- I spent my first night in Yharnam tonight. I went into the sewers, got the Plague from a filthy Ratman, I killed a whole group of pitchfork-wielding dudes, and was slain by the mighty Cleric Beast. I like the game so far, the combat is fun and the world of Bloodborne is a wondrous place in all of its gothic glory.
- Hmm... 'Fortifying' weapons also repairs them.
- Coldblood Dew and Thick Coldblood is just bonus Blood Echos. I guess I'll just use them.
- Yes! Slaughtered the mighty Cleric Beast, using 8 Blood Vials and not much else. I am level 15 now, so that may have helped.
- I got a quest, finding a girl's mother, and I'm supposed to give her a Music Box.
- DAMMIT! I was *so* close to beating Father Gascoigne on the first try.
- Got him! I'm currently level 21.
- It seems like Insight unlocks 'shops' but if your Insight is high, difficulty of monsters may increase. I don't know of anything important I need to use Insight for, which is why I won't consume my collected Madman's Knowledge just yet.
- I streamed my early hours in Bloodborne to Twitch using the PlayStation 4's built-in streaming feature. I have thought about what makes the gameplay of Bloodborne more a pleasurable experience to me than Dark Souls II. Since the games are very similar, it is mostly a question of Dark Souls annoyances that has been removed in Bloodborne. Here are some of the changes:
- Your health doesn't decrease when you die. Much less stressful.
- Monsters won't stop respawning, which means you are able to grind character levels, which seems important to adjust the game's difficulty.
- No inventory encumbrance.
- Your attacks are not blocked by walls. Attacks also seem to be designed for hitting enemies, instead of you having to carefully position yourself to avoid just swinging into thin air.
- With Peter watching, I got rid of the gatling dude in Old Yharnam. My strategy was to run up to him and hit him in the face a lot, which pushed him off the edge. And after that, I went down to an spooky underground place where I was too afraid to continue.
- Now, the mission at hand in Old Yharnam is unlocking a gate to a ladder down. I should go through the aforementioned spooky underground place to find the other end of the ladder.
- Defeated the Blood-Starved Beast on the first try. Immediately after winning, I fell to my knees, poisoned to death!
- I've been captured and awoke in Yahar'Gul. The sackboys are insanely powerful, but I managed to kill one of them.
- I'm farming pigs with my newly acquired sword, Ludwig's Holy Blade. I'm now level 44, and things seem to be looking up a bit.
- I need an Upper Cathedral Key for the door at the end of the Healing Church Workshop, the right of the three exits in the Cathedral Ward. The rest of the Healing Church Workshop, including the drop down, should be complete.
- The Upper Cathedral Key is apparently found in Yahar'gul Chapel later in the game, and should not be my focus now. According to IGN, my focus should be buying the Hunter Emblem Key, going to the Cathedral Ward, taking the middle of the three doors, going out to the cliff area, up the large stairs past the giant, and into a new area that should contains a boss named Vicar Amelia.
- Much like the Cleric Beast, the Vicar Amelia fight is annoying due to the camera. When close enough to hit, the camera makes it impossible to see you character and dodge properly. Not fun at all.
- Important fact: the weapon Attribute Bonuses change when they are upgraded. It's impossible to know how good a weapon can *become* ingame.
- After seeing the mess of all the messages in online mode, I'm satisfied with playing offline mode.
- Yes, beat the first boss in the first Chalice Dungeon, and undead giant. That guy has been annoying for a while.
- Got the Vicar Amelia trophy. - FINALLY! Used my trusty Saw Cleaver +4 and doused her with my newly purchased Flamesprayer +3.
- The trip through Hemwick Charnel Lane out to the waterfront was a great and very atmospheric experience.
- Oh, the Insight Shop just opened. Should I buy something?
- I've unlocked the lift and the gate in the Hemwick area, which should enable me to reach the witch boss fairly easily.
- I've beaten 4/18 bosses.
- It's worth noting that supposedly, if your Insight is below 15, the enemies should be easier. Possibly, it could be worth it to spend some Insight?
- Got the The Witch of Hemwick trophy. - No. Problem.
- Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes? Horrible 'snake kings', like Rat Kings, but with snakes.
- STOP. Snake-hammertime.
- Got the Shadow of Yharnam trophy. - Second attempt against those three Nazgul-lookalikes.
- Got the Darkbeast Paarl trophy. - Put on my least conductive clothes, and stabbed the beast a lot with Ludwig's Holy Blade +6.
- Arrrghh, so many spiders.
- Oh no, I think I just got sexually assaulted in the face by snail genitals. Seriously, Brainsuckers. They are horrible.
- Thing to do before fighting the spider: Get a Tonsil Stone to access Nightmare Frontier.
- Got the Tonsil Stone, was grabbed by the ghostly hand, but nothing happened?
- Got the Rom, the Vacuous Spider trophy. - FINALLY! After much analysis, discussion, and two separate resource gathering runs to earlier parts of the game, I managed to defeat that big ugly spider. My strategy was to first kill all the little spiders with Ludwig's Holy Blade, then use a Bone Marrow Ash to boost the Flamesprayer +4, staying close to the left of the spider head and follow it around. When it teleported, it had lost most of its health, and I managed to dodge around and attack enough that I could finish it off with a couple of Molotov Cocktails. And now, everything is a nightmare!
- The Nightmare Frontier has nightmarishly great environment art.
- So much poison. And then I was killed in one hit by a Nightmare Yeti.
- Finally activated the elevator that leads to Amygdala in the Nightmare Frontier. I jumped down the gorge close to the lamp, ran to the right, ran into a cave guarded by a Yeti (which I rolled past), sneak attacked the horrible Frenzy-inducing monster, and the rest was easy. Phew.
- The One Reborn! Damn!
- Got the The One Reborn trophy. - After murdering the summoners, The One Reborn was not hard. What an abomination, though.
- I'm at the Nightmare of Mensis. I opened a gate and there was spiders inside. Big ones.
- BIRDDOGS! DOGBIRDS! ARRRGGGHHH
- The Hunter's Dream is on fire. Gehrman wants to talk to me.
- I refused his offer.
- Now I wish I had accepted. Then I would have completed the game. Anyway, I'll save Gehrman for another evening. I should have the whole week to take him before MKX arrives.
- Completed the game. YES!!! Defeated Gehrman and took his place (bad ending). I used a lot of counterattacks with my Blunderbuss and punished him with Ludwig's Holy Blade. Now I can be the old cranky hunter until someone shows up and kills me. :)
- Hmmm... the game seems to roll right into New Game+.
- I started a new game with Martin, played through the early parts, slaughtered the Cleric Beast and was killed by Father Gascoigne several times.
- I booted up Bloodborne to show Thomas J, and after spending a *long* time creating an axe-wielding female hunter, he started getting into the game. He ended up beating the Cleric Beast after many deaths, and reached Father Gascoigne.
- Thomas finally beat Father Gascoigne! And then he had to go home. Too bad, so much exciting stuff ahead of him...
- I felt the need for some more Bloodborne, so I started working on the Chalice Dungeons. It turned out I had missed several areas in the first dungeon, and finally found some Tomb Mould.
- I made my first Root Chalice Dungeon, and it was complete BS! It was mostly empty, no items, no Lanterns, no boss fights, and going through the final exit door on level 3, I fell forever into a grey void. The materials were consumed by creating the dungeon, and I don't think I have any way to get them again except for recreating the first dungeon and playing through it again to get the materials to create a new Root Chalice Dungeon.
- Going back to the main game (New Game+) to farm some Blood Echoes, I beat the Cleric Beast in the first try with my trusty Holy Blade. I guess being level 84 helps a bit with the difficulty level.
- Recreated and completed the Pthumerian Labyrinth, and proceeded to create the Central Pthumerian Labyrinth.
- I let Jacob F loose in the world of Bloodborne, and he seemed to enjoy the brutal experience for a couple of hours.
- The Old Hunters DLC is out tomorrow, so I'm preparing myself by making sure I'm ready to start it. Apparently, you need to have defeated Vicar Amelia, and then you can travel to Hunter's Dream and get a special item that unlocks the new content. My main save is on New Game Plus and pretty close to Vicar Amelia, so I'll try reaching her tonight.
- I might as well try to find some of the stuff I missed in the first playthrough, so first I'll try to find Arianna in the Cathedral Ward and send her to the Chapel. The rest should be doable after I kill Rom the Annoying Spider.
- I defeated Father Gascoine (NG+) and reached Vicar Amelia. The boss fight seems hard, but doable.
- The DLC unlocks in an hour or so, but I'm too tired to play any more tonight. Tomorrow.
- Saving Vicar Amelia for a bit, I traveled to Hemwick and killed the Witches. Then I went back and killed Amelia with the aid of Old Hunter Henriett.
- Now The Old Hunters is unlocked, and I'm venturing into the Hunter's Nightmare.
- I've picked up several weapons, but one was so incredibly metal I had to start using it: the Amygdalan Arm.
- Playing the DLC is very enjoyable, I am wading through pools of blood with piles of corpses everywhere. A nightmare indeed.
- The Ludwig boss fight is too hard right now, so I started to play other parts of the game, leveling up and working towards finding some of the stuff I missed during my first playthrough. So far, I have sent Arianne to the Chapel and got one Third of an Umbillical Cord from discovering The Source of the Dream. I have also traveled to Castle Cainhurst and gotten myself destroyed by Martyr Logarius.
- I've banged my head against Shadow of Yharnam, Martyr Logarius, and Ludwig for too long, and started to play some more Chalice Dungeons. I've completed the Depth 2 one, and commenced Depth 3.
- Tonight was three hours of failure. First, I failed beating the Shadows of Yharnam, then failing at Chalice Dungeon spelunking, followed by a bit of Cainhurst Tick farming, after which I finally got some progress in beating a Chalice Dungeon boss, the Undead Giant. I then reached my old nemesis, Rom the Frustrating Spider - now in Chalice Dungeon form. He killed me a few times before I gave up and went to bed.
- HOORAY! The sadness of yesterday's session was turned into an awesome victory tonight. First I leveled up *a bunch* killing Cainhurst Ticks, then I defeated Darkbeast Paarl. I felt optimistic, and went up against The Shadows of Yharnam and won. Feeling powerful, I went and killed Rom the stupid Spider. Now I thought myself almost unstoppable, so I dared going back to Cainhurst Castle.
- Got the Martyr Logarius trophy. - He wasn't even that hard, now that I had more Vitality and Strength. :)
- I defeated Rom, reached the Nightmare Frontier and the new area, The Choir. I killed Iosefka and consumed two thirds of an Umbillical Chord.
- I just learned that Insight reduces resistance to Frenzy. Also the Deep Sea Rune increases Frenzy resistance.
- I got through the Nightmare of Mensis and reached Micolash.
- Defeated Micolash. I went back to the Cathedral Ward and killed Ariannas disgusting offspring, and she died with it. That's not what I wanted. Anyway, now I have eaten 3 Umbilical Cords, the ending should be secured. Afterwards, I entered The Choir and wandered nervously around, gaining a Make Contact emote.
- A very productive two hours: I started out with The Choir, easily defeating The Celestial Emissary, that big fungus dude. I then approached the Altar of Despair, and destroyed Ebrietas on the second try. After a few aggravating falls to my death, trying to get off between floors on a very unsafe lift, I fought my way past the horrible Winter Lanterns and killed off the poor disabled Brain of Mensis. I found the Blood Rock (which really should be the name of a Slayer album), and upgraded Ludwig's Holy Blade to it's max level. I then went and murdered Amygdala on my first try today.
- This seemed like a good time to get back into the DLC. I finally defeated Ludwig, entered the horrible Research Halls, and defeated the Living Failures, who had the most mind shattering magic attack in this game.
- Wow, when did this turn into Shadow over Innsmouth?
- The introduction of the Orphan of Kos is great. This DLC is fantastic.
- Completed the game (The Old Hunters DLC). I defeated the Orphan of Kos using a lot of countering and a bit of luck. Then I went into the well and killed the two Giant Fishmen and got a sword.
- Got the Old Hunter's Essence trophy. - After a bit of hunting, I got all the DLC weapons. The only DLC trophy left is defeating Laurence.
- I started working my way through the final Chalice Dungeons, and managed to defeat Watchdog of the Old Lords using dodging skill. Amygdala was problematic, but I got the best of her by learning all her moves and not locking on unless I needed to. To get the two Red Jellys I needed to create the final dungeon, I created a Great Isz Chalice dungeon and got the Jellys from there.
- Got the Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen trophy. - The final Chalice Dungeon was much easier than the previous one. I killed the Pthumerian Descendant and the Bloodletting Beast in a couple of tries - what a horrible monstrocity that was - and appropriately summoned the Old Hunter Queen Killer for the Queen.
- In the main game, I have all trophies except
- 'Hunter's Essence' (acquire all hunter weapons),
- 'Hunter's Craft' (acquire all special hunter tools - meaning magic spells),
- 'Yharnam Sunrise' (accepting Gehrman's final request),
- and 'Childhood's Beginning' (three Umbilical Cords, and defeat Gehrman).
- Before defeating Gehrman (and getting 'Childhood's Beginning'), I should get 'Hunter's Essence' and 'Hunter's Craft', and preferably defeat Laurence. Then I only have a single trophy left, which requires a new playthrough, which could be an entirely new character.
- Note: When a weapon scales with Arcane, it only refers to magic damage, such as Fire or Electric damage, not basic damage.
- I think I have every weapon except Blade of Mercy. The normal way to get this is completing Eileen the Crow's storyline or murdering her, which should get you the Crow Hunter Badge, enabling you to buy it. According to a Reddit post titled 'Greatest Chalice Dungeon Ever!', another option is creating a Pthumeru Ihyll Root Chalice dungeon with the Glyph 'sz73v83s', where the Lost Blade of Mercy should be in the 'side room before the 2nd boss'.
- I just came up with a sinister plan: to get all trophies without needing to clear the game one more time, I'm going to save-scum out of it. I have disabled automatic online backup for Bloodborne, and have backed up a 37 MB save file to a USB stick. Then I should be able to talk to Gehrman and accept his proposal, which should yield the 'Yharnam Sunrise' trophy, after which I can restore the save.
- Got the Yharnam Sunrise trophy. - The deed is done. And my save game is restored.
- Of the Hunter Tools, I'm only missing Beast Roar and Messenger's Gift.
- Got the Hunter's Craft trophy.
- I think I need to be in online mode to create a Root Chalice Dungeon with a specific Glyph.
- Fortunately, you can still play your created Root Chalice Dungeons offline. I just found the Lost Blade of Mercy. Annoyingly, I haven't got the trophy. The internet says I should try re-buying the starter weapons, so I guess I'll try that.
- Got the Hunter's Essence trophy. - Re-buying the weapons didn't work ... the next suggestion was: NG+ the game and get the Torch from the starting area where the big dude is hammering on the gate. And it worked!
- So, "all" that is left trophy-wise is: 'Laurence, the First Vicar' (killing that dude), and 'Childhood's Beginning' (defeating Gehrman after eating 3 delicious Umbilical Cords).
- Perhaps I should figure out how to summon Valtr for the Laurence fight. Apparently, you are supposed to equip the Impurity Rune for him to show up.
- Got the Laurence, the First Vicar trophy. - YES!!! I did it, with the help of Valtr.
- Backing up my savegame to USB, just to be safe.
- Got the Bloodborne trophy. - YEEEEESSS!!! Gehrman is defeated, the Moon Presence wasn't much of a challenge, and now ... Platinum trophy *and* all DLC trophies!
- Mastered this game.
- Completed the game (NG+).
- For reference, James Smith III is level 179. The save game has 160:51:54 hours (I tend to leave games running when taking breaks).
- The last game of the year was good ol' Bloodborne, with Thomas and Yngve.
- Bjørn was visiting and I felt he needed to try Bloodborne. With little guidance from me, he played through the Central Yarnham area and encountered the Cleric Beast, which he damaged considerably before succumbing to its great power. I finally figured out that you could roll off the edge of the little square behind the Brick Troll knocking on the gates and get back through the dark house and open the Central Yarnham shortcut without having to fight the two Scourge Beasts on the bridge.
- Thomas J and I continued playing his character, Joker, and Thomas beat the Shadow of Yharnam dudes. We reached Rom, and we decided to postpone that particular endeavour to a later session.
- Visiting Bjørn and his family in Silkeborg, I started a new Bloodborne character and reached the mighty Cleric Beast. I should play this again sometime.
- A perfect game for our new 55" Sony TV at the office, Erwin created a new character and played some of the early parts of Bloodborne.
- Thomas bravely went back into Yharnam and fought Rom with the help of an NPC. It was actually going quite well until the very end, and now Thomas doesn't have any Blood Vials left. Annoying.
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