Bloodborne Diary, Part 2

Optional areas! Galore!

DAY 3 (3-27-15)

    Picked up right where I left off last (that morning, as a matter of fact), and that’s in the graveyard where you fight Father Gascoigne. He drops a key that gives you access to the next area. This next area is called the Cathedral Ward. It isn’t a big area (unless I’ve missed something. Totally possible). After carefully making my way through this area, I found a big locked door with a note. Go through this door and you’re in Old Yharnam. I didn’t know this at the time, but apparently this is an entirely optional area.

    When you get into the area, there’s a guy (with quite the booming, traveling voice) far away that warns you to leave. If you press on (as I did), he is none too happy. In fact, he stands on top of a tall cathedral and he has a goddamn mounted mini-gun up there. Yup, mini-guns in a Souls-ish game. Pretty crazy. Also, this guy is a major pain in the ass. Because of his vantage point, he can see you from basically anywhere in the area (unless you’re in the few destroyed buildings, or if you’re behind something). Being out in the open is dangerous. As you can guess, the mini-gun tears you to shreds pretty fast. In the end though, I kind of liked this area. Avoiding his gunfire wasn’t terribly tough. It really kept you on your toes. Always looking and panning the camera, to see if you could see him. Killing him is the toughest part of the area. Eventually, after going through the ruined streets (fighting off aggressive enemies while hiding/dodging from machine gun fire), you’ll come to a long ladder. It leads up to a second ladder. This second ladder leads up to the roof where this guy is. As soon as you get to the top, he fucks your shit up. He has a Blunderbuss I think. It seems more powerful than mine. He also has some arm-sword-looking thing. I have no idea. He kind of reminds me of cyborg. Anyway, he'll kill you quick. I ended up getting to the top of the ladder and immediately running towards him, blasting with my 'buss. It took two shots to knock him off the building, killing him. Unfortunately, where he landed was inaccessible to me, so I couldn't retrieve any items he had. Big bummer there.

    After taking down that clown, I continued exploring the area. I eventually found a shortcut that would help me out a little later. I wandered (I use that word a lot, but it's pretty fitting for this game) until I happened upon an area I hadn't been to before. It was full of werewolves. Once I got through them, I found another boss. Numero drei. And he's a particularly nasty looking creature called the Blood-starved Beast. After ALMOST beating him my first try (ONE HIT LEFT), I failed on a subsequent attempt. This was when I decided to shut it off for the night.

Ominous, no?

     I did find several cool things during my play  time, including a Rifle Spear weapon (but I don't have the correct stats to use it. Sounds awesome) and some damn blood gems finally. Now I can upgrade my weapons. I put one in my Axe that  increases my physical attack by 2.7%. Speaking of my Axe, I also upgraded it to +3, and my Blunderbuss to +2. Got myself up to level 19 to boot. Perhaps the coolest thing I found, but one I haven't tried yet, is an item to temporarily turn me into a beast. How kick ass does that sound? 

    I hate leaving off a session with a boss un-beat, but I don't think he'll be too bad to kill. 

DAY 4 (3-28-15 & 3-29-15)

    [author's note: You may notice several of my "days" are more than one day. Unlike my Final Fantasy IV Advance Diary stuff, that was basically me playing one hour every day. It was nice and clean. This is short, long, and extremely long play sessions on same days, different days, at night, in the morning, in the early morning, and all other times. I'm lumping them together because it's just a little easier and cleaner looking]

    Both these play sessions were pretty short, which is why I put them together. Saturday night I turned it on to try and beat Blood-starved Beast. Only played for maybe half an hour? I didn't beat him that night [second author's note: it's possible I actually DID beat him Saturday night, but those are just petty semantics anyway]. That's all that short session consisted of. 

    I played Sunday for a bit too. An hour or less. I did beat Blood-starved Beast (or BS Beast as you could call him. Pretty fitting) this time. In the end it took me five tries I think. That damn poison is rough.
    You get a Chalice when you kill him. This allows you access to a Chalice Dungeon (finally) named Pthumerian Labyrinth. What a fun word! Anyway, you need to use it, along with Blood Rituals (for this first one I needed two, which I had found earlier, sitting on an altar, in Old Yharnam I believe), plus you need Blood Echoes (in this case, 1000). So it's not as simple as just getting a Chalice and using it. Luckily I had all those items, and I was able to do the ritual and create a Dungeon. I'm still a little unclear about all the details of them. I know they are randomly generated. But I also read some of them might be fixed ones? I don't know. I spent the rest of my brief time starting this dungeon (it was like five minutes).

Very beginning of first Chalice Dungeon

Also, leveled myself up with the appropriate stats to use that Rifle Spear. Eh, pretty disappointing.


 

DAY 5 (3-30-15)

    Another unfortunately short session this morning before work (so hard to wake up at 5 or 6am, especially when you go to bed at 12:30am). I spent my time exploring the Dungeon. It's fairly small actually. It looks like an old underground cave. I'm hoping each Dungeon has a completely different aesthetic and they aren't all "caves with different rooms". 

    At any rate, once I got past an area that was eerily reminiscent of Sen's Fortress (a narrow bridge with giant swinging axes), I found a lever that opens up a locked nearby door. I knew where the door was, so I went to it. Turns out, it leads to a boss! Undead Giant. I'm assuming this is the end of the dungeon. It's great because the path from lamp to boss is simple and fast. Go down one ladder, go up another ladder, and boom. You're there. No enemies to fight. 

    I didn't beat him this morning (tried five times), but he doesn't seem too hard. I ran out of Blood Vials, so that was a problem. Spent my remaining 10 minutes before shutting it off farming BE (Blood Echoes )to buy Blood Vials (got 29!). 

    Next time I play I'll beat that boss then continue on with the game

~~~~~~~~~~~

     We're still on March 30, so I'll just do a little tilde line to separate the two play sessions. Played Monday night (which was last night as of this writing. In real time) from about 11pm to 3am. Definitely my longest play time so far. And it was all sorts of awesome. I'll try to run this down as succinctly as possible:

     First off, I beat the Undead Giant. He took me way more tries than I would have expected, but I killed him. He was tough, but he wasn't on the level of Father G. He's still the hardest so far, even though Undead Giant definitely killed me more (I'd wager close to 20 times. But with the re-spawn so close, it wasn't an issue at all). 

    Also, I was very wrong about this being the end of the Dungeon. Nope. Just the end of the first floor (or Layer, as they call them). There's a lift after the boss that takes you to the second Layer. I didn't really explain how this Dungeon works, so I will briefly here: each Layer has a very apparent locked door. It's usually very close to the Lamp, and it has purple candles near it. Somewhere in the Layer there is a lever (guarded by a big hulking guy) that opens this door. So, the goal of each Layer (so far, through three of them) is to find the lever, unlock the door, and proceed. Behind each locked door is a boss.

It's got an old library vibe

    After I fought through the second Layer of the Chalice Dungeon and found the lever, I went on to the boss. This boss(es) was by far the easiest of them all so far. It consists of three big fat guys, named the Merciless Watchers and the Watcher Chieftain. They look like the guys that guard the levers. Maybe they are, but are just more powerful. At any rate, there are three of them. Two have large cleavers, and one has a blunderbuss. I'll go more in depth in the boss article, but these guys were lame as hell. They don't pursue you. They just stand up in their area, waiting for you to attack. It's actually quite annoying. 

    But, they were easily dispatched, and then it was on to the third Layer of this Dungeon. But first, I almost forgot! They drop another Chalice when killed! It's the Central Pthumeru Root Chalice! Better yet, I have all the materials to create it! 

    Back to THIS Dungeon, however. The third Layer is my favorite. It seems bigger, more open, and has a nice outdoor area. Almost like the courtyards of a ruined castle. It also has some really crazy bug monster, which I really liked. Here's a picture!

Eh, not the best picture. But look how crazy he is!

    Besides this knucklehead, there's a lot of great items to get here. I got some more Blood Rituals, so I can open up more Chalice Dungeons. I also got a Tomb Mold, which is an item needed to create one of the Dungeons (the aforementioned Central P-word Root one). I ended up getting through this area easily enough as well. Got to the boss, and saw a large, flaming dog. It's called the Watchdog of the Old Lords. This is the first really cool boss name! I only attempted this guy two or three times. He looks like he'll be pretty tough, but certainly manageable. Again, the run back is only a few seconds. I've also noticed that every time I've died in this Chalice Dungeon, the load time is five seconds or less. Every. Single. Time. I know a lot was made of the absurd load times of this game (I was one of them making a lot of it), and it does suck when you have to wait so long to re-spawn, but it was a breath of fresh air down here at least.

    I will go back and beat him this week, but I decided I wanted to try and venture back into the story mode. So far, everything I've done since Father G has been optional. Old Yharnam, that Chalice Dungeon, and the next area I'm about to talk about. In my quest to figure out exactly where to go, I went back to the Cathedral Ward, thinking perhaps I didn't explore it well enough. I even purchased the Hunter Chief Emblem from the merchant in Hunter's Dream. As I was exploring though, I was killed by a peculiar enemy. He's tall, and he carries a burlap-looking sack with him. Imagine my surprise when, instead of re=spawning at the Lamp, I was shown a short cut scene of myself waking up in a strange area. It's called Yahar'gul, Unseen Village (what is with the ridiculous names? Geezus). This place is pretty cool. You start off in a small prison area, but once you get out, it's more of the same as most other areas. Besides those tough bag guys, it's got some giant pigs (two of them!) plus some other easier enemies. There is also a Lantern (I keep calling them Lamps. Sorry, sorry) near where you wake up, and you can then transport back and forth here whenever you'd like. I found a boss here, but he killed me in one shot, and I didn't even get a hit off. I'll come back and fight him when I'm stronger.

    I think that's about all I did last night. Messed around in that Chalice Dungeon, messed around in the Unseen Village, and that was about it. Oh, I did finally do a tiny bit of co-op. I was summoned into someone's game to help them take down Blood-starved Beast. Of course I got killed when the monster had like a quarter of his health left. I really hope that guy finished the job. It was great fun either way, and I can't wait to do more. 

    There's one other thing I wanted to bring up all the way back in my First Impressions post, but I kept forgetting: this game has TONS of very long ladders.

    This week has been a good one so far, and I only hope in the coming days I can actually figure out where to go and find an area that isn't optional. Thanks for reading

I thought for sure this thing was gonna climb down from there and fight me