That's true. There's also the Upper Cathedral, the Cathedral Ward, and the Grand Cathedral. I'm on my second playthrough now and I'm still getting lost in Central Yharnam.

Hey I don't want to make a whole thread about just this one thing but can someone explain Insight to me in its entirety? I'm at least 10-15 hours into the game but I still don't think I quite understand. I know I can use it to buy certain things but....is that it? It's just odd to me

@frostyryan: You also use it to summon people in your game. (One is used each time you ring the summoning bell.) You can also earn it through the small resonant bell, which is used to join someone else's game and help them beat a boss (you only earn it once you defeat said boss). You also earn insight through discovering and/or beating a boss, and consuming a madman's knowledge. The closest comparison I can think of is humanity (Ds1) and a human effigy (Ds2), although it's more of a resource than something that alters your character's state.

@frostyryan: Insight is sort of like how deep you are in the Eldritch abomination rabbit hole, you'll notice it'll go up just from seeing some shit for the first time.

I haven't really seen or heard of anything in the world altering beyond the often cited 15 breakpoint though, it's hard to notice without testing.

Once you cross certain insight thresholds, certain enemies will also gain new attacks, making them harder, in theory at least. I also think it has an effect on the world state, although it's unclear to me which things are triggered by insight and which are triggered by beating certain bosses.

Have we had any confirmation that bloodtinge increases the parry window?

Oh, nice. I haven't even thought of that (I've only played 20 hours or so of these games before Bloodborne).

I'm at about 13 Insight with a ton of Madman's knowledge. I'm trying to stay under the 15 cap, but should I just start popping those? Or should I naturally just build up the Insight as I progress? I don't know if there's a reason to buff it so early, except for all that Lovecraft business you're supposed to see later on?

It seems like weapons come in different variants (normal, uncanny and lost), each with a different set of blood gem imprints. Do you get the other versions from the Chalice Dungeons? Also, has anyone found an alternate use for the Gold Pendant or the Tear Stone?

@militantfreudian said:

Regarding the stones; nope. Crack those suckers open and suck the blood out like candy.

Do you ever get to combine low level stones? Or should I just start selling off all these low level ones. I have like 80 of the +0.7% atk ones. I'm tired of scrolling through them.

Haven't seen this info here. Weapons' stats scale. A scale that makes no intuitive sense. I quote Judgement100 from Gamefaqs:

It means that the attack power of the weapon gets a bonus based on your stats.

It goes, in order from least amount of bonus to most:

-/E/D/C/B/A/S.

So, for instance, you have a sword with 40 attack power and an S bonus in STR.

That sword's attack power will be 40 + (whatever your STR stat is) * (some modifier, probably a pretty high one if it's an S bonus

@dryker: Not sure if you are describing something new that I'm not understanding or just the way I think all the Souls type games weapon scaling has worked :P Or you are just providing info for new people lol

I got a question related to Chalice Dungeons.. don't think its a spoiler but I'll tag it anyway. Kinda need a quick answer. GameFAQs doesn't appear to be working (is it just me?) so I can't search there.

I'm trying out the first Chalice thing (the Ptuemetuhasduhtsdgs thing) and on the third layer now. There is a talk boney priest looking thing with a staff here? Its glowing blue/white and it is not attacking me. I can attack it and I almost did. It looks.. friendly? If I stand near it then it just stands there and looks at me. If I walk away then it continues on. I tried gestures on/near it like Pray and stuff. Nothin. Wtf is it?! What do I do?!

So I have a question: If you start a boss in co-op, but the co-op partner(s) die, does the boss still have the boosted health pool? I was getting wrecked by a boss, so I summoned dude who died within 30 seconds, but then that was the attempt I finally beat that boss on. It didn't feel like I was doing less damage or anything, so maybe they changed it from Souls games?

I don't believe so. I never encountered anything useful for those low tier ones. No combining or recreation. Best off to sell them.

@zevvion: Bummer. I guess I'll sell them off for 20 echos each.

Also is there a use for the Dolls armor set? I sold it off because the selling prices were crazy high. Then after was like, wait, did I need that for something. I think I got like 52000 echos for the set.

@teddie: From what I've seen health levels for bosses don't drop if a co-op partner dies during the fight. That honestly wouldn't make much sense either.

I'm getting super pissed off at this late game area Nightmare of Mensis

*fist through wall* What the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!! The spike whatever thing doesn't even matter. It's not really doing anything to me.. But omfg the first wolf beast white things I spent at least a few times just trying to kill them without dying because they team up and even if you get one or two down, the worms kill you before you can recover. So eventually I said "OMFG ALL THESE AREAS ARE BULLSH** YOU JUST RUN THROUGH!* and tried to run.. easy. Made it through the big door on first try. Oh.. excellent.. giant spiders.. Proceed to die repeatedly here until I figure out a super slow but safe way to eliminate the "little" ones.. Ok now ripping through the big one annnnd BAM kills me when its got a sliver of life left. *other fist through wall* This pos game. Eventually I get them all down and proceed along the path. Oh.. more excellent.. an NPC which are some of the most bs enemies in the game. I lay into his face.. okay.. okay.. doing alright.. almost got him annnnnd.. BAM I die when hes got a sliver of life left. *both fists through wall* F it.. F it.. F all of this. I'll run past the spiders because they take too long and maybe they won't chase me.. Annnnd nope.. they all follow me to the NPC and kill me. Just beautiful. So every time I die here I have to survive a sprint, slowly kill and survive all the little spiders, and then kill an NPC. Perfect. I do it all again and do even better against the NPC, dodging all his crap and lookin good and yet again he pretty much one shots me when he has no life left. *foot through wall*

F**k. This. Game.

Edit: I cleared it. I'm okay. This game is amazing.

This applies to ANY item, If you're full with Blood Vials, a green symbol will appear next to the item upon pick up. This is basically a way to tell you that they are stored, and if you use a bunch and die or go to Hunters Dream, the items will fill up again.

To avoid killing a friendly NPC - When you get to the Arcane Library do not kill the spider that covers a small door way. At a certain point you go down a ladder into a small dark room, there is a spider across the door and if like me your first reaction is "ARGH! spider!" followed by killing it ...then unfortunately you have killed a friendly NPC - I think it was Patches from the Souls series.

@sterling: you look pretty when killing monsters :)

Hey guys, is Ludwig's Holy blade worth it? I've been fortifying saw cleaver and kirkhammer the whole game with a blunderbuss at my side. I'm going with a strength build

Where can you do that? I just beat Vicar Amelia and The Witches. Am I not there yet? 80-100 vials in 10 minutes would be really nice.

This is going to sound dumb, but where do I go after beating the Cleric Beast? Everywhere I go just ends up taking me back to other lamps or shortcuts. Feels like I'm going in circles.

@shortbreadtom said:

the vaguest of hints; follow the sewers.

@obikwiet: Go to the lamp where you fought Witch of Hemwick. Backtrack, kill the 3 crazy ladies, the giant axe guy comes in, kill him, he drops 3-4 vials and gives 2500 Echoes. Backtrack some more to kill the other two giant axe guys (9-12 vials total, 7500 Echoes), then backtrack through the gate just a tiny bit further to kill the brick wielding giant for 2 vials, then let the crazy lady on the ledge kill you. You respawn, repeat the process (22-28 vials and ~16.000 Echoes), except this time you'll probably have to kill the lady on the ledge to get your Echoes back. Then backtrack just a tiny bit further to get killed there and repeat the process once more. Don't forget to pick up your Echoes again and at this point it is easiest to just backtrack a little further to the other lamp. You should have 33-42 Blood Vials and ~25.000 Echoes at this point. Return to Hunter's Dream: 25.000 / 380 = roughly 65 Blood Vials on top of your harvested 33-42. Each sequence should take about 4 minutes with loading, so I guess it's a bit over 10 minutes for the entire run. Still good though.

@zevvion: Awesome! Thanks

@zevvion: That seems quicker than running central. I was getting 25-30 in central, but only 4k echos. So not as good.

That's still better for very early game though, since you obviously won't have access to Hemwick yet. But you can go there pretty early still though. And you'll 'naturally' get there about a third into the game.

For leveling up, is it worth putting points into endurance? I'm on about 110 and I feel like that's about as much as I want to put into it. That lets me get three kirkhammer swings in and then back the hell off.

I've been focusing on Str and Vit and putting a point or two into skill when needed for new weapons.

@jesus_phish:

Up until 40 you will see increases to stamina. After that, leveling Endurance will only increase your resistances. I honestly don't know if getting it up to 40 will give you another swing or not.

When you get to the witch, ignore the summoned monsters and focus on finding its location during the fight, swing for the fences once you've found it, and repeat. Their location is obvious during the second phase of the fight.

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: I boned this up so bad the first time. I was under the impression that you had to kill a certain amount of the monsters for the witches to appear again--turns out I just happened to get close enough to reveal them. I probably cut through thirty or forty of them by the time the witches got really aggressive with their spells. I just kept thinking, "Wow, I didn't expect them to put an endurance test battle in here."

@ragnarok7038: I did the same shit during the first time through. I killed them on the first try, but it took well over 30 minutes. I killed them on the first try on NG+ in under 15 minutes.

I cross dress on my main because REASONS! My main looks a little like Flake in Rammstein. :)

Does anyone know how gestures are supposed to work? I can activate them from the menu but there are icons suggesting you could activate them by doing a motion with the controller or something with the touchpad maybe. I have never been able to consciously activate a gesture without the menu BUT it has happened once to me that i unintentionally did the pray motion and the wave motion without going into the menu so I'm sure there is a way. Anyone?

(so dissapointed I found out about what insight does, it's my own fault though :P but I would've loved to have found it out for myself, probably late game or something haha, this being a souls game I'm sure it is being alluded to)

Hold X and make the motion!

@dprotp: Wow that is astonishingly simple, can't believe I havent tried that myself hahaha, damn. Thanks :)