Isz Glitch Bloodborne Wiki » The Tomb Prospectors Discoveries » Isz Glitch

Source ❘ Edit ❘ Sitemap ❘ License page revision: 05, last edited: 11 April 2020

Basic Information

Tomb Prospectors found out the glitch in Isz Root dungeons that prevents some hunters from generating all Isz dungeon variations, called "32 pool glitch". Before going further here is brief summary on how Chalice Dungeons generation works in light of recent save-editing and datamining: dungeons are not randomly generated. Instead, they are pre-set layouts the player generates from an existing pool. This revelation is what lead Tomb Prospectors to start an organized exploration to map all possible dungeon variations. each root chalice has 100-200 possible layouts the player can pull. Isz root supposedly has 200 layouts. the estimated total number of root dungeons is 2200. This number might be slighly off because recent exploration of Cursed and Defiled Root seems to indicate there are more than 100 layouts for this Root (100 is Zullie's initial estimation). Months ago, /u/Kazin79 noticed there's something wrong with Isz dungeons when even after generating hundreds and hundreds of root dungeons, he was only able to get an extremely small amount of unique layouts compared to Pthumeru and Loran. After Zullie's discovery that Isz has 200 possible layouts, a more in-depth research began, only to reveal that certain players are only able to generate 32 different Isz dungeons out of the entire 200 pool.

This is how Tomb Prospectors big Isz exploration began, along with their research what could be possibly causing this glitch. Initial idea was that the player's level somehow affects the generation, as they tested more and more characters and it seemed like players above BL160 are stuck in this glitch. Further testing revealed that this is not the case and the current theory indicates that the player gets sucked into the 32 glitch after exploring certain amount of root dungeons. Now, Tomb Prospectors still don't know for certain what exactly is causing it. /u/MorosNyx has a theory that the glitch happens once the player gathers a certain amount of loot from Isz dungeons, which seems to be largely true, but it still need to be tested what kind of loot it is and if it's truly only tied to Isz loot and not all dungeons. As far as we know, once a player is stuck, there's no way out of the 32 loop and the only way to generate new Isz dungeons is to make a brand new character every time your current one gets stuck. Sinister Isz seems to be affected as well. No other root dungeons show any sign of this bug. The goal of small Tomb Prospector team (shoutout to /u/DrAnger90 who's been an invaluable help in managing all info and dungeon mapping!) is now to map all 200 possible Isz layouts. Big thanks to everyone who provided glyphs to test and explore!

UPDATE: Isz Glitch, cracked and explained [reddit, spreadsheet, mirror]

The Isz Glitch is a bug that prevents certain characters from creating all possible Isz dungeons (there are 200 unique Isz and 200 Sinister Isz dungeons) and reduces the number of dungeons you can generate from the entire pool to mere 32. For nearly a year it wasn't known what causes this glitch that doomed the characters to repeatedly generate the same 32 dungeons over and over again, and Tomb Prospectors were forced to create dungeon mules to be used only for generating Isz dungeons as it was the only way for them to create dungeons outside of the 32 common pool. Today, it can be announced that Tomb Prospectors finally figured out what causes this glitch. Here it will be explained what they have learned about the Isz Glitch, and provide you the means to avoid it. One of the very early theories was that the glitch is somehow tied to dungeon loot because it only occurred on characters that explored a large number of dungeons, yet it wasn't known what loot exactly and if it is truly only tied to Isz loot. The most plausible theory was that the glitch is related to unique coffin loot specifically as it consists of items you can only loot once and if you were to loot the same item again, it would be replaced by either Madman’s Knowledge or Great One’s Wisdom - this indicated that there is an event flag for each of these items that keeps track of what item you’ve already looted. This theory finally led Tomb Prospectors to a series of testing where were able to reliably replicate the Isz Glitch and pinpoint its source and factors. There are 11 unique coffin items in Isz you can only loot once: Top tier runes Weapons Other Eye Lost Kirkhammer Blood Rock Arcane Lake Ludwig’s Lost Holy Blade %Arcane Gem Great Lake Lost Threaded Cane layer 4 %Nourishing gem Great Deep Sea Deep Sea For testing this theory Tomb Prospectors created a new character, unlocked all story dungeons and conducted a number of testing sessions. First testing simply consisted of creating 20 dungeons on the new character. As expected, this character was able to generate various dungeons from the entire 200 pool, as seen on tab “Test 1” in this sheet: Isz Generation Testing Sheet All dungeons that belong to the 32 common glitch are highlighted in red. After this, Tomb Prospectors looted several coffins in various dungeons and created another 24 Isz dungeons. As you can see in the second testing column, the character was severely glitched this time, with only a couple of Isz dungeons outside of the 32 common pool. As a final test they only looted unique Isz items so that by the end of the setup, this character only had Isz specific unique items in their inventory, and created 24 Isz dungeons. All of these dungeons were from the 32 common pool, signaling that said character is entirely glitched, and that the cause of it were Isz coffin items, as seen in the final column. Tomb Prospector's next series of testing, Test 4, consisted of looting only one item at a time and then creating 24 Isz dungeons after each one of them to see how the glitch progresses. This is where it gets way more complicated than previously thought the Isz Glitch actually is. It was found out there’s another “feature” that comes to play when you create a dungeon, a mechanic which is most likely supposed to ensure the next dungeon you create includes a different unique coffin item than the one you’ve looted previously. All dungeons are internally sorted into a total of 15 groups (numbering starting from 0 to 14) with various amount of dungeons in each group based on dungeon depth and type. All of these groups are present in depth 5 Pthumeru and Loran while Isz only uses 12 groups. This information has been extracted from Bloodborne param files, and you can see it on tab Holy Grail - All Chalices, column N - BB, or on tab Dungeon Groups and coffin loot that has been formatted for better clarity. From Tomb Prospector's final testing of Isz dungeon generation it became apparent that each group is related to one unique coffin item, and in Isz, by looting an item from certain group this group will become forever locked away for your character. These groups and related items are: Group 0 Ludwig’s Lost Holy Blade Group 1 Lost Kirkhammer Group 2 Lost Threaded Cane Group 3 Great Deep Sea Group 4 Deep Sea Group 5 Great Lake Group 6 Arcane Lake Group 7 Eye Group 8 Blood Rock Group 9 % Arcane gem / % layer 4 Nourishing gem Group 10 ? Group 11 ?

For example, if you create an Isz dungeon and loot the Eye rune from it, dungeon group 7 will not be included when you create the next Isz dungeon, effectively reducing the number of dungeons you can create on your character. From this it’s obvious it’s very easy to get in the glitch since you can usually get more than one unique item in one dungeon. Practically, it can only take 5 or less dungeons to get your character glitched depending on which items you loot. This applies to looting items by using glyphs and false depth dungeons as well. Selling and/or discarding Isz runes and weapons will not get you out of the glitch. The event flag has been set, and the game still remembers you had these items, even if you get rid of them. As you can see, groups 10 and 11 are marked with “?” as these two groups of dungeons are the final Isz Glitch phase. These are the two groups your character gets forever stuck in once glitched. Tomb Prospectors still don’t know for sure why these two groups are repeating and there are only theories. One such theory hints that dungeons in these groups should include loot that's for some reason missing or has been removed but the game is still trying to give you a dungeon that's tied to an item that's no longer in there, and ultimately gets stuck in a loop (aka Isz Glitch). The only two dungeon items that come to mind is Guidance tier 3 rune and Revered Great One Coldblood. Both of these items are in the official Bloodborne guide but are unobtainable in the game by normal means. They still exist in the files though, as it is possible to save edit them into your inventory. They just don’t have any drop table assigned to them. As of now it isn't known if this mechanic works the same way in other chalice types as well but there will surely be similar testing in Ihyll and Loran dungeons in the future. It’s possible that it works similarly in other dungeon types with the difference that after obtaining all unique loot from them, the generation mechanic is reset and you are again able to create all dungeons from their respective pools. Still, keep in mind this is a theory for now. Conclusion: If you want to stay completely out of the Isz Glitch, do not loot any coffins in Isz or Sinister Isz dungeons. Isz and Sinister Isz share unique loot, and looting an item in one will reduce the number of dungeons in the other as well. Summary: The Isz Glitch is caused by looting unique coffin items in Isz dungeons, such as runes, weapon variants, Blood Rock and certain coffin gems The glitch happens gradually. Every time you loot a unique Isz coffin item, the number of Isz dungeons your character can create gets reduced. The moment you collect all unique Isz coffin items, your character becomes entirely glitched Once a character is glitched, there’s no way out of it. You need to create a brand new character While it’s impossible to generate dungeons out of the 32 pool once you are glitched, it’s possible to explore these dungeons via glyphs or Short Ritual Chalice Huge thanks go to everyone who contributed to this research: XTrinX, DrAnger, Foxy Hooligans, Altair, MorosNyx, Jetayvid, Kazin

Test by HotPocketRemix

In this test made by HotPocketRemix it can be seen the way the dungeon group boundaries is misaligned in Isz and how it could be theoretically fixed. The picture below shows all unique coffin treasure events in all 200 Isz maps and dungeon groups they belong to. The number of the map is at the top and unique items on sides, split into several chunks for better readability. Each group is contained in a box, and red highlight show maps that don't contain their group item; for example, map 18 belongs to group 2, but this map doesn't contain the unique item that's assigned to it (Lost Kirkhammer).

The second picture shows what happens when the dungeon grouping is adjusted to only consist of 10 groups instead of 12. The dungeon groups now exactly match the unique items they are supposed to contain. What this test demonstrated is that the Isz dungeons were created assuming there's only 10 items, but HolyGrailExParam assumes there's 12. It's checking for all of the 12 flags to be on before it resets which dungeons you're allowed to access, but the last two flags will never be set, because their item never spawns.

Isz Glitch and Gem Farming: an overview of the common 32 layouts [by altairnaruhodou]

This post is about specific information that concerns chalice dungeon exploration and gem farming. If you are not familiar with these topics, this is probably not going to be a concern for you at the moment. Regardless, they come into play in late endgame, and are of interest if you wish to delve deeper into Bloodborne. So, for whoever is interested, here is a brief introduction: Chalice Dungeons are a completely optional, dungeon-crawling-style part of Bloodborne, featuring a sort of boss rush mode. The Chalice Dungeons offer weapon variants, new runes and, above all, the most powerful Blood Gems for your weapons. There are two types of Chalice Dungeons: story chalices, aka chalices that are identical for all players and must be gone through in a mandatory sequence to unlock further ones, and root chalices, which change every time you generate one and offer new loot and bosses. Root chalices are not randomly generated: they are premade and exist in 100 or 200 new maps, one of which is randomly selected by the game each time you generate a root chalice. Chalice Dungeons are completely accessible in offline play, but online play includes several advantages once you reach the final stages of them - such as the glyph system, which allows you to enter other people's root chalices without any expense of materials. The main reason why dungeons are used is to farm blood gems from specific bosses in root chalices. This post is meant for people who play offline and have to farm bosses without the liberty to choose specific glyphs, generating their own root chalices every time. Especially for offline players, one of the most unfortunate aspects of Bloodborne that is probably going to remain unsolved forever is the presence of the Isz glitch. In short: This glitch consists in the player gradually being forced into generating fewer and fewer of the 200 available Isz root layouts, until that number is reduced to 32 possible dungeons. This glitch is limited to each single character, is not reversible, and the only way to avoid it is to not collect unique loot - runes, weapons, Blood Rock - in the coffins of Isz and Sinister Isz root side areas. If you, unaware of the glitch, already collected all of the loot in the Isz dungeons and find yourself with a glitched character without access to PS+, there is an obvious consequence: the offline pool of bosses you can farm for gems is reduced to the boss setup of those 32 dungeons. Being a player who is normally offline myself, and having just gotten a question on the topic, I decided to take a look and write a short recap of what usually farmable bosses are available in the common 32 layouts. The good news is that no Isz boss is left out and you can still farm all of them. The bad news is that a few of them are a little less available.

Layer 3-4 bosses for Abyssal gems These are the most commonly farmed bosses in Isz, and have the unfortunate limitation that Layer 4 of each layout only has a 20% chance of opening. Amygdala - Nourishing Abyssals Amygdala is fortunately still a very common boss, appearing in over one third of Layer 3 layouts. Layer 3: 13 dungeons Layer 4: 7 dungeons Ebrietas - Arcane Abyssals Ebrietas is one of the most common bosses in Isz, and farming her for Arcane Abyssal gems will prove no issue even in the common 32. Layer 3: 15 dungeons Layer 4: 8 dungeons Pthumerian Elder - Cold Abyssals Pthumerian Elder, essential boss for Arcane builds, unfortunately becomes a lot rarer. He scores a total of 10 appearances, only 2 of which are on Layer 3. Fortunately, this boss is also one of the few that appear in Ihyll and Loran as well, which can help you compensate for the scarcity of Triangular abyssals. Layer 3: 2 dungeons Layer 4: 8 dungeons Rom the Vacuous Spider - Nourishing Abyssals Rom is already a very rare find in Isz. Not only does she score a single appearance in the whole common 32, she is on Layer 4 to boot. If you are looking to farm triangular Nourishing Abyssal gems from her, consider it impossible on a glitched offline character, and go for Amygdala instead. Layer 3: - Layer 4: 1 dungeon Layer 1-2 bosses for other gem types These are the remaining bosses that are farmed in Isz for other gem types. Brainsucker - Isz primary + high Flat Arcane secondary Brainsucker is also an extremely common boss in Isz, and farming him offline on a glitched character will prove no issue to you. Layer 1: 8 dungeons Layer 2: 15 dungeons Merciless Watchers - Isz primary (highest value) The coveted Watchers tend to be a bit rarer than Brainsucker or Ebrietas, but between the total of Layer 1 and 2 you still have a 1/3 chance of meeting them in the common 32. Layer 1: 8 dungeons Layer 2: 8 dungeons Undead Giant - Adept primary + Isz secondary Rarest of this category, but still fairly common and less farmed on the whole, the Undead Giant appears in all three variants in the common 32. Layer 1: 8 dungeons (3 Cannon, 2 Chain, 3 Swords) Layer 2: 5 dungeons (2 Cannon, 2 Chain, 1 Swords) If you play offline and have this problem, I hope you found this post useful. This post was made possible by the thorough research of the Tomb Prospectors community as a whole, and the data comes from their direct exploration of the common 32 glyphs. I remind you that, if you create a new character, not collecting coffin loot from Isz and Sinister Isz will prevent this completely. Furthermore, if you really need a specific weapon or rune, collecting one or two items of unique loot still allows you to access the vast majority of layouts (each rune, weapon etc. will lock just a small amount of layouts). Sources and further reading: Blood Gem 101: basics of blood gem farming, Prospector exploration sheet of all root dungeons