They put a lot of vial drops in Central Yharnam, but everything after that is relatively barren of them. Makes me wonder if the usurious price increases were added late in development.
I might exploit the vial price increase breakpoints a bit on my next playthrough. For example, the wiki says the first increase is upon entering Cathedral Ward, which means it’s probably smart to dump all your Gascoigne echoes into vials as soon as you kill him. Also, the cheaper vials are basically the only incentive for doing any chalice dungeons before the endgame.
I’ve actually done the first part of that vial farming run a couple of times (enough to know the elevator tidbit by heart), good to know about the remainder. Also all references to music boxes still confuse me, gonna assume I just whiffed on that badly.
Kinda bummed to hear that the vial allotment is just that… perhaps ill-considered. I had made the connection with Demon’s Souls before, but that game just tossed all sorts of grasses at you.
One thing I do like about the vial system is that you can refill your “backpack” stock of vials from drops – so the limits of how long you can endure aren’t as fixed as they were with the Estus system. It’s the kind of little mechanical nuance that changes up the pace of Bloodborne compared to Dark Souls – it’s similar to the regain mechanic in that it makes it a bit more okay to play things fast and loose with incidental hits.
I assume the reasoning behind making you go farm for vials is that they thought the farming might make a nice break from slamming your head repeatedly against a challenge, and then let you come back to the challenge refreshed instead of salty. In practice, it never feels like a nice break though, it’s just toil. Even though it’s the same activity as farming for levels, somehow it’s much less satisfying because you’re not working toward a permanent improvement.
I mean, again I’ve just been trying to beat bosses without having to heal (until they are low health) so the main impact on me is that the difficulty level has skyrocketed to a degree that is nudging against what I am actually capable of handling. Rather than playing fast and loose with incidental hits, getting one basically means I may as well die and start over. Like walking around earlier today I was wrestling with the notion of having to walk away from the game at some point as if it were to ramp up much beyond this I simply would not be able to beat it.
The Souls games were hard at times, but really they were more challenging than hard if that makes any sense. This for me is hard, as hard as people who’ve never played the games think they are. But then again I usually had 5-10 safe heals per life in that game, if I felt as if I couldn’t heal I’d probably… well I’d have never gotten past Maneater.
I may have to look into the summon system (there is a summon system, right?).
Either that or just go grind up to a hundred or so vials so that it feels like there is no end >_>
I never thought of trying that – that does make the game sound intractable as a new player, and it will get worse when you run into more multi-phase bosses. They’re not that precious, it’s a renewable resource, I recommend just grinding for vials and using them like candy. Half an hour of farming will get you a ton of them, it’ll probably save time overall compared to what you’re doing, and it’s better to be bored than salty.
Oh, another thing! Speaking of summoning system, I recommend doing the following clever thing which almost nobody thinks to do. Put down your summoning signal in front of the door before you’ve beat (or even seen for the first time) the boss. You’ll get to learn the boss patterns in relative peace, and thanks to the power of ganging up, even if you both don’t really know what you’re doing you’ll still win a lot of the time, and gain echoes you can use to buy vials.
That’s a very efficient and fun way of playing, and you can enjoy jolly cooperation without sacrificing your boss challenge experience. You just need to let go of a small amount of pride in the short term and don’t feel any responsibility to the other player to be a competent white phantom. Someone who is summoning will beat it within a few attempts anyway so it’s no big loss if you fail, and it makes the fight a little more intense for the host too when the white phantom doesn’t totally carry.
Yeah you know the Souls thing where the best way to farm souls is just to take repeated cracks at a challenge, let your blood pool a bit, then grab your 10k+ dropped souls and homeward out? In Bloodborne those souls are all for vials, baby.
Seconding Broco’s point about using the summon system for practice, though i’m surprised at the idea that no one thinks about doing it this way – i rather thought that was part of the point of summoning and being a phantom. That’s why in Demon’s you would get your body back, in Dark 1 you’d get humanity, 2 you’d get an effigy etc. it’s so you can go summon help and kill the boss, now that you’ve learned how to do it for someone else.
Yeah, this is largely why I don’t care about soloing in any Souls game. It is so much fun to go help other people do a thing, then get other people in to help me, and I just enjoy that whole process a whole lot.
i really enjoy co-op but i’m used to playing these games without online functionality, so solo is my baseline and co-op is just a nice change of pace. i appreciate that i can dip in and dip out as i see fit. If i feel like challenging myself, i can do a boss solo, if i’m just trying to unlock something it’s gating or in a breezy “let’s just smash this thing mood” i can summon help. i think i’m just describing the Souls multiplayer system like we don’t all know why it’s good but i don’t do a lot of online gaming, so it’s still novel and cool for me
I used the summon system a lot more in the Souls Trilogy than in Bloodborne or Demon’s. For Bloodborne it was mostly because summoning never worked. For Demon’s it was usually because nobody was around (wasn’t in on the day 1 stuff - got it later).
I’m making a slightly different point that I believe is counterintuitive/surprising. I’m saying I, like many players, have a personal rule not to summon, because it trivializes bosses and I’d like to enjoy them in their full mechanical interplay and feel that rush of brick-wall-followed-by-satisfaction. Because bosses are easy when you summon, there’s no “need” for practice if you’re planning to host a summon yourself.
Your idea of the value of practice summons is focused around the idea of playing as much multiplayer as possible and enjoying the boss in a more carefree way. That’s fine, but everyone already agrees that summons are a great mechanic for casual players. I’m claiming that in addition to that, even if you’re one of those players who approach the game in an austere way, co-op multiplayer can still play a role.
I adhered to a ‘no summons’ rule through Dark 1, but by 2 I also treated summon markers as practice runs before soloing bosses (I only ever got wait times I was comfortable with in Dark 2 and Dark 3). It’s my preferred way to play, too.
I get you, i was just pointing out that your reward for helping other players is something that materially makes your game easier, so what you’re saying is supported by design. Having more humanity or full HP is useful on its own, even if you aren’t going to summon help yourself.
I thought to do it for the first time on the DkS2 giant spider boss. That one is so far from the bonfire I really didn’t want to walk back. So to see what’s up behind that fog door, I put a sign down instead.
Oh definitely, making the summoned reward allow you to summon yourself is intended to incentivize players to engage in this loop and drive down the wait times for everyone; I believe they look at boss balance for solo and small groups but they don’t seem to especially concern themselves if one approach is trivialized or <50% of a difficulty outlier.
