Melee pits can be found in many villages, towns and cities across the game in Horizon: Forbidden West. Each will come with a couple of challenges to take on but there can often be an issue where you become stuck in the pit unable to fight and unable to escape.
There are several causes to this, but the underlying issue is down to a quest somewhere that you started but failed to complete. It is more than likely one that you picked up around Chainscrape, early on in the game but it can vary. It can also vary on which quest you need to do to fix the problem.
When this bug occurs, you will be locked out of taking part in any Melee pit in the game. You will be able to interact, but when you enter the pit, it will be empty and you will have to reload a checkpoint to get out.
How to Get out of the Glitched Melee Pit
You are not able to fast travel while you are taking part in a Melee pit, so you will be unable to use this to break free. The only solution to get out of the problem immediately is to reload a previous save. The game makes plenty of autosaves, so hopefully, you do not lose a huge amount of progress.
Once you reload the game save, you will be free to roam around again but if you enter a melee pit again, the bug will reoccur, locking you inside and preventing you from completing the objective.
How To Fix The Melee Pit Bug
This has already been fixed, so if you download the latest patch for the game, the problem will be resolved. If you are in a position where you do not have the ability to update the game there is a fix that is a little harder to work out but you may get lucky if you have a good memory or have only just encountered the issue. Here is what to do if you can’t update the game.
Reload Recent Checkpoint
Reload your most recent checkpoint to break out of the melee pit. You will then need to find the quest that has triggered this bug. Welcome to the struggle!
Finding The Bugged Quest
The problem is caused by an incomplete quest that you started but did not finish. The melee pit does not seem to work as the game is primed for a different quest to be completed. For me, I returned to the board game in Chainscrape and finished the tutorial here. When I completed this quest, as you can see in the video below, more than one quest was un-glitched and marked as completed.
When I returned to the melee pit after fixing this, I was able to take part in the challenges and they worked as expected.
The best thing to do is to try and think of the last quest you did before this issue happened. For many, it is likely in and around Chainscrape, which should make it a little easier to get to the bottom of. Start completing all of the active quests you have in the area, starting with the board game and you will eventually figure out which quest has caused the problem.
