Builds

Blood Echoes buy attribute points and nothing else. Every build we have written up asks for a second payment on top of that, and the payment is made while you are swinging: some of these hunters pay in their own health bar, some pay in Quicksilver Bullets, and one pays in the hours it takes to farm the gems that make it work. Sorting the eight loadouts across our five PvE builds and three PvP builds by that second price says more about how each one plays than any stat spread does.

Builds that pay in health

Four of the eight run the Chikage, and the katana's second form takes a bite out of you for every hit it lands. Our PvP write-up makes the important point about that drain: it is a flat amount rather than a percentage, so a hunter with a thousand health loses exactly what a hunter with six hundred loses. That single sentence is why the Cainhurst Assassin sits at 35 Vitality and 37 Endurance rather than pushing Bloodtinge higher, and why the fix for the drain is more health, better Blood Gems and the right runes rather than restraint.

The Wheel of Fortune spread trades the same currency in the opposite direction. Logarius Wheel does not transform; it spins, up to four times, and each spin raises the damage while eating more of your health bar. Land a hit while it is wound up and a decent share of that health comes straight back, which turns a self-destructive weapon into a reason to keep pressure on. The catch is range, since a wheel is a blunt object with a telegraph, and the build carries the Kirkhammer for opponents patient enough to stay outside it.

Builds that pay in Quicksilver Bullets

Bloodborne has no spell list, and our hunter tools guide explains what stands in for one: nine Arcane items that spend bullets to do something a weapon cannot. Two builds lean on that. Ludwig's Arcane Disciple opens with the Tiny Tonitrus and follows with Ludwig's Holy Blade, on the reasoning that a PvP opponent stacked against physical and poison damage has usually left Arcane wide open. The Plague Doctor pairs the Church Pick with the Flamesprayer for burning beasts and the Executioner's Gloves for the spirits they send out.

Bullets are finite, so the Memory Altar is part of these builds whether the pages say so or not. Formless Oedon raises your maximum bullet count and Oedon Writhe returns two bullets on a visceral attack, both listed in our Caryll Runes guide, and the Wheel of Fortune spread already carries Formless Oedon for exactly this reason.

The build that pays in bench time

The Poison-Toxin spread is the odd one out, because its damage does not come from the attribute column at all. It puts 40 into Strength and 40 into Arcane, hands you Logarius' Wheel, and then asks you to fill the imprints with flat Arcane gems carrying poison effects and poison gems carrying flat physical damage. Our PvE page names the two gem prefixes it wants, murky for slow poison and dirty for the rapid kind, and that hunt is the build. Read our workshop guide before you start it, since imprints only open at +1, +3 and +5, and a gem sitting in a weapon you are about to abandon can be pulled back out and reused.

The runes are a uniform as well as a bonus

All three PvP spreads memorise Clockwise Metamorphosis for the extra maximum health, which is as close to a rule as this game gets. The rest of their rune slots are worth a second look, because our covenants guide states that memorising a covenant's rune is what enrols you. The Cainhurst Assassin swings a Vileblood katana while wearing Radiance, which belongs to the Executioners, and the Executioners exist to hunt Vilebloods. Ludwig's Arcane Disciple wears the Hunter rune from Eileen the Crow's covenant. Neither page mentions the loyalty problem, so decide for yourself whether the stat boost is worth flying somebody else's colours in an invasion.

Where to start, and at what level

The Vitality-Based spread is the beginner entry: 40 Vitality with Strength and Skill both at 25, so nothing you pick up is unusable. From there the split is clear enough. Bloodtinge builds want the Chikage and the Evelyn, Arcane builds want tools and Ludwig's Holy Blade, and the Strength lane ends at the Wheel. Our PvP page writes all three of its spreads at level 100 and notes that a character only starts to take shape somewhere around level 90, which matters more than it looks: our multiplayer guide says invasions are matched by level, so the level you stop at decides who you meet. If you are still short of the echoes, the routes in our mechanics guide and the shopping list in our items guide are the two things to read next.

One warning about the PvE page while you read it. Four of its five entries print an Origin that does not match any of the starting classes named elsewhere on our site, so treat those lines as author credits rather than character creation advice, and take the stat spread underneath them as the real instruction.