I've killed all the bosses in the main game (leaving the true ending boss for when I'm ready to move into NG+) so I've been spending a lot of time in the Chalice Dungeons. I can say that there is no doubt that the toughest content in the game can be found there. The level design leaves something to be desired, but the enemies themselves (many unique to the dungeons) can be quite a challenge once you start dipping into the depth 4 and depth 5 dungeons. The enemies can one shot you just as easily as the bosses.

The bosses in the Chalice Dungeon are on a completely different tier from the stuff in the main game. There are plenty of tricks that can be utilized on the bosses in the main game and the same can even apply to the starting Chalice Dungeons, but I feel I've reached the point where the bosses are now on par with the hardest stuff that Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 2 had to offer. Trying to end the boss fight quickly by rushing in with a flurry of attacks is no longer valid. Being careless and greedy with your approach can now end with the boss one shotting you. Summoning is pretty much impossible (there is a lot of setup involved to get someone into your dungeon) so you need to do it on your own.

I recently beat the Abhorrent Beast and the Defiled Watchdog of the Old Lords. I feel that those two bosses in particular are an excellent example of the patience, planning, and execution required to take on these bosses. I'm pretty happy now that they're gone and I'm ready to see what else the game can throw at me.

The Watch Dog & the Headless Bloodletting Beast boss kills with the Blade of Mercy's short range was seriously some of the most difficult gaming I've done in a loooooong while. That platinum trophy feels that much better now.

The ending of that Abhorrent Beast fight was pretty funny, haha. I delved into the Chalice Dungeons just deep enough to get the Bone Ash set and have never gone back, but I think this convinced me to give the rest a shot. I've been procrastinating on finishing my first playthrough knowing that the rest of the content is in there, since what I saw of the CD early on didn't really inspire me to continue with it. I suppose it's worth sticking it out just for the bosses, that one looked like fun.

@redyoshi: The final final boss in the chalice dungeons is really interesting.

I just entered the Nightmare. Should I complete the chalice dungeons before finishing the home stretch?

I can't say that I'm looking forward to fighting the Watchdog in the Defiled Dungeon. While learning the Abhorrent Beast's moveset and trying dodge around him was a lot of fun, the Watchdog seems to have a lot more health, and the ability to easily one-hit kill you. I didn't enjoy bosses like Rom or the Undead Giant (the one with flails), because all I did was bait his attack, hit him once, then back off, so I hope this one doesn't boil down to just that.

@phoenix778m: They don't reset if you go into ng+, BUT there are items you need for some of the later chalices out in the game world and some of them are very late game gets, so if you wan't to go deep I would hunt those items down lest you be forced to play to the end of ng+ to get them.

@militantfreudian: I'm also kind of bummed every time I realize a boss wants me to go back to the Dark Souls style of playing. I prefer fights like Gascoigne, Paarl, One Reborn, and Vicar Amelia where boldness is rewarded. At first I hated Amelia, but now I get what the game was teaching me. She can be stunned so easily if you just hammer her arms and face. Every time a boss behaves like Undead Giant or Watchdog, I start to get bored and discouraged.

I'm trying to beat Ebrietas in one of my Great Isz Chalice Dungeon.

That fucking charge attack...

I feel that the Watchdog and Ebrietas are very similar with their charge attacks, but I've only killed Ebrietas in the main game and I didn't fully learn the timing to dodge her charge. As long as it doesn't one shot like Watchdog it should be fine. I believe she can clip you with her charge and you can survive, but if you get hit head on then you're dead.

The boss that gave me the most grief was the Loran Darkbeast. The boss itself was pretty tough but the framerate made it maddening. I'm working on beating Amygdala in the cursed chalice but none of my weapons have the reach to reliably hit that thing, beating it in the main game was hard enough but with half health it requires a lot of patience.

I really like the chalice dungeons though, it's a nice refresher between NG+'s.

Adhorrent Beast is probably the only mini-boss in the main game that was challenging. All the Chalice Dungeon stuff have increased health compared to the main game, though that seems to be because it doesn't scale with NG+.

It's really too bad the design of the Chalice Dungeons are pretty terrible though. I don't think I've reached Depth 5 yet. I play one dungeon and then quit the game and play something else because I don't want to continue playing it. It really feels like grinding to me. The bosses are okay, but there is no cool level design or interesting lore/NPC's there. It doesn't help that most dungeons look very similar and it takes a long time between dungeons before you get completely new enemies. You get one or two new ones per dungeon, but loads of the same ones. I just get bored of it so fast.

Errr, statistically NG regular bosses are ALREADY harder than anything that DkS can throw at you, Artorias of The Abyss included. In DkS you can 3 shot bosses with a Black Knight weapon and power within, nothing you'll ever manage on this game.

The comparison between Abhorrent, Bloodletting, or Descendant with anything on Dark and DLCs is straight ridiculous. But I find the comparison with Dark 2 pretty fair (with things like Ancient Dragon, Lud & Zallen, Fume Knight, Elana, Sinner NG+, etc)

Hated some of the fights at the begining, but a bunch of them started to seem interesting after a few attempts.

@zevvion: I'm at the cusp of beating the game again and starting NG++ but I really have no desire to do that so I started doing the Chalice dungeons and similarly I have a hard time going forward. Just doing one level seems to take a great deal of energy because it's just so utterly boring. Strangely enough I would probably rather do an entire run of NG++ than keep doing them. The worst thing is that the harder dungeons require materials from the earlier ones so now at level 150+ I'm basically slogging it out through areas where I kill everything with one swipe so that I can finally get to an area thats even halfway challenging. Wish I could just jump to the end or something.

@humanity: I'm doing about one dungeon a week. Consequently, it seems I also play Bloodborne only once a week too. I wish they'd just left the Chalice Dungeons out and spend that time on the main game. There is barely anything interesting in there. Can't say I'm having fun with it. In addition, I am once again the odd-man out, because I don't think it's that insane in terms of difficulty either.

Does ~15 or more Insight make the Chalice Dungeons harder like it does the main game? Or is a certain amount required to even get in? A total Bloodborne noob here talking so sorry for my lack of knowledge. Just curious since I noticed the amount in the videos.

@golguin: I was happy the Abhorrent Beast was gone too....until he spawned again as the first random boss in the very next dungeon run. Quite a bit easier the second time around after you already know what to do though; managed to 1-shot him this time. He seems to like me as I had to face him a third time later on too.

I held off on beating the game for a while because I wanted to try to complete the chalice dungeons first, but after finally beating the Loran Darkbeast and moving on to yet another area that was identical to the last I just couldn't take it anymore and decided to fight the final boss. Was pretty relieved to find out your progress in these carries over and doesn't scale to NG+ though, now I can go back when I want and don't have to feel like all that time up to that point was wasted like I was worried it might be (I refused to look at a guide for anything until beating the game at least once so I didn't know this was the case until I'd already done it).

@zevvion: Either not put them in at all or simply turn the whole thing into a really hard optional dungeon with 5 hand crafted floors and a boss at the end. I want to fight the queen at the end but man I just don't want to go through all those super samey looking areas. It's completely monotonous and destroys any atmosphere or immersion.

It's terrifying to think that the DLC for this game will be new Chalice Dungeon tilesets.

@dudeglove: Haha, while I was watching that, I wondered if that was mine. It wasn't til I read your comment that I realized it had stopped.

Is that confirmed? :/

@quid_pro_bono: Yep, I thought it was neat how you can damage individual limbs and they react to it. I actually felt the same way about Vicar Amelia; I didn't hate the fight initially, but once I learned how to fight her, it became one of my favorites.

I enjoyed the Chalice Dungeons quite a bit, but I really hope that's not the case. If they decide to add something to them, I hope it's a boss gauntlet or something like that.

@humanity: Exactly a well designed dungeon with randomly generated enemies, loots and events would have been so much better and i think it will add a lot to the replayability value.

Not at all, I'm just saying the possibility of that happening is terrifying and at once very real. If you think about it thats the perfect DLC plan for these games. They can roll these out every once in a while instead of storybased content and it's less work and for those who enjoy it adds a lot more playtime.

I really hope that isn't the case. I respect Miyazaki a whole bunch. It is clear his games have a very distinct vision and it results in very consistent world building that I appreciate tremendously, but besides that it's becoming more and more obvious to me that the A-team otherwise isn't better at all than the B-team. I bet Bloodborne 2, if created by the B-team, would fix any gameplay issues there are.

@zevvion: I don't know if I would put my faith that strongly in them. They definitely fixed a bunch of smaller things in DS2 but it still was far from what I would want those games to be. The day when I can play a Souls game and I'm not wrestling with the camera or the lock-on system will be a beautiful one indeed.

So Defiled Amy is a bitch. Most hits will one shot. The needle needs to be threaded in her final form in order to get at her head because the arms literally block your path. There was a sliver of health left and instead of simply taking the shot I wanted to be a cool guy and get the last hit in with a sword and I died. The 2nd time I got close I just needed to thread the consecutive arm AOE bash one last time and the last arm smash got me. I got pretty mad.

I'll have to take another shot at Amygdala tomorrow or in 2 days to let it all sink in because fighting mad got me killed as soon as I entered the room 3 times with one shot attacks.

God, doing the Loran Darkbeast is so annoying. Long legs, can't lock on, bad camera, powerful and frequent AOE attacks. It's the last step before I get the last weapon and it's making me not like this game. Maybe I should grind more or something, but I'm already like 125. This guy is such a pain though, it's so easy to get hit and it's so hard to hit him because his legs are so strange. It's odd since I thrashed Paarl in 1 try.

@dan_citi: This is kind of a crappy tip and you may already be aware of it, but it worked for me: if he's about to do his AOE and it looks like you may not be able to get out in time, stand completely still and you'll take significantly less damage. It'll still likely take off the majority of your life but you won't be in oneshot range in his final phase assuming you've leveled your hp sufficiently.

Pthurmerian Elder is giving me the most grief. His first stage if fine and dandy, but once he buffs I don't last long.

You haven't got to depth 4/5 yet by your own admission. Trust me, get to cursed pthumera depth 4 dungeons where bosses can one shot you with basically any attack then come back and tell us how easy it is for you to beat it. Or lower Isz depth 5 where you fight an Ebreitas who is stronger than NG++ Ebreitas with like twice the HP and in a smaller room. Or Loran Darkbeast who is basically Paarl on crack cocaine with something like 4 times more health, twice as aggressive, three times the damage, extra moves, and a camera that is actively trying to kill you.

@karkarov: Maybe. That'll be a couple of months from now before I get that far. If I get that far, that is. I'm so bored out of my mind, I wish I could just get to the good stuff without slogging through these mindless sections first. However, I'm not as stupid as you may think: I was obviously talking about the stuff I have played. I wasn't stating everything in all Chalice Dungeons is easy. I was saying everything I had played of it was. I honestly don't feel that compelled to grind out these dungeons before I get to the stuff that makes it 'better'. Mostly because I'm very skeptical if it will actually get better. I've heard that before.

Well I will give 1 super Karky pro tip!!! To get the achievement you only have to do the pthumera chalice, the pthumera central, the pthumera lower, then maybe Hithertomb, then Ailing Loran, then you go back to Cursed Pthumera, then Pthumera Iithyl or however it is spelled. Also any chalice without "root" in it's name is actually a static dungeon with no random elements at all and you don't have to do any "root" chalices to get the cheevo's.

@karkarov: I don't really care about the achievements. I would like to see some of the more interesting bosses in there though, but there is just a nightmare amount of numbing content in between. I'll try to keep doing one Chalice Dungeon every... week... or two. I should be able to get there eventually.

Well funny story. Doing the order I just stated will cause you to fight every unique chalice boss too. Well except for the Forgotten Madmen which aren't all that tough and the Loran Darkbeast. If you wanted just burn to Ailing Loran then just stick in Lower Loran, Great Isz, and Lower Isz. That's where all the nastiest stuff is generally.

@karkarov: I'm pretty sure I can't do that yet though. Not enough materials grinded from the other dungeons.

I was stuck on this one too for a while, but you can cheese it. When you stand behind it, it jumps. If it jumps when you're standing behind it, if you don't move it will land with its head right behind you for easy smacking. When it gets to the second phase you can still do this, only you'll have to attack it when you're standing behind (and do minimal damage), because it always jumps forwards.

That second form will take some time, but it's pretty much impossible to screw up using that strategy.

I'm actually not having any issues staying alive or getting to the final form. I can pretty much get to Amy's final form (ripping arms off) without getting hit. The problem is smacking her in the head in her final form with any kind of consistency because her arms and AOE attacks prevent you from simply running up to her. You have to dash your way through her arm AOE attacks so you have enough time to attack and then back off safely while she's recovering.

If I REALLY wanted to kill her I could simply shoot her in the head during her final form until she dies. I have max Bone Marrow Ash and each bullet damages her for around 1000 DMG so I'm not worried about her dying. My goal is to learn her arm AOE bash attacks and dash through them. I've already done it and it looked super cool and that's how I want to kill her.

BREAKING NEWS! Defiled Chalice's Amygdala status: DEAD

I was learning new techs and strategies all the way to the end and the final one proved to be the clincher. She finally has my respect because Amy forced me to find MULTIPLE strategies to dodge her attacks and still find enough time to get in on her face. 3 Visceral attacks were dealt during her fight because I was focused on working her face over. I'm pretty pumped. Video coming later today. Not sure how long the final fight lasted, but it felt like a while.

EDIT: Here is the video. The video starts where it does because it pairs up perfectly with the pivotal moment of victory at the end. To get what I mean you'll want to see 0:10-0:30 and then fast forward to 7:19 for the money shot. You guys have no idea how many times I lost to Amy at the very end of her life because I couldn't get the timing right on those hand AOE bashes.