If you need more than 5 vials per boss then you are doing something wrong strategically, better check some videos to understand boss patterns or do save scumming to save time from grinding.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
keep trying But cant stay interested in bloodborne due to blood vial farming
- Thread starter Xero grimlock
- Start date
the trick is to not use your blood vials when you're first fighting a boss. Only when you think you have an actual shot at beating him should you use the vials. So like, the first few times, study the bosses movement and try your best against him. If you get the boss to the second phase without having to heal, then go ahead and use em. Next thing you know, you'll have hundreds in your storage and it won't be a concern anymore
I have no memory of buying vials during my playthrough, but I'm now reading that you can buy them for 180 at the messenger fountain.
As for farming, I was never able to find a way to generate them that wasn't annoying.
Blood vials were the absolute worst thing about my time with Bloodborne and often made me consider stopping playing. No one can deny the people that had their experience spoiled by this crummy system.
Yeah, this is another good tip. This goes for any consumables also, like bolt or fire paper.
I just always buy a ton of them while there are still cheap at the beginning. Usually I use all my consumable Blood Echoes for vials/bullets and the ones from bosses I use to do everything else. There's usually some left-over echoes from that for more vials too.
I consider myself pretty shit in BB but I can't remember farming anything.
Did I do something wrong?
Did I do something wrong?
It was worse when the loading screens were longer. Don't forget to rally back health when you can.
Bring a friend if you can.
Bring a friend if you can.
And the storage cap was what...99? I don't quite remember. xD
Go to the Cleric Beast lamp. And go towards the bridge. Kill the brick guy. If you are early in the game skip the wolves and go to the house on the right. Kill the few guys in the house. Go out and kill the two brick guys. Ride the elevator. Trigger the flaming ball trap on the bridge and let it kill most of the enemies. Finish off the one or two enemies there.
That route takes about 5 minutes and will get you 10-12 blood vials and probably 6 quicksilver bullets. If you can kill the wolves, which technically you can cheese if you really want, that's maybe another couple of vials and/or some gems or something.
This can be done very early in the game. You can probably do it even before beating cleric beast and father gascoine it just won't be quite as quick. But then really you can just do any similar sort of route and get blood vials.
If farming had to be done a lot, or if it was difficult or something I would be more inclined to agree. But if you play bloodborne for 50 hours and 2 or 3 of those hours is spent farming blood vials and quicksilver bullets, that seems pretty reasonable.
Holy shit I forgot about the Day 1 loading screen times, they were brutal.
This comes up every once in a while and I just don't get it. Bloodborne ain't Souls. It beats you over the head with its systems to establish this fact.
Vials ain't Estus. They're not even grass (DeS) Souls rewards cautious play: you get hit, you retreat, you heal. Bloodborne rewards aggressive play: you get hit, you counterattack, you get your life back. Rallying is the primary form of healing and it's why you're given ample opportunity to do so against every standard enemy in the game. Bosses typically have a mix of normal attacks and more hard hitting, high knock back attacks. That's when vials are used to supplement rallying.
I suck at Bloodborne, but I was capped on vials for most of my time with it. Then again I'm super averse to using consumables in games in general, so that may be why I embraced rallying so readily. It did take a lot of "reprogramming" my brain to not play BB like Souls in the early going, though.
Vials ain't Estus. They're not even grass (DeS) Souls rewards cautious play: you get hit, you retreat, you heal. Bloodborne rewards aggressive play: you get hit, you counterattack, you get your life back. Rallying is the primary form of healing and it's why you're given ample opportunity to do so against every standard enemy in the game. Bosses typically have a mix of normal attacks and more hard hitting, high knock back attacks. That's when vials are used to supplement rallying.
I suck at Bloodborne, but I was capped on vials for most of my time with it. Then again I'm super averse to using consumables in games in general, so that may be why I embraced rallying so readily. It did take a lot of "reprogramming" my brain to not play BB like Souls in the early going, though.
You could most certainly have, just save to a USB or PS+ Cloud before a boss fight and reload every couple of failed tries.
Everyone's saying to grind at the bridge in Central Yharnam, but if you have the bottom floor of the Lecture Hall unlocked that's a much better spot. Run from the lantern to the lecture room with like 15 Slime Scholars, slice through them like butter, pick up any quicksilver they drop, and brave hunters mark to reload them and start again. They don't drop vials but they drop more than enough echoes to make up for it, and each loop takes like 90 seconds with loading.
The other argument I've heard is that From wanted people to be able to earn back vials between lanterns by killing enemies, but that system basically already existed for Estus too. They could have just simplified it a little and had any enemy that would have dropped a vial give you an extra charge while still removing it as an item and topping you off at 20 at each lantern.
None of this justifies making Blood Vials a resource that you can run out of. There's nothing challenging about having to stop making boss runs to go wait at load screens and grind at the lecture hall for 30 min, it's just tedious. Yes if you're playing the game well you won't need as many vials, but that goes without saying.
The other argument I've heard is that From wanted people to be able to earn back vials between lanterns by killing enemies, but that system basically already existed for Estus too. They could have just simplified it a little and had any enemy that would have dropped a vial give you an extra charge while still removing it as an item and topping you off at 20 at each lantern.
Yeah, I had a big issue with this as well after coming off of Dark Souls 3 to play this.
By the third time I failed to beat the final boss and was left with no vials or souls I moved on to other games. I really like dark souls 3 more. It's a design decision that really doesn't respect the player's time, a shame.
By the third time I failed to beat the final boss and was left with no vials or souls I moved on to other games. I really like dark souls 3 more. It's a design decision that really doesn't respect the player's time, a shame.
"This health recovery resource is limited. Maybe I should leverage this free recovery mechanic a bit better?"
This is FROM A-RPG design in a nutshell. Thing is difficult -> do different thing.
The way that the health recovery resource it limited is how you can only carry a set amount at a time, so that already encourages you to use the comeback mechanic so you don't run out during a boss fight. Gaining more vials in between deaths isn't limited since you can always warp to an old area and grind.
There actually is one tweak to the formula that if it were the case I might agree with you. If warping were limited like Dark Souls 1, this could actually be an interesting choice. I can imagine it being really tense and compelling to feel like you're deep in the Forbidden Woods, have a dwindling amount of vials, and your only choices are retreating on foot back to Yharnam to restock or pressing your luck and pushing forward. Sort of like a meta-version of the game you play when you're deep in a new level with a ton of souls and low Estus looking for a bonfire. One of my favorite parts of DaS1 was getting to the bottom of Blighttown and sitting at a bonfire, since it's the perfect balance of huge relief and growing tension due to understanding that now you're stuck down here so far from home.
But no, that doesn't happen. You can always teleport wherever you want so running out of vials now just condemns you to dull mindless gameplay for a gameplay session as you do repetitious actions that pose zero threat or strategic choices.
It's one of the more meh design choices in the game, they really should have just gave you the maximum amount you can carry when you respawn and let you still collect vials from enemies. It's not terribly hard to farm them but then why make them farmable at all lol, just cut out the grinding.
If you're early on OP, just kill the easier enemies and buy some vials. The big dudes carrying bricks or w/e at the beginning always drop vials too.
If you're early on OP, just kill the easier enemies and buy some vials. The big dudes carrying bricks or w/e at the beginning always drop vials too.
There are easy ways to deal with it but yeah I would say this is a pretty big flaw for those who aren't familiar enough with these kinds of games or hell, Bloodborne specifically. The loss of this resource turns what should have been a tense game into a slog.
For me a fix would be spawning you in with some free vials or giving you an early game rune that does the same thing. Hell a bloodgem that increases the likelyhood of bloodvials dropping and automatically popping into your inventory.... there are several ways to fix this that I don't think ruin the games flow since again, if you know what you're doing, vials aren't an actual issue anyway.
For me a fix would be spawning you in with some free vials or giving you an early game rune that does the same thing. Hell a bloodgem that increases the likelyhood of bloodvials dropping and automatically popping into your inventory.... there are several ways to fix this that I don't think ruin the games flow since again, if you know what you're doing, vials aren't an actual issue anyway.
"Rallying is the primary way of healing" lmao
Pretty sure 99% of players, especially beginning ones, rely on healing items instead of rallying. Rallying is something that can give you good rewards when you learn how to do it properly, but not the primary form of healing. It's great if you're able to leverage rallying properly and at some point barely need vials, but most people, most of the time, will rely on vials.
And that wouldn't justify making blood vials be able to run out. Limiting the amount of vials you can have at a time on you would do that better and wouldn't condemn you to do mindless farming runs.
Pretty sure 99% of players, especially beginning ones, rely on healing items instead of rallying. Rallying is something that can give you good rewards when you learn how to do it properly, but not the primary form of healing. It's great if you're able to leverage rallying properly and at some point barely need vials, but most people, most of the time, will rely on vials.
And that wouldn't justify making blood vials be able to run out. Limiting the amount of vials you can have at a time on you would do that better and wouldn't condemn you to do mindless farming runs.
While Lecture Hall is an amazing spot for grinding, people are suggesting the bridge because OP hasn't defeated Cleric Beast yet. He's still at the beginning of the game.
Oh my mistake yeah, I totally missed that post where he said where he was
Yeah, this. The biggest crime of blood vials is that it runs counter to the basic philosophy of getting better at a boss till you defeat it. No sorry, please go farming for an hour. Even if this were to promote rallying, which limiting max amount of vials would do already without needing to farm, the downsides are way too bad.
Go find some brick boys and practice yr parry timing on them. They have rather large windows for parrying and tend to give out blood vials. There are two really close to a shortcut at the first lamp.
Blood vial farming sucks and had no place in this game after it was dropped for the Demon Souls sequels.
Plus the way the Souls games have always worked is your "punishment" for losing to a boss is the boss run. That's always been the justification and I think it's totally fair. You died, so now you have to run to the boss for an extra 45 seconds and learn how to dodge enemies. If you don't want to do that next time, then git gud and win.
Bloodborne has the boss run and every 10 deaths you get to spend a bunch of time grinding. It takes the harsh but fair punishment and tips it over the edge into just being excessive and bad.
I really don't feel like Vials regenerating after death would change this in any particularly significant way. Rallying would still be encouraged since using a Blood Vial takes time and kills momentum and enemies are especially aggressive anyway. Hell even you just said that despite being capped out on vials most of the time, you preferred to use rally so clearly having the resources readily available doesn't really lead to the rally mechanic being discouraged.
It wouldn't have worked for Bloodborne's speed, but I actually like Dark Souls II's healing system the most out of the games where you had unlimited healing with lifegems (but consumable), and limited healing with estus (but always refillable). The trade-off was that healing was all heal-over-time, which works for DS2 speed and not DS3/Bloodborne speed.
Perhaps lifegems/blood vials could have been heals-over-time while estus returned working like DS1 and DS3 and was hard capped to a low number like DS2 and DS3.
Then again, Idk. I'm no game designer.
Perhaps lifegems/blood vials could have been heals-over-time while estus returned working like DS1 and DS3 and was hard capped to a low number like DS2 and DS3.
Then again, Idk. I'm no game designer.
Bloodborne is one of my favorite games of all time, but I have always found the blood vials to be a poorly realized mechanic. Estus flasks from 1 were already a perfect system.
I enjoyed the game plenty but 3 crappy hours are exactly that.
I don't remember ever farming for blood vials during my 60+ hr play through.
I did farm for blood echos though to level up and purchase stuff.
I did farm for blood echos though to level up and purchase stuff.
The idea is that you're not supposed to blood vial farm, you're supposed to A) not get hit and B) rally if you do by attacking the enemy.
But no one plays that way so they just upped the storage count to 600, which changes the overall design so you just get 10 bankable, renewable fast-use estus flasks every life until you have to go refill the storage 2-3 times a game for an hour. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But no one plays that way so they just upped the storage count to 600, which changes the overall design so you just get 10 bankable, renewable fast-use estus flasks every life until you have to go refill the storage 2-3 times a game for an hour. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean I'm not exactly sure how to respond to that. If you play a game for 50 hours, and you spend 2-3 over the course of those 50 hours killing enemies and decompressing, possibly trying out some new weapons in the process, and that's a significant negative then we just have different tolerances. Furthermore, the need to farm is somewhat overblown. If you don't want to farm, buy the blood vials.
Whether estus or blood vials is a superior mechanic depends on the player. I'm not sure which I prefer. With estus is like a balance of progressing until I reach that tipping point where I'm out of estus or low enough that I need to rest at a bonfire. Sometimes, especially for smaller areas or on subsequent playthroughs, I can make it to the boss in one go. With the blood vials system, that's a more common occurrence in Bloodborne. You are constantly getting more blood while progressing through the levels and if you are smart you will leave some on the ground and circle back once you've taken a few hits (especially true in chance dungeons). Because you can buy them from the start of the game you can choose to mitigate what small amount of farming you might have had to do at the cost of a few levels.
I really don't think it's an issue at all if I'm being honest. Maybe in the first hour or two of the game, I guess. Beyond that, farm if you want or buy them if you don't.
Yep, same here. I mean, I probably did get some vials here and there and summon in NPCs, etc., but I never felt like I was being slowed down because I needed vials.
Just buy Blood Vials with left over Blood Echos after each level, or just buy a fuckload once and skip a early bit of leveling. You build a pretty big supply in no time, while actually making progress.
You say this as if only vials can be dropped by enemies so that's a weakness of the Estus system, but Dark Souls 3 already has a mechanic in place where killing enemies often gets you another sip of Estus. It's a bit less common in DaS3 than blood vial drops in Bloodborne, but Bloodborne could absolutely have that exact system where anytime an enemy would have dropped a vial it just gets added to your total instead.
I completely disagree, the fact that you can stack up to 20 vial and the fact that the animation is way faster than drinking an estus flask make it all worth it
