I've now gotten pretty far into my Strength build playthrough of Bloodborne - beating Micolash means that I'm practically at the end of the main game, though I haven't taken down Ebrietas, and none of the bosses of the Old Hunters have gone down. I suspect that if you do pretty much anything after Eileen the Crow tells you about fighting Henrik in the Tomb of Oedon, she'll lose the fight. On this character I had to take her down instead of the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst, and it was sad to see the hands-down most badass character in Bloodborne ranting and raving about how she needed to kill all the Hunters. Apparently losing to Henrik really messed with her mind. Killing her gave me the Crow Hunter Badge, but I did not get the Hunter rune, which sucks because that's one of the best faction runes (giving you increased Stamina regen).
So, while I'm not abandoning that playthrough entirely, I went ahead and made a new character, named after my original D&D character (a Great Old One Warlock - appropriate for Bloodborne) and went full Arcane. I actually discovered that it's easier than even previously believed to get into the "cummmfpk" dungeon, as I didn't need to even go into the initial Pthumeru chalice. I even wonder if you need a chalice at all, or if you can go in the moment you get access to the Hunter's Dream. Perhaps if I make a Skill character to round things out I'll see (though of course you'll need to get an Insight before you can make use of the absurd number of runes. There is a Madman's Knowledge in the sewers if you want to get super-powered before you even fight the Cleric Beast).
Anyway, Arcane is really cool, but requires you get gems to give you something for your weapons to scale on, and elemental gems are not easy to come by. There's one you can get in Cathedral Ward that gives you fire scaling, but it's a Waning gem, and as far as I can tell any weapon you can get before Vicar Amelia has to be at +6 to open up a Waning gem. So, instead, I plunged into the labyrinth and finished the initial Phtumeru layer one dungeon, whose final boss drops a nice 8% fire gem. Slotting into my Ludwig's Holy Blade, I've got a little more to work with.
But while I've been putting off taking down Vicar Amelia (I even did two more chalice dungeons on the hopes that they'd drop some elemental gems) I think I really just need to suck it up and go in with my only partially enhanced weapon (the second gem slot I have a Tempered one, which is mostly useless but has a little bonus reduction in stamina costs. Better than nothing, I guess).
And, of course, prior to Vicar Amelia I think the only Hunter's Tool you can get is the Old Hunter Bone, which is fine but also doesn't actually do damage, so my 50 Arcane I've already got from... well, cheating isn't really doing anything for that. I do have the Flamesprayer, which is ok.
Actually, it occurs to me that while I don't have the Tonsil Stone just yet (this requires Amelia to be dead) nothing is preventing my from going to the path toward the Amygdala that takes you to the Lecture Building, and I think there are some wandering nightmares or whatever the crystal lizard equivalent are, and as I only need four more twin bloodstone shards to get my sword to +6, that might be the right call.
I think my intent is ultimately to maintain a Fire weapon, a Bolt weapon, and an Arcane weapon - while this latter doesn't do much for you in the main game, I might actually try to do more of the Chalice Dungeons on this character, both because that seems the best place to farm gems and also because it's something I haven't really done before, and while I think the main game is obviously the far better aspect of Bloodborne, it might be a fun "I feel like playing some Bloodborne" activity to come back to periodically (also, I've never fought Queen Yharnam).
As a Righteous weapon, I think I might make my Ludwig sword the Arcane one. Then, I'm tempted to make a fiery Whirligig Saw just because I love that weapon so much, though we'll see - I might just do something simple like the Saw Spear. For Bolt, well... we'll see. Of course, the challenge here is that you only get one Blood Rock on your first playthrough. Though I noted that in New Game Plus you can actually purchase one for Insight - it just costs a massive amount. But you can always make more Chalice Dungeons and just blast through a depth one dungeon if you want to farm it for Insight.
Given it's an 8 year old game, I have to remind myself that, unlike Elden Ring, there's no new content to look forward to here, and so the kind of "prepare for more progression" side of the game is confined only to the for-me-unexplored Chalice Dungeons. I've got several character in Elden Ring who are sitting in Roundtable Hold waiting for the DLC to come out, but there's little to fear being missed if I take Bloodborne characters into New Game Plus.
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