Bloodborne

Vorph_sl said:

Yeah, skill to 50 unless you feel you need more hp or stamina.

For Ludwig and Burial Blade, physical% gems always. Preferably cursed ones that have a negative that is of little consequence. I keep an hp regen one in my pistol, since it stays active even when you 2H your trick weapon.

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Never thought about putting regen gem into my pistol. Good lookin out V Money.

Is there a trigger for being able to kill the undead queen behind the castle boss? I remember doing it the first time I played this game, but this time I can't kill her for the Queens Flesh for some odd reason.

Also, holy shit level 100? That's some serious farming. I was ready to claw my own eyes out after doing enough HypGaol runs to hit certain stat minimums. Pretty much back where I was when I got annoyed and replayed DS2 the first time around. I think I am at the point of needing to gank the Spider to do anything new, unless I want to power farm chalice dungeons for some reason. I might farm the castle to try and get my Ludwigs up to +9, as the Strigoi Vampire things on the roof have a small chance of dropping the chunks for it.

Couple observations as a filthy casual:
Stats-
I totally echo what others have said here about getting 25 STR for Ludwigs and stopping there. Skill you can never have too much of, even if you are not good at Visceral attacks, because it affects so many other things including damage scaling on the best weapons in the main game. Get Arcane to at least 15 (Beast Roar and the weapon enchant are good), maybe 18 or 20 if you want to play around with the other spells. Get Vit to at least 20 and End to at least 22 (enough for the entire swing patter of Ludwigs plus one dodge). Blood Tinge is a waste and scales terribly, but the spear rapier combo weapon is fun for clearing trash. Beyond that, just dump skill and Vit.

Armor-
Basically, wear what looks cool and whatever resist matches the enemy you are tackling. In particular, Frenzy Resist is a big deal for engaging a couple of the nastier enemies in Nightmare or the area just outside the spider fight. Once you level to a certain point, the bulk of your physical defense is going to come from your raw level anyhow, so sweating a few defense points here is not worth it. If you are really good at countering and dodging, the Student and Knight sets are baller for all around resists. Armor is really about the most pointless gear in this entire game.

Weapons-
Ludwigs does everything and does it the best by the time you get it with the stats you should have. I know people swear by the whip, but its a lot easier just to flip into one hand mode when needed and stunlock shit the entire rest of the time. Seriously, I cannot believe they have not nerfed the piss out of this weapon by now. You can pretty much power through the first part of the game with the Axe and then throw it straight into the trash once you unlock Ludwigs. If you have a hardon for PVP, then yeah the big scythe rocks it, but otherwise Ludwigs will do everything you need for the entire run through. The few things I have seen be resistant to it have done down fast when you enchant it with the magic conch shell.

Martyr Fight-
His first stage is largely unable to be parried, aside from his generic sickle swing. Pretty much roll through the spells and stick and move. Stage two, when he starts dropping his sword, you need to bust out the gun and pop the weapon periodically. At this point, he can be parried rather easily, but you are better off just powering him down and backing off periodically for heals. He wastes a lot of time dropping that blade and charges you whenever you snipe it, so if you get a rhythm down of snipe-roll-switch-chop, this part is actually easier than the opening sequence. If you are at the point where you have the magic weapon boost conch shell, it helps a lot here but you need to be sneaky about casting it so he does not hit you with a big nuke.

Still vastly prefer DS2 and DS1 to this, but I am powering through it so I can complete the main game before Witcher 3 deteriorates my skills too much and I have to restart again.

Full clears of Hyperion Goal with the Moon Gem equipped are a lot faster. You can net over 25k in blood and a pile of gems you can sell off for more, if need be. Plus you will come out ahead by 5-6 vials per clear. That and I have had zero luck trying to get any coop going in this game. I spent like four hours or so power farming HypGoal and stopped once I hit L72 out of boredom because I hit all of my stat goals. I might grind it some more to get more Vitality for some of the deeper Chalice bosses (Undead Giant is one hit killing me) before I drop the Spider, but I have not seen anything that compares to the resources of that run for how easy it is.

As for Alfred, I think I am fucked on that front because I ganked Vicar kind of early. I got the whore to move before that, so I can still get the three cords, but I think the NPCs stop talking to you once you kill Vicar. Where was Alfred, exactly? Maybe I can go back and check. Right now I am mostly working on Chalice dungeons and trying to find a place to farm blood chunks to finish leveling my Ludwigs. I've basically cleaned out everything I can prior to the spider boss at this point and am trying to do all the side farming I can before the world goes screwball.

Question for the pros: Is there any downside to having excessive insight stored up? Beyond seeing all the messed up stuff in the main zones?

95% of the bosses can be beat by rolling into their attacks, charge swing from behind to stun, then Visceral. The rest are just a matter of knowing how their hitboxes work and adjusting movement accordingly. Normal mobs are a waste of ammo to parry and really the only true purpose the gun serves is to pull singles in certain situations. Learning to do Viscerals on bosses is the single most critical skill to learn. You are actually better off not having played the prior Souls games, because the absence of the shield will not be messing up your muscle memory.

I agree its powerful if you master it, but its like parrying in the Souls games. Its basically there for master level players who want to dedicate the time to it. For us filthy casuals, roll into it and power down with Ludwigs (or Axe starting out) pretty much wins just about any fight in the game. Even the NPC hunters can be skunked through a combination of Axe/Ludwigs and terrain gimping. The only time I felt like I needed to parry were for the aforementioned Father G and Martyr fights. I am guessing people wanting to conquer all the chalice dungeons need to learn it, but that's really for the poop sock crowd who are going to put the time in to learn it, anyhow.

Really, its a simple case of math here. When you are not two handing the Axe/Ludwigs you are gimping your damage output. Nearly every boss fight in this tame I have done (up to spider boss) is generally a twitch fest to execute long enough to kill it before you fuck up and get stunlocked/one shotted. Drawing the fight out with parrying (especially on things like the Shadow Trio or Vicar) massively increases the odds that you will goof up and get ganked, unless you are a god at Viscerals. For someone just looking to beat the game, its much simpler and safer to do the old "roll into, counter, roll out" mantra and just learn the tells and hit boxes.

Phazael_sl said:

I agree its powerful if you master it, but its like parrying in the Souls games. Its basically there for master level players who want to dedicate the time to it. For us filthy casuals, roll into it and power down with Ludwigs (or Axe starting out) pretty much wins just about any fight in the game. Even the NPC hunters can be skunked through a combination of Axe/Ludwigs and terrain gimping. The only time I felt like I needed to parry were for the aforementioned Father G and Martyr fights. I am guessing people wanting to conquer all the chalice dungeons need to learn it, but that's really for the poop sock crowd who are going to put the time in to learn it, anyhow.

Really, its a simple case of math here. When you are not two handing the Axe/Ludwigs you are gimping your damage output. Nearly every boss fight in this tame I have done (up to spider boss) is generally a twitch fest to execute long enough to kill it before you fuck up and get stunlocked/one shotted. Drawing the fight out with parrying (especially on things like the Shadow Trio or Vicar) massively increases the odds that you will goof up and get ganked, unless you are a god at Viscerals. For someone just looking to beat the game, its much simpler and safer to do the old "roll into, counter, roll out" mantra and just learn the tells and hit boxes.

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I'll agree to disagree about parrying being a "poopsock only" skill. Can you beat the game without mastering the parry? Sure.

Will you feel like you've mastered the game without learning to parry? I wouldn't, but maybe you will.

Maybe it is the chalice dungeons one shotting stun proof autotrack bosses making me jaded, but I just do not trust the parries in this game at all. Sometimes enemies simply do not end up stunned from the setup charge attack or parry. Sometimes they randomly throw in an extra swing into their pattern. Sometimes the hit boxes do not correspond to where their limbs/weapons are on the screen. Worse still, some attacks are simply not able to be parried or can only be parried for certain stages of a fight. Dodge-chop-Dodge takes the speculation out of the mix and leaves a lot less room for randomness or execution errors, especially with some of the enemies that go into super saiyen rape mode for the last third of their health. Learning the basics of dodging is a lot more forgiving and less risky than trying to get parries down and pull off viscerals consistently.

But I completely agree that a master level player who knows the reads and parry timing is going to destroy fights more easily, its just easier for a casual player to rely on dodge (in the same way we leaned on shields in the Souls games).