1683

You have to beat the Witch to get the rune tool.

1684

dammit!

1685

When you’re ready for the Forbidden Woods (after killing The Witches maybe?) head to the courtyard where there were two giants circling a circular area, remember that? Now they will be sitting down. One of them is sitting down blocking an entrance to a hallway. Head down that hallway and keep going until you get to the password door. Before killing Amelia you didn’t know that password, but for some reason you know it now.

Nice call ejecting to keep the 30,000 blood echoes. I ended up beating the Witch(es) the first time but if I hadn’t, I would have lost a lot as well. That bit me later on, I don’t think I’ve kept anything I earned in the Forbidden Woods, eventually lost it all. Same with the new area, the Unseen village.

But instead of backtracking I keep moving forward, because I figure there will be enemies later that I can farm if I want to level up some more.

1686

Because of the vision from the skull! Although why you’d know it was the password, passphrase really, is another thing.

1687

I remember the password door, wow, I already forgot. That happens when you take a 6 month break.

1688

I remembered the password door this time because I had just been there literally the day before. But I still didn’t remember where it was, and I ended up exploring all of Bloodborne open to me so far before I finally found it.

1689

ok, I found the forbidden woods, but no lamp. It is a long way from home. Proabably I will try to kill the Witch and get the rune tool first…

1691

I did the first Chalice dungeon. Man, that was … boring. Kind of. I don’t know. They clearly tried for something different here, but once they started getting less linear and more maze-like by the third area, and I got completely lost because everything looks the same, I was so ready to be done with it. I did beat it all in one go, since I was overpowered for the first dungeon. So there’s that. I didn’t get much loot or blood echoes out of it though. The loot I did get out of it is unclear. I always get things in this game, then go into my inventory and try to find it and I can’t. Either that thing disappears, or I forget the name because it’s like a dozen other bloodgems I already have or something.

1692

Yeah, the chalice dungeons seem like an experiment to give players something to do other than run the same levels over and over on NG+++++++++++++++++, which is something From fans are known to do, but they fell flat for me, too. There is some crazy shit down there, I guess, but a programming error also locked away a huge amount of the variety in layout they were supposed to display. Same as it ever was, I guess.

1693

I had a lot of fun fighting the 1st boss giant in the Phtemeru (?) chalice dungeon. It was something to do outside of the real game. But I wasted a lot of blood vials… not sure how they develop. But I like them so far.

1694

I do like the boss fights in the dungeons. All 3 of them were quite fun.

Meanwhile, I’ve reached the Nightmare areas again in the full game, so I’ve basically caught up already with my other character who took years to get to the same point. Amazing what playing through the game again with more knowledge can do, and how it can make it so different.

1695

yes, this. It took me a lot of tries to get through 1-1 in Demon’s Souls to the phalanx boss. Now I can usually get to phalanx on my 1st run. It is almost easy, of course I skip the red-eyed knight ;)

1696

And now, I’ve passed where I was with the other character. I found the pigs you guys! The pigs! The ones you told me were the best place to farm experience.

Noice.

And I’m only 2 levels below where my main character is. And I haven’t even played the DLC yet, except to run in there for that Whirligig Saw.

EDIT: I should clarify, I’m not exactly equal with my other playthrough, since I’ve made MUCH more progress in the DLC over there, and that other nightmare area with the river of poison and such, this character hasn’t explored that at all yet.

1697

There are many bosses buried in the chalice dungeons. More than the rest of the game. You get to fight the moon women in the elegant dress in one of the last ones you get.

I actually don’t remember the fight too much because I beat it first try. I just remember it was pretty easy. (although my character was high level)

1698

God, I am lagging so far behind.

1699

Well, got the Beast Cutter, anyway! Tomorrow maybe I’ll try to get the constable outfit, but regardless on to the Woods!

1700

Yay! You’ll be caught up in no time. Now that I’m in unknown territory my progress will be a lot slower.

Truth is, I haven’t been able to farm those pigs yet either. Before you get to them, you need to beat three guys. Sometimes I have no trouble with those three guys, but whenever I’m doing a run where I’m farming blood echoes, I always get killed by one of those three. They go down easy, but they hit HARD, as it is with most enemies in this game, come to think of it.

Last night I did dip my head into the DLC again to see if I could make any progress beyond just getting the whirligig saw. I went into the fight with Ludwig. It’s one of those fights where I can summon an NPC to help before the fight, but I wanted to figure out this fight without help this time.

First time through, it’s one of those fights where it just seems like it’s impossible. Every time I swing, the enemy dodged away. Every. Time. I died without getting a single hit. You just shake your head and go back into the fight a second time. I know the enemy was dodging side to side, but mostly he would dodge backwards, so I tried to get him cornered near a wall so he couldn’t dodge all my attacks. That worked! It’s one of the rare areas in the game where having a large arena to fight in is an advantage to the enemy instead of being an advantage to you. A couple of more tries is all it took and I took him down. That’s similar to all the bosses in this game I find. Unlike the Dark Souls series, they made all the boss fights pretty easy in this one.

Well, except Lady Maria and Living Failures. Those boss fights were insanely hard for my last character. We’ll see if I still feel that way this time around.

1701

One thing I wish I could do in this game was to save and reload, so that I could find out what some of these “finite use” things in my inventory actually do. It’s so frustrating to have all these things where I have only one of something, and it’s finite use so presumably I can only use it once and it’s gone forever. But what does it do? There’s a really dangerous enemy in the DLC, he’s a red-eyed bandit/cowboy. But if you do an amazing fight, and you finally kill him, you get about 1400 blood echoes (which is nothing) and you get an item called “Vermin”.

At first I thought Vermin must be a characteristic like “Lake” that you can activate. But no, it’s a “finite use” item. So of course, like other finite use items it just sits in my inventory, permanently unused.

Another one like that is an item that supposedly heals you more than regular blood vials. But what the heck is the use of one of those in my inventory? Am I supposed to save that up for, let’s say, Lady Maria fight, and only in the fight where I think I’m doing well, where I think, “this is the one”?

1702

This is what wikis are for. Ain’t nobody got time to remember exactly how many blood echoes you get for “Thick Coldblood (4)” (it’s 1200).

I also don’t really see the point of the special vials simply from a gameplay perspective. From games are full of this kind of thing, though.

Vermin are related to the League multiplayer covenant. Spoilered in case you really don’t want to know (you could have easily googled it, right).

1703

Heh, I did google it and I still have no idea what that means.