As if I needed another reason to boot up Bloodborne and accidentally play the whole game again.
Yesterday, Bloodborne speedrunner GiantCookieJar discovered a glitch that let his brave hunter clip through some walls in the starting area and reach the Forbidden Woods, not unlike a similar skip that was patched out years ago involving a well-positioned jump onto a ledge. We're back in business!
This demonstration from Distortion2 shows how the new skip in Iosefka's Clinic works.
After alerting the first enemy in the game – a low-health werewolf who won't respawn – you need to turn around, run up the stairs, and get the wolf to grab you in the left corner. While you're being grabbed, "you want to spam L2 and R2" to clip out of bounds, then walk to the right, and drop down.
"You can skip straight to the Forbidden Woods on a fresh character," according to Distortion2. That means you can bypass bosses like Father Gascoigne, Blood-Starved Beast, and Vicar Amelia.
"The mashing of L2 and R2 is important when you get grabbed because it does a different animation where your character pushes the wolf off of you, and that allows you to actually clip through things."
Given From Software's history with patches, this trick might not last forever, so try it while you can. If you'd like to see the skip used in a speedrun, here's an encouraging early example from Romanticore.
