Chalice Dungeons Bloodborne Wiki » Chalice Dungeons

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Table of Contents

Description

How to use Makeshift Altar

Online Sharing

Introduction: Frequently Asked Questions

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. The Chalice Dungeons are a large part of Bloodborne, but they are an entirely optional part.The role they play in the game's overall structure is another mystery for players to solve. Preset Chalices: These labyrinthine dungeons must be unlocked through rituals, each of which carries a cost in materials and Blood Echoes - the deeper the dungeon, the more costly the ritual is to complete. Reaching their deepest depths is no small undertaking, and your path there begins when you acquire your first Chalice, by defeating the Blood-starved Beast in Old Yharnam. This Chalice lets you perform the ritual to create the Pthumerian Labyrinth. In order to craft the first labyrinth you'll also need a 'Ritual Blood (1)', which you can find in Old Yharnam at an Altar on your way to the boss. You can also purchase them from the Messenger Bath shop in the Hunter's Dream after acquiring the Pthumeru Chalice defeating the Blood-starved Beast.

Completing the Pthumerian Labyrinth rewards you with the Central Pthumeru Chalice, which you can use to make the next dungeon, which in turn will reward you with another Chalice. From this point onwards you can progress through the dungeons in tandem with the main quest. There are two more Chalices that can only be found in the main game, and many more to be found by clearing the dungeons you build. All three main game Chalices are: Pthumeru Chalice ► Defeat the Blood-starved Beast; Ailing Loran Chalice ► Defeat Amygdala; Great Isz Chalice ► Defeat Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos. Root Chalices: Many dungeons will reward you, upon defeating bosses, with either a Preset Chalice or a Root Chalice. Root Chalices always have the word 'Root' in their names and are used to create randomly gen¬erated versions of the dungeon the Chalice is named after. So the Central Pthumeru Root Chalice, for example, will create a randomly generated version of the Central Pthumerian Labyrinth. Ritual Altars: To conduct your rituals, you can use any of the six 'Ritual Altars' lined along the path to the left of where you always enter the Hunter's Dream. These altars are where you'll be able to craft or dismantle Chalice Labyrinths and search for other player-created labyrinths online. Treat this area of the Hunter's Dream essentially as the Chalice Labyrinth hub. There are only six Ritual Altars, so you will eventually have to dismantle some of your crafted labyrinths by selecting the 'Remove Chalice' option when you wish to craft newer labyrinths, or improve root labyrinths by performing additional rites with newer materials when re-crafting them. Preset labyrinths will always remain the same when re-crafted, which is worth bearing in mind in case you wish to hunt for specific items and materials.

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.

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.

Fond of Chalice Dungeons spelunking? Why not join the Tomb Prospectors then. The Tomb Prospectors seek the nether reaches of Root Chalice Dungeons, in order to find the strange, the weird, the undiscovered. The Tomb Prospectors Discoveries wiki page lets you unearth the profound Root Chalice Dungeon expeditions. If you love running Root Chalice Dungeons, the Tomb Prospectors Covenant will gladly take you in! Join us on Reddit and Discord.

Introduction: Frequently Asked Questions [By Esper_Row, with input from the Tomb Prospectors’ Discord]

Getting Started What is a chalice dungeon? A chalice dungeon consists of three or four layers, each containing a minor level culminating in a boss fight. Each layer tasks the hunter to navigate a series of underground ruins and find a lever that opens a locked gate to the boss, so that they may proceed to the next floor and repeat the process until the dungeon’s end. The difficulty of a dungeon is dependent on its depth, which is represented by a number from 1-5, with 1 being the easiest and 5 being the hardest. Chalice dungeons are divided into two categories: fixed dungeons (also called “story dungeons” by the community) and root dungeons. How do I begin dungeon-diving? The first obtainable chalice is the Pthumeru Chalice, which is dropped by the Blood-starved Beast in Old Yharnam. The two Ritual Blood (1) needed to create it are found earlier in the level, on an altar in the building below Djura. To use it, conduct the ritual at any of the six ritual altars to the left of the messenger shops in the Hunter's Dream. This is where you will always be creating dungeons. You will obtain more chalices by exploring Pthumeru and defeating the optional bosses Amygdala and Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos in the main game. What is the difference between a fixed dungeon and a root dungeon? A fixed dungeon can be considered the normal version of a chalice. Its map has set enemy/item placements, layouts, and bosses, all of which remain the same each time the dungeon is generated. Fixed dungeons are generally made once per character to unlock other chalices they contain and make them open to connect to for co-op. A root dungeon will almost always be a different experience every time you create one. When a root dungeon is generated, the game pulls from a list of 100-200 pre-generated dungeon maps for that chalice and spawns one of them. Each map will have a unique arrangement of rooms and differing placements of items, enemies, and bosses. Root chalices are never required for story dungeon progression, but they are important to have for accessing glyphs later on. When should I tackle the fixed dungeons? Depth 1 is scaled to be accessible as soon as you defeat the Blood-starved Beast, so you can begin the journey immediately. Gehrman even encourages the hunter to do so. A +3 weapon is good to have at this point, which should be achievable with the abundance of Blood Stone Shards scattered throughout the early game. Depth 2 is a minor step up in enemy scaling from the previous depth. Most will be comfortable coming here directly after depth 1, although getting a handful of extra levels beforehand is wise. Depth 3 sees a noticeable spike in difficulty and should be saved until after you reach Yahar'gul, Unseen Village in the blood moon phase. A +6 weapon at minimum is recommended. Depth 4 is where the dungeons start to earn their infamy, as this is where the ever popular Defiled Chalice resides. Enemy damage and health modifiers start to rival and even exceed the late game and DLC here, so it’s best to hold off on these dungeons until you reach the endgame in Mensis and max out your main weapon at +10. For the Defiled Chalice in particular, which comes with the twist of a cursed rite, it’s wise to have a high Vitality stat (at least 40 ideally) and multiple Clockwise Metamorphosis runes. Depth 5 amps the enemy scaling even further than depth 4. While the lack of a natural cursed rite makes the depth 5 fixed dungeons less punishing than the Defiled Chalice, you should still expect a decent challenge here, especially from Pthumeru Ihyll. If you choose to ignore the dungeons until after completing the main game and/or DLC, depths 1-3 will largely become a cakewalk, due to their early and mid game difficulty that never scales with story progress or New Game Plus cycles. Making detours into the dungeons throughout a playthrough will provide more gems/upgrade materials for the main story and prevent the monotony of blitzing through five or more easy dungeons all in a row during the endgame. What are ritual materials? Ritual materials are ingredients used to create chalice dungeons. The most basic ones are Ritual Blood and Tomb Mold, which will be required for the majority of dungeons you make. These materials are each separated into five levels, represented by the number in their names. The level of Ritual Blood/Tomb Mold needed always corresponds to the dungeon’s depth, so the depth 1 Pthumeru Chalice requires Ritual Blood (1) and the pattern continues from there. As you descend to lower and lower depths, you will need to gather higher quantities of increasingly rare materials for each dungeon made. If you are following the game’s intended dungeon progression, exploring each fixed dungeon’s layers and side areas thoroughly to find chests with materials is critical. You may occasionally need to farm certain enemies for materials as well. All materials will eventually become purchasable in the Hunter’s Dream from the two messenger’s shops by completing certain fixed dungeons and entering New Game Plus. The only material found exclusively outside of the dungeons is the Living String, which is needed for Pthumeru Ihyll and dropped by the Brain of Mensis on death. As such, it is recommended that you do not enter New Game Plus until you obtain this material, as you will otherwise need to make your way back to Mensis in New Game Plus to obtain it. There is also a common bug associated with the Brain that prevents it from dropping the Living String while in co-op, however it should respawn after reloading the area. What is the Short Root Ritual Chalice? The Short Root Ritual Chalice can be bought from the Insight messenger bath for 10 Insight after completing the first Pthumeru fixed dungeon. It enables use of the Makeshift Altar, which comes with a handful of useful functions. With it, you can perform a quick search to open a random root dungeon you meet the entry requirements for, resonate your bell to be summoned to a host seeking assistance, or invade a dungeon with an active bell maiden as an adversary, all directly from the Hunter’s Dream. This is a great tool for hunters looking to find random dungeons to explore and/or participate with others in, although the game’s age and the altar’s notoriously slow matchmaking usually make for long waiting times between sessions. What are rites? Rites are additional modifiers that can be added to a root dungeon. Each rite makes a dungeon more difficult, but some also improve your rewards for exploring. The lower the depth, the more rites become available. There are four in total that are available by the time you reach Depth 5: The fetid rite will grant a red aura to several enemies throughout the dungeon, increasing their damage output by 35%. On the positive side, these enemies will drop larger amounts of Blood Echoes and more rare items. The rotted rite will replace some enemies in the dungeon with one or a combination of the following new enemy types in every layer: Eye Collectors, who will aggressively summon Mad Ones in groups of three until killed NPC hunters of varying builds, including: Saw Spear hunter wearing the Bone Ash set, Chikage hunter wearing the Cainhurst set, Logarius Wheel hunter wearing the Gold Ardeo Roaming Labyrinth Ritekeepers, each flanked by a small patrol of Pthumerian watchers The cursed rite will halve the hunter’s HP while they remain within the dungeon. It also causes all enemies to drop cursed gems by default, which have much stronger primary effects at the cost of a random negative effect. Like the fetid rite, echo amounts and item drop rates from enemies are improved, but the cursed rite also has a hidden effect that boosts the item discovery of any hunter with an Eye or Milkweed rune equipped by a staggering 1000. While cursed dungeons represent some of the most challenging content Bloodborne has to offer, they are always the most lucrative places to farm for blood gems and echoes. Sinister Rite will add a guaranteed Bell Ringer to every layer of the dungeon. Notably, this rite is only available for separate sinister root chalices and cannot normally be stacked with the prior rites. Ringing either of the Beckoning or Sinister Bells in a sinister dungeon will still spawn a second Bell Maiden, allowing up to two invaders to join at once. This rite provides no tangible improvements to rewards, but it is handy for PvP-centric hunters looking to set up fight clubs or run dungeons with the added twist of multiple invaders. If they are entirely optional, why even bother with the chalice dungeons? Players looking to obtain Bloodborne’s Platinum Trophy must reach the Pthumeru Ihyll fixed dungeon to defeat Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen. Doing so via the intended path will require traversing the four previous Pthumeru fixed dungeons and, unless in New Game Plus, two additional detours into other chalices for necessary materials. More dedicated hunters seek the dungeons for their powerful Blood Gems, which trounce those found in the main game. To give an example, the strongest physical damage gems outside of the dungeons are 22.3% cursed temperings, dropped by Winter Lanterns in the Fishing Hamlet. In depth 5 cursed dungeons, the Merciless Watchers can drop temperings as powerful as 27.2%, providing a substantial leap in damage for any build. Optimizing any weapon in Bloodborne will require varying amounts of time spent farming in the dungeons’ lowest depths. There are, of course, more reasons to go deeper. The chalice dungeons are home to unique enemies and bosses not found anywhere in the base game or DLC, many of which will pose a significant challenge to experienced hunters. Other benefits include finding uncanny or lost variants of each weapon with different gem slots, the strongest versions of most runes from the main game, the Beast Claw trick weapon, two unique sets of attire, efficient farming locations for Blood Echoes, and the allure of finding Bloodborne’s greatest rarities.

Dungeon Navigation How are chalice dungeons structured? As mentioned earlier, a chalice dungeon consists of three or four layers. Each of these will have three distinct sections, commonly referred to in order as the pre-lamp, the main area, and the pre-boss. Finally, a layer will be capped off in an arena with a boss encounter. The pre-lamp is the corridor leading from the beginning of the layer to the layer’s starting lamp. Often, there may be a bronze door or open doorway on one side of the hallway that leads to a side area. These will always contain a well-guarded treasure coffin with rare loot like ritual materials in fixed dungeons or Caryll runes and weapon variants in root dungeons. Although these paths are optional for completing the dungeon itself, their rewards are often enough to make them worth exploring, especially if you are combing through the fixed dungeons. The main area is the middle section of a layer, immediately following the lamp. There will always be a locked gate near said lamp. Your task will be to find a lever within this section to unlock the gate and continue forward. This lever will be found somewhere deep in the main area. Explore diligently and check every corner and closed door to find it. Once you have done so, return to the start of the main area and open the gate to enter the pre-boss. The pre-boss is the corridor leading to the boss arena. Just like the pre-lamp, there may be a side area with a treasure coffin, which will work the same way as a pre-lamp side area. The end of the layer will always have a boss fight. Defeat the boss, proceed to the next layer, and repeat the process until you reach the dungeon’s end. Are there any deviations to this dungeon structure? The chalice dungeons occasionally throw small wrenches in the mix, but the core progression of pre-lamp/main area/pre-boss/boss will always remain the same. The main area can contain its own bonus area and treasure coffin, either behind a bronze door or through a seamless corridor transition. The pre-lamp and pre-boss areas may also sometimes connect to the main area via alternate routes, and in the case of the pre-boss section, this may even allow the hunter to bypass the locked gate and open it from the other side without ever touching the lever. Additionally, unlike the main game, illusory walls are present in two of the fixed dungeons and many of the root dungeons. There is a chest in a doorway blocking my way forward, what do I do? You can break it with your weapon or firearm. This will take several swings, but doing so will let you pass. Unlike Dark Souls II, breaking chests will not damage their items inside. Shotgun firearms like the Blunderbuss are great for breaking chests quickly with their high ammo spread. Sharing and Accessing Glyphs What is a glyph? When a hunter creates a root dungeon, a unique eight character code will be generated for it, visible in the bottom right corner of the dungeon menu. Think of this as a password that can be entered to access that dungeon again at any time. To enter a glyph, interact with any of the six ritual altars and select “Search by Chalice Glyph”. I just made an interesting glyph, how do I make it open to others? Interact with the ritual altar holding said dungeon and select the option to share it. This will open access to other players once you have shared it with either an open or closed privacy setting. What is the difference between a dungeon being open or closed? An open glyph can be entered by any player ringing at the Makeshift Altar, allowing hunters to summon cooperators or be invaded by adversaries directly from the Hunter's Dream. This is especially convenient for hunters looking to quickly help a friend on a lower layer of a difficult dungeon. Bear in mind that it takes much longer on average to be summoned from the Makeshift Altar than from inside the dungeon itself, so be patient when waiting to connect. A closed dungeon can only be accessed by inputting its corresponding glyph at a ritual altar. Hunters will not be able to enter these dungeons with the Makeshift Altar and must instead ring their bells near the host’s proximity on the same layer of that dungeon. Most save-edited farming glyphs are closed. Why was my glyph deleted from the server? Glyphs that are not routinely accessed by other hunters will eventually expire and be removed from the server, presumably to maintain space for others. While we do not fully understand the specifics of how this system works, it typically takes around two weeks of inactivity for a glyph to be purged. Sadly, there is no way to recover a glyph once it is gone. If you want to keep your glyph alive as long as possible, consider sharing it with friends and/or the community on social media to increase the chances of other hunters accessing it. Why don’t I meet the requirements for entering [insert dungeon]? Two conditions must be met to enter any standard root dungeon: First, you must have already obtained the corresponding root chalice for the glyph you are trying to enter. (for instance, pwmf22gu, a classic farming glyph, is a Pthumeru Ihyll, so entering it requires the Pthumeru Ihyll Root Chalice or its sinister variant in hand). Second, you must have previously generated dungeons with all of the same rites as the glyph you want to access. Creating a single root dungeon with the fetid, rotted, and cursed rites all applied is sufficient. There is no need to complete this dungeon, enter it, or even keep it on an altar; making such a dungeon will guarantee that you can enter glyphs with any combination of F/R/C rites, so long as you also meet the first condition. Note: The same rule applies for the sinister rite, therefore you must make your own sinister root dungeon with its rite enabled before having access to any sinister glyphs. This is less important than the other rites, as sinister chalices are never used for farming glyphs. Multiplayer Interactions Is there any difference in how I connect to people for co-op/pvp in dungeons? The core fundamentals of Bloodborne’s summoning system remain the same. The host rings the Beckoning Bell, the cooperator rings their Small Resonant Bell, and both wait to connect. If a Bell Maiden is present, you will be notified of her ringing by a hud message and she will actively search for an adversary to invade your session until she is killed. Passwords carry over as well. The only difference is that potential cooperators and adversaries have the option to search for sessions from the Makeshift Altar for added convenience. Why can’t my friends connect to me in [insert dungeon]? Bloodborne’s bell summoning system is notoriously obtuse and finicky, so there are a number of factors that could be tripping you up. Below is a list of details you can check for troubleshooting: Ensure you all have a matching password. This sounds obvious, but everybody forgets to switch their password from time to time. Set your matchmaking to “Worldwide” if you have not already. Check to be sure the bell symbol under your HP and stamina bars isn’t grayed out; remaining on ladders or unstable ground like certain bridges will cross this icon out and prevent you from connecting. If your cooperator is ringing into an open dungeon via the Makeshift Altar, be mindful that the Makeshift Altar is infamously slow at matchmaking, so do not expect to connect for at least a few minutes most of the time. If you are in a closed dungeon, make certain you are meeting the following criteria on top of the first two bullet points above: All participants must ring on the same layer of the dungeon to connect. Ring in the same general area as your cooperator(s) (e.g. if they are ringing on the stairs leading to the layer boss, make sure you ring there too). Check what oath runes you and your cooperators are wearing. Executioners and Vilebloods connecting to each other takes demonstrably longer than ringing with any other combination of runes. Hunter of Hunters also appear to take longer to be summoned on average. Do covenants interactions carry over from the main game? Vilebloods and Executioners will still be enemies when summoned onto the same team and Hunter of Hunters can enter as adversaries too. The Milkweed, Beast's Embrace, and Impurity runes are good choices to avoid unwanted interactions like these.

Gem Farming Is farming top tier blood gems from the dungeons worth the effort? While the uptick in damage between story blood gems and depth 5 cursed blood gems is substantial, Bloodborne’s main story is entirely doable for most average players with story gems and top tier chalice gems are often seen as overkill. This generally holds true for early New Game Plus cycles and the DLC as well. If you plan to engage in PvP with veterans, run low depth cursed dungeons, or go all the way to the highest New Game Plus difficulty, then chalice gems will become more important for keeping up with skilled hunters and heavily scaled-up enemies. Otherwise, if you’re only interested in a few casual playthroughs and don’t care about PvP, don’t feel too pressured to optimize. How and when do I get to farm top tier blood gems in the dungeons? All relevant farming glyphs are cursed depth 5 dungeons. To reach them, your priority is to obtain all three of the depth 5 root chalices and create your own root dungeon with all optional rites applied. Meeting these requirements will ensure your access to all farming glyphs for whatever blood gems you seek. Refer back to the final question of the Sharing and Accessing Glyphs section for a more in-depth explanation. I’m farming for [insert gem] and it hasn’t dropped yet, what gives? Patience is a virtue, and when it comes to gem farming, it is also a necessity. Even with the improved drop rates in save-edited farming glyphs, many gem types are still very rare and can take many hours or days of dedicated farming to obtain. What do all of the blood gem effects do? Below is a summary of each primary gem type and what they’re best used for: Tempering: Boosts physical damage at an average rate. These are very useful all-rounder gems that work for any non-arcane build, even if they aren’t always optimal. Adept: Boosts exclusively blunt or thrust damage at a higher rate than tempering. These will be much more situational than tempering gems, but if your weapon deals predominantly or exclusively blunt/thrust damage, these provide a generous boost in damage. As a side note, bear in mind that visceral attacks inflict thrust damage, meaning that thrust adepts will make them stronger while blunt adepts will provide no benefit for them at all. Nourishing: Boosts all damage at a lower rate than tempering. The lower numbers might look less appealing on the surface, but if your weapon has a mixture of physical and elemental damage, these will boost both damage types and sometimes outperform tempering gems. Importantly, blood damage is considered a type of physical damage for the sake of blood gems, so temperings will still boost blood damage higher than a nourishing will provide. Striking: Greatly boosts damage dealt exclusively by fully charged strong attacks. These gems are very situational and gimmicky, but for weapons with already potent charged attacks like the Stake Driver, using these can make for a fun meme-worthy build. Arcane builds using element-converted weapons will see no benefit from Striking gems, as their effects only impact physical charged attack damage. Radiant: Reduces all stamina consumption of a weapon’s moveset. These gems are essentially useless due to the already low stamina consumption on Bloodborne’s weapons across the board and added damage always being preferable. Fool’s: Boosts damage exclusively while the hunter is at full HP at a higher rate than tempering. Fool’s can either boost physical damage alone, like tempering gems, or all damage as nourishing gems do. If you’re confident in your ability to fight unscathed in PvE, fool’s gems can provide a decent chunk of extra damage. In PvP however, they are ill-advised due to factors like latency and the fast pace of fights making it extremely difficult to maintain these gems’ effect against experienced duelists. Poorman’s: Boosts damage exclusively while the hunter is below 30% HP at a higher rate than almost all other blood gems. Like fool’s, poorman’s can also drop as either tempering or nourishing effects. These gems are inherently risky by forcing a glass cannon playstyle, but for very knowledgeable players, especially challenge runners, they are very appealing for providing some of the highest damage possible in Bloodborne. Beasthunter/Kinhunter: Boosts damage exclusively against enemies that are classified as beasts or kin respectively. While these gems appear stronger than tempering gems in raw value, beasthunter and kinhunter effects are calculated after enemy defense is applied to your hits, making them weaker in practice. This on top of their situational applications and difficulty in farming makes these gems unappealing to most. Heavy: Improves the weapon’s strength scaling. Heavy abyssal gems provide such a massive increase in scaling that hunters on high level strength or quality builds will want to get one of them for most of their weapons. Sharp: Improves the weapon’s skill scaling. Due to a lack of any depth 5 boss at layer 3 or lower that drops sharp abyssals on par with heavy abyssals, any available sharp gems are always worse than temperings and should never be farmed. Warm: Improves the weapon’s bloodtinge scaling. For the same reason as sharp gems, these are entirely useless. Cold: Improves the weapon’s arcane scaling. These gems are crucial for arcane builds, as most convertible weapons have low arcane scaling to begin with. Pulsing: Steadily regenerates HP by a small amount every 2 seconds. The regeneration rate is very slow and not worth sacrificing your main weapon’s damage for, but if you are using a build that doesn’t care about gun damage, putting one on your firearm can help save a blood vial or two in a pinch. Murky: Enables the weapon to inflict the slow poison status and improves the build-up rate. The abundance of bosses with high poison resistance renders these situational to begin with and slow poison itself drains HP too slowly to compete with the raw damage provided by other blood gems. Dirty: Enables the weapon to inflict the rapid poison status and improves the build-up rate. The same issue with murky gems applies here, although rapid poison is a significantly stronger effect akin to the Bleed status in other Souls games and can be decent on weapons with fast multi-hit attacks against the handful of enemies that are weak to poison. Fire/Bolt/Arcane: Converts a pure physical damage weapon to the corresponding element and changes its scaling to exclusively arcane. For arcane builds, these gems are important for changing your damage type from physical to elemental and allowing your weapon to scale off of arcane. Bloodtinge: Boosts exclusively blood damage at a higher rate than tempering. While exceptionally tedious to farm in shapes other than circle, these gems are very potent for the tricked modes of the Bloodletter and Chikage while also being a staple for any high damage firearm. What blood gems will be best for my weapon/build? Given the large variety of blood gems, weapons, and possible builds, this is a hard question to give a general answer for. The Best Blood Gems Setups page on the Bloodborne Wiki is a good starting resource for checking what you should be aiming for on each weapon. If you want a more direct answer, you can ask in the Tomb Prospectors’ subreddit or Discord server for input from other prospectors. What are abyssal blood gems? Abyssal gems have the highest rank of any gem in Bloodborne and are greatly sought after by the more dedicated prospectors in the community. Each boss on layers 3 or 4 at depth 5 will have a 33% chance to drop an abyssal gem of their corresponding type. Abyssals are not always the best of their kind and not every gem type can be normally obtained as one, but many builds do require some for optimal damage, especially those incorporating strength and/or arcane. Save scumming is recommended for farming abyssal gems, as a hunter would otherwise need to reset the dungeon and run back to layer 3 or 4 for every farming attempt. Notably, there are a few exceptions to the normal abyssal rule. Pthumerian Descendant at layers 3 or 4 in cursed dungeons cannot drop abyssal gems. Additionally, Descendant and the Pthumerian Elder drop tempering abyssals at layers 1 and 2. These instances are attributed to mistakes or bugs rather than intentional decisions on the developers’ part. What is save scumming? Save scumming involves making a back-up save when farming bosses, which cuts out the need to redo the dungeon after the boss is killed. To start save scumming, proceed through a dungeon to the boss you’re looking to farm, save and quit immediately in front of the boss gate, and upload your save within your console’s cloud settings or on a separate USB drive. Re-enter the game and defeat the boss. If you get the gem you’re looking for, then you are good to move on. If not, go back into the settings and download back the save you just made. This will place you back where you were originally with the boss alive again, letting you repeat the process until you get your desired gem drop. Does item discovery help for farming gems? The answer depends on what you are farming. Discovery has no impact on the quality of gem drops, so its only use is helping those gems drop at all. Since all depth 5 bosses in root dungeons have a 100% chance to drop a gem to begin with, it will not help you with theirs. However, for mobs who regularly have consumables and materials in their drop tables, tacking on an Eye and/or Milkweed rune will make their gems drop more frequently. I see the phrase “Unable to acquire ?GoodName? due to inventory or storage max” while farming, is this something to worry about? No, this is a harmless side effect from save-editing dungeons. It’s a broken drop script attempting to give you an item that does not exist. You can safely disregard this message. What do OoS and OoE mean? OoS stands for out of shape. This refers to when a gem drops in a shape that is not native to the corresponding chalice (radial in Pthumeru, triangle in Hintertomb/Isz, and waning in Loran). The chances of this happening are significantly lower than in the main game, thus OoS gems found in dungeons are very valuable, especially when dropped from bosses. Bloodtinge gems in particular are highly prized as OoS drops for the Bloodletter and Chikage, as these are almost exclusively dropped as circle shape otherwise. The only enemies that drop gems with their own distinct shapes regardless of the chalice are the Beast-possessed Soul (enemy version, not the boss) and mobs spawned by the rotted rite. OoE stands for out of effect. This refers to primary and secondary effects on blood gems that are not native to the gempool of that chalice. In layman’s terms, they are extremely rare effects you will practically never see. For instance, while obtaining a Bloodtinge gem from the Merciless Watchers boss in unedited Pthumeru Ihyll is technically possible, the chance of it happening is 0.008%; an astronomically low possibility that few will ever see. What is a gempool? Each chalice has its own gempool, which determines all of the possible primary and secondary effects each gem dropped can have and their likelihood. In unedited dungeons, Pthumeru will provide gems impacting physical damage and support effects and Hintertomb is mostly the same with a slightly higher emphasis on poison. Meanwhile, Loran leans more heavily into elemental damage and poison gems while Isz is generally a mix of everything, despite its chalices’ item descriptions suggesting mostly arcane effects. With save editing, some players can share dungeons with tweaked gempools that make obtaining certain gems in different shapes much easier than normal and also sometimes improve drop rates altogether. See the following section and question for more information.

Save-Edited Dungeons What is a save-edited dungeon? Save-edited dungeons are made by players with access to a third party save-editing program, allowing them to make limited modifications to a dungeon. Most commonly, save editors are used to create dungeons with improved drop rates for blood gems that would normally be very challenging to obtain. It is important to note that while this is quite beneficial for farming certain gems, it is impossible to manually input custom drop rates into a dungeon with a save editor. At best, we can only work with what is already programmed into the game, so some gems still remain tedious to farm. Additional uses for save editing include: Creating false depth and reverse depth dungeons Stacking multiples of the cursed rite for increased item and blood echo drops Accessing developer test dungeons Changing what enemies are spawned by the rotted rite or spawning all of them at once Forcing a dungeon’s fourth layer open Spawning the Beast-possessed Soul mob and/or the chalice messenger bath What is a test dungeon? Test dungeons are broken and incomplete dungeons that contain significant amounts of cut content, including architecture, mobs, and even bosses that were all left inaccessible in the final release. These provide a unique opportunity to see content that was once planned for the finished game before being scrapped. Those with a save editor are able to recreate these maps as glyphs and share them publicly for the broader player base to explore. While they do not usually provide checkpoints for you to warp back to the Hunter’s Dream, simply falling to your death in one of the many pitfalls of these dungeons will do the trick. Just make sure to spend your echoes before entering if you don’t want to lose them in the process. What are False Depth and Reverse Depth dungeons? False depth dungeons are lower depth dungeons that have been edited to be accessible much earlier than intended. They can be found via glyphs once you have obtained the Pthumeru Root Chalice from Layer 2 of the first fixed dungeon. These allow you to obtain uncanny/lost variants of base game weapons, tier 3 runes, powerful blood gems, and even skip directly into later depth fixed dungeons to unlock the best farming glyphs within hours of creating a new character. Reverse depth dungeons are depth 1-2 root dungeons that have been edited so that enemies drop late game upgrade materials, namely Blood Stone Chunks and Blood Rocks from bosses. These glyphs are vital for farming these rare resources, as the bosses will be scaled for early game health and damage output, making them pushovers for any decent build. Chunks can be farmed from any boss and rocks from the Layer 3 and lower bosses of a reverse depth. Be sure to equip an Eye or Milkweed rune to improve the drop rates of these materials. These dungeons greatly streamline the buildmaking process, cutting down the time investment needed to reach the depth 5 dungeons and making farming easier. However, for hunters venturing into the chalices for the first time, these glyphs will sour the experience by overloading them with a ludicrous amount of echoes that far outpace the game’s intended leveling curve, while also letting them skip large amounts of content entirely. For these reasons, new players should look into save-edited dungeons very sparingly or not at all until a later playthrough. Are there any malicious save-edited dungeons I should be concerned about, and if so, how can I identify them? Unfortunately, there are a few problematic test dungeons that have been made open for anyone to access. These dungeons have no lamps to leave or cracks in the architecture to force a death by gravity, permanently trapping any character that enters. Some of these dungeons can be escaped naturally if playing on the European Game of the Year edition, but they still remain dangerous on all other versions of the game. In January 2022, a glitch was discovered by the community that allows players to confuse the character’s spawn point in dungeons, which can be applied to escape deadly test dungeons. An explanation of the glitch and instructions on how to use it for this purpose can be found in this Reddit post. While this discovery does mean that these dungeons are no longer true softlocks, you should generally avoid any unknown dungeon that has these traits in its menu: Broken descriptions/names with “?PlaceName?” or ?menuText?” text Depth 0, 6, 7, or 8 dungeons Multiples of the same rite applied or has the sinister rite stacked with other rites Glitches, Exploits, and Softlocks I’m trapped in a boss room with a Pthumerian Descendant, how do I get out? See if you have a save file backed up on the Playstation Cloud or on a separate USB drive from before you entered this dungeon; you may lose some progress, but this will let you restore your character to a safe spot. If you don’t have one available, your only option is to use a glitch to force yourself out. You can find guides about how to execute it here. What is the dungeon merging glitch? The dungeon merging glitch was discovered in early 2022 and its applications are versatile. To simplify an extremely complicated exploit, the dungeon merging glitch requires placing one character in a specific spot in a dungeon and using a second character to quit from a co-op or invasion session. When executed correctly, this will cause the first character to be launched into another predetermined dungeon, which retains the gem shapes, effects, and values from the dungeon they were initially set up in. This glitch is quite difficult to explain in short terms, so for a more involved explanation, see the Dungeon Merging tab in the Bloodsheets. This glitch is chiefly used to force the game to provide blood gems that are normally very tedious to farm, such as out of shape abyssals from bosses like Amygdala and the Bloodletting Beast. It also allows one to farm abyssal gems that are normally impossible to obtain, such as flat arcane gems from Brainsuckers and other gem types like adept, fool’s, poorman’s, and many more. The dungeon merging glitch can also be used to escape test dungeons that can otherwise soft-lock players, as explained in the previous section. What on earth is the cum dungeon? The infamous cum dungeon, cummmfpk, is a save-edited dungeon created by long-time prospector XTrin that exploits an unfortunate enemy placement and the way Bloodborne progressively loads its level assets. In the pre-lamp side area of this dungeon’s first layer, a tomb prospector NPC is placed directly in the path of a swinging axe that continually damages him. Because the game doesn’t fully load the pre-lamp area until you get close to it, remaining in the hallway outside causes this NPC to remain stuck in place while the axe quickly kills him, providing an efficient, effort-free source of Blood Echoes. The dungeon has also been edited to have multiple cursed rites stacked together, which greatly enhances the amount of echoes obtained. This is why your HP is in double digits territory while inside. For a more visual explanation from an expert on how Souls games work, modder and content creator Zullie the Witch has a short video explaining cummmfpk’s exploit as well. I’m not getting free echoes from cummmfpk, why? cummmfpk’s echo farming exploit works so long as you do not approach the Layer 1 pre-lamp side area. Due to the way Bloodborne gradually loads NPC’s and objects based on distance, if you get too close to that area, it will be further loaded and the NPC hunter that would be killed by repeated axe swings will instead be knocked off and take no further damage. Taking a step or two out from the Chamber of the Seal lamp and looking for the damage numbers in the distance to your left is all you need to do. Miscellaneous Did the community ever figure out what the deal was with Guidance Tier 3 and Revered Great One Coldblood? Both exist in the game’s data and are fully functional, but neither can be obtained without modding on a jailbroken console or a save editor. While both were mentioned as lootable from depth 5 root dungeons by an official guide, a complete exploration of every root dungeon has proven this to be false. Does the Yharnam Stone do anything? A cut set of dialogue for the Hamlet Priest NPC that would have been triggered by having the Yharnam Stone was discovered, but this event was not kept in the final release of the DLC. The stone is best looked at as a testament to conquering the story dungeons and nothing more. Are the chalice dungeons affected by NG+ cycles? Chalice difficulty is never affected by New Game cycles and your progress will not be impacted by going to the next cycle either. If you enter a new New Game cycle, all of your chalices will be on the same altars they were when you completed the game. Can Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen be found in the root dungeons? Yharnam is exclusive to the fixed Pthumeru Ihyll dungeon. Can I get Uncanny/Lost variants of DLC weapons before entering the DLC? DLC weapons’ uncanny and lost variants are only unlocked at chalice messenger baths after you obtain their original versions from the DLC campaign. There is no way to save-edit weapons to appear at chalice merchants earlier than normal. I heard that everything in the dungeons has been found, is this true? With two complete rounds of community mapping for every root dungeon in the books and modders digging into the game’s files for years, it’s safe to say that every major secret in the dungeons has been laid bare. It’s very possible that there are other glitches and exploits yet to be found, but groundbreaking discoveries like new enemies and bosses are a thing of the past.