Chalice Dungeons Bloodborne Wiki » Chalice Dungeons

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Flow Chart

Chalices

Ritual Materials

Bosses

Enemies

Labyrinths

Glyphs

Description

Underneath Yharnam there is a vast underground ruins spread wide and deep across multiple floors. Horrifying and ancient, it appears to have been created by something not quite human. It’s at once both a graveyard, and a place of slumber. What’s more, these ruins change their appearance for each visitor. The seal to these underground ruins can be broken by conducting a special ritual using a holy chalice. Every time the ritual is performed, the dungeon’s structure changes.

Dungeon Structure

Each individual labyrinth has its own unique layout, but they all follow the same basic pattern. All dungeons start with a chamber of the seal, which is a small room with a lamp in it. That leads into a linking corridor, which in turn leads to the layer Lamp Linking rooms can have doorways on the right or left that lead to optional paths, the goal of which is a treasure room with a coffin to loot Once you've opened the coffin it's safe to head back to the linking room to progress. Every labyrinth has at least one locked exit gate per layer. Once that door is unlocked you'll have a clear path to the boss, though there's usually a linking room behind the door that may contain another optional path. The layer Lamp is very often near the locked exit gate, as in the example here. This ensures that if the boss defeats you, it won't take you very long to get back and try again. With Lamps being as frequent as they are you'll never have to travel far to reach one, so taking frequent trips back to the Hunter's Dream to repair your weapon, upgrade your character and ensure you're fully stocked up on consumables is highly recommended. Doors/Gates: While the doors and gates you come across in dungeons may initially just feel like they're there to halt your progress, they do convey useful information once you know what to look for. At the start of each layer you'll come across one or more bronze doorways, and a pair of statues holding flaming torches will surround one of them. Those torches are used to let you know that the path beyond that doorway is the one that will eventually lead you to the room containing a lever that must be pulled to open an exit gate.

The door without the flames will always lead you to optional parts of the layer, where you can get some extra loot. Finding the locked exit gate is rarely a problem because they are almost always placed in plain sight, as if taunting you, and they're easily identifiable due to the statues holding a blue flame on either side. Once you pull the lever associated with that gate, those flames will turn from blue to a normal yellow flame, letting you know it has been unlocked. Gate Lever Rooms: These rooms will usually be some of the most heavily-defended ones in the dungeons, and you'll often have to battle your way past large groups of regular enemies, a single strong one, or sometimes a combination of both. A cautious approach is called for when entering one of these rooms, and with patience you'll often be able to lure the enemies out one at a time to make the fight easier, and sometimes you can take advantage of room layouts to let you get behind enemies without them noticing. Treasure Rooms: Similar to the Gate Lever rooms, these rooms should be one of your primary targets in any dungeon. You'll often have to make your through a challenging gauntlet of traps and enemies to make it to these rooms, but once inside there's often only a single enemy guarding the chest(s). The contents of these chests are often large quantities of valuable materials for creating dungeons.

Create and Download New Challenges

The Chalice Dungeon feature includes both standard dungeons as well as procedurally-generated dungeons. Both types of dungeons can be played offline or online with other players, but generating new dungeons requires connecting the game online once to download required data. You can also publish your Chalice Dungeons online to share with other players, and download dungeons created by other Bloodborne players.

Online Sharing

When conducting the Chalice Ritual each fixed shared dungeon and root dungeon has "messengers" icon indicating how much is the dungeon shared online. The more messengers on the icon, with maximum five, the more players used this dungeon online.

Creation

To create a Chalice Dungeon you have to use a series of ritual altars in the Hunter’s Dream. The altars activate a menu that lets you create, share and search for Chalice Dungeons. Once the ritual is activated, you will be asked to use one of many chalices you can find around the game. The Chalice of Pthumeru is the first, basic chalice you can find, but there are quite a lot more. Once the chalice is selected, you have to spend a number of materials that can be gathered around the game. Each dungeon has an unique ID that you can share with your friends. Otherwise you can share it openly to everyone. The basic chalice dungeon created by the Chalice of Pthumeru has three levels, with a boss at the end. The boss room is sealed, and needs to be unlocked via a lever somewhere else in the level. Once the door is unlocked you can access the boss room directly even if you die. Different chalices bring to different areas, different types of enemies. Many different kinds of dungeons can be created. The player doesn’t have direct influence on the layout of a dungeon, but depending on what chalice is used and on the ingredients, they can cause the dungeon to tend towards a certain kind of dungeon.

How to use Makeshift Altar

Before you can use the Makeshift Altar in Hunter’s Dream, you have to acquire the item – Short Ritual Root Chalice. Patch Notes v1.04: Players can now acquire a Short Ritual Root Chalice by trading Insight. The Chalice will become available after completing the Pthumeru Chalice dungeon. Players can now use the Short Ritual Root Chalice’s quick matching feature in the early part of the game. It is also available if you defeat the last boss in Lower Hintertomb Chalice (the order of the chalices is the following: Pthumeru Chalice » Central Pthumeru Chalice » Hintertomb Chalice » Lower Hintertomb Chalice). Makeshift Altar has three Quick-search options: Dungeon Quick-search: Quick search and join an accessible Chalice Dungeon. Co-op Quick-search: Quick search a Beckoning Bell chime to begin co-op Adversarial Quick-search: Quick search a Sinister Bell chime to become an adversary. Updated: When using a Short Ritual Root Chalice for co-op play, the guest player will always start from the Lamp room of each floor rather than in random locations.

A New Player's Guide [Source]

What Are Chalice Dungeons? Chalice Dungeons are separate multi-layered dungeons accessed through the Hunter's Dream. While the four headstones leading up towards the Workshop near the Plain Doll's usual location are used to warp into the various locations of Yharnam, the various headstones leading up the other way are used to access the Chalice Dungeons. The first altar is used via a special item I'll get into later - the rest are all used to create and access Chalice Dungeons, which we'll discuss how to create and access in a moment. As for what they are in more practical terms, there are two ways to look at it. First, from a lore perspective. The Chalice Dungeons represent the "old labyrinths" discovered by the College of Byrgenwerth and are located physically beneath (as in, underground) Yharnam. They have been explored and it is in one of these deep dungeons that the source of Blood Healing and the foundations of the Healing Church were founded. Each chalice has its own unique lore to it, which you'll discover as you read the various descriptions of the dungeons. Second, from a gameplay perspective, they are extra dungeons that can be used to farm things like Blood Echoes, items, weapons, upgrade materials, blood gems, and more. They do not scale to NG+ cycles, each having a static difficulty to it that does not change. The earlier ones you get are easier, while they get more difficult as they go on. How Do They Work? To create and access a Chalice Dungeon, you need two things: the chalice for the dungeon you wish to create, and the proper materials to create it. Chalice are found in various locations in both Yharnam and inside other Chalice Dungeons, which I'll cover at the end of this write up. Materials, likewise, can be found both in Yharnam and in dungeons, and some can be purchased in the Hunter's Dream. Some rarer materials can only be found in limited quantities or through defeating specific enemies. So, for the sake of example, we'll use the very first chalice you find, the Pthumerian Chalice. You receive this chalice by defeating the Blood-Starved Beast in Old Yharnam. The Chalice requires two Ritual Blood (1) chalice materials, which are found earlier in Old Yharman as well. With these two items, and with 1000 Blood Echoes, you can use one of the Ritual Altar headstones in the Hunter's Dream, and create the dungeon. While there are more materials and options with some later dungeons (which I'll cover in a moment), the process remains largely the same. You need a chalice, materials, and some echoes. While the materials are used each time you create a dungeon, the chalice itself is not, so a chalice can be created any number of times. Once you create a Chalice Dungeon, you can access it through the Ritual Altar Headstone where you created it. They have varying numbers of levels, from 3 to 5, and difficulty levels called "Depths" which vary from 1 to 5. The Ptherumian Chalice creates a Depth 1 dungeon, which is the easiest difficulty, and has three levels. Each level has a main area, where the objective is to defeat enemies and find a lever to access the boss chamber. Defeating the boss will give you various rewards, from other chalices, to upgrade materials, blood gems, or ritual materials, and then you can access the next level of the dungeon. This is how they all work - find a lever, defeat a boss, head to the next level until you reach the bottom. Once a boss is cleared, it will not respawn - you can revisit the dungeon, but only the normal enemies will return, not the boss or items. Bosses in the dungeons are sometimes unique, but are also sometimes repeats of bosses from the core game, often with different health or AI patterns. Once a dungeon is completed (or at any time, really), you can remove the chalice from the altar, which will destroy the dungeon. You can then recreate it using new materials, which will recreate it complete with items and bosses from scratch. Finally, some dungeons will have treasure rooms located in the area before or after the main level of the dungeon. Exploring these can find you rare upgrade materials, ritual materials, or weapons, as well as plentiful blood echoes from defeating more enemies. Why Should I Do These? There are several benefits to going through the Chalice Dungeons. First of all, lots of great lore stuff is found throughout the dungeons, both in the item descriptions and the bosses fought. If you want to know more about the story of the game, there's some great hints to be found. Second, blood echoes! Always good to have! Third, upgrade materials and blood gems for your weapons can be found/dropped by enemies and bosses throughout the dungeons, some of them potentially much more powerful than the ones found in the core game. Fourth, one weapon (the Beast Claws) can only be found in one of the Ailing Loran chalice dungeon initially. And finally, defeating the final boss of the Pthumeru Ihyll dungeon will net you a trophy - required for platinum, if you're going for that. And all of this, of course, in addition to great co-op and PvP opportunities throughout the dungeons themselves.

Ritual Materials As explained, you need ritual materials to create a dungeon. These are found throughout Yharnam, at the Bath Messenger Shop, or throughout Chalice Dungeons. Often, if you fully explore a dungeon, you will find enough materials to recreate it, or move onto the next one - though sometimes you'll have to purchase or farm new ones. There are also several unique ritual materials that are found in limited quantities throughout the game. For example, defeating The Witches of Hemwick will gain you several Blood-Shot Eyeballs, which are needed for a further ritual, and will not be available for purchase until they've been found. If you're missing materials and unsure where to find them, a quick search of the various wikis can help - I won't list all of them, as there are a lot, and I'm trying to keep this as spoiler-light as possible. Just keep exploring the game - some dungeons cannot be accessed until very late in the game. Short Ritual Root Chalice So, back to that first Ritual Altar headstone I brought up earlier. That is used for an item you can purchase from the Insight Shop later called the Short Ritual Root Chalice. Using that item at the altar allows you three options: Create a random dungeon you have previously created. It will be a randomly created Root dungeon with no additional rites. You cannot control which dungeon it is, or use any kind of glyphs, but these dungeons do not take any materials. It's a fantastic way to farm items or ritual materials if needed. Join a random co-op dungeon, where anyone in a dungeon you currently have access to is ringing their Beckoning Bell. Join a random PvP dungeon, where any dungeon you currently have access to has a Bell-Ringing Woman present who is ringing her bell. It's a great item, get it when you see it in the Insight Shop. Root Chalices, Glyphs, and Rites There are two types of Chalice Dungeons - "fixed" dungeons, and "Root" dungeons. Unless a Chalice has "Root" in the name, it is a "fixed" dungeon, meaning that the layout, loot, bosses, and treasure will always be the same. A Root Dungeon, however is different. For example, defeating The Merciless Watcher boss in the normal Pthumerian Chalice dungeon will get you the Pthumeru Root Chalice. When you use this at the Ritual Altar, instead of just two Ritual Blood (1), this chalice requires more materials. In this case, you also need three Tomb Mold (1) items. Doing this will create a Chalice Dungeon for the Pthumeru Chalice again - only this time the three levels will be randomized. The layout, treasure, and bosses will be different each time you create this dungeon, though the difficulty will remain at Depth 1, meaning it will be roughly as difficult as the normal dungeon. While you can rely on the whims of fate to create a Root Chalice Dungeon, you can also search for the dungeon by Glyphs. Glyphs are unique alphanumerical codes that allow players to share dungeons. For example, if you find a dungeon that has a great item in it, or easy access to a unique weapon, you can enter the Glyph and create that dungeon, assuming you have the proper chalice and materials for it. Glyphs and unique dungeons tend to be a focus of late-game item farming, so for the purposes of this guide, just know that it is possible to share the dungeons you find for future use for yourself or other players. Finally, later Root Chalices will allow you to perform extra Rites on them. These cost additional materials to the creation, but often give some extra benefit - in exchange for greater difficulty. There are four rites that can be added to various dungeons: Fetid offerings increase the difficulty of existing enemies, as well as adding more traps to the dungeon, but the empowered enemies drop better items. Cursed offerings cut your max HP in half, but you get more powerful blood gem drops from enemies in the form of Cursed blood gems, which give greater strength with a drawback. Rotted offerings add additional enemies to the dungeon, but this means more echoes and more chances for drops. Sinister offerings add the Bell-Ringing Woman to the dungeon by default, meaning that you can be invaded from the start without having summoned any aid. With one exception, the regular dungeons do not have these rites added to them, and are unique to add to Root dungeons. Most of these are more used for late game item farming, and are not necessary to explore the dungeons.

Quick Guide to Chalice Dungeon Order

This guide's purpose is to provide a quick outline of how to get access to all the top tier loot in chalices. This can also serve as the general order for getting the Queen trophy, though only the chalices in the Pthumeru series are outright required. If you go into NG+, you can buy/find some of the materials you'd usually get in the optional chalices.

Here is an FAQ on chalices in general. Please refer to this if you have questions about the basics of chalices. Make sure you fully explore every layer of every chalice so you aren't missing materials for the next one. PS+ is required for glyph searches.

#	Route	Notes
1.	Pthumeru Chalice	Once the all is done, make any one Depth 5 root chalice with all three rites (Fetid, Rotted, Cursed - referred to as FRC). Isz is the cheapest in terms of materials. You do not need to clear this chalice. You now have access to all important glyphs. Use the "Search by Chalice Glyph" function to create the dungeon you need. This will not consume materials. All Rune Locations - Glyphs and speedrun videos included. Sinister root chalices can count as basic root chalices (aside from rites). This means that you do not necessarily have to beat the Layer 3 bosses in Great Isz and Lower Loran if you purchase the Sinister Isz root and Sinister Lower Loran root. You will still have to make the Pthumeru Ihyll FRC root. If you do not have PS+, you will have to manually create your own D5 FRCs and hope that you get the bosses you need. This will consume materials each time. The Hintertomb series can be done around Lower Pthumeru, but there's nothing of note in there in terms of top tier gems and etc. You shouldn't really bother with Hintertomb unless you want the Madman's set. You cannot skip chalices via SRRC summoning. That has been patched out.
2.	Central Pthumeru
3.	Lower Pthumeru - The Workshop Haze Extractor in Layer 2. There are 4 layers in this chalice.
4.	Ailing Loran
5.	Defiled Chalice
6.	Lower Loran & Great Isz - Order doesn't matter.
7.	Pthumeru Ihyll