Bloodborne Hidden Secrets Guide: Missable Areas, Items & Easter Eggs (PC Remaster 4K)

Bloodborne hides half its content behind walls you'd never think to check. I missed Cainhurst Castle entirely on my first playthrough. An entire area. With a boss. And one of the best weapons in the game. This guide covers the stuff the game never tells you about, plus some visual details the remaster mod reveals that weren't visible on PS4.

Some of these secrets are well known. Others are things I stumbled into by accident or read about on a wiki at 2am. I'm not going to list every single item in every area. But these are the big ones you'll actually regret missing.

Cainhurst Castle

This is the most missable area in the game and it's not even close.

First, you need the Cainhurst Summons. It's in Iosefka's Clinic. But not the front door. From the Forbidden Woods, there's a hidden cave behind the dog cages near the village. Follow the cave through poison water and a ladder. This path leads to the back of Iosefka's Clinic through the roof.

Inside the clinic, on an operating table, there's the summons. Don't kill Iosefka if you're doing her questline. If you do kill her, you get a rune but it's not as good as the one you get from finishing her quest properly later.

With the summons in hand, go to Hemwick Charnel Lane. At the crossroads near the executioner enemies, there's a stone obelisk. Approach it with the summons and a cutscene triggers. A carriage pulled by dead horses takes you to Cainhurst.

Cainhurst is worth it for three things. One, the Executioner's Gloves hunter tool, which is a top tier arcane item. Two, the Reiterpallasch, a rapier that can parry while transformed. Three, Martyr Logarius, one of the best bosses in the game. And the Crown of Illusions after beating him reveals a hidden throne room with the Vileblood Queen and the option to join her covenant.

Upper Cathedral Ward

Locked behind a door in Cathedral Ward that needs the Upper Cathedral Ward Key. The key is in Yahar'gul, the Unseen Village. After the Blood Moon rises, the key is on a corpse in a jail cell near the second lamp.

Upper Cathedral Ward is terrifying. The brainsuckers here are everywhere and they steal Insight with every grab. Don't carry more than 10 Insight into this area. Spend it on items at the Insight Bath Messenger in the Hunter's Dream first.

The payoff: the area has the Cosmic Eye Watcher Badge which unlocks bolt paper and the Rosmarinus flamethrower. It also leads to the Celestial Emissary and Ebrietas boss fights. Ebrietas is optional but drops the Isz Chalice and lets you revive the Vileblood Queen if you've been doing Alfred's questline.

The Abandoned Old Workshop

This is the source of about half the lore theories on YouTube.

From the Cathedral Ward lamp, go through the door on the right that opens after killing the Blood Starved Beast. Take the elevator up. When the elevator stops at the top, roll out through a gap in the wall as it descends. There's a wooden platform halfway down. Walk across the beams carefully and drop onto the lower platform.

Inside the workshop, you find the real Hunter's Dream. Or the original one anyway. There's the Doll, lifeless. A One Third of Umbilical Cord on the altar. The Small Hair Ornament that you can give to the Doll in the dream for a Tear Stone. And the Old Hunter Bone tool, which gives you a faster dodge with more i-frames. That tool is amazing for PVP.

With the remaster mod, the lantern inside the abandoned workshop actually emits dynamic light now. On PS4 it was just a texture. You can see dust particles floating in the beam. Tiny detail but it makes the room feel properly abandoned rather than just dark.

The Brain of Mensis Secret

In the Nightmare of Mensis, after dropping Micolash's health low enough to chase him into the final room, there's a path you might miss. Before going into the final room, there's a lever you can pull that drops the Brain of Mensis into a pit. The brain is the giant eye creature that was causing frenzy during the earlier section.

After pulling the lever, backtrack through the area. Take the elevator near the Mergo's Loft Middle lamp down. There's a new path leading to a dark pit. The brain is down there, harmless now. Use the "Make Contact" gesture in front of it for about 30 seconds until your character's arms switch position. Wait another 30 seconds. You get the Moon Rune, which increases echoes gained by 30 percent. Best farming rune in the game.

Also, kill the brain after getting the rune. It drops a Living String, which is required to access the final Pthumeru chalice dungeon.

Arianna's Questline

This is easy to mess up. After killing three bosses, Arianna appears in Cathedral Ward near the lamp. She's a woman of ill repute and she asks for a safe place. Send her to the chapel, not the clinic.

Later in the game, after the Blood Moon, she moves to the basement of the chapel. She gives birth to a celestial child. Killing it drops a One Third of Umbilical Cord. You need at least three of these for the true ending. This is one of the four available in the game.

If you send her to the clinic instead of the chapel, Iosefka experiments on her and you lose access to the cord. If you take too much of her blood early on, she disappears. If Adella the nun is also in the chapel and gets jealous, she might kill Arianna. Keep Adella away from Arianna by never taking Adella's blood.

Remaster Mod Visual Secrets

This is specific to the PC remaster. The mod's SSR and dynamic lighting reveal details that were literally invisible on PS4.

In the Hunter's Dream, look at the puddles near the workshop. They now reflect the moon and the burning workshop in the distance. On PS4 these puddles were just grey blobs.

Old Yharnam's smoke effects interact with the point lights from the burning beasts. The light scatters through the smoke instead of just being a flat orange fog. You can see Djura's assistant on the minigun tower more clearly because the muzzle flash actually lights up his position.

The Fishing Hamlet at the end of the DLC has rain. On PS4 the rain was a flat screen effect. With the remaster mod, water surfaces ripple when rain hits them. It's subtle but once you notice it, the area feels way more atmospheric.

In Yahar'gul after the Blood Moon, the Amygdala creatures clinging to buildings are lit by the paleblood moon with proper god rays. On PS4 they were dark silhouettes. Now you can see the detail on their bodies. Honestly this makes them creepier, not less creepy. Sometimes detail is not your friend.

These aren't gameplay secrets exactly. But finding this stuff is part of why the remaster exists. The original Bloodborne was a compromised version of what FromSoftware built. The mod just turns on what was already there.