Bloodborne

Yharnam takes everything back. Die in the street and your Blood Echoes stay on the cobbles, the enemies stand up again, and the only thing you keep is what you managed to bank somewhere else. That somewhere else is Hunter's Dream, and it is the reason this game is easier to explain as a building than as a route. The Dream holds four things worth walking to, and every one of them starts inert. A doll that will not speak, a bench that will not infuse, an altar that will not accept a rune, and merchants who are not there yet. Each is waiting on one specific item or number that you have to bring back from the city.

First job: wake the Doll

Until you hold one Insight, you cannot spend a single echo on your character, which catches out almost everyone in their first two hours. The cure is a walk rather than a victory. Head out of Central Yharnam towards the Great Bridge and the Cleric Beast, because arriving at a boss arena is enough on its own, and a Madman's Knowledge does the same job if you find one first. Our leveling guide gives the exact path there, including which Netherbeasts to drag into a doorway and which crows to ignore, and the wider ladder of systems around it is laid out in our mechanics guide.

The Doll is also where the game's best-known small secret lives. Once she is awake, gestures get answers: bow and she bows back, use Hunter's Rally and she applauds. That and the rest of what we have found, including a duplication trick from the early patch days, sits in our Easter eggs and secrets guide.

Second job: come home with echoes

Echoes are the fuel for levels, repairs and most purchases, and they only exist while you are alive to carry them. When you fall, they sit as an orb at the spot where it happened; if the orb is not there, look for the enemy with glowing purple eyes that took it. Our blood echoes farming guide keeps to short circuits that finish at a lamp: a house full of enemies in Central Yharnam, a prison loop in Yahar'gul reached with the Unseen Headstone, and a longer Old Yharnam run that opens once the second boss is dead and pays out around 20,000 in half an hour.

Third job: pick a weapon and feed it

There is no blacksmith in this game, so the bench is yours. Fortification eats Bloodstone in four grades and most weapons take ten steps of it, each step at +1, +3 and +5 opening another slot for a Blood Gem. Infusing those gems needs the Blood Gem Workshop Tool from a chest in Central Yharnam, and a weapon left unrepaired eventually breaks outright. Our workshop guide covers the whole bench, and our items guide answers the question that comes just before it, which is who is holding the weapon you want in the first place. Fifteen trick weapons and eleven entries in the firearms column are catalogued on our weapons page, complete with the badge or the price each one demands. A single trick weapon can also turn up as a Normal, an Uncanny or a Lost variant, each kept somewhere else and slotted differently.

Fourth job: the altar, and who you swear to

The Memory Altar stays dead until the Rune Workshop Tool comes home from Hemwick Charnel Lane, which is why an optional boss turns out to be a priority. After that, twenty-two Caryll Runes are on the table in our Caryll Runes guide, with their higher tiers scattered between the Forbidden Woods, the Lecture Building and four different Root Chalices. Three of them are not really upgrades at all. Corruption, Radiance and Hunter are membership cards for the Vilebloods, the Executioners and the Hunter of Hunters, and our covenants guide explains how to join each one, what badge and weapon it unlocks, and why the first two groups attack each other on sight.

Fifth job: spend Insight rather than hoard it

Insight is the second currency and the strangest number in the game. Our Insight guide collects twenty ways of earning it against four ways of losing it, and the important part is what happens as the counter climbs: past twenty, some enemies pick up new tricks, and at forty you start seeing the Lesser Amygdala that has been sitting over the Cathedral Ward all along. Ten points brings out the Messengers who trade in it, and both resonant bells, the small one for answering a summon and the sinister one for invading, are sold there alongside three of the eighteen outfits in our attire guide. The other fifteen are mostly out in the world on corpses, and so are all nine of the Arcane items in our hunter tools guide, which are what this game has instead of a spell list.

Playing with, and against, other hunters

Bells are the whole multiplayer system. Our multiplayer guide walks through summoning a stranger, invading one, and setting a password for a friend, and it is worth reading before you ring anything: the Beckoning Bell that invites help also drops a Bell Maiden into your world, and she is the doorway an invader walks through. Matchmaking works by level, which quietly makes your stopping point a decision about who you will meet.

Two fights, in detail

We have written up two encounters properly, and our bosses guide treats them together because they share a nasty habit. The Witch of Hemwick answers a slow hunter by cloning herself, twice if you let her, while the Shadow of Yharnam is three guardians who get fire and a summoning spell from a snake that appears once the fight drags. Both hand over something you will use afterwards, a rune from one and the Memory Altar's own key from the other.

Building the hunter you actually want

Once the Doll is taking echoes, the question becomes where they go. Our five PvE builds run from a plain 40 Vitality starter that can hold any weapon up to an Arcane and Bloodtinge monster that leans on the Chikage. Our three PvP builds are written at level 100 and go further into how each weapon punishes its owner. The builds guide sets all eight side by side according to what each demands from you in a fight, whether that is your own health bar, your Quicksilver Bullets or an evening of gem hunting.

The order to do it in

One page ties the rest together. Our game progression guide is a running order rather than a walkthrough: which optional areas are worth the detour, which NPCs need sending to safety before Rom is killed, when Iosefka can be dealt with, and where the three pieces of umbilical cord are that decide how the night ends. Read it early. Most of the ways to lose something permanently in this game are timing mistakes rather than combat ones, and they are all listed there.

What we do not cover in depth yet, and it is only fair to say so, is the boss roster beyond those two fights, the Chalice Dungeons as places rather than as rune sources, and Blood Gems as a subject of their own. Everything else in Yharnam starts at one of the four stations above.