Ludwig the Accursed/the Holy Blade: Still Hard

Ludwig is the first boss of Bloodborne's Old Hunters DLC. As perhaps one of the most hideously monstrous creatures in all of video games, Ludwig is also a tragic figure - a Hunter who genuinely thought he was doing the right thing, enlisting the people of Yharnam in defeating the Scourge of Beasts, only to become the most grotesquely malformed beast (and seemingly fused with his horse) and damned to the Hunter's Nightmare.

Anyway, I've gotten to that fight on my Bloodtinge-based character, who now sports a +10 Chikage. And while I haven't slammed my head against a wall exactly when fighting him (only three attempts in,) I am definitely reminded that this guy's a bit of a wake-up call.

I've been through most of the DLC on three characters - the first one had every fight (except perhaps the Living Failures) an exercise in gradual progress and multiple "let's step away from this for now" breaks when I got frustrated. Astonishingly, I beat the Orphan of Kos (and possibly Lady Maria) in a single attempt on my Arcane character - a fluke, I'm sure.

But Ludwig is definitely tricky - his strikes are fast and hard to dodge, and some require a bit of luck, like when he leaps up to the ceiling and drops down on you. Then, when he hits 50% and the second phase begins, the moveset changes entirely. I think he's less unpredictable in this phase, but his attacks are devastating. In my best attempt on this character, I got him down to about 15 or 20%, but hadn't realized that he was about to use his most devastating forward blast attack, which one-shot me.

Anyway, the Bloodtinge build is still proving itself exciting in the amount of damage you can put out - especially after I picked up some very effective gems from Winter Lanterns (seriously, fuck those things) in the Nightmare of Mensis. I'm tempted to put a Bloodtinge-scaling gem in place of one of my physical attack gems and just dedicate myself to using the Chikage's transformed mode for the whole fight.

In particular I've found the hunter-vs-hunter fights sprinkled through the game (like the two Yahar'gul guys on the path to the right of the Grand Cathedral) much easier with the damage I can put out. I'll need to see how I deal with the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst, which I generally think of as the toughest of these fights.