By now you probably beat Bloodborne once, and hopefully with the assistance of our free walkthrough, collected all of the important items. Once you defeat the final bosses and complete the game, you won’t be able to go back to your previous save and continue. Instead you’ll start a New Game+, keeping almost all of your items (you’ll lose a few key items) and maintaining your character’s current level.
In New Game+ the enemies have considerably more health, hit harder and in turn, drop more Blood Echoes. You’ll also find a few different enemies in some areas, generally more powerful than the other foes you faced during the first play through. You should already be familiar with the basics, so let’s jump into some tips for your second play through.
Collect Everything
It may be a little late, but before you beat the final boss and transition to New Game+, you want to make sure you collected as much from your first play through as possible. At the very least you want to make sure you have some of the rare items such as the spell, A Call Beyond, that you can find just before the boss battle against Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos, and the Tonitrus weapon in Yahar’gul, Unseen Village.
Anything you don’t collect the first time around will be harder to obtain in New Game+, so make sure you’ve looted as much as you can before finishing off the final boss. In addition, farm Blood Vials and weapon upgrade items (Blood Stone Shards, Twin Blood Stone Shards, etc.). If anything, you’ll have the Burial Blade to level up in New Game+, if not a few other weapons that you may have neglected during your first play through. It’s much easier to do your farming now while you’re more powerful than most enemies in the game, as opposed to waiting until New Game+ when everything is considerably stronger.
Level Up the Burial Blade
Upon defeating Gehrman, the First Hunter, you can buy his weapon from the Bath Messenger shop. At first it won’t be leveled up at all, so it will likely be one of your weakest weapons. Don’t let this discourage you. Hopefully you farmed a few Blood Stone Shards and other weapon upgrade items so you can quickly get it up to a Burial Blade +6 or higher. Add a few good Gemstones to the weapon and it will serve you well enough for the first few areas. If you have trouble, switch back to your main weapon from the first play through, but upgrade the Burial Blade as much as you can.
You won’t be able to get the Burial Blade up to the final level until late in your second play through since you can only find one Blood Rock in the main game. However, the Burial Blade +9 is better than most other weapons, especially if you prefer to use faster weapons as opposed to the slower Hunter Axe. Until you get a solid Arcane build going, it will serve you well so long as you level it up.
Create an Arcane Build
During your first play through of Bloodborne, you probably focused on increasing your Strength, Skill, Vitality and Stamina. By the time you get to your second play through, you won’t see much of an increase from leveling up Strength and Skill, and you probably have a great deal of Vitality and Stamina as well. While you want to continue increasing your Vitality (and even a bit more Stamina), this is a great time to start focusing on an Arcane build.
If you picked up the spell, A Call Beyond, and the Tonitrus weapon along with the Tiny Tonitrus item weapon, you’ll need a decent Arcane level to even use these things. A Call Beyond requires 40 Arcane just to equip the spell. These are powerful weapons that can inflict a lot of damage in a short amount of time and hurt a group of enemies at once. A Call Beyond is especially powerful, which is why it requires such a high Arcane level. At the very least, get your Arcane up to level 40 and try out the spell to see how it fits your play style. You may be surprised at the results.
Pick Up a Second Blood Rock
It will be awhile before you make it to the end of your first New Game+ experience, but once you do, pick up a second Blood Rock. As previously mentioned, you’ll only find one Blood Rock in the main game, so it’s important to pick it up every play through so you can get another weapon to maximum level. It’s recommended to use it on the Burial Blade, but if it doesn’t fit your play style, upgrade another weapon that you use more often.
Be sure to check out the cool loot you can get from exploring the main game and Chalice Dungeons, then equip the best weapons in Bloodborne!
