Returning several years after I first played it, I've now taken down the Witch(es) of Hemwick, and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief, as I downed the boss without dying (actually, that makes this playthrough pretty darn good - I've only died to Cleric Beast, having taken down Gascoigne and Blood-Starved Beast in one go each. I'm not counting on that streak continuing, especially as I get ready to take down Amelia).
I had remembered that the route from Hemwick Charnel Lane to the Witch's Abode was one of my best early-game Blood Echo-farming routes, and I now see why: the executioners that patrol near the Witch's house are worth something like 2300 echoes, at a level when I need about 5-6k to level up and everything else is dropping like 2-3 hundred.
I also think I was extremely stingy with using Coldblood Dew and the other "echo items." Sadly, unlike in Elden Ring, where you can sell the equivalent items to the blacksmith (or any vendor) for an equal value, here you get significantly more if you actually use the item, so you can't just dump them en masse in the same way (I think Dark Souls III also let you sell them for their equal value).
So, essentially, I'm still in the game's Act One, but with little to do other than fight Vicar Amelia (I suppose in theory I could let the Snatchers take me to the Hypogean Gaol - and then fight Darkbeast Paarl? I think that might be the way to get Djura to act non-hostile to you, but I may have screwed that up by already going up his tower and fighting with him).
I do find myself really wishing that we could get a Bloodborne II, largely to see how some of the gameplay enhancements that have come in DSIII and Elden Ring could be applied here.
I will say that I think the way Blood Vials work in this encourage you to be a little more liberal with them than your Crimson Tears/Estus Flask, because so many enemies drop them. It's still easy to run a deficit, especially when you hit a difficult boss, but I think it's meant to keep you going even when you've had a lot of battles and taken some hits. Again, though, I think Elden Ring's (and I think, more rarely, Dark Souls III's) ability to grant you a refreshed charge on your healing item when you defeat some groups of enemies might be more elegant.
Then again, the excess with which you slam alien blood-goo into your leg over and over during the course of the game is kind of thematic (the detail how there was a superstition about how the Curse of the Beast crept up the right leg, and so people would tie a belt around it, is kind of brilliant: obviously, it's really that you're injecting all this alien blood into your right leg, but you could imagine that the Church suppressed that truth to keep people enforcing their status quo).
I do wonder what the Witch of Hemwick fight is like on New Game Plus, if you have a very high Insight. While I still one-shot the encounter, I did get one hairy moment when three Mad Ones surrounded me, and that was when I came into the fight with only 1 Insight (though obviously I got another for seeing the boss).
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