The Bloodborne Identity with JanThe Bloodborne Identity with Jan: Part 7

oh Jan , i feel this boss is really meant to be beaten in coop mode....

or put in a few hours of farming to raise health + agility bars

Keep going it IS worth it !

Jan actually almost had this boss when he was playing with Tamoor.

The first 1/3 he has down no problem as he confidently is able to parry and visceral counter attack the beast.

What I think is tripping Jan up right now is that he is trying to continue parrying in the aggressive stage and it would be safer to just dodge to the side and get a few swipes in. When the BSB is in the hyper active poison stage the risk / reward for parries becomes too great as missing one of those means you get hit multiple times AND poisoned.

Unfortunately the cane being a low damage weapon the fight is going to take longer than it would with either the axe or the cleaver but with a bit of patience it can definitely be done. I beat this boss using the cane on my entire first playthrough, didn't summon, and honestly am not that amazing at these games. I certainly parried a whole lot less than Jan does.

farm and summon arthur/alfred for the boss

I think its fair game to do the save on cloud then reload given he's doing this for a stream. He can beat the boss later but the added fear of over use of items and needing to farm is annoying and useless. Its not showing skill its just how tediously you can gain stuff from mooks you already beat. The boss fights are whats important and consistantly getting patterns and timing is broken when you have to farm. Plus he will get bored and tap out from fustration like Jeff. That said he seems more ok with slower games than jeff. XD

Go to admire Jan for sticking to his guns about going in on a skill based build. I myself did this on my first run (Threaded Cane / top hat) is pure fashion souls. Then I met the Blades of Mercy oh the Blades of Mercy my first true Bloodbourn weapon love. I'm secretly hoping Jan picks them up and starts using them just too mimic my first run.

This boss is where I tapped out when I gave this game another shot a few years back. I was all proud of myself for having made it this far but in the end I just couldn't get past this thing. I don't think I bought the key like Jan did, but I did go over and take out the machine gun dude on the tower. But too many deaths to the beast boss killed my interest and patience. Always happens with these games, except Sekiro.

someone should just heavy hint him about the one item he should look into using

Jan, this was really great progress to see. There are multiple ways to see progress, be in learning more about a boss and getting better or learning more about the world and areas by continuing to explore. Keep it up!

For whatever reason, I never had that much trouble with the Blood-Starved Beast. Although I should mention I also almost never parry in Bloodborne since I find it actually trying to do so makes the game much harder.

In act, I'm strongly of the opinion that dodging is almost always the better choice. The extra damage you get from the visceral attack is almost never worth the risk of damage and/or death you expose yourself to by trying to parry. If you dink and dunk, you'll be doing less damage per hit, but you'll also probably be doing damage more often while exposing yourself less.

Plus, the timing and animation is janky enough in a lot of spots that even if you manage to get the parry, there's a greater than zero chance the game won't register that you are lined up for a visceral attack. I still have bad memories of parrying Father Gascoigne on the stairs a few times.

Jan's definitely learning and has mastered the early part of the fight with his dodging and not getting too greedy. But after the first 3rd, the beast gets more aggro and you need to be a bit more conservative. Even though the boss gets harder, I would still suggest using the summon and always attack if you are behind the beast and you have the stamina. In Jan's early attempts he'd be too passive when Arthur/Albert/Alfred was drawing aggro. You have to think of it as saving A's life - don't let him die!

@therealturk: same, i summoned and beat BSB in about 4 goes, finished the game never parrying

Hi Jan, I don't comment much but you should roll towards rather than away from enemies the game is setup to punish those who retreat the vast majority of the time you want to roll towards or towards in either direction as that will slip behind or the side and away from the danger.

The thing that got me to finish it was learning how From Software love smacking that ass, no joke most bosses can be beat either from behind or to the sides just smacking that ass and not getting greedy but occasionally taking the chance to get the finish but never think either go for the finish or dodge.

Also double heal is quicker, just spam the button and it'll pop 2 heals faster than it would waiting for the end of each one.

Good luck, don't let it beat you down and if all else fails just over level until you can survive it and if you want skip this optional boss and pay 10k souls to open the gate from the shop!

@ultra2extreme: Never been a parry guy myself. Why sekiro was so hard for me and dark souls 1,2, and 3 were fine. I also find the first souls game you play to be really hard at first and somewhat frustrating until it clicks. Once you beat it you wanna go through it again and notice how your fear of the boss tripped you up more then it being hard. I wasn't a shield guy in dark souls either all low armor doughing and biggest most powerful slow swing weapon. Glass cannon wait for openings and big damage. My fights were either over in a minute or two or I lost. Nothing is drawn out. I think Jan's weapon is too weak. Kirk hammer and dodge to the left all day for the win. Lol. tank hits by mashing vials. Funny. I let my friend beat the last boss of dark souls 1 with no knowledge of how to play it besides me telling him on the fly to press b to dodge and r to attack. Gave him havels armor, stone spell and tons of eskas, Strong sword. He beat it first try. The lack of fear let him play it like any normal hack n slash he played as a kid. Up in the face and dodge when they attack. Sure I helped with my stats and armor etc. but it shows these games aren't as crazy as we make them out to be. Some of us just got too use to the new normal of games holding our hands as we cross the street...(said while I kinda held friend's hand) XD.

Really enjoying this series! Love watching people play this game for the first time.

Combat tip: You can chain regular attacks into transform attacks for some variety by pressing R1 followed by L1 (followed by another L1 or R1 to switch it up).

Jan "Party Comb" Ochoa!

I'm about 16m in. My recommendation, don't IMMEDIATELY go to heal/antidote after getting hurt. Let it move for another attack, dodge, THEN heal while it's still in offensive animations. Wait until it's locked into something else, so it's less likely to interrupt you.

Mulch that cane, bro.

@janman Long time lurker. I finally caught up with all the episodes. I agree with the general consensus that you were doing so much better under Tamoor's guidance so you might want to go back and analyze that run. A few pieces of advice:

• Don't be afraid to look up a guide off-camera and do some additional exploration. I know most people will say it's more fun to go in blind but it helps when you're stuck and you need to collect some stuff you may have missed.
• If you're interested in learning about the lore, pressing triangle in the menu offers a full item description
• Don't be afraid to use the Madman's Knowledge (BB's Humanity/Ember) to summon Alfred and other NPC phantoms prior to a boss fight. The more Insight you consume, the harder the game gets. You gain Insight as you discover new areas, do NPC quests, or discover an optional boss. You also gain Insight from completing Chalice Dungeons. Use Insight to buy armor and new weapons from the Insight bath messenger in the Hunter's Dream. Chat told you about the shop before.
• If you plan to stick with defeating BSB, remember the keys to the fight are it's weak against fire, use the Pungent Blood Cocktail, Alfred/Arthur to pull agro and chip away at it, bait it into attacking, and roll/dodge around the boss rather than away. I would upgrade the flamethrower a few times since it's handy.
• Keep at least 2 backup weapons in addition to your main weapon. The Saw Spear is a pretty decent bet for where you're at but if you want to use the Kirkhammer, it's a Strength-based weapon. While BB doesn't have the option to respec like Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3, you can totally go off into other stats. As someone else said, Vitality becomes useless after 30 points.
• Similarly, don't be afraid to mix and match armor pieces. You'll find armor that offers high physical defense, resistances to poison, fire, etc. Always buy new armor, especially from the Insight shop since it's another tool in a good hunter's arsenal
• You might want to go back to the graveyard and to the girl you got the musical box from
• Similarly, the beast that you avoided confronting under the bridge is worth fighting. You can sneak up on it from behind it to take it out.
• The game is probably a bit more interesting if you play online but I can understand if you don't want to get invaded. I played through it offline but that's because I don't have PS+.
• If you want to do more exploring sans a guide, the key you bought is the key (pun intended) to the main path. You know where to go since the ladder where the mob killed you at leads to more areas
• The giants aren't as bad as you think. They have slow, big attacks but dodging behind them and waiting for an opening is key. Expect to fight more of them as you make your way to the boss in the area.
• The weird portal you saw outside of Oedon Chapel in the graveyard leads to another area if you get sucked into it. It might be something of interest if you're tired of boss bashing

It's been fun watching your run. It's lighting the fire on my ass to beat the main DLC boss and the optional boss. It gets better and more nightmarish as the game goes on so hopefully, you stick with it. Happy hunting and good luck!

It's disappointing to see Jan forgo the multiplayer aspect of this game. Even just helping out other players can give you better experience and familiarity with the bosses.

Previously I had mentioned that I had terrible issues with this game the first time that I had played this, or tried to. Getting stuck on various bits of the world, stuck mid air as I tried to jump down from higher areas, the BSB being able to hit me from across the room (leading to one amusing moment where my character was twitching about with blood gushing from himself in spite of the BSB not being in physical contact with him). I put the game away because I COULDN'T enjoy the game: I was just waiting for the next glitch.

I recognized at the time that my experiences were unique, that there did not seem to be others with quite my level of issues. I figured that I would uninstall, maybe come back to it some other time.

I came back to the game this week. Now, while I'm still not sure that I especially like the game, I WILL say that I haven't encountered any glitches. The result is this: in spite of remembering very little about the game, I am absolutely mowing through the enemies. I'm getting close to approaching Father GasCan and have died once, and not against the Cleric Beast which I would have expected. SO FAR (this may change) the absence of fear over the game breaking is just letting me go to town on everything around me. This is more of an amusing side note than anything. It does, however, lead me to be somewhat concerned about a repeat of my experience with the last Souls game that I played, that being Demon's Souls.

I did not find Demon's Souls difficult. I rarely died, and I played as an archer, which I imagine that the developers did not expect since the bosses all seemed to have difficulty countering my arrows. I got bored, but played through to the end thinking "It gets more difficult, right?" It didn't. Not because I'm some sort of incredibly skilled pro gamer (I'm not), but because something about that game clicked with me, and I could sort of figure out how things would play out with each encounter. Hopefully that doesn't repeat itself here, because I don't want to run into another scenario where I grow bored and spend more time with a title than I really should.

@janman You can press X to skip to the next line during dialogue so you don't have to wait for the NPCs to finish saying their lines. It might not seem that way cause you're still in control of your character when they talk, but it's tru~

I feel the same way towards Adam Sandler too, Jan.

Jan getting all apprehensive about cthulus at this point, and with 0 insight, means I'm really looking forward to certain later levels.