Haven’t picked up Bloodborne yet? Read our full review. Trying to beat every boss in the game, or having trouble getting past a certain point? Head over to our Bloodborne walkthrough, where we’ll talk you through everything step by step.
Before you invade, there are a couple of ground rules we need to cover. First, the tools you need to allow other gamers to join your game are locked when you begin playing. This means you’ll need to spend at least a little bit of time by yourself in Yharnam. Once you have at least 1 Insight, you can travel back to the Hunter’s Dream to pick up the Beckoning Bell and Silencing Blank from a group of messengers on the ground. Now you’ll need to ring the Beckoning Bell to open your world to co-op, and when you’re ready for the other players to leave, use the Silencing Blank. Just keep in mind that ringing the Beckoning Bell will use 1 Insight.
On the other side of things, you’re able to use another item, the Small Resonant Bell, to join other player’s sessions and help them out. This will require that you purchase the Small Resonant Bell from the Insight market, which requires 10 Insight before it will even show up.
To earn Insight, you’ll either need to use a Madman’s Knowledge consumable, or defeat one of the bosses in the game. The first time you encounter a boss you’ll gain 1 Insight. Once you kill that boss you’ll earn a total of 3 Insight. Before you go using all those Madman’s Knowledge sitting in your inventory, you should know one thing. The higher your Insight is, the more difficult the game will be. If you run into tougher enemies that you can’t seem to get past, check your Insight level and burn some if necessary.
Before you can invade other players you’ll have to own the Sinister Resonant Bell, which can be purchased from the same Insight market where you picked up the Small Resonant Bell. It’s a bit more expensive, however, as you are required to earn at least 30 Insight points before you can participate in Bloodborne’s PVP. Along with this high Insight stipulation, your luck in finding a world to invade is all dependent on whether or not a bell-ringer woman is in the other player’s game. This makes PVP tough to spend a lot of time with, as the bell-ringer will only appear when a host initiates a co-op session, or sometimes from random events that happen throughout the game world. If you’re having trouble joining a PVP match, chances are it isn’t your connection. It’s mostly just how the game works.
If you get lucky enough to find an applicable match-up, there are a couple of things you should know about PVP in Bloodborne. As the invader, you have a time-limit in which you must kill the other player. This time-limit works in the form of an area boss. If the invaded player happens to kill you or beat the boss before you can kill him or her, then you’ll get transported back to your world with nothing to show for your troubles. If, however, you manage to take down the other hunter, you’ll have a nice shiny new Insight point to show for it, as well as the player-spilled blood which will now cover your Saw-Spear.
Chances are most of you already know this, but if for some reason you’re confused, all of the Messengers and scrolls scattered throughout your world are the result of the asynchronous multiplayer feature within Bloodborne. This feature allows you to leave notes for other players and vice versa. It also allows you to see what happened to players, if they died when rounding a corner or heading up some stairs, or whatever the case may be. These are great things to pay attention to when playing, as they can lead to hidden treasures, ambushes and death traps. You should also take into account the more mischievous side of other players, as some of these messages are bound to lead you to your death.
That’s all we have today, so what are you waiting for? Get out there and ring those Beckoning Bells. Get your friends together and take down every boss you can. If you still need help, you can check out our Bloodborne character creation guide, as well as our in-depth guide to farming blood echoes and how to level up fast in Bloodborne. We also talk about why games like Bloodborne aren’t for everyone.
