Bloodborne Tips You Did Not Know

by DaryanAvi

Here’s a list of little interesting things in Bloodborne that I think are unknown by most hunters.

1 – The list of beasts in this game can be divided in two subsets: “true” beasts, consumers of old blood afflicted by the scourge such as werewolves and cleric beasts, and “animal” beasts, such as dogs and rats. Serrated damage bonuses only affect the former; beasthunter gems affect all beasts, and so do curses that reduce your damage against beasts.

2 – The Saw Cleaver only gets the serrated bonus in untransformed mode; the Saw Spear gets it in both modes.

3 – The Church Pick has some interesting modifiers. When transformed, all of its attacks do thrusting damage, so it might be a good ideia to socket in those stong adept gems that deal 30%+ extra thrusting damage. On top of that, all of its thrusts get a 20% righteous and a 20% beasthunter modifier. But why am I saying beasthunter, not serrated? Because it deals 20% extra damage against all beasts, not just the ones afflicted by the scourge.

4 – The +10 Beast Cutter has some of the lowest scaling values in the game: 0.6 STR + 0.3 SKL. However, be mindful that all of this weapon’s attacks do blunt damage, and just like with the Church Pick you can take advantage of good adept gems to make its damage skyrocket.

5 – The attacks of the transformed Beast Cutter have the longest recovery time in the game.

6 – Beast runes reduce falling damage.

7 – The Communion and Formless Oedon runes have 5 versions. All other Caryll runes have 3 versions, except one: it seems no one ever found the strongest version of the Guidance rune, which would boost your rally potential by 30%.

8 – All weapons lose 1 point of durability for every 10th hit, with the exception of the buffed Tonitrus, which loses 1 point for every 2nd hit (as if its durability wasn’t bad enough already!). And you know what those “WPN durability down” curses do to your weapon? If they make your weapon durability go down by 10 points or more, it’ll starts losing 1 point of durability for every single hit. That means one “WPN durability down -10” curse has the same effect on your weapons as three “WPN durability down -60” curses. So if you’re okay with these curses, just stack them. The durability of your weapon already went to shit anyway, it ain’t gonna get any worse.

9 – Labyrinth Watchers are commonly weak to arcane damage. And by labyrinth watchers I mean those assholes that you only find in chalice dungeons.

10 – Ludwig’s Holy Blade might be the best weapon in the game for a quality build, since when fully upgraded it gets equal scaling from strength and skill. But you know what’s (theoretically) the second best option? The Stake Driver. At +10, it gets +0.6 STR scaling and +0.55 SKL scaling. But I guess you don’t mind, cause no one cares for the Stake Driver. :/

11 – Speaking of Stake Driver, its charged R2 is the attack with the highest damage multiplier in the game. If it does 500 damage with an R1 swipe, it’ll do 1775 with a charged R2.

12 – Don’t be deceived by the low damage that is shown for the Kos Parasite on the stat screen. Put on the Milkweed Rune and most of your attacks will get more than twice the damage that is shown there.

13 – The Hunter Axe is the weapon with the best rally potential in the game; Kirk Hammett and Pizza Cutter come right after.

14 – The Threaded Cane gets extra +0.15 skill scaling for transformed attacks. In other words: the skill scaling for its transformed version is not an A, but an S.

15 – The LHB and the Kirkhammer do “only” around 70% of their listed damage when untransformed. Whirligig Saw does around 75%.

16 – Most of the attacks of the Holy Moonlight Sword don’t inflict all of its listed arcane damage. Untransformed R1 does 50% of its arcane potential, transformed R1 does 70%. Transformed L2 does a whopping 150% physical and 150% arcane, though.

17 – Rom and Ebrietas are listed both as kin and Great Ones.

18 – Winter Lanterns are not kin.

19 – The transformed Bowblade’s charged R2 does 1.4x its listed blood damage. Yeah, it’s that good.

20 – Shark Giants can be parried.

21 – Most bosses are practically immune to poison. Some notable exceptions are Micolash, Mergo’s Wet Nurse and Pthumerian bosses such as Queen Yharnam.

22 – The Tonitrus’ sparky transformation gives it a +0.4 ARC scaling (which makes it go from C to A) and a 70% increase in all bolt damage. After all the modifiers are calculated, it also adds +40 flat bolt damage. Here’s an example: consider your character has 99 in all stats and your Tonitrus is +10 with three 20% nourishing gems (gems that increase all your ATK). The weapon will get 160 base physical damage, 80 base bolt damage, 0.65 STR scaling, 0.25 SKL scaling and 0.5 ARC scaling. When untransformed, the math for the final damage will be as follows: ( 160 + 160 x 0.65 + 160 x 0.25 + 80 + 80 x 0.5 ) x 1.2³ = 732. After you buff the weapon, however, the damage will be something like this: ( 160 + 160 x 0.65 + 160 x 0.25 + ( 80 + 80 x 0.9 ) x 1.7 ) x 1.2³ + 40 = 1011. Not bad, eh?

23 – Still on the Tonitrus topic: The listed damage for this weapon is wrong in multiple ways. If you buff the weapon and open the menu to see its damage while being at full HP, the listed value will be erroneously high (idk why). If you do it while not being at full HP, however, the listed value will be erroneously low. In this case, it’s because the game is making the calculation without adding the 0.4 ARC scaling that the weapon gets.

24 – In general, the softcap and hardcap mechanics presented in this game make you get very marginal increases by upgrading a stat beyond 50. For weapons, the scaling damage bonus you’ll get will be 50% when the stat is at level 25, 85% at level 50 and 100% at level 99. Hunter Tools kind of work differently, though. Their scaling is so high that you might really consider upgrading your ARC all the way to 99. A Call Beyond, for example, has only 235 base damage, but with a whopping 3.5 ARC scaling it does only 65% of its maximum potential damage at level 50!

25 – Every weapon in the game that does purely physical damage has an arcane scaling that is equal to its ( SKL scaling + STR scaling ) x 0.55. Example: a +10 Ludwig’s Holy Blade has 0.8 STR scaling, 0.8 SKL scaling and 0.88 ARC scaling. ( 0.8 + 0.8 ) x 0.55 = 0.88. Which means: when thinking of converting a weapon into elemental damage, just pick the weapon you prefer. If you think its scaling is good enough in physical form, you’ll think it’s good enough in elemental form too.

Part II

1 – Fire Paper, Bolt Paper and Empty Arcane Shell add a flat +80 elemental damage bonus to your weapon. This bonus does not scale in any way, therefore it will be always the same. With this we can conclude that 1 – Empty Phantasm Shell is by far the cheapest of the three, as you’ll only need 15 ARC and 3 bullets for each cast, although the other two may do more damage depending on your enemy’s weaknesses of course; and 2 – These buffs make a lot more difference on NG than NG+ cycles, since on NG+ your weapons will be stronger and you won’t notice the +80 damage bonus as much.

2 – The bonuses you get with Fire Paper, Bolt Paper and Empty Phantasm Shell apply to the Reiterpallasch’s bullets. Yes, you can fire bullets infused with elemental damage!

3 – The Rifle Spear has only one attack that deals blood damage, and that attack does only 15% of the weapon’s listed blood damage. I mean… why?

4 – Bone Marrow Ash has no effect on right-hand shooters such as the Reiterpallasch and the Rifle Spear.

5 – Bone Marrow Ash buffs the damage of your next shot by 155% for pistols, 135% for the Piercing Rifle, 114% for Flamesprayer and Rosmarinus, and 40% for shotguns and cannons (Ludwig’s Rifle counts as a shotgun). It has no effect on the Gatling Gun. For sprayers, the bonus is applied for every hit until the first bullet is consumed.

6 – You probably know the basics of boss weaknesses: beasts are weak to fire, kin are weak to bolt and thrust, Pthumerians are weak to arcane. But here’s a few thing you might not have noticed: OoK is strong against any elemental damage type, but fire is a better option than arcane or bolt; Laurence is weaker against physical, thrust and blood, stronger against arcane and bolt, and very strong against fire; Gehrman and Maria are weaker against arcane and bolt equally; Logarius is strong against any type of elemental, but fire is the best option of the three; Moon Presence and Amydgala are weak to any type of elemental damage; Darkbeasts are weak to arcane above all else, even fire.

7 – Most weapons do 5-10% less damage after rolling or quickstepping, but there are three exceptions that I know of. The Chikage gets a 0-10% bonus, and the Burial Blade a 5-20% bonus. The Blade of Mercy? 40-50% bonus for every single one of these attacks.

8 – Did you know your weapons can have multiple attacks after quickstepping? If you quickstep while holding down the left stick, your next attack will be different than if you just press Circle without moving the stick in any direction.

9 – Did you also know you can do a strong jumping attack by pressing R2 and moving up the left stick at the same time? Gawd, it took me like three playthroughs until I figured that out.

10 – The Kirkhammer gets the righteous bonus only in sword mode, whereas Ludwig’s Holy Blade gets it in both modes. There’s nothing Holy about that big crushing hammer.

11 – Have you ever thought of trying adept gems for your Kirkhammer? All of its attacks do blunt damage in hammer mode, so you might wanna take advantage of the 30%+ blunt damage bonus that some of these gems yield.

12 – Only four enemies in the game are weak to righteous: Bloodlickers, Lost Children of Antiquity, Forsaken Castle Spirits and Evil Labyrinth Spirits. In other words: giant ugly ticks, skinny old gargoyles and ghosts. Therefore, this bonus is hardly relevant outside Cainhurst.

13 – You can kill Queen Annalise of the Vilebloods by hitting her like 50 times. She’s also weak to righteous, although I didn’t mention her on the above item because she’s not exactly an enemy. After reloading the area, you’ll be able to collect the queenly flesh and revive her at the Altar of Despair if you want.

14 – There’s an item called Ring of Betrothal that you have a small chance of finding in chalice dungeons. You can use it to propose to Queen Annalise! She’ll reject you, though. :/

15 – Kneel to Annalise and she’ll give you the Corruption rune. Killing hunters (NPCs or player in PvP) with this rune memorized will give you Blood Dregs. Offer one to Annalise and you’ll learn the Deep Respect gesture. Alternatively, consuming a Blood Dreg will yield you 1 insight.

16 – The only use to the Altar of Despair is reviving Annalise.

17 – Quick guide to weapons’ attacks and damage: the damage output of your attack is given by ( base damage + base damage x stat scaling x ( weapon scaling + scaling given by gems ) ) x % damage given by gems x damage modifier of your attack + flat damage given by gems. Physical damage scales with STR + SKL, blood damage scales with BLT, and arcane, fire and bolt damage scale with ARC. Stat scaling is 0.5 at level 25, 0.85 at level 50, 1 at level 99 (it’s no linear progression). Example: consider your character has 50 STR, 25 SKL and a +10 Kirkhammer. The Kirk will have 210 base damage, 1 STR scaling and 0.29 SKL scaling. Let’s say you stacked it with the following three gems: +50 STR scaling (which translates into +0.5 for our math), +20% physical damage and +40 flat physical damage. And how about the damage modifier of your attack? The Kirk has a 0.7 modifier for a normal R1 in sword mode, so let’s throw in that number. Finally, the damage of your attack is gonna be: ( 210 + 210 x 0.85 x ( 1 + 0.5 ) + 210 x 0.5 x 0.29 ) x 1.2 x 0.7 + 40 = 466. If you’ve found all this to be way too complicated, wait for the next one.

18 – The actual damage you’ll deal to an enemy depends on your weapon damage being compared to your enemy’s defenses. I’ll say it right away, no matter how low are an enemy’s defenses, he will never take the full damage of your attack. If your attack is more than 8 times higher than your enemy’s defense to that specific attack type, the damage you’ll inflict will be 90% of its potential. On the other hand, if your enemy’s defense is more than 8 times higher than your attack, you’ll only inflict 10% of potential damage. But how about the in-betweens? Well, it’s complicated. You can learn about it here.

19 – The are two damage modifiers coloquially called Open state and Instability state. Enemies are open for a short period of time after they miss an attack, and if they get hit in this state they’ll take an extra 20-40% damage depending on your timing. Instability is basically the time window in which enemies are open to visceral attacks, so it’s triggered by parrying, backstabbing or damaging enough certain weak spots. Enemies take almost twice the damage during this state. Here’s another thing, though: if you get caught in the middle of an action by an enemy, such as when they hit you while you’re rolling, you’ll take twice the damage too.

20 – You know a good way to test what your attacks are doing? By hitting the doll. She has low defenses all-round. If you kill her, she’ll revive next time you reload the Dream by using a Hunter’s Mark or leaving then coming back. She’ll introduce herself again as if you two never met. Fun fact: you can still level up by interacting with her dead body.

21 – The Yharnam Stone that you get by killing Queen Yharnam doesn’t have any use in the game.

22 – There is not a single boss in all of Bloodborne that is particularly strong against blood damage. It’s a quite reliable damage type.

23 – You probably already knew that shooting dogs and spiders knocks them off. But did you know that any type of blood damage has this effect on them? Try using a transformed Chikage or a transformed Bloodletter and see what they do.

24 – Celestial Emissary’s 26 thrust resistance is the lowest defense of any boss in the game. Watchdog of the Old Lords’ 9939 fire resistance is the highest.

25 – Beast-possessed Soul is weak to fire damage, even though it has fire attacks of its own.

26 – Abhorrent Beast is very weak to slow poison. It has the lowest poison defense of any boss in the game, considering both types of poison.

27 – Only fat bosses are particularly weak to blunt damage. No, I’m not joking. Merciless Watchers and the Maneater Boar are the only ones.

28 – Headless Bloodletting Beast is the boss with the highest amount of HP that you can find in chalice dungeons: 24k. Laurence is the boss with the highest amount of HP in the entire game, reaching a total 40k at NG+7. No surprise there, but do you know who takes second place? Living Failures, with 36k.

29 – HP for bosses don’t scale all that much past NG+2. On NG+7, their health bar will be about 10% larger than it is on NG+2.

30 – Boss HP is multiplied by 1.5x when you have a cooperator, and by 2x when you have two.

31 – You know those disgusting slimy black things that you occasionally find in chalice dungeons, but only after they drop on your head from the ceiling and one-shot you because you were unaware of their presence? Their strength vs physical and blood attacks and weakness vs elemental are crazy. And by crazy I mean their physical resistance is 33 times their arcane resistance. Quite unique.

32 – You can escape grab attacks faster by mashing buttons repeatedly (L1, L2, R1, R2, Square, Triangle, X or O). Combining L1 and R1 may be the best option. This way, Brainsuckers may possibly only steal 1 insight from you.

33 – Oil Urns thrown at enemies make you do 2x fire damage on your next hit, but only on your next hit.

34 – The Tonitrus deals some bolt damage when unbuffed, but the Boom Hammer deals no fire damage when unbuffed.

35 – Ludwig’s Holy Blade, Kirkhammer and Chikage possess a special R1 attack after transforming. Press L1 then R1 with these weapons and you’ll see. LHB and Kirk have a special attack for both transformations, whereas the Chikage only has one when going from physical to blood form.

36 – You can block with the Kirkhammer an the LHB. Here is how.

37 – Orphan of Kos can be cheesed by sticking to the right side of the arena and throwing shit at him before he aggroes on you.

38 – Your Beasthood meter will only increase with physical attacks. That means converting your Beast Claw to elemental damage is a bad idea.

39 – Having a high Beasthood stat won’t make your beastshood gauge fill any faster. It will only make the gauge larger. The amount of Beasthood that is shown on the character menu is directly linked to the size of your Beasthood gauge. Base Beasthood is 300, and 300 is also the amount you need to fill you beasthood gauge in order to get the maximum damage bonus (70%). In other words: if your Beasthood is 300, fill your gauge entirely to get that maximum 70%; if it’s lower than 300. you’ll never reach the 70% bonus; if it’s higher than 300, you don’t even need to fill the gauge entirely to get that 70%.

40 – There are three softcaps for the effect of insight on Frenzy RES and Beasthood: 15 insight, 30 insight and 60 insight. Your losses will be diminished after hitting each softcap.

41 – Your Beasthood stat will have dropped by 130 at 15 insight, by an extra 70 at 30 insight and extra 90 at 60 insight. In other words: not including attire and rune modifiers, you’ll have 170 Beasthood at 15 insight, 100 Beasthood at 30 insight and a measly 10 beasthood at 60 insight.

42 – Your base Frenzy RES is 100, and it doesn’t drop until you reach 15 insight. It will have dropped by 40 at 30 insight and another 40 at 60 insight.

43 – The Evelyn is objectively better than the Hunter Pistol when you have 22 BLT or more. They both have the same speed and range, but the Evelyn will do more damage. [Update: some people have pointed out in this post that the firing angle of the Evelyn makes it more likely to miss on mobile targets than the Hunter Pistol. If the Hunter Pistol has at least one advantage over the Evelyn, then it’s incorrect to say it’s objectively worse.]

44 – Your max stamina won’t increase past 40 END, and your discovery won’t increase past 50 ARC. This is kind of trivial information since you can see these things on the stat screen, but if you’re an innatentive hoonter like me it may pass you by.

45 – Each time you level up, your Physical DEF stat value increases. But don’t be deceived by its name: leveling up will make you more resilient to all types of damage, and by all types of damage I mean physical, blood, arcane, fire and bolt (poison and frenzy work differently).

46 – Each 10 points of resistance listed for your attire equal actual 1% resistance. Example: A full Henryk set, with its 316 bolt resistance, makes you take 31.6% less bolt damage than being naked.

47 – When your weapon enters risk state (30% durability or less), it will do 30% less damage. When it breaks (0% durability), it will do 50% less. You won’t lose your weapon forever when it breaks, though. Just go back to the workshop, repair it and it’ll be good as new.

48 – It’s been theorized that discovery only affects the loot tables of some enemies, and that their drops won’t change past 210 discovery (more on that here). 210 discovery is what you get with 50 ARC and one Eye rune, and it’s probably worthless to increase it past this threshold.

49 – Being on a cursed dungeon can give you an extra 1000 hidden discovery, but you’ll need to have at least one Eye or Milkweed rune equipped. Additionally, enemies in cursed dungeons drop 20% more blood echoes than they normally would.

50 – Ever tried getting naked while using the Beast’s Embrace and Milkweed runes? Beast’s Embrance changes the appearence of your entire body. Milkweed only changes your head and lower arms.

51 – If you crush 5 vermin, interact with Valtr, reload the game then come back to where he was, he’ll have left his very intricate piece of head armor for you. Then you get to fight Younger Madaras Twin, which is quite fun cause sometimes he blows his whistle but doesn’t back away enough, and gets crushed by his sister snake. But the best part of it all is that next time you summon Valt for help, you’ll find out that he has beautiful long blonde hair.

52 – The Wooden Shield reduces damage taken by 50% for physical and blood, 40% for arcane, 30% for bolt and 20% for fire. The Loch Shield reduces damage taken by 30% for physical and blood and 70% for arcane, fire and bolt. It’s not a bad idea to use a Loch Shield when fighting arcanists such as Micolash and Living Failures, not a bad idea at all.

53 – Blue Elixir does not quiet your footsteps, so be careful when using it.

54 – Lead Elixir can be useful for Laurence’s second phase, as it lets you walk by his lava without flinching, allowing you to strike him from behind. You’ll still take some small, continuous fire damage though, so watch out. Another use for this elixir is for fighting the Pthumerian Descendant. You might just wanna tank his R1 spamming and continuously heal by rallying.

55 – Shaman Bone Blades can be useful in gank boss fights. It will make your enemies turn on each other for a limited time. Useful for Celestial Emissary, Shadows of Yharnam and above all else, the Legendary Giant Sharks of the Well.

56 – You need 180+ Frenzy RES to not be affected by the transformed Bloodletter’s L2 attack.

57 – You can get a total 3 Blood Rocks from chests in chalice dungeons, one for each Depth 5 chalice. If you find one in Isz, for example, you’ll never find another one for this same chalice. Blood Rocks dropped by bosses are not limited, though. You can farm bosses normally.

58 – Chalice Dungeons have illusory walls that will be unveiled by hitting or rolling into them. Four of these are scripted for Lower Pthumeru, one for each layer. Other than that, they’ll be generated randomly in Root Chalices.

59 – You know those skinny old gargoyles? They can be an easy way of farming good nourishing gems in chalice dungeons, depending on the depth of the dungeon and the offerings made. They also have a considerable chance of dropping twin blood stone shards and blood stone chunks.

60 – The Logarius’ Wheel deals its listed physical and arcane damage combined when untransformed. But after you transform it and start spinning the thing, oh boy, things change. Your physical damage will be multiplied by 0.7, but your arcane damage will be multiplied by 4. Spin it once with L2 and your HP will start flowing away, but you’ll do 10% extra arcane damage. The arcane bonus will be 20% at speed 2, 40% at speed 3 and 60% at speed 4. Now let’s do some math. Consider a +10 Logarius’ Wheel with 99 STR and ARC, and three 20% nourishing gems (gems that raise all your ATK). It’ll deal 200 base physical damage and 50 base arcane damage. It also gets 1.1 STR scaling and 0.56 ARC scaling. The damage output when untransformed will be: ( 200 x 2.1 + 50 x 1.56 ) x 1.2³ = 860. Now, for transformed version at gear 4th: ( 200 x 2.1 x 0.7 + 50 x 1.56 x 4 x 1.6 ) x 1.2³ = 1370. A fully buffed Logarius’ Wheel is the strongest weapon in the game by a long shot, but you gotta pay a big price in blood to use it.