melmer

Bloodborne (Dark Souls 2 successor (Dark Souls successor (Demon's Souls successor)))

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Finally beat Rom, at around level 55-60, and I'm trying to figure out where to go next. The area that you're dumped in post-Rom is bonkers,

with how enemies keep respawning. I've pushed in there a bit by running past that huge staircase of guys. Past that I can handle things okay, but as soon as things go a little out of hand I'll probably die. Killing the bell maidens doesn't seem to stop the respawning?



Other areas I can go:

- I am up to the boss in the nightmare frontier, but I was doing single digit damage amounts, so I probably shouldn't worry about that right now.

- Cainhurst Castle, where the horrible tick monsters in the courtyard absolutely wreck me, so I definitely shouldn't worry about that right now.

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On your spoiler, there's more than one!

On the boss, weak points! Look for glowey bits, very short weapons can struggle in this fight. The head is also super weak to ranged/thrown attacks.

Those flees are the hardest mobs in the game, sprint past them to the castle and just come back and mop the courtyard up later. The castle is definitely doable at your level.

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Yeah, cleared out Cainhurst! Boss only took two tries. That was the most Dark Souls-y area I've gone through yet.

 

While wearing the crown, I found the Vileblood queen area. Do I need to go back through the entire castle to look for other illusory walls, or is that it?

 

It's really baffling that the enemies in the courtyard are so damn difficult. Even the little worms down the hill are crazy strong. I guess that tiny area is this game's Valley of the Drakes.

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Cainhurst Castle has been my favorite area of the game so far. It was super neat and fun to go through.

I do kind of regret giving Alfred or whatever his name was the unopened summons, though. That was a crazy little event! And I never got to see what was up with that swearing fealty to the lady thing. :(

Right now, I'm stuck on Nightmare Frontier.

I've cleared up to Amygdala and ALMOST killed it a few times -- like, a hit or two from death -- and died several times. Argh. It's a frustrating boss. Rom is an interesting boss, but it seems more main story, progress related so I'm trying to kill Amygdala first.

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Cainhurst Castle has been my favorite area of the game so far. It was super neat and fun to go through.

I do kind of regret giving Alfred or whatever his name was the unopened summons, though. That was a crazy little event! And I never got to see what was up with that swearing fealty to the lady thing. :(

In response to your spoiler, a spoiler for later that you may not want to read:

You can still do that if you take her Queenly Flesh to the Altar of Despair, which you'll find after Rom/other-junk in the Upper Cathedral Ward.

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I beat the 1st boss last night. I was having issues for longer than I should have because I insisted on staying locked onto it, which I think in this case actually makes dodging and attacking more difficult (and definitely makes the camera act like garbage). I'm spoilering my cheesy winning strat:

 

I managed to get it into a corner and then ran up and just spammed R1 over and over. Because you can regain a large percent of health by counterattacking I was able to stay alive doing this for quite some time and either because I was in so close or because it was cornered it never could get off any of the seriously damaging attacks. This got me through at least 3/4ths of its health before I had to back off to heal for the first time. At that point I could just do some basic dodging + butt attacks to finish it off.

 

So now it's on to the next thing that will destroy me.

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In a depth 4 chalice dungeon I faced an empowered Blood Starved Beast. I was having trouble trying to visceral attack, so I changed weapons to the scythe, and had a zen moment where I dodged literally every attack. The only damage I took was from poison. 

 

When I said I was nearly done with the game, I was wrong. It's so good. 

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I think I may be finally winding down on this game. Played NG+ up to the witches before deciding I didn't really like the build I had going and new levels weren't coming fast enough to alter it, so I made a new character and made it up to Rom. The difficulty jump of the unseen village and the nightmare frontier have me grinding though and I don't think I really wanna do much more of that. Overall I'd say this is easily the best current gen console game I've played and might just eek past Dark Souls on my list of favourites but I wanna give it a few months to sink in.

Once all the little secrets have been found and some DLC has come out I may run through it again with a new new character, but for now I'm calling it complete.

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I played for a bit tonight (another new character), the patch does seem to have greatly improved matchmaking.  I had no problems getting summoned quite quickly for 5 different boss fights.

 

I'm also not sure I realized that your Summoning Bell was basically infinite until you cancel it or return to the dream.  I had assumed it would automatically stop after summoning a person or two, or after a boss.  I summoned Father G for the Cleric Beast fight because I was curious to see him in action as an NPC.  We trounced the beast, I barely used any heals and no bullets, so I decided I'd just run over to the Father's arena and kill him without returning to the dream.  Didn't realize my summoning bell went back active as soon as I stepped out of the arena for the Cleric Beast.  In the minute or two it took me to run over to Father G, I ended up summoning in 2 people.  It was actually fun to just annihilate him with 3 people after how much I struggled with him with my first character. 

 

I still hate that you get summoned where you are, rather than where you were, but co-op does seem in better shape now than at launch. 

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Coming into the game from rest mode now auto kicks you to title screen as you've been "disconnected." So in a way it's "fixed", yeah.

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I explored the unseen village last night. Random spoilery questions:

 

- Those three hunters you have to fight near the gaol lantern were quite a challenge. Notes made me think Eileen would have been there if she hadn't died in my game?

 

- Also, I guess there's no way to fix that lantern. I guess the elevator shortcut isn't too bad.

 

- What's up with those weird bodies that are on fire in the streets now? You can put them out if you hit them a few times, but that doesn't seem to matter.

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I explored the unseen village last night. Random spoilery questions:

 

- Those three hunters you have to fight near the gaol lantern were quite a challenge. Notes made me think Eileen would have been there if she hadn't died in my game?

 

- Also, I guess there's no way to fix that lantern. I guess the elevator shortcut isn't too bad.

 

- What's up with those weird bodies that are on fire in the streets now? You can put them out if you hit them a few times, but that doesn't seem to matter.

 

-There's no way to save Eileen. Even if she survives past the fight at Oedon Chapel she dies from her wounds outside the Grand Cathedral (either that or she leaves for good after that)

-As far as I know that lantern is gone, which is annoying.

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Something lore-wise I noticed last night going through Old Yarnham:

 

Gehrman is really insistent that you need to go to Old Yarnham and hunt beasts, like, it's the most important and valuable thing you could possible do at that very moment.  Obviously, from a game flow perspective, they wanted you to get the first Chalice fairly early and the game is balanced for you to go there.  But the way that Gehrman suggests it as a destination sets you up to kill Djura.  I didn't catch it the first time, but I'm sure that's the story reason he's sending you there.  Djura abandoned the dream and the hunt, and Gehrman can't allow that.   

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I killed my first invader tonight, after forgetting I'd been invaded and almost dying. It felt good, after dying repeatedly to those giant brain dudes who frenzy you that I can't seem to figure out how not to die horribly to.

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I killed my first invader tonight, after forgetting I'd been invaded and almost dying. It felt good, after dying repeatedly to those giant brain dudes who frenzy you that I can't seem to figure out how not to die horribly to.

 

Honestly? Carry sedatives. It's pretty much the only time in the game you need them.

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Yeah, lots sedatives. And be super aggressive - kill 'em fast. But... don't let them grab you... That's how I handled it!

 

Frenzy and poison are terrible mechanics I hate both of them! But eh they're at least mostly non-present in the game. EDIT: I'm less disdainful of poison when it comes from an enemy and not a stupid poison lake. |:

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The only thing I thought was weird about poison was that they saw fit to make a distinction between slow poison and fast poison? But for the life of me I can't think of a single time I was "fast poisoned." It felt like a mechanic left over from alpha or something.

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I think it's a weird carryover from Dark Souls, where you had "poison" and "toxic." Poison was much more common, and drained your health slowly, toxic was only used by certain rarer enemies, and was just an incredibly fast-acting poison. What's nice in Bloodborne is that an Antidote cures them both, but is DS there was an item that cured poison and a less-common one that cured both.

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I still always had trouble with those Brain Ladies.  Eventually ended up just running past them. 

Official guide terms these monsters "Winter Lanterns."  They appear to be wearing a bloody version of the Doll's clothing, and their heads are made of dead messengers.

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The higher your insight, the faster the frenzy meter increases. If you're having difficulty with frenzy, reduce your insight. There are also a bunch of runes that can increase your various resistances.

 

The only thing I thought was weird about poison was that they saw fit to make a distinction between slow poison and fast poison? But for the life of me I can't think of a single time I was "fast poisoned." It felt like a mechanic left over from alpha or something.

 

There is one area that I've noticed that has fast poisoning

the Nightmare of Mensis. The creepy midget guys with flails cause fast poison.

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Rapid poison is more like bleed in dark souls, I.e. a debuff that builds up and causes instant 30% . So it's pretty amazing when you use it in pvp, but almost useless in pve.

I tried using a bleed build in dark souls and most bosses were resistant to it, but when it worked it was really cool.

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Rapid poison is more like bleed in dark souls, I.e. a debuff that builds up and causes instant 30% . So it's pretty amazing when you use it in pvp, but almost useless in pve.

I tried using a bleed build in dark souls and most bosses were resistant to it, but when it worked it was really cool.

 

Yeah, it's definitely odd how the Souls games teach you that poison and bleed are so powerful, but if you try to use that power for yourself, you find out it doesn't work as well. It's one of the few instances where a gameplay system is weighed against the player through flat asymmetry.

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It's a really video gamey thing to do, which is fine, but doesn't really fit with the visions of the Souls games in general. They generally subvert those sort of things, with the idea that everyone in that world has equal use and abuse of the world's mechanics. Rather than enemies being special or the player having their own rules.

The debuffs just don't follow that. They're essentially things that affect players and weaker enemies.

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It's not obvious to try, but you can parry the grab move that the frenzy singers do.

The fast/slow poison just seems like yet another vestigial system. Those are the parts I like least, where it feels like they took Dark Souls and just removed stuff from it rather and didn't redesign all the other systems to compensate. They diluted the RPG mechanics so much that it doesn't make sense to base them on such an insanely stat heavy game as Dark Souls.

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