Living Failures

"The sky and the cosmos are one. "

— The Choir

Living Failures
Affiliation	Kin
Locations	Lumenwood Garden
Drops	Astral Clocktower Key
Health
NG	NG+
20646	30072
Blood Echoes
NG	NG+
22000	85668
Defenses
239	273
102	71
92	171
256	205
180

The Living Failures are a boss in Bloodborne's The Old Hunters DLC.

Description

The Living Failures resemble a Celestial Minion, although their heads have melted into their bodies and they lack any facial features. Like the Emissary, they can cast powerful energy orbs and are also capable of summoning meteors.

Despite looking the same, the Failures have two variants, the Arcane and the Brute. The Arcane will simply act as a ranged combatant, casting slow traveling Arcane orbs, either multiple but small homing orbs, or a large explosive one. The Brute variant merely follows the player and tries to attack them by flailing its arms or hitting with their heads.

Location

• Lumenwood Garden:
  • Atop the Research Hall, accessible after activating the stair mechanism.

Lore

Due to their location in the Lumenwood Garden and proximity to the Research Hall, it's likely that these creatures are the result of the Healing Church's attempts to create a Celestial Emissary through human experimentation with the Old Blood.

The blue hue to their skin is reminiscent of that boss, as well as the much smaller Celestial Minions that are found in the Lumenflower Gardens.

Strategy

The Living Failures are not a single boss, but rather multiple bosses of the same kind.

Each Living Failure can be slain one at a time and doing so lowers the boss health gauge. Bolt damage and Thrust damage is also advised as it is still Kin.

The Lumenwood tree in the middle of the garden can be used to block the Arcane orbs and separate the Failures. If the player stands on the left side of the tree; when facing the garden from the entrance, it will block all the cosmic attack.

Another way to help defend again this attack is to use the newly found Loch Shield, which provides good arcane defense.

Try to backstab as many as possible when they engage in the Cosmic Meteor attack.

​Boss Attacks

• Arm Swings: Failures will either perform a single or double swipe at the player. This attack has deceptively long reach but can be interrupted.
• Homing Blast: Failures will cast a large orb of energy similar to Martyr Logarius' Homing Orb. These orbs will explode on contact or after a short delay.
• Headbutt: Failures will perform this attack if the player stands directly in front of them at close range. It can also be interrupted however the timing is very short.
• Frontal Slam: A slower frontal attack that is only performed if the player stands in front of a Failure.
• Cosmic Missiles: A Failure will briefly pause and fire several blasts of energy. This attack can be blocked using the Lumenwood tree or by evading to the side.
• Meteor Swarm: Once the boss health is below 60% it will begin using this attack. All Living Failures will stop moving and raise their hands to the sky which begins to darken. A barrage of meteors will rain down onto the arena causing severe damage if struck. However, if the player stands behind the tree, it will shield them from the meteors as they always approach from the right side. Alternatively, the player can backstab one of the Failures and use a Visceral attack as the meteors start falling. The animation will render you invincible until the attack ends.

Notes

• There is a sort of bug when using the Oedon Writhe or Blood Rapture against the Living Failures. Since the boss can multiply into 4 different enemies, upon a successful visceral attack on one of them, it will count as if the player had done that attack against the four of them at once, netting 4 times over the regular reward.
  • This means that if players have the best version of Oedon Writhe and perform a single visceral attack on the Living Failures (while there are 4 of them), the reward will be a whopping 12 Quicksilver Bullets. With all of the Oedon Writhe runes equipped, players will receive an astounding amount of 24 Quicksilver Bullets.
  • Likewise, if doing a visceral attack with the highest version of Blood Rapture players receive an instant 1200 health back. With all of the Blood Rapture runes equipped, they shall restore an overwhelming amount of 3000 health points back.
    • This amount is enough to restore a player with 99 Vitality and with all Clockwise Metamorphosis runes equipped, completely back to full hp.

Trivia

• These enemies appear to be extremely similar to the Celestial Emissary, while also bearing a resemblance to the Clocktower Patients, which links them to the experiments that the Healing Church conducted.
• This fight is reminiscent of the Four Kings in Dark Souls, as they both will keep respawning after dying, yet there can never be more than four enemies at a time.
• Their name in Japanese is: '失敗作たち'.

Videos

Bloodborne First Blood (22) - Research Hall & Living Failures

Living Failures - Bloodborne - The Old Hunters Part 8

Living Failures NG++ - Skill Build

Music

Bloodborne DLC Official Soundtrack - Living Failures

Nobuyoshi Suzuki - Living Failures (Extended) (Bloodborne Full Extended Soundtrack, OST)

Gallery

Living Failures concept art

Their meteors