Having reached the point in Lies of P: Overture where the game warns you not to proceed until you finish all the sidequests in the DLC, I found myself at a fork in the road: to research online and ensure that I was had done everything (I suspect there are some Black Rabbit Gang hideouts I haven't found, because I've got way more keys for those than I've used) or doing what I had been meaning to for a while, which is to start a new playthrough with an Advance build.
Probably my favorite play-through of Bloodborne was when I made an Arcane character. In Bloodborne, Arcane is the stat that Hunter's Tools (kind of spells, though actually more akin to Elden Ring's various reuseable magic items that I never actually use, like the Omen Bairn) but also provides scaling for any weapon with a non-kinetic damage effect, like the Tonitrus or Logarius' Wheel. The other way that you can build around Arcane in that game is putting non-kinetic damage gems into your weapons, which causes them to stop scaling with Strength or Skill and instead with Arcane.
The problem in Bloodborne was that these elemental gems were very hard to come by, and you didn't start seeing them until quite late in the game. After doing that and then making a Skill or Strength based character, I was struck by how much higher my damage was simply because the game supported it better.
But I love playing around with different damage types in these games. And so, after going pretty hard on the "Technique" route on my initial playthrough (though using the Booster Glaive handle, meaning I'm still largely doing slower, heavier swings) I decided that I really wanted to try out Advance.
Here's the thing, though: I also wanted to play around with the lower difficulty modes. While playing the DLC, I've only lowered the difficulty from Legendary Stalker to Advanced Puppet for two sections: one fairly early on at the zoo, up through the crocodile mini-boss, before going back to Legendary Stalker, and then again when I was stuck on Lumacchio - and even then, it took me I think another hour after an initial hour on the higher difficulty to take that bastard down.
I decided, though, to just take it easy with the second playthrough, and I've downgraded all the way to Guiding Butterfly, the "story" difficulty.
And to be frank: I'm kind of loving it.
I don't think I've yet died, though I've hit points where I need to recharge my energy cells. There are still fights that are challenging (starting the Mad Donkey fight with no Pulse Cells was a bit of a risk - also, it's crazy that, having now played through the story, Mad Donkey is 100% right).
While it does take you until chapter 2 and Elysian Boulevard to get a weapon that scales with Advance, this is actually kind of fine because you can just focus on leveling Vitality, Vigor, and Capacity. I know have the electric mace from there and the Salamander Dagger from the Venignini Works (which I think I missed on my first playthrough,) so the plan is to basically have a leveled-up blade for Electric, Fire, and then Acid damage, which I'll swap out depending on what I'm fighting (I believe that the rule of thumb is that electric works best on puppets, fire best on carcasses, and acid best on humanoids).
Naturally, it would be easy to get lulled into thinking that these weapons are extra-powerful given that A: we're in the early game and B: we're playing on a much lower difficulty, but it's nice to see those blue numbers pop up after only one or two hits on a regular puppet enemy.
I actually think the cadence of Advance weapons works out quite well - you get the Electric one pretty early on, when every foe is a puppet (though I remember seeing a carcass body on Elysian Boulevard in my first playthrough without having the context, suspecting it was foreshadowing something, but now fully understanding what it is). We get a fire weapon in the Venigni Works, where the foes are still all puppets, but given the Cathedral is next, I'm hoping I can find some upgrade materials to get that dagger to +3.
Oh, I did look it up and realized I had simply missed the item you can bring to Polindina to purchase unlimited Half Moonstones, which is great (and unless the price scales up in NG+, they should just become more and more affordable). Still, as far as I know, no unlimited source for Covenant Moonstones (and having to use multiple Full Moonstones of the Covenant is also very limiting) but for this character at least, I'll probably only be leveling up weapons that have Advance scaling, which narrows things a bit.
I'm a little torn on whether to go for any of the other endings, in part because, much like in Bloodborne, choosing some endings means missing out on certain bosses and their special boss items. (I think I prefer Elden Ring's model where you still fight all the bosses regardless of which ending you choose). I also feel like it would be too much of a bummer not to go for the Rise of P ending (not that that's, you know, sunshine and puppy dogs). So yeah, I'm going to be doing all my "lying to spare people emotional pain" routine again, most likely.
One thing I had totally forgotten was that the Parade Master doesn't have an option for you to summon the Specter. On the lowest difficulty, of course, beating him and the Scrapped Watchman were both relatively easy to pull off without one.
While I did I think just about all of the side quests (I could have missed some, of course) in my first run, I think there were still a ton of records I hadn't gotten, so I'm trying to be extra-thorough in my exploration. At this point in the second run, I only have "Feel," from the woman in the quarantine area in Elysian Boulevard, so it's just playing on repeat in Hotel Krat. Will need to diversify that playlist!
Anyway, I'm sure I should return to my original run and deal with the boss of the DLC, but we'll see whether this new run draws me away from it long-term.
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