Goddamn, i've fought this bitch almost 30 times now, and still haven't beaten him; i put in 2.5 hours today grinding and grinding, buying antidote, bullets, molotovs, vials; even leveled up 2x, now at lvl 30 (30!) wherein others have beat him at level 10; have watched youtube vids on how to kill him many times; used up all my insight; i've got him down to his second fury mode where he does a poison aoe (about 20% of his health left); i wish i'd saved my insight; i hate having spent the past WEEK trying to beat him

I've seen YT videos of people throwing (I think) pungent blood soaked whatevers to distract it. No idea if that works or not.

yeah i did that once; it actually works but the stuff costs 2000 per; the problem is when you get him down to his first transform; then my heart starts beating faster, hands sweat and i start wincing; i have to keep talking to myself "calm down, calm down; you will beat him this time"

Took me two/three trys first run. Used saw blade. I mainly tried to just get in there face to face, rolled out when needed. Hide behind pillars when he went really ape shit to get some breathing room to use pots. NG+ I summoned someone as I died 3+ times, and wanted to progress so I could farm twin blood stones to upgrade some of my weapons.

Hes one of the harder bosses. I might work my way over to the forbidden woods an farm souls if I were you as its one of the best spots to do so. Molotovs work well on him as well. I might have used 6 to finish him off first time.

How are you dying exactly? Remember that if you are having trouble getting away from him to heal that your roll goes much farther than your dash.

Keep at it, brother. Took me a full day of basically nothing but banging my head against the wall to get him down (which was a huge bummer because i'd given myself a bunch of time that day thinking "Yeah, i'm gonna check out a bunch of stuff in Bloodborne today!"). Here's the light at the end of the tunnel; after a day of fighting him, my killing round ended with me not needing a single Blood Vial. I'm not sure what it is, but something clicked and the boss suddenly made sense. It sort of just came over me, but as far as I can recall here are the things that worked for me;

• Dodge left. The great thing about this boss is a lot of his charging attacks can be missed entirely if you keep close to him on the left, allowing you to keep thwacking at him without getting hit.
• Stay close. Just get right up in his face and keep going. Blood-Starved Beast will win this fight if you let him freak out and take swipes at you, whittling away at your Blood Vials with his bob-and-weave tomfoolery. His best advantage is his ability to run up, hit you and duck away; don't give him that opportunity. Stay in his grill.
• Fire does more damage. Part of what helped me on my last run was putting Fire Paper on my Hunter Axe, and lobbing molotovs on his last couple of hits. Neither of these are necessary though, so honestly if you don't have them, don't worry about grinding for them; remember there are people that can beat this boss at Level 1 without breaking a sweat.
• Don't worry about charge attacks. This was one of my biggest revelations. It might be tempting to go for the big swings because he's got a decent amount of health, but Blood-Starved Beast is great at dodging just as you have a fully-charged R2 on him, which basically means you just wasting an opportunity for 3 solid R1 hits and a potential stagger, just because you wanted the glory of a big hit. This isn't set in stone of course; if you know for a fact that you can land a good charge attack on him, go for it.
• Ain't nothing wrong with you. Almost everyone has a boss they fucking despise and can't seem to do anything about. You're just going to tear your hair out worrying about all the SYK MLG PROZ who beat the boss first try with their hands behind their back and their controller up their ass. Just keep trying, you're gonna make it.

Most of this advice is probably a broken record. Just letting you know what helped me, which hopefully might at least alleviate some frustration by knowing other people have totally been there.

Get your Parry's down and its easy. If you want, Id coop with you to help you beat it. Not sure if wed match up though because I'm 50 levels higher than you. Either way, I'm probably going to stand by some boss rooms to help some folks out anyway.

The advice for Blood Starved Beast is thus: Parry that Puppy.

He's a lot less threatening when you realize that for all his seemingly frantic and fast attacks, a good shot to the head will set him up for a visceral. And all three phases are susceptible to this.

I never parry that guy, just only attack him from behind (or the sides at least), meaning I constantly stick close to and dash around him, then attack. Usually doesn't hit me, except with his poison, obviously.

Go heavy on the parries and then when he gets all poisony dodge left and use Kirkhammer 2h to brutally beat him into the ground. You can stagger him with the jumping attack.

If you don't want to switch weapons, dodge left and stay close, go heavy on parries, and don't be afraid to use the pillars to get distance and regroup. If you can consistently bait the charging swipe you'll have an easy time dodging.

Shoot the motherfucker and then visceral attack him. One or two of his attacks have blatant tells and large enough parry windows that it shouldn't be too difficult to learn the timing on.

If you can't do this then, I don't know, use fire paper and summon Alfred.

I beat him on my first try and was really surprised cause I've heard he's a pain in the ass. Just wear some poison resistant gear and be aggressive until the last third of his health bar when he starts spamming you with poison. Weapons with longer reach help, I fucked him up with the kirkhammer.

The key in the final phase is having weapon with a good reach. Hit him ONCE and back off until your poison bar has dropped. Rinse repeat. Fire also works wonders on him so if you have some firepaper I'd use it.

put in two hours last night; went at bsb six times; tried the potent blood lure - no dice; returned to the usual blunderbuss and visceral attack strategy; one thing that is driving me nuts and causing me to lose a lot of my gains is that when i use the blunderbuss to stagger him i don't trigger the visceral attack correctly; sometimes when i press R1 i get the weak attack; sometimes it seems that tapping the R1 when bsb's kneeling works but other times i have to press R1 firmly

I don't want to sound like a uppity jerk in saying this because who cares really, but I was surprised to see folks say they were having trouble with this boss because I stumbled into him and managed to kill him the first try without any special item gimmicks or viscerals (though it was admittedly close at points).

I would say a lot of any boss in this game's difficulty is in your head. Bosses have a hard time dealing with you if you're putting a lot of distance between you and them, and there's no time limit or anything, so if you're hanging back and sussing out the boss's attacks with openings, you can generally get small hits in here or there with little risk of danger, and with this particular boss, darting around the columns to heal or use antidotes makes it a little harder for him to get at you. Also keep in mind the generous invincibility on the front-end of your evasive roll/dashes.
Patience and full stocks of health vials and antidotes. There's no need for flashy visceral attacks or item-based strategies. Stick to 'dem fundamentals, yo.

Dodge left

Frist phase I used parry and just dodge left on the second phase trying to get some hits in. On the third phase I used alot of Molotov cocktails (ALOT because I missed...) :) But it's superhard and she's really agressive I agree. Woke up my girlfriend screaming when I took her down in the middle of the night.

Yea I heard about people having trouble so I tried her once on my own and then just summoned someone to help beat her the second time. Pretty damn easy to co-op even though my partner died the distraction alone is so helpful. I did use those columns a lot to keep her at bay when I was on my own as well.

Unfortunately the hardest boss in the game is the third one you meet.

@spitznock: Yeah, I got pretty close my first time, then wiped the next 10 times. It isn't a hard boss at all, conceptually, but I found that it punished me to the tune of all my health if I messed up. Like you said, nail the fundamentals and it's really straightforward.

...That said, this boss has a big windup that makes parry/visceral attack really effective. I did some of those while using fire paper. Helps reduce the length of the fight, which in my case meant fewer chances to mess up.

Flame thrower weapon thing upgraded to +3 helped a lot on this boss. But yeah, second hardest boss in the game for me.

I think by this point you should have your first chalice. I'm not sure if it's a guaranteed or random drop but I got a blood gem with fire damage. Extremely useful haven't taken it of since. Better than spending blood echoes on fire paper.

Use flame on your weapon, sidestep his attack, attack back... success. Have no idea how people can call him the hardest boss, or even one of the hardest...

Summon the NPC outside the door. He'll distract it enough for you to just run up behind and wail on it for the first two stages. Once it gets to its third stage, (and gets violently poisonous) keep your cool and get some pot-shots in here and there. One or two slashes, then bail. Try to hit it often enough for it to not ALWAYS attack the NPC, because he'll die pretty fast if you don't.

Once you've hit it enough in stage 3 and its health seems kinda low, just time your shots right and molotov that thing.

Also, FIRE PAPER. Literally every boss in the Cathedral areas are weak as fuck to fire. I took BSB and Vicar Amelia down insanely fast with fire paper on my Saw Cleaver.

Just skip him. He's optional.

It's weird, I had a ton of trouble with him so I decided to skip him. Came back later and absolutely wrecked him. It wasn't even that I was over-leveled (hadn't leveled up much in the interim), he didn't land a hit on me. At some point you just get the flow of dodging and anticipating attacks. Also, getting frustrated tilts you. Taking a break helps.

Pretty sure it isn't optional, beating him opens a door that is required to move on. Also, I agree, it sucks. The method of throwing the blood cocktail seems fine but isn't useful when it is constantly going crazy. I ended up just waiting for it to attack a bunch, get a swing in or two, then dodge like crazy.

He's absolutely optional. You can buy the emblem in the Hunter's Dream instead.

optional???!!!!! what the F______K ??????? you mean i've been trying to kill this thing for the past week and didn't have to?

He drops one of the chalices used for chalice dungeons. Pretty sure he it isn't required for the main progression, unless there is some quota of bosses killed needed to trigger certain story points.

@laudasolem: He's barely optional. Killing him gets you:

A. 1st chalice for chalice dungeons (This chalice is required to get you one of the trophies, if you care about such things)

B. Access to an area that will net you one of the items you need to get the secret ending, Ludwig's Holy Blade, and eventual access to another secret area with two more bosses.

So by not killing him, you're missing out on pretty big chunks of the game.

@nophilip As right as you are he is still 100% optional. There are four umbilical cords in the game, you only need 3; Ludwig's Holy Blade is only relevant if you're doing QUALITY or a str/arc build; and those two bosses are only worth doing if you plan on being Balls-Deep in chalice dungeons. If the duder's plan is to critical-path it and he legit cannot defeat this boss, then there is absolutely no requirement to do so.

Or better yet, he can always just continue the game and come back when he is higher level with better weapons? As an aside Ludwig's at +10 scales insanely well with everything you can use it as a straight skill, str, or arcane build and be plenty effective. I would not be stunned to find out it has the highest damage potential in the whole game to be honest.

i found some insight; now i'm going to summon backup and wack this muther-effer

It was a boss I had a lot of trouble with myself. I think I only beat it because of the weird memory leak thing from Bloodborne being in suspend mode because it was a different fight.

Good luck duder. Keep banging against it, you'll break through eventually. May the good blood guide you and all that.

The big adjustment I made on the run I eventually beat him on was using the pillars in that room to my advantage. When I got poisoned I used them to create the space necessary to pop an antidote. Also if you are using any square items at the beginning of the fight, don't. Early on in my attempts I was using molotovs and fire paper in stage one and two and that's not the way to go. Generally I'd wait for the specific attack where he's telegraph with his right claw and I would dash to my left through it and get a few hits. I just became way more cautious in the poison stages and used my fire paper in form 3.

Second day in a row I've had to throw in the towel because I got so enraged playing him over and over... I feel your pain.

Also I have been summoning right before the fog gate and get the same dude every time, same build same weapons, days apart. Are there npc summons? Seems like if no one is around the game will bring in a npc hero to fight with you, is that right?

You can co-op it with that NPC hunter you met at Oedon Tomb. Haven't tried it, but it's a note just to the right of the path that leads down to the area of the church. Get down there and then look to your right.

But the boss is really not that hard. Put on armor with high slow poison resist and use a long ranged weapon. The boss requires patience, like pretty much everything in the game. Just try to get in one attack and get out of there. You can try and parry it if you want. I beat it using the halberd/transformed axe. The L2 sweeping attack covers a big area around you, so you don't even have to be in front of the beast to get a hit in.

On my first playthrough he was definitely the boss I had the most trouble with.

I just beat him on NG+, first try, mostly by throwing Pungent Blood Cocktails at the wall over and over again.

Fuck that guy.

@boysef: There are NPC summons. The guy you're probably summoning is Alfred. He wields the kirkhammer and wears gray robes. You shouldn't expect any summoned people, real or artificial, to be anything more than distractions.

@shadowconqueror: Ah makes sense, and yea I just usually used him for agro.. he does a pitiful amount of damage but to his credit he usually lasts longer than I do!

I read about the half of this, so if someone said this already I apologize. You can attack through the terrain and pretty handily win if you are willing.

I went toe to toe with him a few times but was having a little difficulty dealing with the poison because I wouldn't pay enough attention to what was going on and just die from that. I ended up using the hunter's axe in its extended mode using the pillars strategically and cheeseing the fact you can attack through objects. I would do a fully charged R2 through the pillar hitting the beast on the other side, a few of those and it was done. I felt a bit crappy for it but decided it was fair because he can attack through it as well and would hit me if I hugged too close to the pillar.

Bloodborne lets you know early on that enemies are just gonna do that shit towards you. "I learned it by watching you." "Ok, I'm being methodical, even tactical here... and these dickwads are hacking at me cheaply through a solid wall. I see how it's gonna be." Sure enough, it works, probably too well (I'd say it highlights some janky level design/AI). But the enemies keep exploiting it and so will I.

It's only leveling the field by playing by their rules.

Well, when it rains it pours. I went and got some insight in the new area past the gate (after buying chief whatever emblem). Returned to summon the NPC. Strange thing is not only did the npc appear but the bell also summoned a real gamer, so I had two guys backing me up. FINALLY beat the bsb, although, ashamedly, i actually came close to dying when i got backed into a corner while it was raging and the camera control got effed up; nearly shat my pants in anger. Anyway all three of us took him down. I don't like to call for so much help to win but, damn, i didn't want to spend one second more on this. (Plus, Witcher 3 comes out in May, and I need to be free and clear of Bloodborne.)

Strange as it is this statement almost perfectly sums up how I feel about bloodborne.

next time you run into a boss that seems impossible, try beating it without using any items or potions.

That might sound weird, but getting the basics down for any boss is important, and if you dont use items you dont lose anything by dying and you wont need to farm. After a while of doing that, use the lessons learned, for a real run with items and see sweet victory.

I kind of had this exact same thing with Vicar Amelia, for some reason she just kept beating the crap out of me. So, I summoned two dudes and while they both died during the fight, they massively helped me defeat her. Blood Starved Beast also caused me some serious issues, but after getting the Black Church Garb I eased through that scrap.

Are you kidding me? It was the only boss I beat in less than 10 tries. It telegraphs its attacks so clearly and has very few different ones. It lifts right arm, dodge right, attack, lifts left arm, dodge left, attack. Thats seriously the only thing I needed to do?.... Vicar amelia though kicked my ass sooooooo many times I had a really hard time identifying her moves with all the hair flowing everywhere (my eyes always want to look at everything that's moving, not handy when theres a bazzilion moving things you shouldn't pay attention too) though I eventually beat her without potions or bullets :D as with most bosses I find hard I just go at them without bullets and potions not not spoil anything and learn the bosses. I would not for the life of me call myself good at this game(or any game for that matter) but most of the time I still ended up beating the boss without using anything except the five extra bullets you can make out of your lifebar.

Super interesting to see how everyone has difficulties with different bosses :D I've seen people talk about how easy amelia was, but I still think its pretty much the hardest battle I've had somehow (maybe I got way better since then haha, I'm at Rom and Amygdahla now)