BLOODBORNE given Feb '15 Euro/NA release date, deemed worthy of own thread by ilxor

Took several tries, but I finally beat the Shadow Ninjas. They were kind of a pain, but in terms of strategy they were similar to other bosses: avoid the ranged attacks, and stun lock the enemy into submission. In this case, that meant taking down the sword ninja first, then the fire sword ninja, then the fireball ninja, pretty much in order of their aggression. Used up a ton of blood vials though, and I was surprised not to see a NPC summons. But they're done, and now there's another area (Bergenworth? a name I've encountered a few times already, at least) I've explored a little, one with these giant bug things that suck on your face and inject some sort of poison - is this frenzy? - and then some giant monster with a venus fly trap maw that shoots fireballs and spits ... something. But I got it down, eventually, and unlocked the first shortcut to/through a castle/house. God knows what's in store for me there.

That might be my favorite boss fight! The Ornstein & Smough of this game, where it forces you to keep track of multiple opponents and possibly not lock on (and that's exactly the strategy I remember using too). I'm kinda glad there's not an NPC summon, since diluting their aggression would ruin the mechanics of the fight.

The next boss though, whew.

Looking it up after the fact, apparently there are two potential NPC summons, but you have to be using one of the specific runes. Thanks a lot, aggressively oblique and obscure game.

The next boss though, whew.

Y'all are making me concerned.

Wow, really struggling with the NPC that comes down the stairs in Byrgenwerth, who keeps kicking my ass. I came really close one time but, impatiently, neglected to clear the area first, and while running away aggroed three (!)of those things with many eyes. I barely escaped, but used up all of my blood vials and have to go farm some in a different place before I even try again.

blood vial farming is obnoxious, dunno why they went back to that crap system when DkS already had figured it out with the flasks

The most annoying thing about it is that, as helpful as auto refilling is, you never really know how many you have backed up. You seem to always carry the "max" amount - 20 or whatever - until you don't, and it's only when the number keeps going down that you realize you're running out.

Does it show the full stockpile if you look in the inventory? That's how it is in DS3, I have 600 firebombs, until somehow I don't.

Hmm, good question. I'll have to stock up and see if it changes in there, or if it goes to the magic chest. Though honestly, I don't see why they would even have that storage chest if you could just accumulate extra stuff in your inventory. In fact, I think that's how it must work here, too, you have a ton of stuff stored that keeps refilling the inventory on your person, but only until you don't. The problem is that, unlike most stuff in your inventory, you really need blood vials. Or at least I do. But paying for them seems silly.

I totally cheesed that NPC, by the way. I just hit her a bunch, ran away, then did it again when she went back up the stairs. Am I proud? No. But I am done with her. Once I figure out the blood vial situation I will I guess take on the next boss. I assume that's what's coming up, because I saw a summons sign by those doors.

I went vial farming for a little while, then went back to the inventory box and it didn't show my surplus. Unless I'm missing something, the only way to know if you're running low is if you're running low. There's no way to know how much surplus you have. So, definitely annoying:

OK, that spider monster is some bullshit.

^

I honestly don't even know the right approach, it's among the first enemies in all of these Souls games I'd consider an outright troll. The enemy is not fast or particularly strong or interesting. Its minion don't do much. The level itself is a wash of nothing. The boss just sits there like a lump while you try to take out these waves of baby spiders (that are super strong from the front), and then, even if you are patient and make some progress and you think you've finally got a leg up, it just drops a bunch of magic rocks on your head and kills you. Can I summon an umbrella?

If I may...

fuck a vacuous spider

― Keith Moom (Neil S), Sunday, April 19, 2015 8:56 PM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't remember exactly what my winning strategy was...some combination of use the Tonitrus, kill most/all of the baby spiders first (from behind), and something something something meteors? Also you can keep attacking for a bit even after he appears to have disappeared/teleported.

I think you run towards the boss for some of the meteor patterns and away for others, can't remember which is which though.

i could maybe replay this
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Sunday, September 27, 2020

Been playing Mortal Shells instead, which I should talk about on here somewhere. It's very good!

xpost That's the lightning mace, right? I think I have that one. Probably better than wasting bolt paper on my saw.

yes to both.

This spider is such a waste of (real) time and (virtual) resources. I got it down to about a quarter health, but had used up almost all of my blood vials (again) getting there. And of course making you go back to the hunter's dream rather than simply rest at a bonfire and reset makes farming a huge PIA. Go back to hunter's dream, immediately warp to somewhere else, get some blood vials, back to hunter's dream, repeat. It's just so tedious, especially since the boss fight itself is literally an endurance test: just panic roll, over and over, through the little spiders, through the crystals, fingers crossed you luck out and don't get hit, then race to the spider and hit it as much as your stamina will let you before you race out of there again and start the rolling. Which is to say, sure I'll beat it eventually, sooner rather than later, but it will not be satisfying. Even the NPC summons is no help.

I tried using the thunder mace, but I was making more progress with my Ludwig's holy blade, untransformed (for speed). I tried it with bolt paper a couple of times, but I didn't want to totally run out, since that stuff is expensive.

haha, ok, and now it's dead. I sort of stumbled on what I was doing wrong just from writing the above. The secret (at least this time) was not to roll roll roll but run run run. So, rather than try to roll through attacks/spiders/crystals, better to just sprint and weave. I went back to the lightning mace, would lure the little spiders to me, then I would activate electricity, run in, hit a few times, then run away, always making sure to have enough stamina to sprint through the magic attacks. And of course I went through, like, 15 blood vials, so now I have to farm again. Also, the game just got really fucking weird and scary and I have no idea what's going on, so it's time for a short break. Looks like there are at least three places for me to go right now, the optional spooky carriage castle area, the area near the great cathedral that I discovered earlier and was teleported to just now, and this unseen village, where, just getting to the lamp, it seems that enemies ... respawn? Also, there are giant monsters in the air.

it seems that enemies ... respawn?

hint: remember the necromancers in the darks souls catacombs?

lol no, but looking it up ... I do now.

btw one of the funniest things about these games is how they always talk up, like, Grumpus the Great Scholar, and then you meet Grumpus and it's a giant dragon. Like, how did the dragon read all those books, it's a fucking dragon, it can't even turn the pages.

lol because it's always a human who was studying how to turn into a boss (dragon)

Seath was just a particularly inept dragon rite

Strengths: betrayal, being able to somehow read books

Weaknesses: having skin or whatever

I'll probably play more of this today, but glancing at a progress guide there does seem to be a number of options right now: I can do the castle, I can be teleported to ... nightmare world? I can be teleported to a lecture hall (?), I can activate the DLC (and I think I have to do that before I fight the/a final boss, right?). I can try a chalice dungeon or two (to just get stuff, right?).

Yeah, if you finish the game first, I think you need to go back through Vicar Amelia in ng+ to access the DLC.

the dlc is hard and doing it in early ng+ is generally advised against

cainhurst or lecture hall are safe choices. or try the dlc, even if it's too hard you get a few new weapons by exploring the starting area

Should I do any of that before I progress through ... Unseen Village? I think that's my most recent new lamp.

I believe Unseen Village leads to another optional area, and Lecture Hall is the main route. So yeah I would do Cainhurst or the Village first probably.

lecture hall is the optional one, it leads to amygdala boss, unseen village is now progress since rom is dead (paarl is optional)

Ahhh my bad. But doesn't Unseen Village eventually lead to Lecture Hall 2nd floor (and 1st floor is optional)?

OK, so to get to the optional Lecture Hall I need to get warped by the giant Lovecraftian monster hovering over the temple on the way down to Unseen Village, right? The same way a different creature warps me to the DLC? Speaking of which, there's another one: how would anyone have known that to get to the DLC you have to get warped there by a monster that was, until this point, invisible, out of the way and, if "discovered" earlier in the game, just a menacing portal that kills you?

I can't remember if they released the info, or just waited for the first person to find it via experimentation and spread it across the internet. It sort makes sense in retrospect, since there was precedent for getting picked up by an amygdala and warped somewhere, and that's the first one you find.

But when you first find it, it's invisible! Just a warping void. Those other things that "warp" you earlier are kidnapping you in a sack, so hats off to whoever systematically went around trying to get kidnapped or otherwise warped to other places. The illusory walls of Bloodborne. ;)

Supposedly if for whatever reason your insight is super high early game those monsters, big and small, all become visible.

they tell you about the DLC in a message in the hunter's dream when you either buy it or get to the point in the game when it's accessible if you'd already bought it, in much the same way they tell you how to get to cainhurst in the summons' item description

"a creature will take you away outside oedon chapel" or something

Oh right, there's a new messenger in the Dream, forgot about that. Yeah after DS1 I think they started making the dlc access a *bit* more scrutable. I do love that they insist on a weird in-game mechanic rather than a boring menu option or something.

I explored a bit of Unseen Village, Castle, Lecture Hall and Nightmare World. It's kind of crazy how many seemingly random path choices there are to go here, not even including the DLC or chalice dungeons. Some levels seem to be optional, some seem to be optional early but required later, some like the lecture hall just now don't seem to serve any purpose except to get you to (in this case) Nightmare World. And there's just so much lore all over the place that seems barely strung together by a thread, but that's part of the fun. Dark Souls 3 came after this, didn't it? I thiiiiiiiink I might prefer that one to this one, but so far Bloodborne is still pretty awesome.

bloodborne is my favourite and i think i found the game after defeating fucking rom just an absolute blast - i’d found my rhythm by this stage, dex build and weapon selection was getting a real shape and flow to it etc and the whole oppressive but attenuated and fragmented sense of lore, that begins to shift again after the shift in the world is brilliant.

I think I more or less have a quality build, with high strength and slightly less high skill, and hard-capped vitality with a hint of extra endurance, which seems to be doing the trick, but I haven't yet committed to either the saw blade or Ludwig's holy blade, both of which seem to good for certain things. Now I'm at the point where I can upgrade one of them to a +7, but I'm not sure which to go for first. I also had a fire gem in the Ludwig for a bit, which gave it fire powers, but I *think* (and yeah, these things are inscrutable, at least to me) the trade off was losing any strength scaling. So I took off the fire gem, which is a bummer, because a fire sword was cool. I'm still not convinced how much the higher resistances of various outfits matter much, either. Kind of like Dark Souls, what you're wearing only seems to matter a tiny bit, or at least much less than a good defense, and any particular benefit might really ultimately boil down to a tiny extra sliver of life, which can be helpful, when you need, but is hard to notice otherwise.

I've got to admit, as someone that plays exclusively offline, I appreciate the challenge of some of these NPC hunters. Exploring Nightmare World, for example, I hit that early point where an aggro NPC attacks me, and I was shocked when, in the middle of the fight, a second aggro NPC joined the fray and killed me. On a subsequent attempt I managed to whittle down the first NPC quickly before the other guy attacked, killed the first NPC but then, while battling the second NPC, panic rolled off the bridge into what appeared to be a poison swamp. I quickly grabbed a couple of items then homeward boned, but when I returned it seemed, at least for now, that that second NPC might have been killed offscreen or is otherwise AWOL. Or maybe I just haven't advanced to the exact spot that triggers him?

I should also note that despite all the game left to play it feels like I'm already at a place where souls don't matter much, as I'm probably leveled enough. For that matter, unlike the DS games you don't accumulate tons of extra stuff to sell (which you don't need to do, because souls don't matter much), nor do you get that many weapons, nor do you end up buying many supplies, because although souls don't matter, at the same time the store is really expensive.

The cool supplies are in the insight-based store (up on the ledge), right?

Dunno! What makes them cool? But for that matter, insight seems harder to replenish than blood echoes.

Lead Elixir enables poise in BB, that can be fun against hunters. Others are mostly useful for pvp, like the invisibility elixir and the one that stops people from healing.

Beast blood pellets are used in speed run strats mostly, you can take down most bosses in seconds if you do it right.

Otherwise it's upgrade items and materials needed to reach all the chalice dungeons.

But yeah, I think insight is finite in an offline game, but online you can get it from pvp and helping people with bosses.

Iirc Humanity is a lot more available in online Dark Souls, too, but again iirc there were plenty of places to harvest it in the offline game, not least because you actually need it to summon even NPC help and kindle fires, etc. In Bloodborne you don't need it, per se, at least not more than 1, to level up, but making you spend a finite or hard to come by resource at a store for special stuff seems kind of dumb mechanic to me. I guess some enemies do drop madman's knowledge or whatever it's called.

That's honestly an element of these games that I *don't* like, these sort of pointless tasks necessary to do important stuff. Like, you have to go to the distant Tower of Blargh to get the magic rock to allow you to buy magic shoes to ... climb ladders or whatever. I suppose on paper it's kind of perverse and funny, but in practice it's just a pain.

Ooof, that Martyr boss in the castle is tough.

minor spoilers for cainhurst area: there's a secret right after the boss fight, check the faq before you leave

lol I have to beat him first, but I think I'm putting that off, because there's no way I'm beating him with less than, say, 20 blood vials, which makes him less of a priority.