with all the dark souls talk on the internet eclipsing from software with so much negativity and weird takes, I’m glad this thread has so many different takes over the years.
anor londo was the first area i ever saw in dark souls. from a friend’s busted up xbox 360 on his dirty ass tile floor. he was just like “look at my character… he’s a battle mage puffs up a fireball” and I saw the background of anor londo and was like woah… that’s pretty fuckin sick… i need to play this. he was up the stairs from the bonfire, facing towards the elevator!
Just catching up on discussion here. Some tips for Bloodborne blood vial hoarding.
Put a couple points into Arcane in the early game, this will increase your Discovery stat. This stat increases item drop rate. Each point is an extra percent.
The more health you have the more effective the vials are. Unlike the dark souls series, the blood vials heal a percentage of your max health. The percentage is 33%, so the more you boost your Vitality stat, the more effective the vials are and the less you have to use.
If you’re spending souls and holding extra, spend the rest on vials/ bullets at the shop. They’re available from the beginning.
Pretty much always fight a few enemies after spawning, the bigger enemies (big guys & wolfmen) are more likely to drop items and a lot of them can be parried / dodged fairly easily. Basically learn who drops what and you can take down easily.
I don’t know if it was because I was good or bad, but I got through the whole game without ever spawning with less than 20 vials
I had a high arcane moonlight sword build. Couldn’t beat the final dlc boss cause he was so arcane resistant.
You really know your stuff,
I think #2 is the major key here. Just like vigor in elden ring, it’s easy to overlook HP pool in all these games. I think that’s what made the game harder for me too. Level your HP! Sounds like the problem isn’t the blood phials, it’s your HP pool!
Finished Anor Londo tonight, and yeah, I definitely still love the game!
Having the ability to warp between bonfires feels absolutely broken, but that makes me appreciate it as fast travel more than I usually do in most other games, where I often avoid using it out of principle
Here, though, I will do no such thing, because I earned it! I’d like to see more games adopt that approach to it, honestly
I didn’t fully explore everything (and I’ve seen enough videos over the years to know I didn’t get the “real” story), but once I got to the final boss I decided that I had seen enough and wanted to bring my time in Lordran to a close. Souls fatigue is definitely real for me, and it will be a little while at least before I either return to this one or move on to the next game (which I now definitely intend to do)
All in all, it feels pretty good to have finally finished this game after so many years of trying
For now, though I’ve several other games I want to get to that Dark Souls dragged me away from!
I’ve started in on Sekiro this week. I just beat the horse guy. I did a ton of the Hirata Estate first - up to Lady Butterfly. I gave her one attempt and I have no idea what to do, so I just backed out for now, knowing that the horse guy was waiting for me.
I appreciate how streamlined everything is - the world, the traversal, the action. Just a really tight action game with beautiful art direction which lends itself to a chill vibe, despite the demanding focus required in combat.
I am inviting all general and specific tips. I’ve not been shy about looking stuff up if I feel stuck or if I don’t know what to do, so don’t worry about spoiling me (but still do put stuff in spoiler tags for the purposes of the thread).
I describe Sekiro as Souls, minus all the most annoying things about souls that gave me burnout. No more stamina bar is an especially huge one for me.
in the way of tips, just enjoy. you probably beat the first boss sooner than I did. I looked up strats for a lot of bosses in the second half of the game and I don’t regret it because it was still fucking hard in the stressful way I don’t necessarily enjoy. but damn those environments were gorgeous.
I also don’t miss feeling like I need to fine tune my character. Just a versatile katana user please and thank you. The animations are much better because there’s only one weapon to worry about.
Basically if the going gets rough you can do what you did and go to places like hirata estate and fully upgrade yourself with the resources you find. The strength and heal upgrades are things you’ll really want, all the time.
I found that taking a break from a particularly difficult boss was more productive than beating my head against the wall. You have to be kind of loose and chill to absorb all the timing/parry stuff (at least that was my experience), so being heated was counterproductive
yeah. I do this a lot in souls but even moreso in sekiro I found myself starting over on a new game just to play through the first areas again with newfound techniques and found them to be chill and relaxingly easy in a way that put me in a state of flow to where by the time I arrived at the boss again, it seemed easier.
Lady Butterfly ended my first two runs. Only after coming back and beating her years later did the combat finally click.
My advice for beating her:
Learn to parry all her attacks. She has very specific combo timing (everyone does, but this was the first time I needed to learn that).
Throw shurikens at her when she’s suspended in the air. They knock her down.
Don’t bother with the snap seeds when she brings the ghosties. They are way too limited a resource, and you will run out quickly after a few tries. Just run around the perimeter if the room until they go away. (This is one of my biggest nitpicks with a game I otherwise love. Why would you make a resource that helps with an early boss so limited in a game about trying to beat bosses over and over? It seems like this only rewards people who already don’t need the assistance.)
Thank you! I actually did beat her shortly after writing that post. I wish I knew about NOT using the beans before. That resource is now likely totally spent.
A lot of the bosses of Sekiro can seem daunting at first but with a guide like the one above, they usually have a weakness. I find it much less stressful than dark souls or elden ring because in Sekiro there is only one build, the best build, and so you don’t run into problems like your play style and build you spent 120 hours playing with suddenly becoming obsolete vs a climactic boss. Like my arcane moonlight sword being basically useless against the final dlc boss of bloodborne
