way...?

"Do you want to scout together? I can show the way."

"Sounds good."

"Then follow me."

Gladly.

There's a lot of land between them and the Ring of Metal, much of it dangerous - though Vala knows the area well enough to thread them through the worst of the machine sites.

Aloy might have to come back later to some of these. Looks like there's lots of potential material.

"There's been a wider variety of machines lately, too - and they're getting deadlier."

"I thought some of them just didn't go into the Embrace which was why I hadn't seen them."

She shakes her head. "There's some that don't, or that are rare - like Grazers and Chargers - but that've been around for a while. Bellowbacks and Shell-Walkers are also older, though I've heard they used to be a lot less dangerous - they didn't used to have elemental attacks, or anything ranged."

"Must have been easy pickings."

"They're enormous, hard to kill, and also fast and dangerous to close with - and they pretty often have as many Watchers as other machines. Shell-Walkers especially are heavily armored, and the only way to really quickly damage a Bellowback is to attack its elemental sacs - which means you don't actually get much usable material from them, since all the Blaze will spill out."

"Well that's disappointing."

"Still, if you can swing it - the rewards are pretty great."

"Someday I'll find out."

"That kind of hunt's best to do with companions, you know."

"I always went solo."

"Doesn't mean you always have to go solo."

"New and exciting opportunities."

"Yeah."

Grin!

But that'll have to wait until their present task is finished.

It's a plan for later, then.