@meedokicky: Glad to hear it could help :) Yes, you'll get an ability to reach higher places. There is a cool trick with that ability where you can "down kick" to bounce off of enemies or lanterns to reach higher treasure that can't quite be reached with a double jump. It is a good idea to revisit areas you like that which couldn't reach before exploring deeper because you'll get gear that's useful early on but won't be as useful later when you have better stuff.

You're making me want to play GoW again but there are so many great new games I have to play first. It's a good problem to have :P Last night I downloaded Slime Rancher and A Hat in Time because they had overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam and are about 50% off from the summer sale. They were each just $10 or $15. Slime Rancher felt really addictive and A Hat in Time is like a modern Mario 64. My name is drumjod on Steam if you want to add me.

@meedokicky: Happy to help :) Hunters and PvP could definitely be annoying in Bloodborne for me but the player messages did make it interesting. There might have been a couple times I played offline just to get through a PvP section haha. I absolutely loved GoW and I'm looking forward to a new game plus playthrough one of these days. Enjoy your new sessions!

@meedokicky: Haha yeah, I totally see how it could sound that way :P

I saw those warnings about too many shards but I'm not worrying about it. Maybe I'll do a new game+, load a backup save near the end to sell them off before finishing it again, or watch the other endings on YouTube if one play through is all I want. I've been selling some of my duplicates shards that I don't use just for the cash while keeping one or 2 of each. Apparently duplicates (grade) increases the effectiveness or power of the shard and upgrading passive shards to rank 9 makes their effect permanent, which sounds really useful. I just googled it and found a discussion on Steam that says you can then turn the permanent effects on and off and then double the effect if you equip the passive shard in addition to having the permanent effect enabled.

I lost some progress from a death early on because I didn't notice my hp was low and I've been more careful since then. The Zangetsu fight was tough until I learned his patterns and got better at back-dashing, but the game started getting easier for me after that. Probably because of the tips I'll explain now.

From playing other exploration based Castlevanias, there are some things I've discovered that can help a little bit with finding save spots and keeping progress when things get dangerous. If my health is low or I get some rare/good drops far from a save point I'll check each left and right passage of new areas for save / warp points before plowing forward while either avoiding enemies or fighting carefully. In a way, hp is more valuable than mp because your mp regenerates. Plus you can keep resetting a room to get orbs from lanterns if you want to refill mp quickly. With that in mind, I'll sometimes use a spell or 3 on enemies that hit hard, have a lot of hp, or are hard to hit up close, then use my melee weapon on the weaker ones or to finish off the stronger ones. Most times that I see a red door I'll go look for a save because red doors have often lead to boss fights.

True arrow is a really good ability shard I found early on from the archer enemy named Barbatos. It has a fast, far reaching wide spread that gets wider with rank upgrades that were easy to find materials for and it can hit more than 3 times after upgrading the rank. If I'm close to a save when an enemy gives a good drop like a powerful shard, sometimes I'll run back to save so I won't lose it if I die. I've often found even more cool shards and drops on my way back from the save when I did this. 9 times out of 10, I'll kill every enemy in the room (or at least the ones in my way) each time I pass through it which has definitely resulted in more powerful shards, gear, crafting drops, and a few extra level gains. I mostly equip gear that has the best luck increase because this also improves your odds of getting good drops and shards. If you do that, you can just do a quick change to a more defensive and offensive gear set when you get to tough bosses, especially after you unlock the gear shortcut abilities. You might already know about breakable walls, but I've also found at least one breakable floor in the first hour or two that cracked when I did a slide over it.

There are some subtle combat tricks this game maintains from the late series that make it easy to learn and fun to master. Here's one adds a lot to the gameplay. Your character is briefly vulnerable and immobile after doing a melee attack while standing (less so if you immediately back-dash once your attack hits), but if you attack while jumping, you can keep moving. It gets more interesting though. If you hit your attack just before you land a jump, you can immediately attack again on the landing, essentially doubling your hits in addition to being more mobile. I found that Bloodstained adds a 3rd fast hit to that combo because you can also back-dash to cancel your standing attack right when it hits, then cancel the back dash by quickly hitting attack again. This gets you 3 fast hits and gives you a little distance from the enemy. I'm still occasionally working on mastering the 3rd part of this using kicks, regular swords, and katanas to practice since they're all fairly quick. I prefer weapons that feel good and enable me to get in a lot of hits without getting hit instead of focusing on raw damage. The flame whip has been my favorite for a while though even though swords are faster because it has a great range and a lot of enemies seem to be weak to fire.

Whenever I get a new food item, I'll wait to use it until I'm at a boss or really need health while exploring. Then I'll use the food that gives the permanent stat bonuses first. If a boss is still too hard after learning it's patterns and how to avoid attacks, you can always just grind to gain additional levels. You can also try different weapons, abilities, and gear since each enemy has different weakness and some of your own gear has different defenses specific to certain attack types. I like to start most fights with a few spells because mp will regenerate while fighting. Then spells when I'm dodging from a distance and melee when I'm close.

Bloodborne was a lot of fun but extremely challenging for me even after I "got gud" at dodging and getting over my old dependence on shields from Demons and Dark Souls 1. I could have put more effort into mastering the gun stun move though. I felt mildly screwed over by Bloodbornes ending style haha. I found out how to back up saves to the cloud to get each ending without starting over, but then I started a new game+ before the DLC came out. The DLC hunters were extremely hard for my first time at new game+ difficulty. I never did finish the DLC and started playing through Dark Souls 2 instead.

One thing I've enjoyed about Bloodstained is that I haven't felt the urge to look at guides. In Soulsborne games, I'm often looking up what I can trade boss souls for and deliberating over which weapon to upgrade because those decisions can't be reversed. Bloodstained will get a lot easier if you use these tricks and learn enemy patterns like in Bloodborne. Plus you can level up as much as you want in this game to lower the difficulty.

I hope you have as much fun with it as I am =)

@meedokicky: I don't think you can upgrade weapons although a few weapons are used in crafting and shard upgrades. You can also disassemble gear for crafting parts, which I haven't tried yet. It's the shard upgrades I'm enjoying. There are some passive ability shards that increase the speed of spells or certain weapon types. As you upgrade the rank of those shards, the spell or weapon type can be used even more quickly and repeatedly. It's a blast to spam the enemies with ninja like speed. There is also a "tome" you can choose later that increases all weapon speed noticeably.

There is one other thing I love about this game that I don't see other games doing. You can actually skip past the company logos at the beginning! Most modern games take at least a few minutes before you're playing and this one has my save completely loaded within 22 seconds from the moment I double click the logo on the desktop. Saving your game is also extremely fast so it doesn't really break up the flow of action. I think speed runs of this game are going to be awesome to watch.

Cool pic btw. Velocity 2x was a lot of fun though I still need to finish it.

@meedokicky: That's a big relief. Glad you posted this before I considered starting over after 8 hours taking my time and digging into the cooking sidequests, which are surprisingly addictive. I like the way they handled crafting in this game plus the exploration, gameplay, and upgrades are fantastic. I've been upgrading weapon speed every chance I get and it makes combat even more fun.

Fun fact: It's easier to focus on and enjoy the video if you don't have to keep reading text at the same time.

Did you guys turn the music off in the options or is there just no music in this DLC?

@mmahardy: Haha, great minds think alike I suppose :P

@mmahardy or editing team, Did you intentionally use the same opening song from the recent Final Fantasy XIV documentary by Danny O'Dwyer, or is it just a really weird coincidence?

@snk0610: I feel like it's becoming more and more common for games to ditch music in favor of ambiance. Breath of the Wild for example. Music was always a big part of the experience for me and it often feels like something is missing without it. It doesn't seem to affect review scores or sales though when music is missing.