Bloodborne October/November Book Club

the mechanic’s actually called ‘regain’ in the jp ver, rather than the more vague ‘rally’ we have

still working on that platinum

amygdala in a small room i got to one hit to victory and then the camera decided i was going to look at a wall while an attack came at me and that was the end of that

i feel my humanity slipping away trying to do these challenges tbh

i love rally it reminds me of college

Signs I may have done something “wrong” in Bloodborne so far:

-I haven’t come across any music boxes.

-I have five or six bonfire-esque warp points available and yet have only come across one boss.

-That creature who was trapped in the floor so that only its head was above it, yet I could still here its footsteps and be hurt by invisible attacks.

-That “mini-boss” hunter battle that ended almost immediately when the guy jumped backwards off of the tower.

-That the game kicked me offline all night.

Signs that I might be doing something right:

-I am better able to “rally” my health back against lower level enemies who I’ve figured out the attack patterns of.

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Here is a really silly protip which always makes me feel inordinately clever. Shoot one the big dudes, then right before doing the visceral attack, press up on the D-pad to get blood bullets. Four free bullets!

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Wait, are you saying you can rally back the health you sacrifice to do that? That is rather clever.

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Yep. Those small, delicious savings. It’s like when you remember an extra deduction for your tax return

i think the only actually non-recoverable health loss is from passive hp drain

I’ve slain two more bosses and have gotten to explore more of the world, which is good. Every path I know of ends in a dead end or a locked door/gate, which is less good. I’m gonna explore a bit around Father’s not-bonfire and hope I forgot about an alternate path from there, if not then that might be trouble.

In Old Yarnham I got to the Blood-starved Beast and defeated it, but that left me with a chalice and no ways forward. The Cathedral Ward left me with the path to Old Yarnham and a gate or two I can’t open. The Healing Church lead to a door that won’t open atop a tower. I did get that chalice, but I was under the impression that those were optional.

pretty much all paths out lead the same place

you can either go down instead of up at the church workshop or take a closer look at the bath messenger shop.

platinum get, game time 87 hours total

just in time for dark souls 3 to go on psn flash sale!!

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How did you find the half-health chalice dungeon? That’s where I threw in the towel

very, very, very dumb.

like nothing else in chalice dungeons was actually challenging so i guess i couldn’t complain about it but, also, one hit deaths were commonplace even after i grinded up to 50 vit and put on all the fire/arcane/phys resist i could.

the bosses there have way too much HP too, it seems like they’re trying to test you to see if you can perform mechanics perfectly or not. so i basically had to wait for a day where i was awake and alert enough that i could react reliably to everything, which is generally not something i do when i play videogames anymore. (i used to! fighting games!)

edit: on a side note: godDAMN holy moonlight sword is OP

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i ended up +10’ing five primary weapons on that character.

here’s my tier list of them!

  • beast cutter - B - basically a cane for people who don’t have skill builds. high stun, but lack of scaling really hurts its damage long term. it does have that hidden bonus damage on beasts going on. couldn’t find much use for this when i had boom hammer.
  • boom hammer - A- - simple move set but powerful and it’s satisfying to just whomp away a group, but it’s not really at all good on bosses! being able to do r1 l1 r1 l1 r1 and just chew away health on something is pretty good though. very handy on groups, especially since charged R2 or sprint R2 just completely smashes an area on the ground. definitely not good on its own though.
  • kirkhammer - A - i know people are like “ooh the dark souls straight sword moveset rules” but i’ll be honest, i’ve always thought straight swords were lame. you have armor on hammer smashes, so just run up and r1 or charged r2 everything to death. it’s really satisfying and you can stunlock a lot of bosses this way.
  • hunter’s axe - A+ - damage is a little lacking endgame but it makes up for it in speed, rally, low stamina consumption, and still stunning enemies easily enough. and you can use buff items on it, which aren’t hard to come by. i beat NG+ mergo’s wet nurse just by running up and whacking it with R1, causing it to flinch, then whacking it some more with R1. I never even got the darkness phase.
  • holy moonlight sword - S - quite literally the most broken weapon in the game AFAICT, extremely high damage, solid range, high stun. strong both transformed and untransformed. only downside is it’s a bit on the slow side and doesn’t seem to have armor. basically the most ridiculous claymore in series history.

ok. that’s my gameplay thoughts. i wanna finish writing up that thing about setting and all that stuff but it’s going to be long and mega-spoilerish and i’m not entirely sure how best to post that without bothering other people playing the game.

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Big-ass hammers and regular-ass longswords are the best weapons in Souls games, change my mind

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Halberds

All

Day

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Actually does Bloodborne even have any polearm type weapons? I’ve played like three hours and basically avoided spoilers but I’ve never seen one in any art or screenshots or anything.

transformed hunter axe is one.

It’s basically axe + halberd in one weapon and if that isn’t absolutely perfect I don’t know what is.

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Sounds like when I eventually restart and play for real I need to use that axe.

I think my first character I took uh the saw thing that was in all the promo art and I didn’t know guns were for parrying so maybe I’ll do better

i mostly used the hunter axe in its transformed state, so basically as a halberd that i could turn into a DPS weapon whenever i wanted. It’s too good.

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the saw is, imo, the weakest of the three starting weapons. it’s the best for a very specific playstyle and has a hidden damage bonus vs beasts, which is why speedruns use it, but i think it ends up being the least versatile of the lot.

i almost never used the halberd mode, but anyone who remembers me from dark souls 2 knows i was an axe guy there, so i was right at home here just hacking away. it was handy for groups, although i almost never used the armored(?) spin to win move. other people play it differently; it’s just an all-around solid weapon.

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