I got myself a little treat after I 100%ed the game and thought I should show you fellas.

Now I’m going to go kill that annoying ass bird in the dlc YOU KNOW WHICH ONE IM TALKING ABOUT.

For our next legendary battle, what weapon are you bringing for this massacre 🤔? Same rules as last one: no 🧀, & you fight em all in the open. Their ai is so frantic, especially teamed up, that maintaining lockon was hard af under pressure. No hit was survivable, & i know for a fact the scythe guy 1-shots even a 50 vit char. They all have some of the best hyper armor in the game, so they can't just be spammed, stunlocked. In fact, boom hammer is the only weapon i've seen break their animation a bit.

Also for the gem enthusiasts, they dropped me this sick triangle fool's gem(see comments). Gotta be like a 1 in thousands drop rate or something. 👀. Glyph is 935qg6hu

Can you guess which is my most hated Bloodborne enemy right behind the Brain Suckers? Granted, I could've shot it from afar, but still.

EDIT: Beat him on my second attempt. His ankles weren't ready for my ass

Been clipping through at a great pace. I'm very thorough when exploring but I've still gotten through Darkbeast Paarl and Rom, The Vacuous Spider.

Hi everyone, hunters, scholars, and everyone in between.

I want to share a small origin story and an invitation.

In 2019, after a couple of years of playing Bloodborne, a colleague asked me to help build a project to promote reading among “young people who don’t read.” My reaction was immediate, and a bit rude: what do you mean they don’t read? We’re reading in Bloodborne!

I had spent hundreds of hours piecing together item descriptions, cryptic dialogue, rune texts, NPC lines and half-sentences, comparing notes with strangers, and arguing about what a single line might mean. Nobody had told me that was reading, but it clearly was. That question became my research: what do we do, exactly, when we “read” a game like this?

Along the way I found I was far from the first person to ask versions of it. The community got there first, and with remarkable rigor. RedGrave’s The Paleblood Hunt is the one that stays with me. It began right here on r/bloodborne, grew into a monumental piece of lore analysis that carefully separates evidence from speculation, and later became an audiobook (which of course I also listened to). That piece! It reads like scholarship written by a player.

I also found a smaller but growing body of critical and academic work on the game. Three texts shaped my thinking the most:

Damien Mecheri & Sylvain Romieu, Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave Vol. 2 (Third Éditions, 2018). It isn’t strictly academic, but it reads Bloodborne as an evolution of the Souls formula, shifting from medieval to Victorian Gothic under the influence of Lovecraftian cosmicism.

Alfonso Freire-Sánchez (2024), “Sincronías narrativas y travesías filosóficas en la intertextualidad entre Berserk y la obra de Hidetaka Miyazaki,” in Hipertext.net. It traces Camus’ absurd and Nietzsche’s eternal return through Berserk and Miyazaki’s games.

Hiranya Mukherjee (2023), “Fear the Old Blood”: The Gothicism of Bloodborne, Games and Culture. It looks at how the game builds “Gothic grammars” through narrative, aesthetics and mechanics.

There are others: Madelon Hoedt’s Narrative Design and Authorship in Bloodborne, The Scholarly Hunter, a thesis on how the game’s narrative and environment invite player involvement and critical debate, and, in various works in Spanish, Concédenos ojos (Grant us Eyes). Bloodborne y el terror cósmico interactivo (Universidad de Valladolid, 2020), Mateo Trapiello Izaguirre’s Enciclopedia semiótica de Bloodborne, and Matías Heredia Castillo’s work on the game’s visual setting (PUCP).

Each looks at the game through a different lens: Lovecraft, the Gothic, semiotics, game design, environmental storytelling. What I kept wondering was how all of us, academics and players alike, were reading together.

My own approach was to code the game’s texts (items, dialogue, runes, notes) using Genette’s transtextuality, to see how they connect to other works and to each other. I also surveyed gamers about their reading habits. Two things stood out. Many people clearly practice this kind of distributed, collective reading, yet don’t call it “reading.” And a good share of the text I analyzed, roughly one in six fragments, only exists for researchers because this community datamined it. The object of study depends on you.

👉 https://www.javeriana.edu.co/pesquisa/bloodborne-leer-lectura-jovenes/

I’ve written about all this for Pesquisa Javeriana, the research magazine of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. It’s in Spanish (sorry!), but browser translation should handle it reasonably well:

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

1. Do you consider what you do with Bloodborne’s lore to be reading? Why or why not?
2. Have you read academic work on the game that I missed?
3. What was the moment you realized you were “hunting for meaning” rather than just hunting beasts?

Thank you to FromSoftware and Miyazaki for a game that trusts its players to read between the lines. And thank you to this community, for the lore threads, the wikis, the datamining, the video essays, and the countless late-night theories. You are the hunters of meaning, and without you this research would not exist.

Good hunt.

I really like this attire and with Burial Blade it looks absolutely amazing. Who else is rocking Yahar’gul black?

Also: Kirkhammer good, big bonk.

I've played through the game about 6 times. Currently on a new run first playthrough. Mergo's loft. I don't mind so much being killed by the Winter Lanterns. I mean... You dodge, frenzy kicks in, you heal so frenzy doesn't kill you (no more sedatives), they grab you, your health goes down, frenzy kicks in, you die. It is what it is. They are probably the most difficult regular enemies in the game. I get that.

The thing that really annoys me, is that regaining your blood echoes is sooooo unreliable with that LIFT!!!!!

Just when you think - oh yeah that timing was perfect. Oh no. Fall to your death. 40k blood echoes gone. I'm like... Goodnight Yarnham. I'm off to bed.

I discovered it using the free camera, and now my heart is broken 😂😭

I recently came back to bloodborne after a long hiatus and I found myself with a couple lead elixir at old yharnam and I had a moment of insight, I chugged an elixir and climbed the ladder to Djura and simply walked through his shotgun blasts and easily nudged him off the edge. Anyone have a similar experience?

Damn I'm casually checking store and this popped up 75% discount on bloodborne, such a good deal thought Id just share it here if there are people looking to buy bloodborne in this sub. You have the deal, grab it amd experience one the greatest games ever made.

So I got caught up with college work so didn't really have time to continue her but here's an updated version of her with some rendering done. I'll try to finish this drawing by the end of the week

I haven't played in a while. Not only did I forget all the buttons but I didn't notice the poison as well

I just found him on my first play through any tips would be helpful

You all rock.

How is the gameplay? I got hit twice by the skulls which isn't typical.

He was just trying to take a nap :D

Being serious, guess It's one of those lucky runs and wanted to share it. Cheers!

Str 25

Saw cleaver +6

I mainly see two camps, people who usually never run out of blood vials and those that seemingly always run out of blood vials. Is there some trick or secret knowledge?

I usually have between 120—170 and will only farm once in a while if I'm stuck on a boss.

Just finished wukong, and then cod ww2. Tried rdr2 but wasn't feeling it. Gonna try bb. Last playthrough was arcane, using hunter tools and lhb. This time will be bloodyinge, focusing more on sidearm and blood weapons like chikage and bloodletter (forgot the other ones). Any recommendations

My interpretation Is that the whole game I've been fighting these bosses, freeing the world from evil. Now finally l've come to the end with the doll, my companion at my side, so many people have died and tried, but I rode beyond them all. I strengthened my resolve. But then in the end I was asked to submit to death. I didn't do it. l refused and my first friend in this world, the one guiding me, tried to kill me for it. My knowledge finally showed all the ill wills of those around me and instead of waking in ignorance I decided to push on and free the world for good, even if I was pushed into final and permanent isolation.

I just finished my first playthrough and thought I would share my thoughts and the number of times it took me for each boss, since I saw some other people sharing theirs and thought why not.

Cleric Beast (3 Attempt): This is my first FS game so this was my first FS boss and honestly those first two attempts I had was before I got the shortcut and I was raging. Really fun boss to start the game with and felt so satisfying beating my first boss.

Father Gascoigne (2nd Attempt): I never really struggled with this boss because of the parrying aspect of the game which I really love. The beast form was hard my first attempt but my second attempt I just threw Molotov's and got him.

Blood-Starved Beast (7th Attempt): This was the real skill check boss for me because of the poison aspect and aggressive boss behavior. I contemplated dropping the game because of this boss but after some grinding antidotes and better movement I finally got him.

Vicar Amelia (4th Attempt): One of the coolest cutscenes and boss designs in the game. Struggled a little bit first few attempts until I got fire paper from Alfred and upgraded my saw cleaver. Very easily limb-broken.

The Witch of Hemwick (2 Attempt): Easiest boss in the game and died only once because I got trapped and then hit by the demons.

Shadow of Yharnam (First Attempt): Very fun fight and one of my personal favorite fights in the game because it's the best gank fight in the game and their designs are very much the Ringwraiths.

Darkbeast Paarl (2nd Attempt) : The design speaks for itself what a badass boss and arena. I had his attacks down by my second attempt and saw cleaver makes it easier.

Rom The Vacuous Spider (5th Attempt): The boss arena is cool and she has a cool name but the fight can fuck off. My least favorite fight in the game not hard but not fun at all to fight. The chalice dungeon fight I thought was more fun.

Martyr Logarius (2nd Attempt): Favorite fight in the game outside of the dlc partly because he is the boss of Cainhurst which is my favorite area in the game. Didn't really struggle much because I levelled high in skill and Vitality by this fight so didn't really struggle other than partly in the first phase.

Amygdala (First Attempt): Can't say much about this boss because I didn't die to it. I died more getting to the boss then anything because the Nightmare Frontier's layout confused the hell out of me.

The One Reborn (2nd Attempt): Died the first time because I realized too late to get rid of the fireball throwers till my next attempt. Cool cutscene with the black sun but kind of forgot I fought them to be honest.

Micolash, Host of the Nightmare (First Attempt): The only reason I beat him first try is because when I realized it was a chase sequence gimmick fight, I did NOT want to deal with it all over again and his attacks are easy if you dodge to the side.

Celestial Emissary (2nd Attempt): Another gank fight but less annoying because the smaller enemies are easier to kill and the the design I do like.

Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos (5th Attempt): Very challenging fight I'd say might be the hardest one in the game but I'm ngl I beat her using the summon outside the door so I could focus on getting behind.

Mergo's Wet Nurse (First Attempt): One of my favorite boss designs but easily one of my easiest fights in this game once I just hugged her back the whole fight and ran/rolled during the duplicates.

Ludwig, The Holy Blade (11th Attempt): First boss that really humbled me in this game and showing me how hard the DLC really is. I eventually learned the timing of his attacks but compared to the base game his attacks threw me completely off for most my attempt specifically the first phase.

The Living Failures (First Attempt): Not much to be said just learn the parry timing and hide behind the pillar for the space attack.

Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower (First Attempt): Was very surprised but I was so invested in the fight and getting parries that I think I was too cautious not to be overtly too risky. Favorite hunter fight in the game though.

The Orphan of Kos (18th Attempt): Not saying anything new but hardest boss in the game simply because it took not just me learning his attacks and parry window it also took using beast blood, electric paper, and perfect dodging to actually beat him but it was very much worth it.

Laurence, The First Vicar (2nd Attempt) : Outside of Logarius this is my favorite boss in the game he is literally a Cleric Beast on fire that can spew lava just cool as shit. I know people find him hard but the first phase is easy if you are careful with his ground attacks and stick to the legs then it should be easier. The second phase with the spewing lava is harder for sure and having to brute force with vials and attacks on the side but nothing I couldn't handle.

Gehrman, The First Hunter (2nd Attempt): Really sick hunter battle but parrying and caution with my health really made the fight easier for me. Cool ass cutscene though.

Moon Presence (2nd Attempt) : Best boss design I've seen for a final boss personally, though kind of underwhelming in difficulty I thought Gehrman was harder.

I love this game and am going to try more FromSoftware games in the future and replay Bloodborne.

Hi, hello. I'm stuck, as you probably would've guessed... I need help :( any from of it will be appreciated!

Quiero eliminar al boss de el cáliz maldito nivel 2 , es un perro de fuego? Alguien

So im currently rocking the blade of mercy in a skill build and i was thinking of moving into a newer weapon, im interested in playing with simon’s bowblade but i have 2 questions

1- how should i start leveling my stats from this point on with the current state spread i have

2- if i kill simon early am i locked from any certain key items for any quests?

I didnt check the wiki for the 2nd question to avoid spoilers but i just wanna know if there will be consequences to killing him early

My current stat spread is this:

Vit: 30
End: 25
Strength: 11
Skill: 30
Bloodtinge: 9
Arcane: 7