Bloodborne: Beginner's Guide & Best Tips

Why this game hates you (and why you’ll love it)

Look, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. Bloodborne is the video game equivalent of getting thrown into a cold lake at 4 AM while someone throws bricks at your head. I bought this thing in 2015, played for two hours, refunded it on PlayStation Store. Came back six months later because a friend called me a coward. He was right.

Now I’ve got somewhere north of 900 hours across seven characters. I’ve killed Orphan of Kos with a torch. I’ve done a level 4 run. I’ve cried. You will too. But here’s the thing nobody tells you in those glowing reviews: the first 10 hours are the hardest part of the whole game. After that, something clicks. The combat rhythm settles in your bones. You stop panic-dodging and start hunting.

This guide isn’t a walkthrough. I’m not gonna tell you where every treasure is or how to cheese every boss. What I am gonna do is explain the stuff the game expects you to figure out alone, the mechanics it never explains, and the dumb mistakes I made so you don’t have to repeat them. I spent my first three runs trying to stack poison damage like it was Dark Souls — got destroyed by the second boss EVERY TIME. Don’t be me.

If you’ve played Dark Souls, forget everything you know. Bloodborne punishes the slow, shield-hugging, patience-first approach. This game wants you aggressive, stupid-aggressive, the kind of aggressive where you heal by hitting things back. That’s the core lesson. Everything else is details. We’re gonna fix the hard part first.

The real reasons you’re dying

Let’s be honest. You picked up Bloodborne, got past the werewolf in the clinic (or didn’t), reached Central Yharnam, and got your ass handed to you by a mob of guys with pitchforks. You died to the big bonfire group twelve times. You’re mad. I get it.

The game doesn’t teach you how to play it. The tutorial is a half-second message on the floor that says “try attacking” and then a giant wolf jumps you. That’s it. The rest is just pain. Here’s what’s actually screwing you over:

• Your dodge timing is wrong. In most action games, you dodge away from the attack. In Bloodborne, you dodge through it. The invincibility frames on your quickstep are generous — maybe 12-15 frames depending on your agility stat — but they work best when you phase through the attack, not run from it. Cleric Beast? Dodge toward its armpit as it swings. Trust me.
• You’re not rallying. That orange bar on your health after you take a hit? That’s a timer. Hit an enemy within that window and you steal that health back. The game forces you to be aggressive. If you back off and heal, you lose the rally opportunity. I lost the Father Gascoigne fight twenty times because I kept running away to heal. Beat him the first time I got in his face and traded blows.
• You’re spending your Blood Echoes wrong. You just got 3000 echoes. You see a shiny new weapon in the shop. DON’T BUY IT. Level Vitality first. Every time. I cannot stress this enough. More health means more chances to rally. More health means you survive the hit that would have killed you. Your damage will come from weapon upgrades, not stats, until you’re past the halfway point. Vitality to 25 before you touch anything else.
• The game is faster than your brain. Bloodborne runs at 30 fps on base PS4 with frame pacing issues. The input lag is real. You are fighting the controller and the code as much as the enemies. You aren’t bad — the game is legitimately janky in places. Accept it. Predict your inputs half a second early. You’ll adjust.

Here’s the other thing nobody says: the first area, Central Yharnam, is the hardest part of the entire game relative to your power level. It throws every enemy type at you, bad sight lines, narrow streets, and a boss that tests everything you’ve learned. The game gets easier after you clear this area, not harder. That’s backwards from every other game you’ve played. Push through it.

First steps — what actually matters

Day one, first run. You wake up in the clinic. You pick a weapon. Don’t overthink this — all three starting weapons are viable for the whole game, but the Saw Cleaver is the best choice for new players. The Hunter Axe has more reach and stagger potential, but it’s slower and punishes bad positioning. The Threaded Cane looks cool but does garbage damage early and its transformed mode uses stamina like it’s nobody’s business. Saw Cleaver has serrated damage in its short form, which does 20% more damage to beasts. You know what the first five bosses are? Beasts.

Choose the Military Veteran origin. It has the lowest Bloodtinge and Arcane stats — stats you don’t need on a first playthrough — and starts with high Strength and Skill. You can’t respec in Bloodborne. You’re stuck with your choices. The Veteran gives you the most efficient stat spread for a quality build (leveling Strength and Skill evenly), which lets you try almost every weapon in the game.

Here’s your day-one checklist:

• Kill the werewolf in the clinic. Use the door to your left. Lure it through the doorway, hit it twice, back off. It can’t fit through. It’s the first cheese in the game and it’s intentional.
• Get the Saw Spear. In Central Yharnam, on the big bridge before the Cleric Beast, there’s a shortcut ladder on the left. Go down, across the rafters, down again, through the dark house. The Saw Spear is on a corpse. It’s a slightly better Saw Cleaver for skill builds. Grab it even if you don’t use it — it’s serrated on both forms.
• Find and open every shortcut. Bloodborne’s level design is a spiral — you unlock gates and elevators that loop back to the first lantern. I spent my first game dying over and over rushing through the same streets. On my second run, I realized there’s a gate right next to the Central Yharnam lamp that cuts the run to Father Gascoigne down to 30 seconds. Explore every side path.
• Upgrade your weapon to +3 immediately. Blood Stone Shards are all over Central Yharnam and the sewers. You can farm them from the brick trolls near the first lantern — they drop 1-2 each. +3 is the power spike that makes the game playable. Do this before you fight the Cleric Beast. I can’t believe I didn’t know this on my first run.
• Learn to parry. The Hunter Pistol has a 12-frame startup and the parry window is about 6 frames before the hit lands. Practice on the big brick trolls. Shoot them right as their arm starts moving forward. You’ll hear a specific sound. Walk up and press R1 for a visceral attack that does 3x your normal damage. This single mechanic will carry you through the entire game.

One more thing: do not consume your Madman’s Knowledge. You need 1 point of Insight to level up at the doll in the Hunter’s Dream. You get 1 Insight from seeing the Cleric Beast through the window, or from using a Madman’s Knowledge. Use it, level up twice, then save the rest. Three Insight unlocks the insight shop in the Dream. Save your echoes for levels, not consumables.

Stuff the game hides from you

You’ve made it past the first few areas. You’ve beaten Gascoigne (probably by falling off a roof and cheesing him with the music box, which is valid). Now the game changes. Enemies hit harder, bosses get two phases, and the game starts testing your understanding of its systems. Here’s what the game doesn’t tell you:

• Beast Blood Pellets are the most broken item in the game. Pop one before a boss fight. Every hit builds a meter called Beasthood that increases your damage output up to 70% at max. The downside is you take more damage too. But if you’re aggressive and dodging well, bosses melt. I killed Amelia in under 60 seconds with a Saw Cleaver +3 and a Beast Blood Pellet. It’s disgusting. You find them early in the sewers near the rats.
• Arcane builds are a trap for new players. Everyone wants to cast spells. The problem is that Arcane does almost nothing until you hit 25, and the good hunter tools are mid-to-late game. Your damage with weapons will suck because Arcane weapons scale differently. I made this mistake. I abandoned that character at level 50. Do a quality build (Strength/Skill) or pure Strength first. Arcane is for NG+ or a second character.
• Bloodtinge is even more of a trap. The Chikage and Evelyn are cool. You need 30 Bloodtinge before they’re even useable. That’s 30 levels of doing garbage damage. Reiterpallasch is a trap weapon. The Rifle Spear is a trap. Ignore Bloodtinge until your third playthrough. You’ll thank me.
• Transform attacks are the best moves in the game. Press L1 after an R1 or R2 attack. Your weapon transforms mid-swing and hits twice — once from the transformation, once from the new form. The Saw Cleaver’s R1-L1 combo does 1.8x the damage of two separate swings and builds stagger faster. This is the optimal DPS rotation for most weapons. I beat the Orphan of Kos by spamming L1 attacks. It’s not a meme, it’s math.
• Bolt and Fire Paper don’t stack with inherent element damage. If your weapon already does fire or bolt damage (like the Tonitrus or the Logarius Wheel), the papers do nothing. You’re wasting them. Save them for physical weapons.
• The Old Hunters DLC is the best content in the game. It’s also brutally hard. Don’t go in until you’re at least level 70 with a +9 weapon. The first area, the Hunter’s Nightmare, has enemies that hit like trucks and a boss that made me put the controller down for a week. But it has the best weapons in the game — the Whirligig Saw (Strength), the Rakuyo (Skill), and the Holy Moonlight Sword (Arcane/Strength). Worth every death.

If you’re struggling with a specific boss, check out our Dark Souls 3 guide for the same cheese tactics — rolling windows and stamina management transfer directly. Bloodborne is faster, but the fundamentals are the same. You dodge the attack, you punish the recovery, you don’t get greedy. That last part is the hardest lesson.

Dumb mistakes that get you killed

I’ve made every mistake in this game. Some of them multiple times. Here’s a list of things that will kill you that you probably haven’t considered:

• Healing mid-combat in front of an enemy. Bloodborne punishes this harder than any Souls game. Enemies have long reach and aggressive tracking. Pop a blood vial behind cover or after a stagger. I died to the Blood-starved Beast more times from panic-healing than from actual attacks.
• Not using the environment. You can lure enemies into doorways. You can kite them into fire barrels. You can shoot chandeliers down on groups. The game is full of environmental kills that the community never talks about because they’re “beneath” us. Use everything. The game doesn’t have honor, why should you?
• Over-leveling resistance stats. Don’t put points into Endurance past 20. The stamina gains drop off hard. Don’t touch Arcane or Bloodtinge. Don’t level Skill if you’re using a pure Strength weapon. Your stat spread determines your viability more than your total level. A level 60 with 40 Vitality and 30 Strength is stronger than a level 100 with 20 in every stat. I cannot stress this enough.
• Ignoring the Chalice Dungeons. A lot of players skip them because they’re repetitive and ugly. But they drop the best blood gems in the game. A +10 weapon with good Chalice Dungeon gems does 30-50% more damage than a +10 weapon with story gems. You can get cursed gems that add 27% physical attack. That’s the difference between killing a boss in 30 hits vs 20 hits. The dungeons are mandatory if you plan to play past the base game.
• Fighting bosses with a broken weapon. Repair your gear at the Dream workshop. Every time you die, check durability. Bosses in the late game will break your weapon in the middle of the fight. I had to kill the One Reborn barehanded once because I didn’t check. It took 45 minutes. Don’t be me.
• Not backing up your save. Bloodborne on PS4 has corrupted save issues. The Chalice Dungeons are particularly bad for this. Back up your save to USB or the cloud after every major boss. I lost a 120-hour character to a corrupted save in the Ihyll chalice. I still have nightmares.

One specific mistake new players make: they treat the R3 lock-on like it’s mandatory. It’s not. Against multiple enemies, unlock and manually aim your attacks and dodges. The lock-on will get you killed when you dodge sideways into a wall instead of through an attack. I learned this after fighting the Shadows of Yharnam boss — the camera is literally the boss there. Unlock, run around, attack the one that doesn’t have range. It’s a positioning fight, not a reaction fight.

Your questions, answered with blood

Q: What weapon should I use for the whole game?
A: Saw Cleaver or Saw Spear. Both are serrated, both have fast transform attacks, both can carry you through NG+7 if you gem them right. The Whirligig Saw from the DLC is technically better for pure damage, but you won’t see that until late game. Start Saw, finish Saw.

Q: How do I get more Blood Vials without farming?
A: You can’t avoid farming completely, but you can reduce it. Level up your Vitality so you take fewer hits. Use the rally system aggressively — heal by hitting. Visit the Lecture Hall in the Nightmare of Mensis — the slime scholars drop 5-8 vials each and you can kill 20 in 2 minutes with any weapon. Best farm spot in the game.

Q: Is the Cane any good or do people just like it for the style?
A: It’s okay. The Threaded Cane has good range in whip form and serrated damage in whip form (people get this wrong — the cane form is NOT serrated). The damage is noticeably lower than the Saw Cleaver until you get high Skill scaling. It’s a “I finished the game three times and want a challenge” weapon, not a first-playthrough weapon.

Q: How do I get the secret ending?
A: You need three One Third of Umbilical Cord items. They’re missable. You find one in the Abandoned Workshop, one from killing the Wet Nurse (it drops one), one from Iosefka’s Clinic (after the Blood Moon, go back and kill the imposter Iosefka), and one from the Old Hunters DLC in the Research Hall. Consume all three before the final boss. Then choose “refuse” when Gehrman asks you to submit. You’ll understand.

Q: I can’t beat Father Gascoigne. What do I do?
A: Get the Tiny Music Box from the girl in the window in Central Yharnam. Use it during phase two to stun him for 4 seconds. Parry his first phase with the pistol — his attacks are telegraphed wide. He’s weak to fire, so use Fire Paper if you found it. If you’re still stuck, lead him to the stairs and fight him there — his AI struggles with elevation changes. I beat him first try on my second playthrough with this strategy. You will too.

Q: I just beat the game. What now?
A: Start NG+ for a new challenge, or make a new character with a different build. Try pure Arcane — it’s awful early but hilarious late game. Try a BL4 (Base Level 4) run if you hate yourself. Play the DLC if you haven’t. The bosses in The Old Hunters are the best in the series, including Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro. For a comparison of how these games handle aggressive combat, check out our Sekiro guide — the deflection system is different but the philosophy of “don’t back down” is exactly the same.

Q: Is the game actually good or is it just hard?
A: It’s both. The level design is the best in the Soulsborne series — Yharnam feels like a real, lived-in city with interconnected shortcuts that blow your mind when they click. The Lovecraftian story is told entirely through item descriptions and environmental details, and it’s brilliant once you piece it together. But it is hard in ways that are sometimes unfair. The camera in large boss fights is broken. Some boss runbacks are sadistic. The 30 fps cap is a limitation you’ll learn to work around. If you can accept those flaws, you’ll find one of the most memorable games ever made. If you can’t, it’s okay to put it down. The game isn’t for everyone. But I think it is for you, or you wouldn’t be reading this.