keep trying But cant stay interested in bloodborne due to blood vial farming

[LavaBadger]

I've never understood this issue. It's got to be a common mistake with how people approach the game. I recall one boss fight in which I ran out of blood vials. And even then, I bought some, not farmed them.

I ran out of bullets more frequently, but likewise, just purchased them with spare souls after a while, and just like that, never encountered the problem again.

 

[Ricelord]

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.

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this 100%

 

[McScroggz]

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.

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Maybe. I can't say whether that would be better or worse, but it would take away some of the ancillary decision making. And honestly I think it would take away the feel of the challenge of progression through an area. It's a nuanced thing.

People boasting about never needing to farm is pointless. The farm becomes an issue exactly when you're already struggling. The game kicks you when you're down.

It's like saying the loading times at launch weren't an issue because you never die. Yawn.

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I think the issue is making false equivalencies like this distorts how farming alters the experience. If you spend extra blood echoes as you play, you are rarely going to run out of blood vials. If you spend 10 minutes every now and then farming up an extra 30-40 blood vials, you won't have many instances where you run out and get super frustrated. If you are fighting a boss like Orphan of Kos and you run out, honestly taking a 30 minute break to farm is likely good for you anyways. By that point you should be able to just buy them anyways. If you don't have blood echoes saved and don't want to farm, use some consumables. If you are so early in the game that none of this is applicable to you, then it's just kind of part of the baptism by fire.

Honestly Bloodborne is probably too generous with Blood Vials, and I am far from a super skilled Souls player.

 

[luffie]

Can't believe the Souls identity stamp ran so deep, people be reprogramming themselves to remind them that BB ain't Souls, and then reprogramming again, Sekiro aint Souls.
Elden ring gonna make everyone reprogram once more.

 

[Themaddestgamer]

Just pretend like your playing blood farm sinulator

 

[Jawmuncher]

People defend it, but the blood vial stuff is pretty whack. Legitimately felt like a change just for the sake of it, rather than anything meaningful. When some of the answers are the equivalent of "get good" it says as much. As you had to "get good" with the estus flask, especially if you didn't find the upgrades for it.

 

[Shakerovic]

Explore and you will find a lot of them and you can buy them easy i was stacked, i didn't have any problems with the blood vials in fact i thought they were giving it away too easy

 

[Laughing Banana]

People defend it, but the blood vial stuff is pretty whack. Legitimately felt like a change just for the sake of it, rather than anything meaningful. When some of the answers are the equivalent of "get good" it says as much. As you had to "get good" with the estus flask, especially if you didn't find the upgrades for it.

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It's not so much as a "defending it" but more like "it's really not a big deal", especially after you delve deeper into the game.

 

[Ruu]

I'm with you. It wasn't an issue until the first time it was an issue... then it fuckin suuuuucked. Even when people are like "go to farm at XYZ" its annoying as hell and not what I want to be doing. I still haven't beat Bloodborne and I think I'm pretty close. I keep trying to force myself for some reason. Bloodborne is the second worst souls game only barely ahead of DS2 for me.

 

[ElephantShell]

Whenever you level up, spend your remaining echoes balance on vials, even if you don't need them at the time, and you probably won't have to farm much if at all. Haven't played the game in a while but I'm pretty sure you'll end up with a lot doing this.


Partway through the game of you realize you have a ridiculous number in your stash you can probably stop doing this and be fine the rest of the way through.

 

[doodlebob]

Just use your remaining souls/echoes to buy Blood Vials. It's the easiest and most efficient way to get Blood Vials. Whatever excess you have goes to storage and fills your inventory when you respawn.

Only "farm" for Blood Vials by killing when you also need to grind at the same time. Otherwise, just use whatever you have remaining to buy Blood Vials. As you keep progressing in the game, the cost of Blood Vials feels really small relative to how many leftover echoes you have. You're going to have a huge stash of them by the end. I think the game does a great job of balancing it out.

 

[Morrigan]

No one can deny the people that had their experience spoiled by this crummy system.

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Maybe not, but what was a negative for you, was a positive for me. So, 🤷‍♀️ ?

People defend it, but the blood vial stuff is pretty whack. Legitimately felt like a change just for the sake of it, rather than anything meaningful.

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See above.

 

[Sprat]

Never understood this complaint. At no point in the game beyond the beginning did rarely have below 15. They drop nearly everywhere and you just go back to the dream if low and they auto fill from the excess you have picked up.

 

[Odeko]

Maybe. I can't say whether that would be better or worse, but it would take away some of the ancillary decision making. And honestly I think it would take away the feel of the challenge of progression through an area. It's a nuanced thing.



I think the issue is making false equivalencies like this distorts how farming alters the experience. If you spend extra blood echoes as you play, you are rarely going to run out of blood vials. If you spend 10 minutes every now and then farming up an extra 30-40 blood vials, you won't have many instances where you run out and get super frustrated. If you are fighting a boss like Orphan of Kos and you run out, honestly taking a 30 minute break to farm is likely good for you anyways. By that point you should be able to just buy them anyways. If you don't have blood echoes saved and don't want to farm, use some consumables. If you are so early in the game that none of this is applicable to you, then it's just kind of part of the baptism by fire.

Honestly Bloodborne is probably too generous with Blood Vials, and I am far from a super skilled Souls player.

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These are all tips that experienced players like you or I can do to ignore the system, not things that will help people experiencing the problem. If you run out of echoes, 95% of the time that means you just died to a boss. You're not going to have any loose echoes lying around to spend on vials, so you'll either have to hope you didn't use all your coldbloods to power-up before the tough boss or go do boring shit for a while

Maybe not, but what was a negative for you, was a positive for me. So, 🤷‍♀️ ?


See above.

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But that experience is in no way incompatible with the proposed solution of just automatically topping you off at 20 at each lantern. Enemies can still drop blood vials without also forcing less experienced players to grind for them instead of spending their time actually learning the boss pattern when they're stuck on a fight.

 

[Chettlar]

Blood vial farming is a good way to make you cool down after a long boss fight. I kept bashing my head against Lady Maria until I ran out of like, 50 blood vials. Maybe even like 70 idk.

I stopped and farmed students for a long time. Came back and did much much better.

I really hated that, but I had to admit, forcing me to stop really helped, and it also made me play using fewer blood vials when I knew they were finite.

 

[Raggen]

Couldn't you just cloud save before a boss and then use that save if the boss drain all your blood vials?

 

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

Bloodborne is my favorite From game and one of my favorite games ever, but I completely agree. The estus flask was an excellent idea and there's no good reason to drop it. Inventory management of an unlimited, farmable resource just makes no sense. All it could possibly add is tedium.

"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.

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This is an argument for fewer estus charges, not for making it a consumable. I actually think the maximum number of vials you can carry at once was way too high, which of course only encouraged burning through them.

 

[Yi Zhang]

Farming can be fun.
Pig farming is so much fun.

 

[Bradford]

I've platted Bloodborne and never really found Rally to be substantial enough to offset vials. It's a really, really minor health regain in my experience even with gems. It usually amounted to a roughly 30% regain in lost health from any given hit (i.e. reducing a hit's total damage to about 70%), which never really was sustainable.

That being said, just farm some vials and rethink your approach.

Farming is a way to encourage the player to relearn basics and take it slow when throwing yourself repeatedly at a challenge. At least that's how I've always approached it and was able to take valuable experience from it. Plus, more souls.

 

[dock]

I never had a problem with the blood vials system. Spend your leftover echoes on a few and you'll be fine. If you are stuck in a retry loop for a hard boss, that's where the consumable blood echoes come in, you can just buy the vials you need.

I actually appreciated the blood vials system because it allowed me to go through the entire Forbidden Woods + boss in one sitting without dying. At some point I had 4 vials left and I thought I would have to retreat back to the lamp, but I pressed on, and thanks to enemy drops, by the time I reached the boss, I was back at 18, so I went on ahead anyway, and killed the boss first try. It was a fantastic experience, which I couldn't have had with a hard-capped amount of potions like the Estus system.

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That's an ideal case, so long as folk are always buying vials. Beating an area first time is pretty rare.

The bad situation that I ran into, and I believe many people are running into, is when they die in a new area and they have no blood vials or echoes. Players are left with no option to even explore or experiment.

I honestly don't think farming is good game design.

An ideal case would be to allow both types of play, with consumables and auto refill, but that takes care to balance. In terms of 'easy mode' and accessibility, I will always push for an _option_ that means players can avoid hating their time with the game. I would even (reluctantly) pay money for a DLC item that changes this.

I completed Bloodborne years ago, but whenever I consider playing again this is the negative thing I remember and what puts me off.

 

[Samanyolu]

This was my very first Souls game, so I'm not sure how the other games are, but the only place I've found this problem is at Father Gasciogne. Just farm the fat dudes with the bricks left of the Central Yharnam lamp. You get around 4 vials per kill, if I remember correctly. After this farm, you will likely never have to farm for them again, in my experience.

 

[ultramooz]

This is what put me off the game the most. Kept getting owned by the blood starved beast and if I could have just reloaded the game and kept my items and kept attempting the fight it would have been a lot more fun for me.

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That's the exact place I dropped the game.
From the start I knew the more aggressive gameplay be a deterrent for me compared to the way I play the souls games. But the blood vials system was the nail in the coffin (pun intended)

Also that game was the moment the threads and the « souls » community became an insufferable circle jerk of condescending git gud comments. I avoided Sekiro, but I have hope for the next game - I hope there will be more to the gameplay than split second action / parry. If not i'm done with these games.

 

[NekoNeko]

i think i went farming twice and kinda enjoyed it.

 

[Scarface]

The classic Central Yharnam to Father G vial farm. Throw yourself off the ladder when you kill the two beasts to the right of Father G. Makes it faster.

 

[AM_LIGHT]

Time is precious man . Just do a backup save either to a USB stick or the cloud and enjoy the game. Otherwise bloodfarming wasn't that bad , there's is a place in the old hunters DLC where you could farm for a ton of blood vials pretty easily.

 

[Batatina]

I don't know why I never had this issue. I think I farmed a lot in the beginning areas, and then later on I used whatever money left from levelling up on buy them from the shop.

 

[AM_LIGHT]

This is what put me off the game the most. Kept getting owned by the blood starved beast and if I could have just reloaded the game and kept my items and kept attempting the fight it would have been a lot more fun for me.

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Just do a backup save and keep trying .

 

[noyram23]

Blood vials is ultimately a useless gimmick mechanic not because you have to grind for it but because it's very cheap to buy thus there isn't much difference if From went with Estus system again. Just buy it with your spare echoes after upgrade and you'll have more than enough for the game.

 

[laxu]

I don't know why I never had this issue. I think I farmed a lot in the beginning areas, and then later on I used whatever money left from levelling up on buy them from the shop.

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I think I encountered it once or twice during the game and then just bought more vials. This was my first Souls game too so getting past the first area and Father G took forever. I generally had hundreds of vials after learning to use the rally mechanic and only got depleted when trying over and over against some of the harder bosses. I didn't even know that they were finite and thought they just replenished to 15, 20 or something like that when you revive.

I do think they should be more generous with them in the beginning but the werewolf cheese (let them follow you to the house and kill them in the doorway) gives you generally 3 per wolf and echoes to buy more. I just don't think it's this big issue some make it to be.

I avoided Sekiro, but I have hope for the next game - I hope there will be more to the gameplay than split second action / parry. If not i'm done with these games.

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Sekiro really does not require twitch shooter level reflexes or anything like that. I'm generally fairly bad at any rhythm games and had a great time playing Sekiro. Parrying is much much harder in Souls or BB.

 

[Deleted member 60410]

BB would be a lot more interesting if healing consumables period weren't in the game and instead rally didn't have a cap and never degraded.

 

[DonaldKimball]

It's a completely idiotic system in an otherwise nearly flawless game.

 

[SCB360]

Git Gud???


To be fair, until it was patched, it was worse because you had a lot less storage for them and bullets, they increased it massively later on

 

[Animismus]

I don't remember ever farming these.

 

[Bjones]

I remover having to make vial runs early on but after that you usually just have enough or get enough getting to the bosses.

 

[Deleted member 20471]

Just buy them.

 

[Chairdeath]

Blood vials is ultimately a useless gimmick mechanic not because you have to grind for it but because it's very cheap to buy thus there isn't much difference if From went with Estus system again. Just buy it with your spare echoes after upgrade and you'll have more than enough for the game.

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I quite liked it because it felt like an actual resource. Estus always felt like an extension of your health-bar, you have this much bar and this many estus charges so that's your total health, see if you can do the section before you run out. With Vials you could pick up more on your way to where you were going so you'd get into a fight, use one maybe and the dead enemies would drop a couple to keep you full.

But you could only hold so many before they started going to storage so it was still a limited resource. Felt like it was the best of both Demons Souls grass system and Dark Souls estus system.


EDIT: And don't use them on boss fights until you fell like you are in a good fight. Don't blow them every fight with a new boss, only start busting them out if you are doing well and want to push it because you think you have a shot at beating it.

 

[Hilarious_Bearious]

+1 for never having this issue. I got a little low once when stuck on Rom, but it just made me realise I needed to slow down and rethink my approach.

 

[poncle]

If you're farming them for a boss, then backup the save on a USB stick, then copy it back on the PS4 if you have to reload.

If you often don't have time or don't like to grind in games in general, consider a SaveWizard.

 

[Hero]

As someone that never played DS and that just Platinumed the game this year, I agree with you. Blood Vial farming was tedious and added nothing other than frustration when you came upon a hard boss encounter to stop, leave, farm vials and/or echoes, and then come back. Flask method would've worked so much better. Maybe they'll change it for BB2.

 

[Odeko]

This was my very first Souls game, so I'm not sure how the other games are, but the only place I've found this problem is at Father Gasciogne. Just farm the fat dudes with the bricks left of the Central Yharnam lamp. You get around 4 vials per kill, if I remember correctly. After this farm, you will likely never have to farm for them again, in my experience.

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Demon's Souls was the first game where Miyazaki was still figuring out the formula and so also had health items you had to interrupt boss attempts and grind for, but Dark Souls 1, 3, and Sekiro all realized this was a completely pointless waste of time that asked nothing of the player other than tedious repetition and so the healing items replenish automatically when you die.

 

[Kill3r7]

At launch it was necessary to farm, if you were a lousy player like myself, due to the low cap on blood vials and the ridiculous load times but by the time the expansion came out this issue had been resolved or at the very least minimized. I fought CoK 30+ times before beating it and I did not farm once. It was no longer an issue or necessary.

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

Thinking about it the first playthrough I felt very much the same way. Doing a new game+ (with DLC for the first time) made a lot more sense and the feeling of being annoyed that vials cost echoes just was not there any more.

 

[cowbanana]

I honestly never understood the vial farming complaint. I guess it depends of playstyle, skill etc.

 

[Deleted member 32135]

I am with you OP, the blood vials problem and the spare checkpoints away from the boss fights make the game unnecessarily tedious. Artificial lenght at its finest. I am all for a challenge, but I can't stand repeating easy tasks again and again just for having another go at the challenge.

Somes games, like Celeste, are just great at offering you another try at a hard challenge inmediatly and that is something that motivates me. Others, like Bloodborne... well, f you and go again through this long path before having a new chance to face the boss.

I, like others, opted to copy my save file yo a USB pen drive and reload it everytime I died on a boss. That solved at least the blood vials problem.

 

[Suburban Thug]

I liked farming for blood vials *shrugs*

Maybe drop the game if it's aggravating you. You can watch the cutscenes on youtube, just type in 'bloodborne movie'

 

[Fitts]

This is an argument for fewer estus charges, not for making it a consumable. I actually think the maximum number of vials you can carry at once was way too high, which of course only encouraged burning through them.

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I disagree because estus, like rally, is an unlimited health resource and having two would be kind of broken. I'll also concede that in DS games if I take a dumb hit and am somewhat near a bonfire I'll be compelled to rest just to top off. In BB, I kind of loved that if I take a dumb hit I can just keep going because you both carry a high vial count and you're almost certain to pick up more before hitting a tough enemy anyway. The way BB's health replenishment was designed really played into keeping the game action heavy.

And could you imagine the freakouts some would be having if the on-hand vial count was reduced?

 

[En-ou]

I am with you OP, the blood vials problem and the spare checkpoints away from the boss fights make the game unnecessarily tedious. Artificial lenght at its finest. I am all for a challenge, but I can't stand repeating easy tasks again and again just for having another go at the challenge.

Somes games, like Celeste, are just great at offering you another try at a hard challenge inmediatly and that is something that motivates me. Others, like Bloodborne... well, f you and go again through this long path before having a new chance to face the boss.

I, like others, opted to copy my save file yo a USB pen drive and reload it everytime I died on a boss. That solved at least the blood vials problem.

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There's no blood vials problem.
You guys are not playing smart. You're doing it wrong.

I like how some of you who complain about this don't respond to the solutions provided.

 

[Chettlar]

I say this as someone this applies to

If you are bad enough that you run out of vials and need to farm them

then you are bad enough that you need to stop trying a boss and go and farm vials for a while.

I know that sounds like a trueism. But like seriously. It's true.

You need to take a break from what ever you are doing and work on giving your brain space to stop and work through that shit in the background while you work on base mechanics again.

I know that's humiliating and boring, but this is a hard game. Those in this thread who did not ever have to farm are better than you. That, and they also do not use as many vials, because they play more aggressively, using enemies to get health back, and not using vials like estus flasks.

Bloodborne is not a game about playing exactly how you want to in an RPG. It is a game about frantic, aggressive, but skillful action. The game systems are designed to encourage you to learn how to play that way. If you are running out of blood vials, you are bad both at playing the game as a player, and at adapting to its style of combat and confrontation.

This is not a dismissive "git gud." It's coming from someone who farmed a lot of vials because I was bad. As I continued, I farmed less vials. It sucks, and it's humiliating, but you don't get better by protecting your pride. Get better at the game. If you want to stop running out of vials, stop using them so much. If that means you die more, then you are bad at the game. So get better, and stop using vials when you don't need to. Take risks. Learn when it's appropriate to hack back health. They are not estus flasks. They are consumables to top off after you've failed to regain your health. If you always got free vials, you would not have to be good at this. Limiting vials to a smaller amount would limit how levels could be designed, and it would make it harder for players who just are not as good. I got better at the game as time went on but was never able to get through some areas without using all my vials. This system allows the game to be adaptable to various skill levels, while also requiring all skill level players to take the time to improve.

The game is not poor because it doesn't allow you to play passively. It's not poor because it demands you get better at the game or stop for a short while because you are wasting your time bashing your head against a wall. The game does not want you to win just by random chance, which will eventually happen if you bash your head against a wall enough (this is also why typically lamps are not right next to bosses; it slows that down). The game wants you to get good at the game, because getting good at bloodborne is really REALLY fun. But it doesn't happen if you don't want to change.

 

[NediarPT88]

I'm surprised to see this is a real problem for some people. It shouldn't take long to kill that group of enemies at the start of the game (humans surrounding the beast that's on fire) getting some vials in the process and then spending the blood echoes you get in more vials.

This actually makes the game easier compared to the Souls games since your Estus are limited when you start the game and here you can have 20 vials from the start, which is a LOT of healing. And you still have rally on top of this. Another thing that makes the game easier is to level up your health since the blood vials heal a fixed % of your hp, so the more health you have, the more your blood vials will heal.

 

[Jimnymebob]

It wasn't the farming I had problem with, it was the fact that they were a finite consumable with a cap, and most players would want to have the full 20 whenever there respawned. It's the same problem with Spirit Emblems on Sekiro. If I respawn with a set amount whenever I die, why make it a consumable?

If you do need to farm, running from WoH boss lantern to the lantern at the start of that area nets you 20 vials and around 20k echoes in one run, so (I can't remember what the exact vial cost is at that point) that's around 40 vials in like under 5 minutes. It's silly that you need to do it, but it's not really a huge timesink.

I'm not sure I really agree with people saying not to waste vials on first try boss fights though. For the bosses after VA, not counting the DLC, I think I killed all but

Spoiler

The One Reborn, Amygdala, and Logarius

in two attempts at the most, but even then, I burnt through all 20 vials more often than not.

I think my main thing is basically, if there was a vial dupe like Demon's had grass dupes, I couldn't see people not using that, at least on subsequent playthroughs.