Sure. The most common thing that’s confusing in Soulsborne, I think, is the levelling system. It’s fairly straightforward in how it works, but what does what isn’t really ever explained, outside of some brief descriptions. First, XP. Like most games, you get XP, known as Blood Echoes, by felling enemies. You spend these Echoes with a particular person in the hub, and each level up will raise one stat by 1 point. Unlike most games, XP also serves as money, to upgrade/repair weapons, and buy anything at the store. Regular stats are as follows; Vitality-Will raise your HP Endurance-Will raise your stamina Strength-see explanation of “scaling” Skill-Scaling Bloodtinge-Scaling Arcane-Scaling Scaling is how your weapon damage is calculated. Each weapon will have a Strength, Skill, Bloodtinge, and Arcane scaling stat. “-“ means no scaling, while E, D, C, B, A, and S represent a scaling value, with E being worst, S being best. A weapon with “S” strength scaling will get stronger by how high your Strebrg stat is. All stats soft cap at 50. Reinforcing your weapons uses “Blood Stones”, which come in 4 different forms of rarity; Shard, Twin Shards, Chunk, and Rock. You need 16 of each type, except Rock, of which you only need one, to fully upgrade a weapon. This raises all its stats, scaling values, and Gem slots. On a similar note, Blood Gems are semi-random drops, that simply raise various stats. A weapon can have up to 3. Only specific types of Blood Gems can go in each spot. Finally, rallying. Rally is a mechanic, wherein when you’re hit, the health you just lost will turn light red, and turn black after a few seconds. During this time, hitting most enemies will restore the lost health. I think that’s most of the basics.

[quote]Sure. The most common thing that’s confusing in Soulsborne, I think, is the levelling system. It’s fairly straightforward in how it works, but what does what isn’t really ever explained, outside of some brief descriptions. First, XP. Like most games, you get XP, known as Blood Echoes, by felling enemies. You spend these Echoes with a particular person in the hub, and each level up will raise one stat by 1 point. Unlike most games, XP also serves as money, to upgrade/repair weapons, and buy anything at the store. Regular stats are as follows; Vitality-Will raise your HP Endurance-Will raise your stamina Strength-see explanation of “scaling” Skill-Scaling Bloodtinge-Scaling Arcane-Scaling Scaling is how your weapon damage is calculated. Each weapon will have a Strength, Skill, Bloodtinge, and Arcane scaling stat. “-“ means no scaling, while E, D, C, B, A, and S represent a scaling value, with E being worst, S being best. A weapon with “S” strength scaling will get stronger by how high your Strebrg stat is. All stats soft cap at 50. Reinforcing your weapons uses “Blood Stones”, which come in 4 different forms of rarity; Shard, Twin Shards, Chunk, and Rock. You need 16 of each type, except Rock, of which you only need one, to fully upgrade a weapon. This raises all its stats, scaling values, and Gem slots. On a similar note, Blood Gems are semi-random drops, that simply raise various stats. A weapon can have up to 3. Only specific types of Blood Gems can go in each spot. Finally, rallying. Rally is a mechanic, wherein when you’re hit, the health you just lost will turn light red, and turn black after a few seconds. During this time, hitting most enemies will restore the lost health. I think that’s most of the basics.[/quote] Wow, that's a lot to take in haha. That's one of the main gripes I remember having while playing at my friends house, I'd level up stats and have no idea what they did or how effective they were; so thanks for the little comprehensive guide. So with the whole scaling damage mechanic, if I were to pick up a weapon with an 'S' ranking and it had X attack, but I were then to level up my strength, would it then become X + 1 or however much it scales by? These 'Blood Stones', are they decently common to the point where you can have a selection of fully upgraded weapons or are they rare enough that you really have to consider what you put them into? Other than that, I think I get the gist of it. Rally sounds easy enough to understand. Really though, thanks for the help. The Soulsborne series is one that I've not understood for the longest time so this is really helping me.

There’s no 1 to 1 value for the rankings, but generally speaking, you’ll get +X amount of damage every 1-2 levelups of the stat. As you get closer, and closer to the 50 soft cap you get lower damage boosts, and less frequently. Once you hit 50 there’s no reason to keep going, unless all your other stats are also at 50. That magic 50 for Bloodborne [i]doesn’t[/i] apply to Dark Souls, by the by. As for Blood Stones.. Yes, and no. Blood Stone Shards are common enough that unless you want to upgrade every weapon, getting weapons to +3 (the highest basic shards can take it) should be pretty easy. For Twin Shards you’ll need to be a bit more stingy, but changing your mind on weapons here shouldn’t handicap you much. There’s also a really good spot to farm these. These can take a weapon to +6. Chunks are where things get difficult. Unless you farm them, 2-3 weapons at most will reach +9. To get a weapon to +10, you have to use a Blood Rock. There’s 1 in the base game, and 1 in the DLC. You can find them in randomly generated Chalice Dungeons, but nobody wants to farm that. Even someone who likes Chalice Dungeons, like me, will find that annoying. Oh! One more thing! When you die, you drop all Blood Echoes on the spot. If you die again, you lose all of them, but if you make it back to the spot without dying, you can pick them all back up.

[quote] Oh! One more thing! When you die, you drop all Blood Echoes on the spot. If you die again, you lose all of them, but if you make it back to the spot without dying, you can pick them all back up.[/quote] Is this kinda like Shovel Knight?

Yep, except you drop everything.

Ok

[quote]There’s 1 in the base game, and 1 in the DLC. [/quote] Insight is farmable.

I was talking about Blood Rocks. :o Edit; Aldrich brought up a very good point about Blood Rocks; [spoiler]They can be purchased for 60 Insight after reaching a certain point in the game.[/spoiler]

A lot of people are going to be attempting summons for bosses. This'll be fun. Martyr Logarius is the most fun to farm.

I will always approve of killing that wretched Executioner! *thumbs up*

[quote]There’s no 1 to 1 value for the rankings, but generally speaking, you’ll get +X amount of damage every 1-2 levelups of the stat. As you get closer, and closer to the 50 soft cap you get lower damage boosts, and less frequently. Once you hit 50 there’s no reason to keep going, unless all your other stats are also at 50. That magic 50 for Bloodborne [i]doesn’t[/i] apply to Dark Souls, by the by. As for Blood Stones.. Yes, and no. Blood Stone Shards are common enough that unless you want to upgrade every weapon, getting weapons to +3 (the highest basic shards can take it) should be pretty easy. For Twin Shards you’ll need to be a bit more stingy, but changing your mind on weapons here shouldn’t handicap you much. There’s also a really good spot to farm these. These can take a weapon to +6. Chunks are where things get difficult. Unless you farm them, 2-3 weapons at most will reach +9. To get a weapon to +10, you have to use a Blood Rock. There’s 1 in the base game, and 1 in the DLC. You can find them in randomly generated Chalice Dungeons, but nobody wants to farm that. Even someone who likes Chalice Dungeons, like me, will find that annoying. Oh! One more thing! When you die, you drop all Blood Echoes on the spot. If you die again, you lose all of them, but if you make it back to the spot without dying, you can pick them all back up.[/quote] Ah ok, so a diminishing return system, gotcha. I thought the Blood Stone system would be something like that, is there a big difference in strength between weapons that are maxed out with a Blood Rock and those that are only maxed out with Blood Chunks? (Blood Chunks sounds absolutely disgusting haha). So if I were to die in a boss fight (which I'm expecting to happen... A lot), I'd have to go back to the boss fight area, pick them up and beat them before being able to go back and use them to upgrade or level up?

Not really. A +9 weapon will work just fine in most situations. If you drop your Echoes in an arena, you have 3 options. 1. Forget about them. 2. Pick them up, and beat the boss. 3. Pick them up, and use a Bold Hunter’s Mark, which warps you to the hub. If you pick up your Echoes, and then die, they’ll drop into a new puddle, so you can potentually just pick them up every time, until you win. Oh, one more one more thing. Most NPCs aren’t met face to face. Be on the look out for red lanterns next to doors, and windows. Missed just about every NPC the first time around.

Alright, thank you for the help, really appreciate it.

Same here

This is the same post I posted above, but assuming by “same here” you meant you also wanted tips, and in case you didn’t see it, here’s the tips post; [spoiler] Sure. The most common thing that’s confusing in Soulsborne, I think, is the levelling system. It’s fairly straightforward in how it works, but what does what isn’t really ever explained, outside of some brief descriptions. First, XP. Like most games, you get XP, known as Blood Echoes, by felling enemies. You spend these Echoes with a particular person in the hub, and each level up will raise one stat by 1 point. Unlike most games, XP also serves as money, to upgrade/repair weapons, and buy anything at the store. Regular stats are as follows; Vitality-Will raise your HP Endurance-Will raise your stamina Strength-see explanation of “scaling” Skill-Scaling Bloodtinge-Scaling Arcane-Scaling Scaling is how your weapon damage is calculated. Each weapon will have a Strength, Skill, Bloodtinge, and Arcane scaling stat. “-“ means no scaling, while E, D, C, B, A, and S represent a scaling value, with E being worst, S being best. A weapon with “S” strength scaling will get stronger by how high your Strebrg stat is. All stats soft cap at 50. Reinforcing your weapons uses “Blood Stones”, which come in 4 different forms of rarity; Shard, Twin Shards, Chunk, and Rock. You need 16 of each type, except Rock, of which you only need one, to fully upgrade a weapon. This raises all its stats, scaling values, and Gem slots. On a similar note, Blood Gems are semi-random drops, that simply raise various stats. A weapon can have up to 3. Only specific types of Blood Gems can go in each spot. Finally, rallying. Rally is a mechanic, wherein when you’re hit, the health you just lost will turn light red, and turn black after a few seconds. During this time, hitting most enemies will restore the lost health. I think that’s most of the basics.[/spoiler]

Thanks man