Bloodborne - Demon's Souls Spiritual Successor's Spiritual Successor

The axe was my favorite all the way through. Just couldn’t get into another moveset.

Back from traveling, I was able to grab some more BB time this morning. Aaand…BSB down, one shot. No tricks, just dodging – with one visceral in the first phase. I guess this guy is just set up for my play style. I had also accumulated quite a bit of poison resist from dealing with the rest of the area. I used 8 blood vials and 4 antidotes. I used pillars to recover, because he would get on me quickly and usually I had to both heal and ingest the aforementioned recovery item to stabilize.

So, where does BSB rank in the boss Pantheon?

Father Gascoigne is one of the hardest bosses. BSB is hard for me too because it requires so many successful dodges and the poison AoE.

Hunters Axe is one of the strongest weapons (so is Ludwig’s Holy Blade) so it probably evens out. Or you’re just more patient than the rest of us.

After I killed Father G, I checked out some guide videos on him. Almost all of them noted that what I did – block him with the gravestones – is somewhat cheesy.

For BSB, I was having a hard time with the last phase until I transformed the Axe to 2-hand. I found the initial dodge fairly easy – big windups – but did get hit with the end of his combos occasionally. I think my poison resist helped me manage that because I generally wasn’t getting immediately poisoned from a single hit; close, though.

I don’t know, really. I certainly am patient – I learned my lesson from the Father G experience on that front.

A certain pair of witches have met their doom by my hand. Fun level with some challenging parts.

A certain Vicar has fallen to my holy blade. It was a really messy fight. If I had known she healed herself, I could have made it a cleaner kill with a certain item.

So far the only bosses that have taken me multiple tries are the Cleric Beast and Father G. So, 40% of them. I think, though, at this point, I’m a bit overleveled. My Ludwig’s is at +6 and my level is around 40.

A long time between bosses.

Finally got to one in what seems to be an optional area. A huge electrified beast with the same bad knee syndrome as the Vicar. I rolled underneath and swung for the fences. Almost a pure stunlock victory.

I keep waiting for the thing that’s really going to create a bottleneck for me – like, say, the Dancer in DS3. Perhaps I should not have leveled so high (just over level 50). Perhaps I’ve just automated so much from Souls games. Perhaps, as I’ve said before, my playstyle is just suited to this game. @TimJames remarked earlier that my weapons of choice are 2 of the strongest. What is obvious to me is that I’m not a great Souls player. I’ve always been a bit too cautious and prone to panic. My twitch skills were never great and have eroded slightly with age. Really not sure. The hunter enemies in this game give me the most trouble, it seems, so maybe one of those in the future will prove my bane.

Sounds like you’re overlevelled but don’t sweat it. Sometimes a boss fight is best when you win the first time, and sometimes they’re most memorable after a bit of struggle. No right answer.

Might want to skip the chalice dungeons on this playthrough to avoid getting even more overlevelled.

I’m going to spend some time buying stuff with my blood echoes, then, and hold off on serious leveling. Once I entered the Forest, though, it seemed like I was always carrying around large quantities.

The second part (post shortcut) of the Forest is crazy. I keep getting turned around and lost. Had a great death where From misdirected my attention towards a shiny and some dangerous beasts below the ridge on which it rested. As I was staring at them, deciding my next move, I got hit from behind by “something” and knocked right into the middle of the swirling snake fountains. I flailed to no avail. I quit for the night after that. I had spent so much time orienting myself and slowly working through the confusing landscape, I just couldn’t face another go at it for blood echo rescue.

Today I’ll get them.

edit: I’m trusting my BB experience and From Soft to offer some kind of additional shortcut at the end of this level. This section has been the hardest to parse for me so far.

I tended to build up resources until I lost them all during a series of boss fights I was unable to win. Then I had to grind up more blood vials, which offended me.

So again there’s no right answer about the best way to play. You’re overlevelled but avoiding that annoyance. Either way works.

Yesterday, I kept going back to this Nightmare Tombstone area I’m in, where you’re constantly getting poisoned down in this poison stream, so I just use my old technique of lots of health potions instead of bothering with antidotes. I was making good progress until I got to this creature that made me frenzied and my head exploded.

And then I realized after I respawned: Oh crap, I’m out of health potions.

And I couldn’t go back, because some lady is ringing her god damn bell somewhere. So after I died, I got a five second window of time before the lady rings her bell, so I was able to get back to the Hunter’s Dream. Since I’d died, I had lost all my blood obviously. So I cashed in a lot of my blood thingies that I’d been collecting for a while. I cashed in the two lowest categories of blood I had. And with that, I was able to buy… 7 blood vials.

Facepalm. That’s not enough.

So yeah, I’ll have to go back and get blood vials from somewhere so that I can go back to that poison river and confront that frenzying creature. How do you fight getting frenzied? Do you just have to beat that enemy fast? Can you slow down the frenzy meter with some kind of item?

Not sure on Frenzy since I have seen it much, but there is a really quick run from the first lamp in Central Yharnam that gets you a guaranteed 6 blood vials and 4 QS bullets. And by really quick, I really mean really quick.

Is been a while but there’s armor you can wear to help slow down that effect. I just killed those things as quickly as possible.

There’s a rune, too, it appears.

Shadows of Yharnam. The real Bloodborne seems to start here (for me).

That’s a fair assessment. That was where my first playthrough hit a brick wall.

The quickest farm is once you’ve unlocked the college, especially if you have both floors. Equip your blood echoes runes and clear it out, takes 5 minutes and can get a lot of echoes. Then just buy vials and bullets. It’s way faster than farming for vials.

I’m horrible with names in this game. Which area is Shadows of Yharnam?

I haven’t found the energy to go farming for Blood Echoes or for Blood vials yet.

Let me ask a related question though. This area where I’ll be going down to confront this frenzy creature down in the poison stream, this seems like a completely optional area I could probably ignore. Is it worth it pursue optional areas like that in this game? In Dark Souls the answer was always “of course it’s worth it” just for the experience of the thing. But in this, I’m just wondering. I wonder if I’ll beat this area, and find something worthless at the end, and all my time using blood vials and farming for blood vials will end up feeling like a waste of my time.

I do remember this area. But I also remember there being one dangerous thing in that area that could get you killed too. Any idea how to get back to this area? Is in the last headstone, the one that’split in half and melting?

I forget which headstone it’s on. There’s two warps to the small area, Lecture Building and Lecture Building 2nd floor. Use a fire rune weapon if you got one.