As mentioned previously, proper item usage can make a world of a difference in this game. There are several utilities, some build specific but some universal, that the player can use to less painfully reach the game’s ending credits. Today’s list will discuss the best and worst options for three different item categories: Consumable, Throwable and Hunter’s Tools. What makes these three subcategories of items distinct will be clarified on. Let’s begin.

Consumables

If you can only press a button and use that item so many times, it’s consumable. But since that also applies to most throwable items or, Projectiles, Consumables will also mean an item that the player applies to themselves. Though I’m not considering it for this list, Blood Vials are an example of a consumable; you don’t throw them at any one or any thing, your character consumes them.

Just for clarity, Blood Vials and Quicksilver Bullets have been excluded from this section. They are consumable, but they function as items which are integral to the core gameplay loop of Bloodborne. As such, they would almost definitely be the #1 and #2 best consumable items on just that logic alone. For similar reasons, I have chosen to ban the One Third of an Umbilical Cord item from today’s list, as this item is strictly tied to one of the game’s endings, and ranking it properly would be difficult.

Honorable Mentions–

Bone Marrow Ash – The reason I can’t consider this for the best consumable is simply that it’s build specific. If you aren’t doing a Bloodtinge build, this item may as well not exist for you. But if you are, this item instead turns into crack cocaine, an addiction that’s difficult to rid yourself of. Just show up and start blasting!

Beast Blood Pellet – I really want to pour my heart out into this one more than just as an honorable mention, because professional caliber players make this item look genuinely overpowered. However, there are two flaws with this item. The first is availability, as the player can’t get any of these until fairly late in the game. The second is that this item naturally imposes a high skill curve that can be difficult to meet for most players. If you are a good player, you probably don’t need me to tell you the potential this item harbors.

Sedative – This item barely got the nod over Antidotes, because it’s slightly more broadly useful than they are. Poison will take a long, long time to kill, but Frenzy can be a death sentence in a troublingly high number of situations. As well, Sedative helps to counteract the negative effects of Beast Blood Pellets, making them even more volatile.

Best Consumable – Fire/Bolt Paper

It’s straight up impossible to consistently say one is better than the other, so they both end up here. There is nothing bad to say about these items. The game gives them to the player at basically the best time possible- Fire Paper is acquired early game, where the player has a number of different beast targets, as beasts are weak to Fire. Then late game, Bolt Paper can be acquired. Kin enemies make up a lot of the late to end game roster, and since Kin is weak to Bolt, Bolt Paper is available to the player at the perfect time. Of course, Kin and Beasts alike do not truly disappear from this game, so there’s never a point in time where these items are anything less than incredibly useful, and for all builds at that.

“Dis”Honorable Mentions–

Blue Elixir- These items are maybe okay if you’re going through the Defiled Chalice Dungeon and don’t want to slowly, carefully kill any enemy you come across. You can also, hilariously, use this to get a free visceral attack on basically any NPC in the game, including names like Bloody Crow of Cainhurst or Madaras Twin. The broad list of uses for this item end there. Some speedrunners may use it in seemingly random situations. Are you a speedrunner? No? Steer clear of this item, then.

Lead Elixirs- This item is a fantastic way for newer players reading its woefully inaccurate, misleading description, to get themselves killed in hilarious fashion. In actuality, this is kind of like the Baldachin’s Blessing from Elden Ring, though you at least don’t lose any of your max HP with Lead Elixirs. For a period of time, you gain a ton of poise and become nearly impossible to interrupt with physical damage. Sounds overpowered, right? You are mostly uninterruptable, but you are not invincible. The only part the item description gets right is the part where it notes that it doesn’t give the player any defense and makes them slower. Why in all of Yharnam would you want to be slower in this game, especially without any protection to compensate? This item can be kind of okay for really speedy weapons like the Blade of Mercy, but good luck wielding it to its full “potential” without getting yourself killed.

Worst Consumable- Tear Blood Gem

What’s that? You’ve never heard of this item before? I don’t blame you, though I might encourage you to do a little more poking around in the Cathedral Ward if that’s the case. Having said that, even if you comb over every inch of this entire game, you may still miss this item. But that’s okay, because all this giant waste of time has to offer to the player is… tiny amounts of passive health regeneration.

This is basically the Sun Princess Ring from Dark Souls 1 and 3. When equipped, it heals the player for 2 HP per second. But how do you equip it, you ask? It’s a Blood Gem, meaning the player has to find space for it on their main hand weapon. Why would you ever equip this over another Blood Gem, even extremely low leveled Blood Gems, that offer more helpful bonuses? Tiny amounts of a Physical Attack bonus are infinitely more useful than this, and they are available in spades all across the game.

And yes, this does technically meet the threshold for a consumable. The player finds an item, consumes it, and it turns into this waste of space.

Projectiles

If you press the square button and your character throws something at someone, it’s a projectile. There aren’t any items I’ve ‘banned’ from this section, so everything is on the table.

Honorable mentions –

Shaman Bone Blade – These don’t work on most enemies in the game, which may make them seem little more than elaborate Throwing Knives. If you’ve any aspirations to get the Rakuyo weapon in particular though, these items do actually work on the Shark-Giant enemies found at the end of the game though. Shark-Giants are harder to kill than most bosses, but are rendered trivial by this item alone. That’s enough to at least earn it a mention.

Poison Knife – These are also not the most broadly useful, but they come in really handy trying to cheese basically anything in this game. Bloody Crow of Cainhurst keeps kicking your ass? Toy with his AI and continue to pepper him with knives while he has no idea what to do. Tired of getting blasted by Micolash? Just stand overhead and throw these at him in second phase while he stands there and lets you play target practice.

Oil Urn – These pots can set the player up for some serious damage, and they can be used against basically any enemy one could think of. Nothing likes being lit on fire, and oil makes that fire deal twice as much damage. What’s not to like?

Best Projectile – Numbing Mist

This is a fantastic back breaker in PvP, it’s great for fighting enemy hunters and it even has application in an important, mandatory boss fight against Vicar Amelia. Effective use of this item can completely deny certain enemies of the ability to heal, such as the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst, who won’t even attempt to heal again if the player makes him try but fail to heal once.

“Dis”Honorable Mentions –

Throwing Knife – Yay, more expensive Pebble! These do very little damage, and the player can only carry 20 of them, enough to kill maybe 3 or 4 small enemies. They have no utility apart from getting something’s attention, which Pebbles can do and are cheaper to buy at that.

Rope Molotov Cocktail – From Software has this weird obsession across their games with giving the player a throwable that they throw behind them. What’s the point of an item like this? You have to get really close to effectively use this, at which point, just attack with your melee weapon. Or maybe just take a Molotov Cocktail that you throw forward like a normal human being.

Worst Projectile – Pungent Blood Cocktails

These items have no right being so expensive for how niche they are. In almost any situation, this item either simply does absolutely nothing, or the player can get by with simply killing the enemy or enemies in question, and not waste thousands of Blood Echoes distracting something for roughly three seconds. The most value the average player will ever get from a Pungent Blood Cocktail is getting a free visceral off against the Blood-Starved Beast at the beginning of the fight. It has to be the beginning, because this item straight up stops working in that fight before long.

Sure, this item isn’t completely useless and it does have its moments, but it also has strong, consistent competition stacked up against it. Why would you spend a ridiculous 10,000 Blood Echoes for just one of these? If you wanted to use them at any stage of the game remotely considered ‘late game’, you’d better be ready to pony up that much.

Hunter’s Tools

The term ‘Hunter’s Tool’ is basically fancy talk for what would be more commonly known across the Soulsborne series as a ‘spell’. All of these Hunters Tools have stat prerequisites stemming from the Arcane stat. So, if you are not making an Arcane character, there is no reason to seriously look at anything we will be discussing in this section.

Honorable Mentions –

Empty Phantasm Shell – If Fire and Bolt Paper weren’t so good, maybe this would be the best Hunter’s Tool. As is, it’s sort of a “Temu Paper” in that it cannot exploit enemy weaknesses like Fire and Bolt Paper can, but it costs far less to use and has a modest stat requirement of 15 in Arcane. Players not making dedicated Arcane builds could still make room for this in their arsenal.

Augur of Ebrietas – This isn’t the flashiest Hunter’s Tool, but it arguably boasts the most broad utility. This is another Hunter’s Tool non-dedicated Arcane builds can get some use out of, as it doubles as a parry tool. It can deal solid damage, knocks back enemies so it possesses elements of crowd control, and it only costs a single Quicksilver Bullet to cast, so it’s pretty spammable. Nothing not to like here.

Blacksky Eye – I had a big debate over which one would get highlighted as the best that involved this Hunter’s Tool. Blacksky Eye was really close, but the tiebreaker was the state of the game in which it’s received. Blacksky Eye, for as rudimentary as it is, is surprisingly not available until all the way in the game’s DLC, so the player won’t be able to wield this for long before their first playthrough ends. Other than that, Blacksky Eye is pretty much flawless and a worthy addition to any Arcane build’s arsenal.

Best Hunter’s Tool – Executioner’s Gloves

Sadly, Martyr Logarius gets a better version of this which is inaccessible to the player. But even then, the watered down iteration is still really, really good. The player fires a cluster of three skulls forward with this, and unless the enemy has a solid wall they can quickly put between themselves and the bullets, this spell will hit them every single time. Because of how the bullets are fired, the player can also wield this Hunter’s Tool like a shotgun, promptly cramming it up the rears of huge enemies like Ebrietas, Ludwig or Mergo’s Wet Nurse and firing it for some huge damage. It only costs three Quicksilver Bullets, so the expenditure is perfectly manageable.

“Dis”Honorable Mentions-

Choir Bell – Costs too many Quicksilver Bullets to use, and is basically worthless on solo playthroughs where the player can replicate the value by using an Antidote or a Sedative completely freely.

Old Hunter Bone – Bloody Crow of Cainhurst makes this out to look way stronger than it actually is. Most of that is because Bloody Crow can just spam this all he wants, given that he has unlimited Quicksilver Bullets. In the hands of the player, this costs four Quicksilver Bullets and it works for less than a minute. The effect isn’t even that useful, either, and it poses the dangerous risk of turning into a crutch if used too much.

Messenger’s Gift – This is basically Chameleon from the Dark Souls trilogy, only it is so, so much worse in this game. In the DS trilogy, Chameleon actually can work pretty effectively against players who do not know an area particularly well. Chameleon turns the user into a piece of the environment they’re actively in, so they can blend in. Messenger’s Gift turns the player into a swathe of Messengers regardless of where it is used. It does so in a way where the player stands out very, very much. Even if facing a player who has never been through the area before, they can sniff this trap out by simply looking at the user from a great distance away. As such, Messenger’s Gift fails at what it sets out to do entirely. Yet, it is somehow less disappointing than our selection for worst today…

Worst Hunter’s Tool – A Call Beyond

I’m sure you could nitpick and find a way to argue this thing is less useless than Messenger’s Gift. Fair and fine enough. What isn’t arguable though, is that this is easily the most disappointing Hunter’s Tool by a mile. Heck, never mind Hunter’s Tools, A Call Beyond would have to be a leading candidate for the most disappointing thing, period, in all of Bloodborne. This is a classic instance of From Software creating something, making that thing incredibly powerful for the enemy, then later giving the player a comically watered down version of that thing.

In the hands of Micolash, Damian, Ebrietas, even some random, nameless NPC at Byrgenwerth, A Call Beyond is frighteningly powerful. It can basically one shot the player even if they have gross amounts of Vitality. What happens when the player gets ahold of it?

It fires out anywhere from ten to a dozen bullets. Go ahead and count on at least half of them immediately skydiving right into the floor uselessly. As for the other half, they’ll randomly go flying out in the air, and you’ll be genuinely lucky if one or two of them actually connect with an enemy. Then, when that one bullet does somehow land, it still does less damage than if you’d just wacked them in the face with an R2 off your melee weapon. Reminder that this costs seven Quicksilver Bullets to cast. What’s the point? Why would you do this to us, From Software, oh why?