Bloodborne

[guigui]

...the guy with the Gatling gun...

Damned, is this game Fallout now ?

[iconoclast]

BTW, this might explain the extremely varied experience people are having with bosses: http://www.reddit.com/r/bloodborne/comm ... easy_mode/

The videos he posted is proof enough, but I'm almost 100% certain this is legit. There's a huge difference between some of the bosses, and it even affects the regular enemies. The church giants for example would never do anything but their fast overheard attacks, but after I reset the game, they started using their full moveset again.

It sucks, too, because I really like the standby feature on the Xbone/PS4. Too bad it breaks this game.

[Immryr]

Man, I don't know why Paarl was giving me any trouble the other day. He was a pushover when I went back to it today*. Made it past the one reborn today too. Managed to beat him first try. I think maybe they went overboard with how easy it is to stagger some bosses in this game.

I also got invaded for the first time today, and won! Action packed day so far.



*and no, my ps4 has not been left on or in stand by mode! :p

[CMoon]

I'm not playing entirely blind but I really don't care which ending I get. I didn't buy a ps4 just to play this game once. Really interested in trying out an arcane build. I made a straight-up STR build this time which means kirkhammer + cannon. Wish I'd discovered the cannon earlier....

[Immryr]

i was originally going to wait until I had completed my first playthrough before watching or reading anything about the game, but I caved in and watched some of the ENB episodes for the areas I have already done. just as I thought, I have missed a huge amount of npc interactions and killed a couple of people off. I'm pleased there is so much more here than I naturally found, but man, they're pretty well hidden. I managed to miss the dude in oedon chapel until after I had already sent 3 people to iosefka so the only person I have there is the rude guy.

[Necronopticous]

You guys...the Shadows of Yharnam at level 4.

[CMoon]

You guys...the Shadows of Yharnam at level 4.

Good luck with this. I've been wondering what kind of legs bloodborne will have once people get past the initial novelty. People are saying pvp is questionable and the covenants are trash. Perhaps low level and speed runs will be the way to go.

[MJR]

I'm actually bit miffed at the difficulty. Problem is, I play alone, I end up stacking insight > which makes game harder, I started run out of blood vials > farming them becomes a chore.

If I spend insights on multiplayer, I end up with (more often than not) with some overly helpful over-levelled mega-character who one-shots everything for me and kills the boss before I get even a chance to do anything.

So it's either stupid easy or then it's vial-farming with too much insight= repetitive and stupid hard

[Immryr]

just buy stuff from the insight shop then.

[MJR]

just buy stuff from the insight shop then.

Duh, didn't know there was one

[Immryr]

haha yeah, go out of the middle door in the building in the hunters dream. there is a bath thing there with stump messengers. you can buy stuff using insight, but they won't appear if you have less than 10.

[MJR]

haha yeah, go out of the middle door in the building in the hunters dream. there is a bath thing there with stump messengers. you can buy stuff using insight, but they won't appear if you have less than 10.

well thats why! Thanks for your help

[Immryr]

farming blood vials can be a chore, someone up thread did mention a good farming route for them though. other than that I would just advise whenever you level up, spend your left over souls on vials.

[CMoon]

farming blood vials can be a chore, someone up thread did mention a good farming route for them though. other than that I would just advise whenever you level up, spend your left over souls on vials.

Yes, absolutely. You might be thinking 'I don't want to buy blood vials', but whether they are vials or blood echoes, the real currency is time. Later in the game there are spots you can farm for huge amounts of blood echoes very quickly. It is still annoying and I don't like the mechanic, but once you get to the point that vials are a real problem, getting blood echoes isn't.

I'm actually bit miffed at the difficulty. Problem is, I play alone, I end up stacking insight > which makes game harder

Although it was confirmed some enemies have more moves with more insight, I don't think it works like rank. Things I noticed:
1. 'Bagmen' show up. No big deal.
2. Frenzy goes up faster
3. The dudes with hats in cathedral ward learn a couple spells
4. You start seeing some things that weren't there before.

I don't think it actually makes the bosses harder; there's been some talk about it, but I don't think it was every confirmed.

Perhaps low level and speed runs will be the way to go.

Started watching speed runs yesterday, only to realize at this point they might as well be called 'glitch' runs with massive sequence skips and a dupe glitch.

Thing is, this game doesn't have a drake sword or even black knight weapons, so that means having powerful weapons will require getting all the upgrade materials. I haven't messed with an arcane build yet, but this might be the way to go--maybe take out all the big bosses with the flame sprayer (but this too needs to be leveled up!) I haven't touched arcane so I have no idea if the spells have enough power behind them to kill bosses (IE something like a pyromancer run.) Worried that a fast route that avoids unnecessary bosses will not produce enough materials for upgrading weapons.

[Necronopticous]

1. 'Bagmen' show up. No big deal.

I believe this one is actually tied to moon phase/beating a certain boss, rather than Insight.

So I've been cracking at the Shadows of Yharnam on my level 4 game for cumulatively about 6 hours now. I've gotten very close, but Jesus Christ. It's actually unbelievable how nuanced and difficult this fight is.

[KindGrind]

1. 'Bagmen' show up. No big deal.

I believe this one is actually tied to moon phase/beating a certain boss, rather than Insight.

So I've been cracking at the Shadows of Yharnam on my level 4 game for cumulatively about 6 hours now. I've gotten very close, but Jesus Christ. It's actually unbelievable how nuanced and difficult this fight is.

Hang in there!

I'll give this a go now that I'm done with my first playthrough.

Out of curiosity, what weapon are you using? Do you actually have options, or there's only one you can potentially wield?

[Necronopticous]

You have 4 weapon options: the three starter weapons, and the Saw Spear. I chose the Saw Cleaver to start, and upgraded the Hunter Axe alongside it. Once I got them both to +6, I made a firm decision to make the axe my primary.

I finally beat the Shadows of Yharnam. What a rush! It took me hours to come up with and execute my winning strategy. Crazy stuff! I'm excited to have someone else joining me in the challenge. Let me know your progress as you go!

[iconoclast]

I'll probably start a SL4 run in a few days. I rented Final Fantasy Type-0 before I even thought about buying a PS4, so I'm going to try and power through that now that I've got my Bloodborne platinum.

The chalice dungeons suck, by the way. The boss fights are decent enough, but if you've played through one dungeon, you've played them all. They just copy & paste the same sections in slightly different orders. By the end I was just sprinting past all of the enemies until I found the switch that opens the boss door.

[Immryr]

haven't played this for a couple of days..... got through the first part of the menstrual nightmare today, the boss fight against micolash was amazing if you ask me. it of course wasn't hard, but really, really atmospheric. if this is bloodborne's answer to a bed of chaos sort of puzzle-ish boss then i definitely approve. really atmospheric, the music alone was enough to give you a heart attack. hoping to get this first play through finished in the next couple of days so i can start watching speed runs and other content as well as playing through again with a different build.

[CMoon]

Well I'm stuck at Gehrman but have basically done everything else (save the chalice dungeons...) Wanted to mention that at this point you can grind indefinitely at 'mergo's loft middle' (pretty well publicized on reddit/youtube), but had no idea how powerful this was with all three moon runes. Good luck finding that third one, but if you have all three it seems to be a 60% increase in blood echoes...although there maybe some multiplicative effect. Regardless I can do the well publicized run with the three pigs for 84K which takes about 1 minute. Its cool you can make the pigs fight the shadow of yarnam dudes. Also as an added perk, the shadow guys all drop blood vials.

Obviously you don't unlock this path until late, and when you first unlock it you won't have the third moon rune, plus the run will be hard. Regardless, I'm not trying to just mindlessly level up but rather buy all the gear I didn't have money for before.

Edit: Finished the game. Just played a bit more aggressively. Wondering whether to push on with the chalice dungeons in ng+ or make a new build, preferably arcane.

[Necronopticous]

I finished my level 4 game this weekend. I did all currently-known side quests and killed all bosses with the exception of Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos. Just as in Demon's and Dark Souls, playing through at base level gave me a whole new respect and appreciation for the game's immaculate design. I highly everyone give it a go once they finish the game normally.

I'm already planning my next run. I'm really interested in the Chikage and Blades of Mercy weapons, so I'm going to build a lowish level character around one of those two (probably aiming for 20 or so) so I can do what I did in Dark Souls and have a crazy powerful character that can co-op early to mid game bosses with maximum efficiency.

[CMoon]

I'm really interested in the Chikage and Blades of Mercy weapons

It seems like there is an extremely powerful bloodtinge build with Chikage and Evelyn. Chikage might be the most powerful weapon in the game fully upgraded with high bloodtinge when the sword is transformed. The evelyn is the highest bloodtinge scaling gun in the game and hits like a truck when fully upgraded (200 or so?) I'm doing an arcane build now since I just finished a strength build and wanted an opportunity to use the hunter tools.

Really scared to take it on so low level, especially since it outs using any weapon with high endurance requirements. Did you use runes to get around this?

[Necronopticous]

Really scared to take it on so low level, especially since it outs using any weapon with high endurance requirements. Did you use runes to get around this?

Eh, yes and no. I just always equipped the best suited runes that I had for each encounter that gave me any resistance. You only have 4 weapon choices that you can even possibly use as a base level Waste of Skin, and managing your stamina with them is just one more aspect to figuring out each encounter. The anti-clockwise metamorphosis runes definitely help a bit with that once you get them, but they definitely weren't a crutch.

[evil_ash_xero]

I've beaten the game twice now. First time, semi blind (very semi), except for finding the secret areas and bosses. Second time, I searched out all the NPCs.

I was wondering, I am wanting to experiment with weapons more, on my New Game Plus, but I'm not sure what's best. I like to have a fast weapon, that does good damage, so I use the cleaver. For the heavy weapon, I use the Hunter Axe.

I have bought all the weapons, and I'm pretty interested in the Scythe type weapon you get at the end of the game.

Some people seem to like the Blade of Mercy a lot, but what is the appeal of it? It's fast, but it's not doing as much damage as my cleaver. Then again, it's nowhere near as upgraded.

Give me some opinions on what weapons you prefer. Mainly because those Blood Chunks are a rarity, and I can't just be spending them out willy nilly. Also, is the Evelyn a good gun? It looks to me like a better version of the pistol. Obviously the repeater is better, but it uses two bullets a shot.

Also, how come I never see anyone use the Cainhurst Armor? It's got 120 defense, mang. And it's other stats aren't bad at all either.

[Immryr]

a few points: obviously a weapon won't do as much damage as one which is more upgraded, even more so if you don't have the right stats for it. it seems in this game basically any weapon is viable as long as you set your stats up for it.

the evelyn is good if you have a lot of points in blood tinge, so maybe if you're doing a build with that and the chikage it could be great.

blood chunks are pretty rare, I'm not sure what enemy has the highest drop raet for them, but the statue looking guys in cainhurst can definitely be farmed for them.

armour is just for fashion.

[CMoon]

Blades of mercy might be good for inflicting poison.

I'm working on an arcane build and followed some of the advice about making an elemental weapon, but I'll admit to being confused about how elemental scaling works. In previous souls games, elemental weapons didn't scale with any stat, but apparently elemental weapons now scale with arcane. In leveling arcane, I'm not really seeing a huge boost. Also, arcane blood gems change the damage type from elemental to arcane, effectively cancelling out elemental damage. I thought arcane might just be for scaling of physical damage or elemental, but it now seems like arcane damage is its own damage type, since physical attack is listed separately from arcane attack.

Man, I feel like I'm back to playing Demon's souls when we didn't understand the weapon upgrade system...

[CMoon]

So as the dust is starting to settle with this game, there are a few things that haven't turned up yet; and I'll admit to being a little surprised:

1) Hyper-mode build. Nothing like RTS or clever rat ring that I have seen in the game.
For those of you thinking the beast claw might offer something like hypermode, I'm afraid not. In fact it looks like beasthood/beast claw is sort of pointless.

2) Level-independent damage dealing 'system', IE...
a) something like the pyromancy flame
b) non-scaling weapons that are purely upgrade based (ie elemental weapons)

3) The existence of any sort of drake sword/black knight type weapon for speed running. No 'partially upgraded' weapons that you can do a suicide run for.

4) 'Early access' to 'item discovery' boosting stats. Grinding Cainhurst for chunks seems very doable except you might as well push on to Rom for access to the eye rune.

5) Various gem stones that make certain builds viable. Particularly elemental.

Part of the beauty of previous From titles was the ability to approach the game so many different ways. This flexibility allowed for speed running, low level runs, and access to virtually all the weapons before mid-game. You could also have a fully upgraded weapon by mid-game, or go all-out with hyper-mode if you were good enough (IE, die with one hit.) First time players would play the game more conventionally, but experienced players would discover how to get around the standard grind and take on the game their own way. As of right now, I feel like there is going to be none of that. The fact the game is more arcadey opens it up to people like our own Necronopticous beating it at level 4, but this is pure skill versus flexibility within the game that allows for multiple play styles. I really want to see some speed runs that aren't glitch based.

I hope I'm wrong on a lot of this, especially the hyper-mode thing. Somethings are encouraging like how early you can get to Cainhurst--critical for arcane and bloodtinge builds! I'm feeling certain that beastmode will be changed based on how worthless it seems to be. Even though the dust is settling, its really hard to say what DLC will add to the game, especially if you can get to it early.

I'll freely admit to not understanding a lot of the game yet and really haven't explored the chalice dungeons significantly.

[evil_ash_xero]

This game rocks, but it does need some DLC, and some tweaking here and there, to make it as re-playable as the other Miyazaki games.

Still, I keep playing it over and over. But God, they need to fix the online. I ring that bell over and over, and nothing. I keep trying to co-op, with this guy from England, but we just stand around for minutes, with nothing happening.

Maybe some of you guys could add me up. I'm evil_ash_xero

Shocking, I know. It might be capitalized. I can't quite remember. But it's that.
Let me know you're from Shmups, and I'll gladly let my brethren join me in jolly cooperation.

[Necronopticous]

Part of the beauty of previous From titles was the ability to approach the game so many different ways. This flexibility allowed for speed running, low level runs, and access to virtually all the weapons before mid-game. You could also have a fully upgraded weapon by mid-game, or go all-out with hyper-mode if you were good enough (IE, die with one hit.) First time players would play the game more conventionally, but experienced players would discover how to get around the standard grind and take on the game their own way. As of right now, I feel like there is going to be none of that. The fact the game is more arcadey opens it up to people like our own Necronopticous beating it at level 4, but this is pure skill versus flexibility within the game that allows for multiple play styles. I really want to see some speed runs that aren't glitch based.

I hope I'm wrong on a lot of this, especially the hyper-mode thing. Somethings are encouraging like how early you can get to Cainhurst--critical for arcane and bloodtinge builds! I'm feeling certain that beastmode will be changed based on how worthless it seems to be. Even though the dust is settling, its really hard to say what DLC will add to the game, especially if you can get to it early.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit. My wife & I have now played through (at least most of) the game cumulatively about 6 or 7 times with myriad approaches, so I feel like I have enough exposure to have a fairly complete opinion of the game now.

First, you're right about hyper mode unless they buff beast blood pellets. That said, it isn't really as important as it was in the Souls games for a couple of reasons. The most important one being that the starter trick weapons (especially the Hunter Axe) do excellent damage at +6 and beyond, even with abysmal base stats. You only have to beat 2 bosses to get a weapon to +6, or zero bosses if you jump the fence to Iosefka's Clinic in Central Yharnam. In a way it's almost like every weapon is pretty close to being an elemental weapon from the previous games in terms of damage output--stat scaling really just adds a little bit more (quite a lot more for some of the non-starter trick weapons). Add this to the fact that enemies and bosses are, in general, much more easily staggered by your attacks (again, especially with the Hunter Axe), and often take critical damage thereafter. Aside from this, there aren't really any bosses in this game where less damage begins to break down the design. Take the 4 Kings from Dark Souls, for example; essentially a DPS race designed for a normally-leveled character with an average upgraded weapon. At base level you almost had to go hyper or Havel mode to even be able to stand a chance of keeping up with the spawn rate. In Bloodborne there is nothing of the sort. Less damage will force you to deal with the boss for a longer period of time, but that's sort of what you sign up for in a challenge run, and what really makes you appreciate the immaculate design when you see it through.

Bloodborne certainly is not as open as Demon's or Dark Souls was (although it's not too far off from Dark Souls if you don't take the Master Key). Initially I was pretty bothered by this, but I don't mind it too much now since I have a better understanding of what the triggers are and the shortest routes to them. At its core Bloodborne feels like 3 distinct pieces divided by Vicar Amelia and Rom. Contrast this with Dark Souls which was a much larger game, and really only ever felt like 2 distinct pieces divided only by Sen's Fortress. Not a whole lot different. Definitely hurts the replay value a little bit, but it doesn't even come close to killing it. I still don't feel like I've had my fill of the game.

Also, in regards to your comment about pure skill vs flexibility, thanks for the compliment, but while both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are certainly more flexible in the way that you can approach encounters in a base-level challenge run, I didn't feel that Bloodborne was necessarily more difficult to complete at base level than either of the other two. Shadow of Yharnam and (final boss spoiler)

Spoiler

Gehrman

both took me many attempts, but so did Flamelurker, Maneaters, the False King, Ornstein & Smough, 4 Kings, Gwyn, etc.

I'll freely admit to not understanding a lot of the game yet and really haven't explored the chalice dungeons significantly.

I also avoided the chalice dungeons for quite a while and only recently gave them a fair shot. My feeling now is that they just aren't good enough to be in this game. I think if Miyazaki firmly committed to making a full-on roguelike with Souls mechanics it could wind up being one of my favorite games of all time, but no matter how you look at it these things just come off as a boring underdeveloped slog when contrasted with the rest of the game. I don't think I will ever complete them all solo because they're really just not any fun, and despite them being touted pre-release as a good co-op opportunity, they are probably the brightest highlight of how broken the co-op system is in the game. No bueno.

My most recent playthrough was a bit of a bummer. My original plan was a level 16 Noble Scion with the Chikage & Evelyn (the lowest possible level to use this set). I soon discovered that this was a stupid idea because actually the Chikage & Evelyn both suck with 18 bloodtinge. In fact, the Evelyn is actually just a worse version of the Hunter's Pistol unless you have a significant investment in Bloodtinge. In light of this, I decided that to give the combo a real test drive, I should level up Bloodtinge until it felt worth it. In the end I wasn't really satisfied with the utility until I was all the way at level 50 (mostly Bloodtinge, but I did invest a few points into HP & Stamina because I felt crippled without it due to the way the Chikage works). The Evelyn at high bloodtinge is awesome. I actually killed Ebrietas almost purely by shooting her in her Cthulhu face. The Chikage, on the other hand, is a huge mixed bag. On one hand, killing shit with the iaido transformation attack (L1, then R1 before the normal unsheath happens) feels fucking great. The general moveset is pretty good, and you can absolutely wreck enemies and bosses with the two-handed mode with that Bloodtinge investment. The real problem is that, as expected, the katana takes its usual place as the ultra-low durability weapon of the game. You might not have even noticed when you played the game with any other weapon, but there is no Ed's Grindstone or Repair Powder in Bloodborne, and not to beat a dead horse, but the load times are fucking terrible, so playing with the Chikage means you're sitting on load screens like 60% of the time going back to the Hunter's Dream to repair it. It's bad enough that we can't refresh our blood vial & ammo stocks or teleport without going back to the Hunter's Dream, but having a whole other reason to be forced to do it is godawful and makes it very difficult to enjoy the fun aspects of the build.

Alternatively, my wife's latest character is built around the Blade of Mercy which seems to just be pure joy. Crazy fun moveset, and seemingly no unexpected downsides like the Chikage.

Still trying to decide what my next run is going to look like.

[CMoon]

what does a good blades of mercy build look like?

ENB has a new video where he shows off the BoM with beasthood. The problem with beasthood of course is that it involves keeping a 'combo' going, and this really only works with big lumbering bosses. I much prefer the hyper mode set-up where you are accepting 1 hit deaths for high damage output. The combo thing feels really limited to me.

Yeah, I'm trying to push my way through all the chalice dungeons, and I'll admit that it isn't something I see myself doing much of on other runs. Too bad it seems like the only way to get some of the better blood gems / weapons.