Clocktower Patient

Clocktower Patient

Affiliation	The Healing Church
Locations	Research Hall
Drops	Regular, Naked, Bottle Thrower, Headless and Arcane: Blood Vial x1 Feral: Random blood gem x1 Blood Vial x2 Infected: Random Murky Blood Gem x1 Quicksilver Bullets x8 Head: Madman's Knowledge x1 Frenzied Coldblood (8) x1 Blue Elixir x1 Giant: Random gun type Blood gem x1 Blood Vial x4 Bound: Quicksilver Bullets x1-2
Health
NG	NG+
Regular, Naked, Headless, Head, Arcane and Bound: 688 Bottle Thrower: 458 Feral: 1299 Infected: 382 Giant: 3058	???
Blood Echoes
NG	NG+
Regular: 871 Bottle Thrower and Bound: 1198 Feral: 1525 Infected, Head and Arcane: 1307 Headless: 653 Giant: 3594 Naked: 1089	???
Defenses

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"Listen close... and you, too, will hear...
The sound of… water. "

— Clocktower Patient by the window

The Clocktower Patient is an enemy in The Old Hunters DLC.

Description[]

The Clocktower Patients are a type of enemy that populate the Research Hall.

Having been experimented with by the Healing Church, their bodies have become elongated and their heads have bloated into a tumorous, leathery mass that bubbles with fluid, which resembles anything but a human face.

There are both male and female patients, but this is only evidenced by the difference in their maniacal shrieks when they attack or are killed, as their bodies have become completely genderless from the experiments. They appear to wear white medical tunics and leather straps on their chest as restraints.

There are many variants of the Clocktower Patient:

Regular - The most common kind, yet far from harmless. They can be found roaming around most floors, but if they spot the player, they will throw themselves in a savage fit of rage flailing their arms mindlessly at them. They can also strike with their bloated head.
Bottle Thrower - They remain at range and throw bottles with unknown yet caustic components. They have low health.
Feral - They are, like their name describes them, beast-like, preferring to crawl around the floor, striking as if they had claws and lunging at players like wild animals, and just like a beast these Patients are also affected by Pungent Blood Cocktails. They have more health than the regular patients.
Infected - Despite appearing like a regular patient, they have a festering tumor in their right arm that has completely replaced its hand and has extended the arm into an amorphous conglomerate of poisonous boils. The attacks of this patient will inflict heavy amounts of Slow Poison and it has a grab attack that will do so as well. It has extremely low health.
Headless - Bizarrely enough, these patients do not possess heads, yet still stay alive. Even more strange is how they apparently completely ignore the player and will not attack unless personally provoked.
Head - These are the heads of the Headless patients mentioned above. They may not seem dangerous, but will inflict Frenzy at an alarming rate. They are extremely sensitive to Thrust damage and extremely resistant to Blunt damage.
Giant - These are the largest patients and one of the most dangerous. They are armed with a transfusion stand and will engage in enraged consecutive flailing that deal high damage. They cannot be staggered, but are easy to riposte.
Naked - By far the most aggressive and likely the most dangerous of the bunch. They have amazing speed, can detect players at incredibly ranges and will attack in groups with relentless aggression. They have the same moveset as the Regular kind of patients, but are much faster at attacking.
Arcane - Only found in a single location, but quite literally by the dozen. As their name implies, they can cast Arcane spells. They will either cast a large explosive orb, or multiple orbs that are extremely fast. Players need to deal with them very carefully as they are extremely dangerous, being hit with all the tiny Arcane orbs of a single attack from one of them is likely to spell death for most players. This makes them, essentially, a "firing squad".
Bound - They crawl slowly around the floor, bound by leather bindings, seemingly to lacking legs of any kind, and having the odd quirk of only being female and preferring spots of water or fluid. They will strike with their head at the player while shrieking and some of them (it is unclear which can do this, or what triggers them to do this) will use tendrils from an orifice in their heads (near the mouth area) to attack the player.

Location[]

Research Hall

Strategy[]

All variations of the Clocktower patient are best dealt with on their own, meaning that a good strategy for the majority of these enemies is to lure them away from the others, be it with a throwable item, careful placement, or a gunshot. However, this strategy does not work well on the Naked and Giant Variations. This is due to the fact that the Naked variants aggro in groups, and the Giant variations are encountered alone.

The Headless version is not aggressive, so it's easy to backstab and riposte them for an easy kill. However, they cannot be staggered with Right hand weapon attacks.

The naked version is best dealt with by being aggressive. As they are easily staggered, they can easily be stun-locked, and with the majority of weapons in the game, multiple enemies can be stunlocked at once.

The Giant Variation is almost always encountered alone, but makes up for this by being very tough. They have the most health and possibly the highest damage out of any of the Clocktower Patients. Two main strategies can be used to get past them. The first is to simply run past and ignore them. These enemies are fairly slow and can easily be run past if they are only recently aggro-ed. The other is to kill them with Critical Attacks, such as visceral attacks and backstabs. It should be noted that these enemies are difficult to stagger and attack in long combos.

Lore[]

The Clocktower patients were cerebral patients. They were experimented on by the Healing Church.

In the early days of the Healing Church, the Great Ones were linked to the ocean, and so the cerebral patients would imbibe water, and listen for the howl of the sea. Brain fluid writhed inside the head, the initial makings of internal eyes.

After the trepanation, water was imbibed into their head. Up to this day, trepanation instruments can still be found scattering the Research Hall.

The more the water imbibed in their head, the more they suffered. And greyish, amoeba-shaped Brain Fluid can be extracted from a patient whose head expanded until that was all that they were.

The discovery of Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos further increased the need for communion.

Dialogue[]

Patient	Dialogue
Patient 1	Has someone, anyone, seen my eyes? I'm afraid I've dropped them in a puddle... Everything is pale, now...
Patient 2	... Kill me...please, just kill me... Free me from this place... Before I go mad...
Patient 3	...Ah, some one...Help me... I'm guilty, I know. But I won't do that again, I promise. The damp darkness... It, it frightens me And what rises from its very depths...
Patient 4	Ah, lady Maria, lady Maria. Please. take my hand. Please. Help me... Don't let me drown...
Patient 5	Plip, plop, plip, plop... Splish, splash, splish, splash...
Patient 6	Plip… plop… plip… plop… plip… plop… plip… plop… plip… plop… plip… plop… Lady Maria, I'm a robin, will I ever curl up and become an egg? What say you? Lady Maria, Lady Maria, say something! Anything…
Patient 7	Oh, Lady Maria... Save me... please... I don't hear anything. I have failed. please, Lady Maria...
Patient 8	Listen close... and you, too, will hear... The sound of… water.
Patient 9	Splish splash, splish splash Have you heard how curiously the sea churns…? Like a storm but like the rain, only gentle, like dripping water… It bellows from deep inside of me… here it comes up through my insides, but gently, like little droplets…

Notes[]

The most common yet varied type of enemy in the DLC, likely overall in-game as well.
There are several harmless Clocktower Patients which players can interact with, in the Research Hall:
- Saint Adeline is the most iconic and has a questline of her own that players can progress through. She is found in bottom level near the Lamp.
- A female patient is found by the small pool of poisonous water near the Lamp (she appears to be voiced by the same woman as Eileen the Crow).
- Three are lying down in beds, screaming in terror, begging for Lady Maria to aid them.
- A female patient begs for Lady Maria, and when the stairs are put into place, she climbs to the gate that leads to the Living Failures arena, claiming that she, herself, has failed.
- A male patient can be found planting a Lumenflower in a small corner of a balcony on the outside. He makes noises of drops of water hitting water.
- A male patient is found atop the Research Hall, banging his head against the wall near the windows with the Carrion Crow that drops the Guidance rune.
Two Headless Patients exist:
- One is guarded by a male NPC hunter wearing the Black Church Set. To reach this patient, players must be in the room with the three Wheelchair Huntsmen activate the lift that leads upward, and exit through the secret path, through the opening in the wall on the way up.
- Another Headless Patient can be found atop the rafters of the Research Hall, to the back and on the right side, after activating the lever of the stairs.

Trivia[]

The Enlarged Head is a hollowed out head of one of the Clocktower Patients. Much like the "Head" variant of the patients, it is extremely resistant to Blunt damage, but has none against Thrust damage.
The Brain Fluid description reads "In the early days of the Healing Church, the Great Ones were linked to the ocean, and so the cerebral patients would imbibe water, and listen for the howl of the sea. Brain fluid writhed inside the head, the initial makings of internal eyes." It can be safely assumed that these poor soul were experimented on by the Healing Church to communicate with the Great Ones until a rune master was able to transcribe those "sticky sounds" into Caryll Runes.
Their Japanese name 実験棟の患者, means "Patient of the Experiment Hall"
There are several lumenflowers brought to these patients, probably by Lady Maria.
The multiple references about water in their dialogue refers to the fact that they can hear the large lake that the rest of the nightmare is underneath.