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From Software Bloodborne. Discuss or die!

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,942
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
Still can't upgrade my blood flask
It's a percentage heal (40?), no permanent upgrades but there are accessories that affect it. You out-metagamed yourself.

The main town area is the 'flask run' where you find flask drops at like 90%. I feel flask farming is the game's way of telling you your level is too low anyway.

At some point you can buy them.
 

Achiman

Arcane
Patron
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Jul 19, 2012
Messages
813
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Australia
Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech
Still can't upgrade my blood flask
It's a percentage heal (40?), no permanent upgrades but there are accessories that affect it. You out-metagamed yourself.

The main town area is the 'flask run' where you find flask drops at like 90%. I feel flask farming is the game's way of telling you your level is too low anyway.

At some point you can buy them.
When you learn and start to play aggressively so that you recover the damage back after being hit, (the main and best imo, combat difference, in this souls-like) flasks aren't as needed for non bosses. Also later on you can get an item that lets you heal from viscerals which keeps your health up without needing flasks.
 

Bloodeyes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 30, 2007
Messages
2,946
Still can't upgrade my blood flask
It's a percentage heal (40?), no permanent upgrades but there are accessories that affect it. You out-metagamed yourself.

The main town area is the 'flask run' where you find flask drops at like 90%. I feel flask farming is the game's way of telling you your level is too low anyway.

At some point you can buy them.

I can already buy them. But if I've died I've lost all my blood echoes so I have to farm some more to be able to buy them. I don't know if my level is too low. I've only just started so surely can't be expected to have levelled that much yet. I've killed the big flailing guy with the baby arm on the bridge and the other hunter that turns into a werewolf. I started as level 10 and I think I've levelled 6 - 8 times just in the starting areas. My weapon is +2 which seems fine for being so early and I can take a hit from everything without getting one shot.

So I'm not underpowered. My DPS sucks but I'm guessing that's because I went skill. I sort of expected STR would be better but at least I have reach to compensate and I chose threaded cane because I want to lean into the aesthetic.

The main problems I'm having are just being unable to control my movement effectively. Quick stepping is very different from dodge rolling. Do you even get iframes? I swear you don't. I keep trying to time my dodges last second to punish and I keep getting hit trying to iframe through attacks. Spacing seems much more important here than timing? Its a very different system from ER at any rate, and I feel like some of my habits are working against me. Like pressing triangle to pick shit up. That doesn't help with flask conservation!
 

Lutte

Dumbfuck!
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- The aforementioned flasks issue really fucks with the pace of one's progression. It feels grindy to a new player who dies a lot. Incredibly repetitive and therefore frustrating and somewhat boring.

After I experienced the first area, in which I had to farm some too, I always had a surplus until the end of the game just by buying vials with the remaining echoes I had after doing level ups. It's a bit of a slog in the beginning of the game but Bloodborne has a weird V curve in difficulty which leads me to this point :

- Its much, much harder in the early game than ER. The starting area is probably just as difficult as the Farum Azula or Consecrated snowfield. I think it drops you in the deep end a bit too much. Give me a chance to learn how to play!

First, learn to parry. Really, learn the timings. They're some of the easier of souls games, and the most forgiving because it's a ranged parry and you have chances of not always being hit when you miss. Second, use strong charged attacks often against slower but hard hitting enemies. Try to get them from the back whenever possible. But really learn the parrying, it's fking OP. Doesn't work on all things, but on the things it does work on, you're thankful it's there.

I chose threaded cane because I want to lean into the aesthetic.

The cane.. isn't the worst weapon ever, but honestly the saw cleaver and the saw spear are the more versatile weapons and offer the most damage against most enemies (damage type matters in this game, so some weapons will fare better on some stuff than others, but let's say the saw weapons at their worst are good, and at their best are amazing). The transform attack can be useful too when things move around.
Threaded cane has serrated in its transform but I find it profoundly unwieldy against fast enemies and mostly useful for wiping groups of trashes or playing it safe against enemies where its range protects you when you attack from maximum distance but this turns fights into slow slogs and I prefer to dish out rapid damage at higher risk of taking some myself.

If that can reassure you, I died more times to one of the first two bosses of the first area than I did for the entire rest of the game, with the exception of one boss, Ebrietas, at the end, that kept kicking my arse. Game's a V curve. It seems impregnable when you're new to it but after you kill Gascoigne everything will suddenly seem easy and it'll mostly remain like that for the rest of the game, the rate at which you grow with better tooling like blood gems and runes outpaces the enemies IMHO. After I learned parrying, got some decent build going, it felt like the easiest souls game by far. 'Till Ebrietas. Bitch ass eldritch cunt.

Quick stepping is very different from dodge rolling. Do you even get iframes? I swear you don't.

You have as much iframes as something like a medium roll in DS3 and the recovery time is much faster, plus it covers a solid amount of ground so if you dodge against the direction of an attack it works pretty well. If you feel too nostalgic for the roll, learn how to play without lock-on. You do a traditional roll instead of a step when you don't lock on and there are a few times in which this can be useful, to dodge straight into some of the larger bosses. Was particularly helpful for me against a certain electrified cunt. It's a bad habit to be too reliant on lock-on in souls games anyway, and it's not that difficult to manage the camera yourself and orient the direction of your attack with the left stick, particularly in tighter areas when the camera goes apeshit.

My DPS sucks but I'm guessing that's because I went skill. I sort of expected STR would be better but at least I have reach to compensate and I chose threaded cane because I want to lean into the aesthetic.

Your DPS sucks not because of your stats but because your weapon is one of the worst at dishing damage, although it gets better later on but it really starts off weak. Whichever stat path you pick almost doesn't matter in practice, as long as you focus on it. In the early game whatever little amount of stats you grow doesn't change shit, you don't have good gems, your weapon barely has any scaling before getting upgraded, it takes some time before you can truly experience the growth and you need more than just stats - gems are very, very important to a char build. You have gems that add +% to your damage, others than add flat amount of damage, some will give you elemental damage and scale with arcane, some boost physical stat scaling to further specialize your weapon into the stat you invest points in etc. Consumables can be very useful too.

Of all the damage stats, the only bad stat to start with would be bloodtinge. It's powerful late game but you'd suffer a lot before getting there. STR and Skill are both great and equally usable with the saw weapons (cleaver leans STR, spear leans skill), and arcane has a bad reputation but the flamethrower can carry you for a decent while with that and the saw weapons do good when turned into elemental weapons (in that sort of build, go pure arcane, only have as much physical as needed to wield a weapon and not a single point more).

You're already invested in skill, so buy the saw spear and go to town. Upgrade mats aren't too plentiful, but enough to bring a second weapon to your cane level and better.

Join the saw spear religion. We have swipes, we have decent range of attack, we have THRUSTS! and we have the non transformed almost as fast as dagger let me DPS this motherfucker state for when there's downtimes in patterns or staggers. Saw spear is life. Saw spear is death.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
16,236
- Its much, much harder in the early game than ER. The starting area is probably just as difficult as the Farum Azula or Consecrated snowfield. I think it drops you in the deep end a bit too much. Give me a chance to learn how to play!

It is until you learn to attack first instead of waiting for attack. It is the fundamental switch you need to make.
Up until Bloodborne i played all DS games waiting for first attack and then counter.

Moreover the dodge mechanic is much faster in BB so BB combat style is very very very agressive compared to DS games.

Thanks to BB and lack of shields i completely stopped playing sword and the board type of characters in DS games as well.
 

Elwro

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2002
Messages
11,751
Location
Krakow, Poland
Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
Yeah, becoming more agressive is key. You've noticed your hp grows back if you can get a hit in right after you've received one?

I've been there with the cane; it was also my first weapon. Managed to finish the game with it but oh boy, on 2nd playthrough I realised the saw spear fanatics have it easy... ;-)
 

Bloodeyes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 30, 2007
Messages
2,946
Parry and use the spear
Ok parrying and the spear... I'll try. The spear isn't available to me yet but I'll put levels on it when I find it. But uh... how do I parry when there are no shields? Do I parry with the gun? I don't use it much because of the low damage but sometimes when I shoot enemies mid attack they seem to stagger. Is that what the pistol is for?

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'll keep trying with Bloodborne. I know that often the games I struggle with the most at first become my favorites. So I'm not put off by struggling initially. But boy... I started this because I wanted a break from my Elden Ring RL1 run but this is no break at all. The RL1 run is easier.
- Its much, much harder in the early game than ER. The starting area is probably just as difficult as the Farum Azula or Consecrated snowfield. I think it drops you in the deep end a bit too much. Give me a chance to learn how to play!

It is until you learn to attack first instead of waiting for attack. It is the fundamental switch you need to make.
Up until Bloodborne i played all DS games waiting for first attack and then counter.

Moreover the dodge mechanic is much faster in BB so BB combat style is very very very agressive compared to DS games.

Thanks to BB and lack of shields i completely stopped playing sword and the board type of characters in DS games as well.
Yah mindless aggression got me through the Cleric beast. I tried iframing his attacks and punishing but I kept getting hit by his baby arm. So next time I just went in with 20 reds and whipped him repeatedly while trying to stay at his back and chugging flasks now and then. I cut him down a millimeter at a time. I think its kind of mean how you have to fight him before you can level your weapon or character, but at least you've got lots of durability right from the start, at least with the survivor background I picked.
 

Jaedar

Arcane
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Aug 5, 2009
Messages
10,118
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
I can already buy them. But if I've died I've lost all my blood echoes so I have to farm some more to be able to buy them. I don't know if my level is too low. I've only just started so surely can't be expected to have levelled that much yet. I've killed the big flailing guy with the baby arm on the bridge and the other hunter that turns into a werewolf. I started as level 10 and I think I've levelled 6 - 8 times just in the starting areas. My weapon is +2 which seems fine for being so early and I can take a hit from everything without getting one shot.
Yeah, I agree that early on blood vials are a bitch. If you get stuck and die often on one of the early bosses it is really annoying to have to go farm.

As the game goes on you'll probably gather up a supply of them so you can die a few times and still be at a cap. But the opening can be rough.

I also think trying to play this as elden ring/souls is a trap. It's a different rhythm. Once you get it down I think it's easier than the others, but there is deceptively much to unlearn.
 

Matador

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Jun 14, 2016
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Bloodborne is much easier and fair than Elden Ring for straight fights without summons cheese, in any fight except Orphan of Koos.

Elden Ring is a bad action RPG. You need to get overpowered through broken RPG elements that require a lot of grind or metagaming to have chances to beat some bosses (without devoiding your life to the game). And when you get OP the fight is not fun anymore.

In any Souls game before Elden Ring, you could reasonable have fun and challenge fighting any boss just with normal leveling, exploration rewards and upgrades; achieving a balance between RPG and action.
 

MasPingon

Arcane
Joined
May 13, 2007
Messages
1,915
Location
Castle Rock
Name one weapon gayer than the cane.
602B2BFFEB194CDF07320AE2B9F3371394F55FCC
 

Elwro

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2002
Messages
11,751
Location
Krakow, Poland
Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
Bloodborne is much easier and fair than Elden Ring for straight fights without summons cheese, in any fight except Orphan of Koos.


In any Souls game before Elden Ring, you could reasonable have fun and challenge fighting any boss just with normal leveling, exploration rewards and upgrades; achieving a balance between RPG and action.
QFT

And Bloodborne might have the slickest, tightiest design of all FROM games.
 

Lutte

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
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Aug 24, 2017
Messages
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DU's mom
Parry and use the spear
Ok parrying and the spear... I'll try. The spear isn't available to me yet but I'll put levels on it when I find it. But uh... how do I parry when there are no shields? Do I parry with the gun? I don't use it much because of the low damage but sometimes when I shoot enemies mid attack they seem to stagger. Is that what the pistol is for?
Yes the guns do the parry. Most often the way to go is to have a feel for when the projectile hits the enemy right as their attack is at the "throwing momentum" frames (say, if you hit as the enemy has their sword at their maximum extension right before they slash toward you). Play around with it a little with the big ass, slow enemies until you get a feel for it.
When you get the right timing the game will make a specific sound like in all souls games and you need to run to the enemy and r1 to get the crit hit before they 'wake up'.
Btw the 'skill' stat does quite a decent boost to critical hits.

Guns aren't meant to do damage, except for a few exceptions, but those exceptions require a build that is thoroughly undesirable to play in a first run, it's for meme runs. You can however have something cool and useful in the left hand instead of guns if you build arcane, a flamethrower and an eldritch mist sprayer.
 

Cyberarmy

Love fool
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Smyrna - Scalanouva
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Bloodborne is another beast (eheh) compared to other Souls games. As others said you need to be on the offensive all the time. Getting your newly lost HP via attacking and "parrying" with guns are the basic tools you need master. Even some heavy armor+shield fag like me can adapt this play style easly (which means after lots of grousome deaths :D )
 
Self-Ejected

MajorMace

Self-Ejected
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Souffrance, Franka
threaded cane
Excellent choice.
Also keep it up, the shit that the game has in store for you is well worth getting used to its mechanics.
my resources keep getting drained buying flasks, bombs and clothes.
The key to enjoying souls game, especially when you start, is to keep in mind that you're not actually losing anything.
The game has no game over, and is completable at "SL0 bare hands" as proven daily by madmen speedrunners.
Ofc you're not supposed to be that skilled right off the bat, but it's just a way to remind yourself that you cannot really soft lock or pseudo-soft lock yourself.
Learn to light-heartedly let the souls/blood go and be happy.
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
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Jan 25, 2016
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3,942
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Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
I played the cane for my Old Hunters Skill/Blood run and it was fine, definitely weaker though. The only real advantage is using the whip mode to stay out of reach when you can but that takes some practice. Otherwise it's an inferior sword.

Simon's Bowblade though, very nice.
 

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