Bloodborne October/November Book Club

Old Yharnam is fun

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whoa, Blood-starved Beast Fleshflaps Poison-Jerk was a close one. Ran out of blood vials, had half my health bar goneā€¦ he was down to a sliverā€¦ it was looking like a classic Dark Souls pratfall. So i darted behind a pillar, peeped my head out and tossed a single molotov while he was doing his poison explosion. PREY SLAUGHTERED

I beat Gascoigne in a similar way (tossed oil on him as he transformed -> stunned him w/ the music box -> tossed two molotovs at him). Love me a molotov.

Thatā€™s one boss down each night this week so far! Letā€™s see if i can go 5 for 5 by the weekend!!

I was surprised at how much the Kirkhammer made that boss a joke. Think I used 5 blood vials and for most of the fight the boss was stunned. Didnā€™t even stun Cleric Beast as much as I stunned BSB. Wasā€¦ surprised at it being so effective. Stun in this game seems to matter a lot more and it actually allows large weapons to be useful, which isnā€™t really the case in the Souls games (unless the weapon knocks the enemy down outright).

Hmm, I had quite some trouble with Chalice dungeon powered-up BSB on my DEX character, maybe the problem I was using the wrong weapon.

BSB is actually the easiest boss in the game because there is a giant accidental blind spot in its animations. Lock on and keep moving forward and to the left. No matter the attack bsb chooses, circle strafing to the left while staying as close as possible will avoid it. After the attack whiffs, get a couple free hits in. You never even have to roll or quickstep! Poison resist armor and some antidotes are helpful for the third form but it should be doable without even bothering.

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Thanks, iā€™ll remember that next time. As it is, for the first 2/3 of the fight I just backstepped a bunch and occasionally wapped them on the side of the head with my extended hunter axe. I liked that the third phase pressured me to get up in their shit more and take risks, otherwise it would have been fairly boring. The more vicious fighting style and constant slow poison chewed up my blood vials surprisingly fast. And using antidotes is kind of a trap! It takes easily 2x as long as using a blood vial, and more than once the beast sprang around a pillar and interrupted me when i tried to.

Yeah, iirc I wasnā€™t able to beat that jerk until I just gave up trying to antidote myself and just powered through it with blood potions

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So this is basically Latria: A Whole Game, huh

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It gets way more obvious about it by the end, sadly.

Latria is possibly my favorite level in any of these games so thatā€™s OK by me!

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Amelia is ADORABLE! Also, pretty difficult!
I know this game has a lot of werewolves in it but i was (pleasantly) surprised to see an actual American Werewolf in London style transformation scene. I guess i should have expected it to happen at some point.

Also, whoa, having higher insight makes those The Spirit looking dudes more dangerous and scary. The lantern guysā€™ lanterns are all covered in EYES! And they shoot soul arrows at you!
Iā€™ve also encountered Latria-esque mind flayers who also shot soul arrows, and lanky dudes carrying potato sacks who kicked me to death and fucking kidnapped me into another level. Like, holy shit

Cathedral Ward might be my favorite level in this game yet. I donā€™t know. Itā€™s all so damn good.

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Wait was Amelia harder for you than bsb? She was the first boss I beat on the first try. I think thatā€™s part of what makes the game so great, that different players will be challenged by different parts

I beat Amelia on first try but only because of the v1.0 easy boss glitch (if you sleeped your ps4 without closing bloodborne, subsequent bosses would forget all but one attack). Never did learn it as well as the other bosses, Iā€™ve tended to fight her with +7 weapon afterwards which is practically cheating

I only tried her once so far. Her attacks have a lot of reach, so i was taking hits i didnā€™t expect to. I got her HP down to like 1/8 of the total before running out of vials, so thatā€™s encouraging!

Itā€™s been a while but I think I found Vicar Amelia falling into the middle of BBā€™s boss difficulty range. Maybe not accounting for Chalice Dungeons or the DLC.

The Grand Cathedral makes me think of a lot more pain to be had later on, with the Crow of Cainhurst and Laurence in The Old Hunters. Taking the time to reach his last phase only to die quickly so many times nearly broke my will to 100%. I started resorting to community help offers (which usually died quick at the end too) and eventually got him.

Oh yeah, if anyone wants to co-op (or FIGHT ME) at any point in the future, let me know and iā€™ll activate a PSN account for a hot minute. Though for this playthrough, iā€™m doing my Souls tradition of going through the whole game offline on my first character.

The only gripe i have with the game so far is that From brought back needing to farm 1-1 for healing drops. When i got killed by Amelia and realized i had hit 0 blood vials, it also killed my enthusiasm for the nightā€¦

yeah i feel like blood vial farming is maybe the gameā€™s only really significant mechanical misstep

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It felt like less of a problem the more times I played through the game, not just because Iā€™d improved but also because I remembered to buy a bunch of vials whenever I had sou-- blood echoes. Iā€™ve actually more often had the experience of having a surplus of blood echoes (and maxed vials). I think Dark Souls got people into the habit of never having to replenish their main healing resource.

To be fair, a quick jog down the first street in Central Yharnam gets me a handful of vials and enough bloodsouls to buy a handful more. And i guess it works well as downtime between boss attempts, and an opportunity to practice with weapons iā€™m not as experienced with.

Beat Amelia on my second try. Fire paper + well-timed cocktails + numbing mist when she tried to heal (i was really pleased that this worked!)

Going to give a chalice dungeon a try. The flaws of having a randomly generated Souls level are already apparent to me, but i can also see how it might be fun. Weā€™ll see.

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Yeah the system works the best at beginning, but it gets more annoying later on. I guess they decided on it based on playtesting in Central Yharnam but it relies on a fine balance that they werenā€™t careful to preserve later.