The Bloodborne Identity with JanThe Bloodborne Identity with Jan: Part 23

Do you believe in life after Kos?

KOS with Friends anything is possible.

Amazing job getting him to go in the well chat.

I had no idea you could kill the black thing after Kos

Does Jan ever throw stuff at enemies, like molotovs?

almost done. great job with Kos

The last bosses of the main game should be a cakewalk compared to the bosses in the DLC, Jan should be able to just straight-up beat the game in the next episode if he doesn't get lost finding his way to "MWN." Hopefully the chat successfully guides him to the true ending.

just want to say, this video is SO crisp. I haven't been following Jan or his doings super closely for the past couple of months (since work kicked back into gear) but his setup, whatever it is right now, must be absolutely top notch.

EDIT: I just got a non-returning yoyo in the past year or so and still barely know how to make it return.

YoYo Balls were ass.

EDIT 2: I love the first minute or so of this Astrojax video.

https://youtu.be/5s5we4KurnA

Man this game has some bullshit attack tracking.... so many times you've dodged after the attack has begun and he still tracks you and hits..

That moment when the orphan wipe the entire party was oddly satisfying.

@geralt: It felt pretty hot to me too. Or maybe that was the lightning cracking me in the side of the head.

Jan, if you want more of the co-op Kos vibe you should 100% look into Monster Hunter World.

@janman Did you get a Peloton bike? Had mine for a few months and love it.

Well played Jan. That was some fine playing.

On towards the final chapter!

@roadshell: Exactly what I was thinking. He's going to wipe the floor with the next few bosses.

Well done on the Orphan, Jan and friends!

@matcauthon: The Dark Ones own luck wasn't with you this day ;)

Am I allowed to be disappointed with Jan using help for Kos. Was so looking forward to Jan beating Kos solo (he didn't even go big sword mode). I remember never being able to beat Midir without help still annoys me to this day not being able to beat him solo.

@cyrusraven: It was the strangest thing. I was out there fighting the thing...lightning...then I was looking at my friend again. Still not sure what happened. But we got the bloody thing taken care of!

Souls games benefit people who aren't super twitch gamers or not ironically into souls. I made my friend play the final boss in dark souls 1 with all havel armor and max flask with black knight halberd and fire intensity/rock body. He beat it first try. just told him how to dodge and drink every few seconds. He also new to attack and move around obviously. Surprisingly, the tracking stops near the time you're just about to move so it can get experienced or constant fear roll dodgers. The reason most people do better at bosses after they won. Once you not afraid you do calmer and well-timed dodges. Since my friend knew nothing about the game and treated it like whatever, he dodged just in time and barely got hurt. Obviously all my stats boost help but that's just so the fight didn't take ages.

@pnutz83: Same, that was a huge letdown. Especially after Jan getting so good at it. He was a few more tries away from getting into the same groove with phase 2 as he had locked in on p1.

Now he'll always remember this boss for the million tries, not the heart-pounding-victory.

I used to not care that much, but I think Sekiro changed me. Played the DS3/BB DLC recently and Kos, Gael, and Midir are such amazing boss fights that really shines when soloed.

@krelle and @pnutz83: You both realize that the boss gets more 1.5 times normal HP when you summon 1 and 2 times more HP when you summon 2 players? Not only that but your summons have reduced HP...I don't recall the figure but it is somewhere around 25%.

Technically the bosses are hardest with 2 co-op summons. Having the summons there allows for a little boss aggro juggling that wouldn't be there solo, but there is so much more boss to overcome that if your summons aren't up to it can result in much quicker wipes.

I don't think we should fault Jan for wanting a little help after what 3 or 4 episodes of being roadblocked by one of the hardest bosses in the Soulsborne franchise. I'm pretty sure one of those he died when the boss was at 1-2% HP left...which was basically a solo kill. I don't know, seems a tad harsh, I suppose.

Have you both killed Cursed Defiled Amygdala solo or something?

@matcauthon: It's true that the bosses scale up when you summon people, but none of the bosses were designed to deal with multiple players. Even with the added HP, bosses become so much easier when you summon people because one person gets to take free shots while the other deals with the boss's aggro.

It's fine that he summoned people to beat Kos, but lets not pretend that co-op in souls games is harder than solo.

@pnutz83: @krelle:

Look, no offense here but that attitude just sucks. The mentality that you're somehow beating 'less of a game' because you summon (on an incredibly tough boss, no less) is fucking awful and perpetuating that is just bad.

Summoning is one of the best parts in these games, and there are a lot of people who just straight up stop playing altogether when they get stuck, because they've been shamed into feeling that is preferable to asking for help.

If you want to hold yourselves to a solo only runs in From games, that is awesome, and I agree, they are truly something special that way.

But the Souls community is hyper toxic about shaming people for using mechanics and features that are literally in the game for a reason and that is just dumb as rocks.

Lets not do that here.

Nice work Jan!

Without spoiling anything, I can say you're past the worst of it.

It's much easier from here on out and honestly, should be smooth sailing ahead.

Way to go!

@bestyhammar (and @matcauthon): I agree with you that Souls games can be enjoyed in multiple ways. But they can not be enjoyed fully in all ways at once. My disappointment comes from Jan beating (and learning!) so much about the game by himself, and then giving up at the very last %. [1]

I started out myself as "summon for everything"/"cheese whenever possible" over 10 years ago. I think both those options are totally valid and amazingly fun ways to enjoy Souls-games. I still cheese bosses that I find lackluster or simply a roadblock I don't have time to deal with. But some bosses are just so darn well designed that beating them co-op takes away from the experience. It makes an awesome, unique, character-building encounter into "just another multi-player experience". (In contrast to something like WoW, where raid bosses are what builds character and bring the most "pure" experience.) Imagine if you could summon players for Owl or Isshin — it would make those encounters so different that they would not be recognized as "the same game".

[1] I don't fault him for doing so, but I'm also a human and, as someone following along for the journey, allowed to be disappointed. I think the ending of this story was a letdown. I think we should be able to show feelings, good or bad, to content creators the same way we would any other medium. Forcing the range of emotions that can be expressed in a community sounds like a bad take to me. (As long as it's not vitriolic hate, but I hope we agree my comment did not cross over to that.)

@matcauthon: @bestyhammar:

I was extra careful not to be toxic. I even asked "am I allowed to" to ensure that I didn't come off as a douche bag. There is no winning with people like you. Come on I just expressed a little sadness that he didn't beat him solo. I didn't say that he sucked or anything or the usual "Git gud". I know Kos is fucking hard and Jan did an awesome job against him, holding out for so long solo. I really did not want to sound like an asshole and Jan if you read this that was not my intention at all.

Absolutely agree with you here. You can relax so much more when you summon, and strategize what to do next. Like stay back and pick when you want to engage in the fight.

At the 46-minute mark was Jan so close to victory before the long silences of defeat that would follow the rest of the run. You gotta love when you're close to beating a boss only to lose for a small mistake or bad RNG. Solo or not, this run would have extended into at least three more episodes of grinding at the lecture hall for souls, buying blood vials, and fighting Kos. As such, I'm okay with co-oping the fight in the name of progress. But Jan nearly had the fight down to a science. At a certain point with repetition, muscle memory kicks in.

As for the shark giants in the well, I did it a different way. I'll spoil this just in case Jan reads the comments:

I used the ledge past the Winter Lantern to aggro the first shark giant with a combination of the monocular and pistol. Because the ledge clips, this means hits go through it. So I smacked the giant, backed off as needed, and eventually triggered the second one. It took me two tries but on the second try, I threw a combination of oil bombs and molotov cocktails to finish the job. Safe and cowardly but efficient nonetheless. And a totally viable method!

But I think Jan is strong enough that he can take them out on his own. It requires some elaborate kiting to keep them apart. Plus their attacks are unpredictable with the dive attack being particularly nasty. I hope Jan goes back to the blood river and gets the goodies he missed on the other side. They're cool if nothing else.

Otherwise, the rest of the run should be smooth sailing considering how OP Jan is for the main game bosses. This for sure isn't a 100% run considering Jan went in blind and missed a bunch of NPCs/items in the process which means no Moon Presence fight.

The best Yo-Yo trick I ever pulled off was going to visit my uncle on a tropical island and ending up saving the last living Argonians from the evil alien Zoda.

Personally, if Jan got the boss down to the point just one hit would kill it or something (not sure haven't watched.) then i count it as a win solo enough that summoning didn't matter. I care less about the idea of winning the boss than knowing I new the patterns got through all of them and all that mattered was me dodging and working through the perfect pattern I knew from repetition. At that point, it's just repetitive and stress for no reason when I go in have a bad run and get 1/3 health vs the time i get through 99/100 and get one-shotted for all my health. But I also have the same idea with just leveling via some cheat (to a basic 10+ or so you'd get in hours of play) vs grinding for hours vs grinding with some in-game fastest to 100,000 in a 10-minute method. At some point your just saving time that you'd be doing anyway but others call it cheating. Sometimes you play the game the way you want for the most fun cause the grindy nature takes away from it. I know the last bosses of this game i was under-leveled and grinded and became over-leveled so bosses were a breeze. I didn't threat as long as I knew I dodged and learned patterns enough that the few mistakes I made and hits I did should have defeated the boss overlooking lame hit sponge hp and my one or two hit hp.

The point, as long as he got the fell down I count it. I still have two bosses to go back and take on cause i never got the feel down and just summoned to get it over with as I was under-leveled at the time and found grinding annoying that early as enemies were sponges with low reward (electric boss) or I just wanted to avoid backtracking if I lost. I'll count that as bad XD.