Bloodborne Diary, Part 4

Co-op & Lovecraft

4-3-15

    I subsequently did a lot this night, and really didn't do much at all. Firstly, I didn't continue where I thought I might last I played. I started by warping to the Hemwick Charnel Lane Lantern. I knew, from a bit of reading/discussion about the game that there were witch bosses at the end of this area. Overall this area was pretty small and only took a few minutes to get through. I believe it's considered optional, which is my guess as to why it's so small.
    At the end of the area there is a boss fight against the Hemwick Witches. It's a bit of a long battle, but it's very easy. One of the easiest so far, as a matter of fact. And for killing the Witches, you get a workshop tool that allows you to use Runes! I've had one for awhile now, not being able to use it. It only increases the BE I get but it's still cool.
    Not content to just whoop one boss, I decided I wanted to take down that fire dog boss at the bottom of the first Chalice Dungeon I created (where I teased I would start at the end of last week's post). Also, in talking with a friend from Instagram (who's just as obsessed with Bloodborne/Souls games as I am, and who may or may not make a little cameo in this week's post), he told me beating that boss would net me the Chalice to create the next Dungeon. So, Layer 3 I went.
    As with ALL the boss battles in the Chalice Dungeons so far, the run from Lantern to boss is SUPER SHORT. Thank goodness for small miracles huh? I entered his boss room, used a bolt paper (imbues weapon with lightning. Lightning is blue in this game, instead of bright yellow), and was ready to get to work.
    This boss is called the Watchdog of the Old Lords, and he's a large dog-like creature who's body is on fire. He mainly uses fire based attacks for his offense (duh)! I had tried him maybe 5-6 times before during the previous week. He seemed tough, but really doable. I beat him tonight on my first try. It was a great battle. Even though most of these boss battles in this game haven't been super hard so far, they have mostly all been enjoyable. Dashing around, barely escaping damage, only to dish out damage of your own, is exhilarating. I'm definitely liking this aggressive, offense-oriented play style. Kind of a bummer that the game kind of funnels you this way, and there doesn't seem to be many viable other builds (I'm sure people will invariably create new ones. Even if they aren't particularly good. They'll be challenging), but I don't even mind that. I wasn't a huge fan of using different builds in the other games anyway.
    After I conquered the Watchdog, it was time to figure out where to go next. After a little searching, I found a path that lead right to an area that I have heard was no fun. That area of course was the Forbidden Woods.
    This is about the time where my progress stops for the night. You see, I was texting with that same friend I mentioned earlier, Joseph, and we decided it was time to team up and do some co-op together. Since Bloodborne has a password system that let's you find people to play with, we figured it would be easy. After I leveled myself up to 42, set a password, and got the the Lantern in Forbidden Woods, we tried to hook up. But alas, it didn't work. We messed around with a few things, but in the end we didn't join up. I'm fairly certain now that I was too far off of his level. I was 42 and he was 58. I went to sleep shortly after this. 

4-4-15

    Made my way through the Forbidden Woods. It's a gigantic, open, confusing area that really is not much fun to go through. As you could probably guess, it's a wooded area. It looks pretty decent, if not awfully drab and same-y (a slight problem this game has suffered from so far since beginning in the streets of Yharnam). Still, it's nice to get a new type of environment. It does contain LOTS of Runes (I went from having one to having five) and it also is host to some really Bizarre (and snake-centric) enemies, like...

The guy that has tons of snakes burst out of his neck

One of those enemies that makes you say, "...what the fuck?"

 The giant ball of writhing snakes

Pretty shocking when you first see it

...and whatever the hell this is?

Mushroom-alien man?

    [author's note: it's annoying that sometimes the "screenshot captured" image is captured by the screenshot, as seen in the above picture and the snake-head picture]
    After fighting through this area for a long time, I opened two separate shortcuts that easily connect back to the Lantern. I leveled myself up to 48 (should be in co-op range now!), upgraded my blunderbuss to +6, and optimized my blood gems for my +6 Axe (as you upgrade weapons, more slots for Blood gems become available. I currently have three). After spending close to two hours in the Woods I found the boss, a trio of black-robed figures called the Shadows of Yharnam. I died but the fight seems pretty easy. Next time I play I should be able to take them out without a problem.

Hmm, you think there's gonna be a boss here?

    Once I died I shut the game off for the day. Like I said, next time I play I'm gonna kill those guys, maybe get some co-op in, and probably mess around in some more Chalice Dungeons.

4-6-15 (morning)

    As I predicted, I started with the Shadows battle. I beat these guys, although it took me a little longer then I had anticipated. I think it took four tries. Pretty interesting battle (check their dedicated post for more details). After this I arrived in a small town called Byrgenwerth. This is another small area. It's a town with a college at the heart. It's got the aesthetics of the early parts is Yharnam (old buildings and streets), but it's also got some of that Forbidden Woods flair (lots of dirty trees and earth). There are these annoying insect-humanoid enemies that jump on you and fill up your frenzy meter. Two of these frenzy attacks will give you frenzy (does frenzy just take off a large amount of health? Are there any other effects? Also, when you get inflicted with frenzy, you'd BETTER have 95% of your health at least, because it does CRAZY damage). After exploring the Woods-area and the village-area, I went into the college. I read four or five different notes warning of a Hunter inside. Oh great.
    The college looks great. It's full of old tables, chairs, and books. Lots of books. Seath would love it. There's a large spiral staircase in the middle. I went up this, and I found that damn Hunter.
    Amazingly he (she?) doesn't have a gun. Instead he has I believe the threaded cane. Also, he uses magic! He will shoot snakes (??) out if his arm. They extend and come back. He can shoot out some white fog directly in front of him. Finally, he has a soul mass like attack, where he'll conjure up six or seven bright lights above his head. They will then come at you.
    I just ended up cheesing him at the bottom of the stairs. Wait until he comes down and he starts following you around the stairs. You can back off, hit him (I used the two-handed Axe with the combo of an R2 attack followed by an R1 attack) then run around the stairs a bit. When he follows and comes back into view, just hit him again. He doesn't try any magic like this. Just tries to melee you. It's cheap, but fuck the Hunters. They're just as cheap
    Once I killed him, I explored the small college some more. Found a key that opens a nearby door. The door leads out to an open patio-like area. There's a man in a wheelchair here (not one of those enemies). He doesn't say anything. After I explored here, I was stumped. I searched around the town again. I searched the college again. Then I figured I'd go back out on that veranda kind of thing that I unlocked with that key. Why would it be behind a locked door if it wasn't important?
    Going by both the notes on the ground and my own Souls intuition, I walked to the obvious jutted out ledge and looked over. Nothing but water. I was gonna jump. Even if I died, I figured it didn't matter. The Lamp was a five second jog back
    Turns out I DIDN'T die, and I fell through the water and landed in an absolutely stunning area called Moonside Lake. It's a white void with water as far as the eye can see (hmm, what's that large creature off in the distance?). Like the anti-Abyss from Dark Souls. Reminded me of Ash Lake, also from DS. Ash Lake was better and more shocking to first find, but damn this came really close.

My favorite area of the game so far. Is that a large moss-covered rock?

    There isn't much to do here as far as exploring. I saw tons of red specters (note on those: the first day the game came out, very few of the red specters worked. Now they work 9/10 times!) and that should have been a tip off. I ran over to the large... thing that's quietly minding it's own business a ways off. I thought it might have been a normal enemy, or maybe even an NPC (far fetched but certainly not out of the question). Nope, once you attack him, a name and health bar show up on the bottom of the screen. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Rom, the Vacuous Spider. He's one of the strangest (and toughest) bosses in the game so far.
    Once you hit him a few times, he calls down a veritable rainstorm of spiders from the sky (?). And these bastards hit HARD. One shot kills are a real possibility here. Also, both Rom and the small spiders have rock hard faces. They have to be attacked from the side or back. But I'll go over all that stuff in the boss post!
    I tried a few times, didn't beat him, and shut it off to go back to sleep (waking up early in the morning to play video games is not as easy as it was when I was in middle/high school. Every day up at 5am without a damn care in the world, so I could play video games for a few hours before school. Clearly much has changed).

4-6-15 (night)

     I picked up last night, logically enough, right where I left off that morning, which was at the Rom boss battle. I attempted it another three-or-four more times before calling in reinforcements. So far I haven’t summoned anyone in the game, and I’ve solo’d all the bosses. But I wanted some co-op fun, so Joseph and I met up, in our respective games, at the college right near the boss gate, and I used my Beckoning Bell, and he his Small Resonant Bell, and with the help of a password, wouldn’t you know it? We actually got connected and I summoned him into my game! It was glorious. I’ve never had a problem with past Souls games not letting you team up with friends (or at least, not letting you do it so overtly). While I don’t think it’s entirely necessary, and it’s still fairly obfuscated, it’s great fun anyway. He entered my game, I walked through the Nightmare Fog, got assaulted by one of those ridiculous bug enemies, then took that leap of faith into the gorgeous Moonside Lake. Joesph followed. We saw Rom in the distance. Well, let me put what happened next in his own words (copied verbatim from a text message):

    "Rom the Vacuous Spider lay ahead of me, thirsty for blood, but this time I had a cooperator to help even the playing fiel-   oh wait, he's dead. Murdered by literally the FIRST enemy he came into contact with"

 This made me laugh out loud when I read it on my phone. You see, my unfortunate co-op buddy got killed by those ridiculously overpowered little spiders. "Oh boy," I thought to myself then. "Time to really nut up for this boss with his buffed stats" (as in past Souls games, it appears that the bosses get stronger if you’ve summoned help). Despite this minor setback however, this was the attempt that I actually beat him! Was happy to get that boss out of the way. One of the tougher ones so far.

The unstoppable duo!

    Not content for one minute of co-op, we decided to team up again and REALLY kick some ass. Turns out, once you kill Rom, you’re treated to a strange cut scene that shows the moon turning a blood-red color. You are transported to a room in the Cathedral Ward. Remember when I had said last week there was a large staircase that had three paths? One went to Amelia, one went to the Hemwick Witches, and one ended in a room I thought might be a boss room? I don’t think I went over that room much in my earlier post, so I’ll do it now. It isn’t a boss room. It’s a large circular room with a closed door on one side. Before killing Rom, if you get too close to that door, you see this buildup of strange blue mist, and if you stand in it too long, you get transported up in the air, and then you die. I found it incredibly odd at the time. Well, turns it, there’s a reason behind that. Once you kill Rom (or even if your Insight is high enough. Not totally sure on that one yet), and you reawaken in this room, and you’ll notice a huge Lovercraftian sort of monster just chilling on the ceiling. 

A little tough to tell because of the camera angle, but this thing is HUGE

    Turns out he was invisible before, but he’s the one that kills you. Before turning him visible, if he kills you, you can sort of glimpse a transparent image of something. I can’t tell you all how unbelievable I find this. I love the Cthulu/Lovecraft inspired monsters a lot (in another life I’d love to be a writer with the imagination and surreal, monstrous properties that he possessed. You know, without the rampant racism, of course). This game is constantly changing, seemingly after every defeated boss. It’s an absolute wonder to behold, and I can’t imagine what I’ve already missed. Hopefully I’ll pick it up in subsequent playthroughs.

    At any rate, if you go through the now-open door in this room, you’ll find yourself back in the Unseen Village. However, it’s an entirely different area than the one the bag-guy brings you to if he kills you. This area is yet another large Victorian-looking city with streets, lights, and buildings. Even so, it looks and feels different then the Yharnam or Byrgenwerth areas. Of course, this is in large part to more of those huge monsters sitting and clinging to buildings. Some will try to grab you (like the one in that Cathedral Ward room) if you get to close. One in particular shoots a large laser beam (I saw someone on the Giant Bomb forums compare this guy to the various fire-breathing dragon's that protect certain bridges in all the previous Souls games. This is pretty accurate) at a large set of stairs that you have to dodge.
    Joseph and I went through this area and we were generally taking care of business. At the beginning, we were even invaded. This was my first invasion in Bloodborne. And this bastard stayed on some stairs underneath one of those giant monsters that will try to grab you if you stay near it. So that, coupled with a huge hoard of enemies (that kept coming back to life!), made this particular encounter very frustrating. I ended up getting killed by some enemies. Luckily Joseph avenged my death!
    After this dumb situation, we continued on. Turns out there are certain enemies that bring other enemies back to life. You have to find and kill them to stop the enemies from respawning.
    I'll try to wrap this up soon, as this is easily my longest diary post yet. Joseph and I went through some more of this area until we eventually reached the Lamp that you can find if you get abducted by the bag man earlier in the game. Doesn't seem like it's working now though. I didn't know where to go, and after both of us were killed again, I decided to call it a night. We did find a key that I'm not sure what to do with, so that should be my assignment for next time. Our co-oping was a lot of fun, and we'll be doing it again in the future. 

4-8-15 & 4-9-15

    Very short session both of these mornings. And I didn't do much. I purposely kept it this way. I searched for another Chalice Dungeon. This time I chose one that had a five skeleton rating. I have no idea what the rating is in reference to. Could it be loot? I spent my entire first 45 minute play session  on the eighth going through the first two Layers of it, and I found four-or-five treasure chests per Layer. The rating  certainly isn't in reference to difficulty, because this Dungeon was easy. Finally, the boss of the first Layer were the Watchers again, like in the second Layer of that first Dungeon. They were pathetically easy (lots of blunderbuss parrying and visceral attacks). I'm not doing boss posts for these guys. Second Layer boss was yet another Maneater Boar. Also stupidly easy. I shut it off after killing this boss. 

    My second short morning session saw the conclusion of this random Dungeon I searched for. I found some more loot (including enough materials to finally make the Central Pthumeru Dungeon. Also, I found a weapon! It's the uncanny version of the saw spear). I fought another spectacularly easy boss in the third Layer of the random one, called Beast-possessed Soul (basically a lanky werewolf with some fire magic). I'll do a write up of him, but it'll be in next week's post. This week's boss post is already super long. After I defeated the boss, I returned to Hunter's Dream, leveled up to 54, and created that Central Pthumeru Dungeon. A splitting headache made me shut the game off earlier than I wanted to.   

    When I play again, I'll probably start the Central Pthumeru Dungeon, then try to figure out where to go back in the Unseen Village. Who knows, I could get some co-op in too! Thanks for reading this bloated beast, and sorry it's kind of late. Fell behind a bit and I've had a tough time catching up.

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.

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

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     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