Central Yharnam
Previous: 1st Floor Sickroom
The right gate will be locked, so head left and open up to your first glimpse of Central Yharnam. You’re relatively safe here, but when you head up to the right you’ll want to hang left. There you’ll find one enemy prowling around, with a torch and blade. Walk up quickly, and start with a heavy attack (R2). Keep along that path and you’ll find two sleeping enemies. Take the one out on the right first, and then the left, before they finish their animations, and you should remain untouched.
There’s a ladder and a lever. Pull the lever, and it should open the gate. Don’t go through the gate! Climb the ladder instead, and you’ll be greeted by a lantern! There’s a gate to the left, but like most gates you’ve encountered thus far, it’ll be locked. Head right instead. You’ll go down a short flight of stairs, and see a bridge. Get ready, because the second you cross the bridge an enemy will come bursting through. Take him out with a good R2 attack. If you look to your left, you’ll see a ledge that you can jump down. Don’t do it just yet. Instead, continue on your path. Once you round the corner, you’ll find two more enemies – one sleeping, another looking out over the ledge. Kill the sleeping one with R2 quickly, then try to get another R2 attack on the lookout enemy, who you’ll find has a shield. An R2 attack on him will make him vulnerable to further attacks. You’ll hear some shuffling, but don’t mind that noise. It’s only a much more powerful enemy down the stairs and around the corner.
Head back the way you came, and drop down the ledge. Try to land on the pile of stuff directly below to minimize your damage. Don’t worry about the noise, the single enemy down below won’t hear you. Walk slowly up to him while targeted, and hit him with a charged R2 attack. This should do him in. You can knock on the door to the right for some one-sided conversation. If you start to head down the stairs to the left, you’ll encounter a group of villagers. Beware, they can see you if you’re on the edge, near the railing. Try to get one villager at a time to see you so they can rush up the stairs and you can take them one-on-one. Target them and wait until they’re within striking distance. Move towards them and press R2 to perform a leaping strike, and follow that up with a couple of R1 attacks. You’ll likely have attracted the attention of other villagers by this point, so get ready to backstep with circle to regroup, and possibly heal by pressing triangle. After five or so kills, the area should be clear.
You can head down the stairs and turn left, but only after you’re used to the game’s mechanics. After walking down the path for a while, you’ll hear that shuffling you heard a few moments ago. Turn left at the end of the alley, and you’ll see a sword-wielding gentleman I refer to as “Bubba.” Bubba is a very powerful enemy for beginners. He has a simple back-and-forth route, and when his back is turned you’ll want to clear out the debris between him and you. When you’re ready, target him and make sure you’ve always got him in your sights. There is no sneaking up on him, so try to get in a good first attack. You’ll probably find more success keeping your weapon in close-range mode, because he’s too quick for your charged up or ranged attacks. After you hit him no more than twice in a row, immediately backstep out to dodge his incoming attack. Try to lure him out into a more open area for your best chance at survival. Wait for his next attack, which is hopefully a lunge, and sidestep it. Immediately run towards him as he finishes collecting himself, and go for as many quick R1 attacks as you can manage, three at most. Dodge back, and wait for his next attack. Don’t get too far away from him, otherwise you run the risk of no longer targeting him while he can still see you. This is when he’ll likely use a jump attack that is very powerful and hard to dodge. With patience and practice you can take him relatively easily. He’s mostly here as a stash of Blood Echoes to collect, since he’s not guarding anything particularly valuable. Head back up the alleyway to continue.
It’s time for another sleeping enemy. Once you run past the flaming cross to your left and a carriage to your right, you might miss the enemy that is sleeping in front of some stairs. Use his laziness to your advantage, and hit him with R2 before he sees it coming. Since it’s early in the game you’ll likely have to follow this up with an R1 attack. Head up the stairs. To your right, you’ll see some more stairs. Walk up the left side of them, and a hidden enemy will make his presence known. Take him out with an R2 attack as well. Collect any items his corpse leaves behind, and head back down. Right of the stairs is a lamppost. Once you get to it, another lazily-hidden enemy is waiting. So dispatch him with a quick press of R2 as well.
Head down the path a little bit to see a whole bunch of villagers gathered around the bonfire. You’ll see some stairs to your left. Don’t head down them, but rather get to the top. This will trigger a couple of villagers to attack you. Stay up top, and take them one at a time. Around three villagers in total will try to best you, including a harder enemy with a sword. Just take your time and dodge when necessary. Then, head to the right of the stairs, and you’ll see an enemy staring down a gated hallway. Target him, and approach slowly. Use a charged R2 attack immediately followed up by R1, and you should perform a stealth kill. You’ll hear some menacing grunting in the area, but you don’t have to worry about that for now.
Still alive? Good job! You’ve come further than most, especially if this is your first playthrough. Head back the way you came, and you’ll see a break in the railing. You can use this to lure enemies up to where you are. Target someone, preferably not one with a shield, and hit them with a bullet from your gun. For some reason, enemies who hear the shot merely look in your direction, and if you’re far enough away they don’t come towards you, but the enemy that you hit will know exactly where you are and will come racing towards you. Be careful that you don’t shoot an enemy carrying a gun – there is one on top of a stagecoach directly opposite this perch, and one to the right between two stagecoaches looking at the fire. They will shoot at you once you make noise, but their bullets are pretty slow and don’t do too much damage.
At this point, you may realize that there are only a few enemies left. Don’t think your victory is assured, however. Pick off as many non-gun-wielding enemies as you can, and then head back down the path. Don’t go down these nearby stairs, because the fire will put you at a disadvantage. Instead, head back all the way past the two hidden enemies you killed earlier, and head down those stairs. Some of the villagers who were originally lollygagging around the fire are now on the hunt for you, so you’ll have to take care of them outside earshot of those two gun toters. Head back down the alley and defeat the last two or three enemies.
By this point, there should be four villagers left around the fire that you can take out separately, not including the gun enemies. Head towards the fire, but stop along the side of the left staircase. If you stay out towards the middle of the street, two of the roaming enemies up top should see you and start to move towards you. If not, lure them towards you by shooting them. Be careful though – the rifleman up top can see you for quite some distance, so you’ll likely want to backstep and take out enemies from some distance away from him. Your gun is too weak at this point to do any real damage to him, so run up the stairs, wait until he fires, then lunge at him with R2 followed up by R1 if needed. Stay on top of his stagecoach, and you’ll hear some barking. It’s an undead dog. There’s likely still a gunman below, but most of the time he’s seemingly blind and won’t see you.
The dog, on the other hand, will definitely see you. Target it if you can, and move off the stagecoach. Make your way towards the stairs beyond the stagecoach, and the dog will usually end up running up them to try to get at you. With your weapon in close-range mode, a few swipes of R1 should dispatch this evil pooch. Head down the stairs and take down the last remaining enemy. You can continue down the path where the large door is being repeatedly banged on, but there’s nothing here worth noting. Head back up the stairs you came down, and into the next area.
If you’re hurt at all and have more than one blood vial, use it now. Don’t ever let yourself have your maximum of 20 blood vials while you’re hurt, because you’ll miss out on any additional blood vials that you might find. Head down the path and down some stairs to a fountain. Surprisingly, there are no enemies here that warrant your immediate attention, other than an ogre I like to call “Grunty” off to the right. He’ll be banging away at the door, but his bark is worse than his bite.
Target him, and approach at any speed you like; he’ll see you relatively soon, and start to turn around. Once he does, move back until he can’t see you anymore. He’ll go back to his spot, but won’t be knocking any more. Approach Grunty again, targeted. You can get up nice and close, and pull an R2-R1 combo to perform a stealth kill on him. Peace o’ cake!
If you head back to the other side of the fountain, you’ll see some decrepit stagecoaches and a pile of undead crows. They’re pretty easily dealt with using R1. Collect any goodies they leave behind, don’t forget to check under and around the coffins, and heal if you’re hurt at all! Now head up the stairs opposite where you came from.
You’ll see two flights of stairs. If you quickly head up both and look to your right, you’ll see an undead hound. Take him out as quickly as you can, because three villagers and another hound will be heading down the stairs a bit further down the path. You can take all three head-on if you’re feeling brave, but beware that there is another hound to your left. Your best bet is to lure the hounds back down below, and then take care of the villagers. One of them is equipped with a gun, another with a torch, and the third is a dual-wielder. Nothing you haven’t seen before.
If you haven’t cashed in any Blood Echoes by this point, you’ll want to. Go ahead and go back the way you came, through the hallway, and back to either lantern that you’ve lit so far. I say this because if you haven’t gone back to the Hunter’s Dream and at least bought some of the new equipment that has been unlocked so far, you probably won’t survive this next encounter, and run the risk of losing what no doubt is a hefty amount of Blood Echoes by this point.
Next: Great Bridge
