Bloodborne Diary, Part 3

Damn pigs

DAY 6 (3-31-15)

    I decided maybe it was time to stop dillydallying in the optional areas of the game, and I decided I wanted to press on. I went back to the Cathedral Ward, because that was the only place I could think of that I might not have explored fully.

    Turns out, I didn’t explore it fully. I don’t think I did anyway. I found a new area to look around in. It has gigantic enemies with huge axes. Despite their immense size (hell, definitely bigger than that puny Undead Giant), they are very easy to kill. They look rad as hell, though. I found a locked gate, and I used the emblem here that I bought back in Hunter’s Dream. Can’t recall the name.

Swinging his axe

    Beyond opening the gate, I really just explored/collected in the new area. Pretty vague, I know, but it’s also a accurate description. I’m not gonna bore everyone with the minutiae of what I do in each individual area. If you’ve played the game, you know what exploring is all about.

    I did notice, however, at the Lantern in the Cathedral Ward, there’s a decrepit, scary-looking lady. I’m assuming I missed her and she didn’t just arrive there recently. She’s friendly though, and she told me to find anyone I could to bring to the Cathedral, as it is a safe haven. This is great and aggravating at the same time. I remember, maybe on my first night playing even, that I found someone in a house that you can knock on the door to, and they asked if I knew of any safe places to go. I only had the option to reply “no”, and I’ve since forgotten about it. Obviously I could go back to him and tell him to go to the Cathedral. I don’t remember at all where he was. If I searched around the beginning area of the game enough, I’m sure I could find it. I imagine it would take some time though.

    Good news on the safe haven Cathedral front, however! I did find someone to send there. A friendly whore. And she really is a whore; she says so herself. I ended up getting an item from getting her there. I think it replenishes all my health?

    At some point, I had amassed more than 20,000 Blood Echoes. I don’t remember the situation, but I lost them all. It was fairly crushing at the time. It was the most BE I had in one go. Despite that setback, I still leveled myself to 32.

    My final note of this day is that I went from being desperately low on both Blood Vials and Quicksilver Bullets, but now I have 20 of each on me, plus 24 BV and 40 Bullets in storage! Everything is coming up Silas!

DAY 7 (4-2-15)

    What, a day with no Bloodborne? Yikes, that’s like a day with no sunshine. Even though it was just two days ago, I don’t even remember why I didn’t play on the first. Oh yeah, because it was APRIL FOOL’S DAY! TAKE THAT SUCKERS!

    I got through the last area of Cathedral Ward. It ends with a giant staircase with several enemies on it. At the top of this staircase there are three different paths to take. There is a large door front and center. To the left and right of the door are two different paths. The path to the right, which was the first one I took, lead down a hill area with some small cliffs you can jump down. You’ll also encounter two incredibly annoying Hunters. One in particular doesn’t EVER STOP SHOOTING HIS FUCKING GUN. I can’t even kill him. I even used one of those items that says it will give you temporary beasthood. I was thinking I’d turn into a kick ass beast. Nope. As far as I could tell, nothing (obvious) happened.

     At the bottom was a building with an open door and a very large, circular room. This looked like a boss room, so I skipped it. I had 20,000 BE on me, and I was running low on Vials. I was very unprepared, should there have been a boss in there.

The entrance

    The left path brings you through a small wooded area (which is home to about a million villager enemies with guns). This leads to a Lantern though! I was awfully thankful for this, because I had contemplated turning around to get back to the Lantern at the Cathedral Ward. See, I was sitting on a fat stack of BE (the urge to call these things souls is crazy hard to resist) and I really didn’t want to lose it. From this Lantern, I went back to Hunter’s Dream. I had a little over 26,000 BE, which is by far the most I’ve had at one time.

    I upgraded my Axe to +5, bought 20-something extra Vials, and leveled myself up to 35. I also used the “search” feature on one of the Chalice tombstones. This allows you to find other Dungeons people have created (these must be the randomly generated ones). I wanted to try this out. I ended up going into some random Dungeon. It was different than the first one I went into, but it had an air of similarity. The first Layer was small, and I got through it easily. I was curious to see what the boss might look like, because in general in that first Dungeon, they were great. 

    Imagine my surprise when I walk through the door and the name I see on the bottom of the screen is "Maneater Boar". I then shift my gaze to the middle of my TV screen, and who is there but one of those giant pig enemies. Yup, the normal 'ol pig enemy that I had professed to enjoy so much in an earlier post. I was utterly disappointed by this. 

    I'm going to take a guess at how bosses for these randomly generated Dungeons work (because I can't imagine Undead Giant and Watchdog of the Old Lords are normal enemies given the boss treatment). I assume they are just going to take normal enemies and up their stats a bit and give them dumb names. I now know that those Watchers I fought in the first Dungeon (which I don't think was randomly generated actually, so they even do this to the "set" Dungeons) are definitely just the normal fat guy enemies that guard the levers in these Dungeons. I guess I understand that they can't just create 500 new bosses for all this random stuff, but maybe at least change the color palette? Add some horns? Something! There was nothing to differentiate Maneater Boar to that very first pig down in the sewers. Oh well. 

    After I killed it, I decided to leave the Dungeon and see what was behind that large door back in Cathedral Ward. I had guessed a boss was behind it. Well, I was right! Upon entering, you are greeted with a short cut scene of a woman clad in white, in front of some sort of altar. She's grasping a locket. She then transforms into a large beast, and the cut scene ends. This is Vicar Amelia. I haven't read any specifics about this boss, and in general I've been very good about not reading up on this game (a stark contrast to how I went about Dark Souls II), but I do know that she is regarded as a tough customer. She does look awesome though. Like some sort of mutated deer-beast (sounds lame, but it was better in practice). I wasn't really there to fight her, so I went in, took my required screenshots, got killed, and called it a day. That's where I ended. Hopefully taking her down won't be too much of a hassle.

  DAY 8 (4-3-15)

    Played for close to 90 minutes today, but I didn’t get much accomplished. I left off with the several paths to take: Vicar Amelia, both left and right paths near her, plus the Chalice Dungeon I had searched for and gone through the first Layer of. I decided on the first option: Amelia. I was looking to whoop some boss ass this morning.

    As mentioned above, I was going into this thinking this was gonna be a rough time. Well, I ended up beating Amelia on my first attempt, and I’m pretty happy about that. It was a tough battle, but it was also a fun battle. Lots of dodging and up-close fighting. Check out my separate boss post for the specifics, but I’d say this was my favorite fight so far.

    After this, you get the gold locket she was holding. You also get treated to a cut scene, which may have been a flashback (?) to…something. A conversation with two people I don’t know (was one Amelia? Was there even two people actually?) talking about something I have no idea about. Boy, I’m bad with story stuff in general (I’m not very smart), but in these games, yowza, I’m lost.

    Otherwise, I leveled up one more time to 36, and I bought some Blood Rituals and used the second Chalice (a “root” chalice) and created a new Chalice Dungeon. I went through the first Layer easily (besides one werewolf enemy that killed me three or four times). It was pretty small. I got to the boss…and it was another Maneater Boar. The exact same one. In an identical-looking room to the searched-for Dungeon I went through. Lame to the super!

    I beat it and left that Chalice Dungeon. Before I shut it off for the morning, I went to the first Dungeon again and tried to beat the boss of the third Layer, Watchdog of the Old Lords. Came close once, but didn’t beat it. So, that’ll have to be for next week. Shut it off after a few tries here.



    Well, that's it for my second "week" of Bloodborne. I'm actually about to play right now (Friday, April 3). Whatever I do today, this weekend, and probably Monday will go into a Diary Week 3 (pt 1) post Tuesday-ish of next week. So, everyone have a great Easter weekend, and may you slaughter as much prey as you can handle.