RESIDENT EVIL — HD REMASTER

Jill Valentine — Full Walkthrough

Jill starts with eight inventory slots, a Beretta, a knife and a Stun Gun, and Barry hands her the Lock Pick within the first few minutes — so she never hunts for keys to open a cupboard. Her route is the more forgiving of the two, and it is the one to play first. Every step below names the room, what is waiting in it, what to take, and the exact solution to anything that blocks you. Pick a part below, then use the buttons at the bottom of each part to move through the game.

Endings — Jill

Two switches decide Jill’s ending, and both are inside this half of the game.

Switch 1 — Barry’s .44 Magnum, at Jessica’s Tomb (Altar B1). Barry hands Jill his Magnum in a cutscene.

• Give it back → Barry survives Lisa Trevor, fights beside you, opens the electronic lock in the laboratory and triggers the self-destruct. The mansion is destroyed in the ending.
• Keep it → Lisa knocks Barry into the chasm immediately and his photograph falls from his shirt. Wesker’s body in the Main Laboratory then carries the Master Key, which you use to open the cell and the door to the heliport passage by hand. There is no self-destruct, no heliport Tyrant fight, and the mansion is still standing in the ending.

Switch 2 — the three MO Disks. Tiger Statue Room (insert the Yellow Gemstone), the desk in the Laboratory Stairway, and the shelves in the Visual Data Room. Each must be authenticated at one of the three Pass Code Output Terminals (X-Ray Room B, Morgue, Power Maze B) to release the three locks on the cell door. Do all three and you can free Chris during the escape. Miss any one and Chris stays in the cell.

Switch 3 — Barry at the heliport. If Barry survived the Altar he is with you for the final Tyrant fight, and the Tyrant can kill him there. Finish the fight promptly: hurt the Tyrant while you wait for Brad, then use the Rocket Launcher the moment it lands.

What locks the best ending out:

• Walking away from Jessica’s Tomb with Barry’s Magnum still in your inventory. There is no second chance; Lisa’s cutscene fires immediately.
• Failing to insert any one of the three MO Disks into a Pass Code Output Terminal before the self-destruct begins. Once the countdown starts you cannot go back and do it.
• Letting the heliport fight drag on until the Tyrant kills Barry.
• Keeping Barry alive also means giving up his .44 Magnum, by far the strongest weapon available to you. That is the trade.

Missables & Point of No Return

• Barry’s .44 Magnum vs. Barry. You cannot have both. Decide before you go down the Stairway Passage.
• The three MO Disks. The Tiger Statue disk is back in the mansion and unreachable once you are in the laboratory. Collect it on the mansion return trip, not later.
• The three Pass Code Output Terminals. Authenticating the disks is a separate step from finding them. Do all three before you go down to the Main Laboratory.
• The Fuse Unit in the Passage to Heliport. Without it the roof lift does not work, and you will burn countdown time going back for it.
• The Red Gemstone. If you fed it to the Tiger Statue for the Adder trap, leave and re-enter to recover it — you need it for the Mirror Room Jewelry Box, and without that Jewelry Box there is no Emblem Key, no Courtyard Study and no Metal Object.
• Family Picture & Notes part 2 in Lisa’s Room. Easy to miss, because Jewelry Box (3) looks like scenery and Lisa’s Room is easy to enter from above and leave in ten seconds.
• Trevor’s Diary part 3 in the Secret Passage, on the gravestone at the end. Most players drop through, grab Last Book Vol.1 and run.
• Point of no return #1: the Fountain. Once you drain it and climb down, you are in the laboratory for the rest of the game.
• Point of no return #2: the self-destruct. Anything in the laboratory you have not done by the time Barry opens that lock is gone. There is no exploration during the countdown — treat the alarm as the end of item collection.

Hard Mode Differences

• Enemy counts match Normal, but every enemy soaks noticeably more damage. Budget more shells per kill and expect fights you win comfortably on Normal to leave you at Caution.
• Ammunition, recovery items and defense items are all scarcer than Normal. Specific downgrades in this half: the Entry Corridor Blue Herbs drop from three to one; the Shotgun Shells in Boulder Passage 1 become a Handgun Magazine; the Shotgun Shells by the Crypt coffin become a Handgun Magazine; the Green Herbs on the Laboratory Stairway drop to one; the Aqua Ring Storage swaps its shells for Magnum Rounds; and the First Aid Box in the Pass Code Corridor holds a single Green Herb instead of Mixed Herbs.
• Kerosene cans hold four doses instead of five. With Crimson Heads reviving faster at the higher difficulty ranks, decide early which corridors you actually walk repeatedly and only burn corpses on those — the Central Corridor, the Laboratory Stairway and the Main Hall approaches are worth it; dead-end rooms usually are not.
• Ink Ribbons still come three to a pickup, but there are fewer pickups than on Normal. Realistically that means saving at the Residence Storeroom, at Room 003 before Plant 42, in the Mining Area, at the Cabin, in the Stairway Passage before the Altar and in the Item Box Room before the Main Laboratory — and skipping the rest.
• Hunters are the single biggest step up. On Hard the Forked Passage spawns two of them after you examine Enrico, and their instant-kill decapitation triggers from a health state you will spend a lot of Hard mode sitting in. Heal to Fine before you touch Enrico’s body.
• Auto-aim still works on Hard. It is only removed on Real Survivor and Invisible Enemy.

Chris Redfield — Full Walkthrough

Chris has six inventory slots instead of eight and no Lock Pick — every locked cupboard costs him one of five single-use Old Keys. He also cannot mix V-JOLT, cannot play the piano, and carries the Flamethrower instead of the Grenade Launcher. His route is written out in full below rather than as a list of differences, because the differences change the order you do things in, not just the items you carry. Pick a part below, then use the buttons at the bottom of each part.

Old Keys — every location and every lock

Chris’s small keys appear in the inventory as Old Key. Each one is consumed the moment it turns a lock — there is no reusable Lockpick in his scenario. There are five keys and five locks, so there is no slack at all if you want every one of them open.

The five keys

The five locks

Six-slot management plan

• Two slots are permanently occupied by the Combat Knife and Lighter. Treat Chris as a four-slot character.
• Standing loadout: Handgun or Shotgun, one healing item, one Flash Grenade or Dagger, one free slot.
• The Fuel Canteen only comes out of the box when you are deliberately going on a burning round. Do not haul it everywhere.
• Never carry a key you are not about to use. Keys go in the box the instant their door is open.
• Examine everything immediately. Golden Arrow → Arrowhead, Collar → Imitation of a key, Broach → Emblem Key, Last Book Vol. 1 → Medal of Eagle, Last Book Vol. 2 → Medal of Wolf. Each of these frees or consolidates a slot on the spot.
• Combine on pickup: Fishhook + Lure, Music mid-pages + Missing Music, Shaft + Cylinder, Stone Ring + Metal Object.
• The mansion has four boxes you will actually use (East Wing Storeroom, Mansion Drug Room, Residence Storeroom, Mining Area). Plan each excursion around getting back to one of them.

Endings — Chris

Chris’s ending is decided by exactly two people: Rebecca and Jill. Nothing else changes it — not Richard, not V-JOLT, not your clear time.

Best ending (all four survive)

Two requirements, and both are things you actively do:

1. Save Rebecca from the Hunter. When you enter the Courtyard Study (the Emblem Key room, Mansion 1F) after returning from the Guardhouse, you hear her scream. Run immediately to the Small Library on 2F east and kill the Hunter that is on her. If you dawdle, she dies, and it is permanent for that run.
2. Free Jill from the cell. Collect all three MO Disks — Tiger Statue Room (behind the tiger, revealed with the Yellow Gemstone), Laboratory Stairway desk, Visual Data Room shelves — and feed one into each of the three Pass Code Output Terminals in the lab. That transmits the full passcode and opens the Cell on B3.

Then keep them both alive to the end. Rebecca can still be killed during the final confrontation, and Jill is in the escape party with you. Beat the Tyrant on the Heliport and everybody leaves.

Rebecca ending — Rebecca saved from the Hunter, Jill left in the cell. You escape with Rebecca while Chris tries to make sense of what happened.

Jill ending — All three MO Disks used and Jill freed, but Rebecca dead. You and Jill leave together.

Bad ending — Rebecca dead and Jill never freed. Chris leaves alone.

What locks the best ending out

• Being too slow to reach the Small Library after Rebecca’s scream. This is the big one and there is no warning beyond the scream itself.
• Reaching the Fountain and taking the lift down without the Yellow Gemstone having been used on the tiger statue — the first MO Disk is above ground and there is no way back up once the lab section starts.
• Letting Rebecca die in the endgame.
• Failing to use all three disks before you trigger the self-destruct — the countdown is not the moment to go looking for a terminal.

Unlocks (not ending-dependent)

• Finishing once with Chris unlocks his first alternate costume; finishing twice unlocks the second.
• Clearing in under five hours on Normal or Hard unlocks the Samurai Edge; under three hours unlocks the Rocket Launcher.
• Clearing the game unlocks Once Again mode, which is where Hard lives. Clearing Normal or above with both Chris and Jill unlocks One Dangerous Zombie and Invisible Enemy.

Chris vs Jill — the complete difference list

Inventory and tools

• Chris has six inventory slots; Jill has eight. Two of Chris’s are effectively spent on the Knife and Lighter.
• Chris has no Lockpick. He needs five consumable Old Keys for the five simple locks. Jill’s Lockpick is permanent and free.
• Chris always carries the Lighter. Jill has to find hers, in the Small Library. That means Chris can burn a corpse from the very first zombie he drops, provided he has kerosene.
• Jill finds a Botany Book in the Small Library. Chris does not.

Combat

• Chris takes noticeably less damage from every enemy than Jill does.
• Defence items: both get the Dagger. Chris’s second is the Flash Grenade, which he forces into a biting enemy’s mouth and takes its head off — a clean kill with no Crimson Head afterwards. Jill’s second is the Stun Gun, which needs Battery Packs and only stuns.
• Chris gets the Flamethrower (Boulder Passage 1). Jill gets the Grenade Launcher from Forest Speyer’s body. Neither weapon exists in the other’s game.
• Chris’s route to the Assault Shotgun is Richard’s body in the Aqua Ring; Jill’s is Richard in the Attic.

Partner

• Chris’s partner is Rebecca Chambers; Jill’s is Barry Burton.
• Rebecca treats Chris’s wounds for free, a limited number of times at each place she settles — the Mansion Drug Room after Richard is saved, and the Residence Medical Room after Plant 42. Barry hands Jill items instead.
• Rebecca plays the piano. Chris cannot; the Moonlight Sonata puzzle only resolves because she does it for him. Jill plays it herself.
• Rebecca can be attacked by a Hunter in the Small Library, and saving her is one of the two conditions for Chris’s best ending. Barry has an equivalent moment at the Altar with Lisa Trevor.
• Rebecca becomes playable in Chris’s scenario — she runs the serum if Chris is poisoned by Yawn, or mixes the V-JOLT and saves him from Plant 42’s grip if Richard died.

Richard Aiken

• Both find him wounded in the Pillar Room and both fetch the Serum from the Mansion Drug Room against a timer. In Chris’s version Rebecca is at Richard’s side and administers it.
• If Chris saves him: Richard recovers in the Mansion Drug Room with Rebecca, then reappears on the Aqua Ring Walkway and is taken by a Neptune saving Chris. The Assault Shotgun comes from there. The cost is that Chris can never make V-JOLT.
• If Chris lets him die: no Assault Shotgun, Rebecca hands over the Radio after Plant 42, and Rebecca mixes the V-JOLT in the playable segment.
• If Jill saves him: he fights alongside her against Yawn in the Attic and dies there.

Chemistry

• Jill mixes V-JOLT herself in the Residence Medical Room and can kill Plant 42’s roots before the fight. Chris cannot mix chemicals at all. He either fights Plant 42 outright or lets Rebecca do the chemistry after Richard’s death.

Traps and rescues

• The Living Room shotgun trap: Chris must bring the Broken Shotgun from the Small Storeroom. Jill can be pulled out of that room by Barry.
• Master Key: it only turns up on Wesker’s body if your partner died — Rebecca for Chris, Barry for Jill. A living partner opens the doors instead.

Endings

• Chris saves Rebecca and Jill. Jill saves Barry and Chris. The MO Disk mechanic is the same in both directions.

The same in both scenarios

• The Broken Flamethrower in the Garbage Compactor Room and the Lisa’s Room door clips.
• Enrico Marini in the Enrico Room and the Hexagon Crank on his body.
• All four death masks, the Crypt, the Crimson Head Prototype.
• All Courtyard, cave, Altar and Laboratory puzzles.

Missables & Point of No Return

Hard points of no return

• The Fountain lift. Once you fit both medals and descend to the Laboratory Entrance, the mansion, Courtyard, Guardhouse and caves are closed forever. The first MO Disk is above ground (Tiger Statue Room, behind the tiger, revealed with the Yellow Gemstone). Without it Jill cannot be freed and the best ending is gone.
• The self-destruct countdown. Once the Tyrant goes down in the Main Laboratory the clock runs. Anything not done in the lab by then is not getting done.

Timed and one-shot events

• The Serum. Roughly two minutes from the Pillar Room cutscene. Miss it and Richard dies, which forfeits the Assault Shotgun permanently.
• Rebecca’s scream in the Courtyard Study. Get to the Small Library and kill the Hunter or she dies. Permanent.
• The Living Room shotgun trap. Walking in without the Broken Shotgun kills Chris.
• The Fuel Supply Capsule. Any sudden movement while carrying it is an instant death.
• The final Rocket Launcher shot. Four rockets, and only one needs to connect — but the Tyrant closing while you line up is fatal.

Easy to lose forever

• Greenhouse herbs. Setting the water pump to Green instead of Red kills all five green herbs.
• Old Keys. Five keys, five locks, no spares. Opening the Large Gallery→Graveyard shortcut costs you one of the four doors that matter.
• The Self Defense Gun. One round, no ammunition in the entire game. Spend it on Plant 42 or the Tyrant, not on a zombie.
• The Emblem. If you take the Gold Emblem from the Beethoven statue without carrying the plain Emblem in with you, you are locked in the alcove.
• The Red Gemstone. Never put it in the tiger statue. Twenty adders, and the gem reappears so it can be done again.
• The Central Corridor wall hole. Take the Residence map, then walk away. Looking through the hole releases an endless wasp swarm.
• The Flamethrower. You cannot bring it out of the underground. Use it while you are down there.
• Ink Ribbons. Finite for the whole run. On Normal, save at milestones — after the first mansion sweep, before the attic, before Plant 42, before the caves, before the Fountain.

Crimson Heads

• Any zombie you shoot down and leave lying will get back up as a Crimson Head. They run, they claw in a rapid combo and they do about twice a zombie’s damage.
• A body is dealt with permanently by burning it (Fuel Canteen + Lighter, and Chris has the Lighter from the first second) or by decapitating it. A Flash Grenade kill takes the head off and leaves nothing to revive.
• A Dagger stuck in a zombie’s head does not guarantee decapitation — check the body before you walk away.
• The Fuel Canteen holds a handful of burns and refills at any kerosene drum. There are stacks in the Small Storeroom and the Residence Storeroom.
• Burn the bodies in corridors you will cross repeatedly — the Mirror Corridor, the ’C’ Corridor, the two stairwells and the Dark Corridor. Leave the ones in dead-end rooms.
• Some Crimson Heads are scripted rather than created by you: one rises in the northern part of the Mirror Corridor once you have the Collar, and one appears in the corridor by the Armor Room. Those are coming regardless.

Hard Mode Differences

Hard is not on the menu at the start — it unlocks through Once Again after your first completion.

• Enemies are far tougher, not more numerous. The same creatures are placed in the same rooms, but each one soaks much more ammunition; a single zombie can take the better part of a magazine. Enemies also hit harder.
• Ammunition is drastically thinner. The obvious pickups are gone; what survives is mostly the ammunition tucked into out-of-the-way spots. Every shotgun shell counts, and the Magnum should be treated as boss-only ammunition.
• Healing is roughly halved. Herb pickups are cut back sharply, which magnifies the value of talking to Rebecca every time you pass her.
• Defence items are cut back. Chris drops from twelve Flash Grenades on Normal to eight on Hard, and from around a dozen Daggers to nine. Losing a defence item to a Hunter hurts a lot more.
• Ink Ribbons drop to three per stack in the rooms that carry them, the same as Normal — but with less healing and less ammunition, dying costs more, so the pressure to save is higher against a supply that has not grown.
• Kerosene drops from five units to four in the Small Storeroom and the Residence Storeroom. Choose which corpses actually need burning.
• A few item slots change contents. Where Normal gives shotgun shells, Hard sometimes gives a handgun magazine instead — the alcove behind the boulder in Boulder Passage 1 is a clear example.
• Herb placement shifts. The Entry Corridor in the Residence has three blue herbs on Normal and one on Hard; the Winding Underground Passage swaps its red herb for a second green.
• Enemy counts do rise in a few specific places. The Mirror Corridor carries two wandering zombies instead of one, the ’C’ Corridor two, and the Forked Passage sends two Hunters at you after Enrico’s body rather than one.
• Codes change. Passcode-style puzzles do not carry over from a Normal run — read the whiteboard in the Aqua Ring control room, light the Rec Room lamps yourself, and run the Slide Filter through the projector rather than trusting a number you remember.
• The eye-lock keypad gives you nothing. Very Easy and Easy print the colours on the keypad; on Hard you derive the order from the lamps and the billiard balls or you do not get in.
• Play the whole route around Crimson Head prevention. With ammunition this tight, a corridor full of revived bodies is a run-ender. Burn early, burn the through-routes, and use Flash Grenades as kills rather than escapes wherever you can afford to.

Puzzles & Solutions

Mansion — ground and upper floors

The Emblem, the Gold Emblem and the Dining Room clock

Scenario: both. Fixed.

Three linked steps that people often trip over because the two emblems look interchangeable and are not.

1. In the Dining Room (Mansion 1F) an Emblem sits above the fireplace. Take it. Removing it opens a panel elsewhere in the room.
2. Play the piano (below) to open the hidden passage in the Bar. Inside is the Gold Emblem.
3. Bring the Gold Emblem back to the Dining Room and put it in the fireplace slot the Emblem came from. That reveals the grandfather clock’s mechanism.
4. Operate the clock and move the short hand (the hour hand) two positions, in either direction, so the clock reads six o’clock. The case swings open and gives you the Shield Key.

The swap trick: the fireplace slot controls a panel in the Dining Room, and the panel is open only while the slot is empty or holding the wrong emblem. So if you need that panel open later, pull the Gold Emblem out and drop the plain Emblem in its place. Carry both until you are finished with the room.

The piano and the Moonlight Sonata

Scenario: both, but played by different people. Fixed.

In the Bar you will find a piano and, elsewhere in the mansion, two halves of the sheet music. Combine them in the inventory to make the complete Moonlight Sonata, then use it on the piano. A section of the wall slides back and reveals a small storeroom holding the Gold Emblem.

Jill plays it herself. Chris cannot — he has no ear for it, and the passage will not open for him. In Chris’s game Rebecca plays the piano; get her to the Bar and she performs the piece for you. This is the one place in Chris’s route where you cannot brute-force your way past by trying again.

The passage closes behind you when the Gold Emblem leaves the fireplace slot, which is exactly what the Emblem swap above is for.

The Blue Gemstone statue

Scenario: both. Fixed.

On the Dining Room’s upper level there is a heavy statue by the railing. Push it over the edge. It smashes on the floor below and leaves the Blue Gemstone in the wreckage.

The Trophy Room mounts — Red and Yellow Gemstones

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The Trophy Room (Mansion 2F) has animal mounts with gemstones set in their eye sockets: the Yellow Gemstone in the bull, the Red Gemstone in the deer. Move the furniture under the mounts so you can reach them, and take both.

The Tiger Statue

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The tiger in the Tiger Statue Room (Mansion 1F) has two empty eye sockets. Put the Blue Gemstone in one and the Yellow Gemstone in the other. Each stone opens a compartment behind the statue: one holds Shotgun Shells, the other holds the first MO Disk.

Do not feed the tiger the Red Gemstone. It is the wrong stone, and using it drops a ceiling’s worth of Adders on your head. You can recover the gem by leaving and coming back, but you will have taken poison damage for nothing. The Red Gemstone belongs in a jewelry box, not a tiger.

The Armor Room knights and Jewelry Box 1

Scenario: both. Fixed. Needs the Armor Key.

Four armoured knights stand around a grated depression, each holding a different weapon — sword, axe, shield and halberd. Pushing one shifts the others, so the room punishes random shoving: a knight pushed out of turn slides straight back to where it started.

The short solution is three pushes, leaving the knight that is already seated alone:

1. Push the knight at the far right.
2. Push the knight at the near left.
3. Push the knight at the near right.
4. Press the button on the pedestal in the centre of the room.

The grate opens and gives you Jewelry Box 1.

Jewelry Box 1 is engraved with a sun and a moon and the line about sunshine waking the sleeper. Rotate the box until the sun and moon faces are showing, then press the two switches on its sides — they are the two halves of a heart, one on the front face and one on the back. The box opens on the Mask without eyes, nose or mouth.

The Armor Key and the imitation

Scenario: both. Fixed.

Use the Dog Whistle outside to call the dogs. What comes back is not friendly, but it leaves a Collar behind; examine the Collar to extract the Imitation of a key.

The real Armor Key sits in a corridor watched by armoured statues. Taking it outright springs the trap. Instead, put the imitation in its place as you lift the real key — the statues stay asleep and you walk out intact.

The Portrait Room pictures

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The gallery corridor on Mansion 1F carries an instruction about bringing light to three spirits. Six framed portraits line the corridor and each has a button beneath it that cycles the picture’s colour. At the far end hangs a portrait of a young woman — Lisa — wearing three pieces of jewellery.

The three spirits you must light are the ones wearing the same three pieces. Match each to the colour that item has in Lisa’s portrait, then press Lisa’s own picture last:

1. The valiant wearing a bracelet → orange
2. The saint wearing a crown → green
3. The sage wearing a necklace/pendant → purple
4. Press the button under Lisa’s portrait

The wall behind Lisa lifts, opening a route through to the small yard and the cemetery beyond, and the Mask without a mouth is yours from the hidden area. This is one of the most useful shortcuts in the mansion — take it early if you can.

The Greenhouse plant and the Herbicide

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The Greenhouse (Mansion 1F) is choked by an overgrown creeper that whips anything walking past. Do not shoot it. Pour the Herbicide into the water pump and turn the pump handle to the red setting. The plant dies and the room becomes safe, which lets you take the Mask without eyes off the shield mounted on the far wall.

The Fish Tank Room bee display — the Wind Crest

Scenario: both. Fixed.

Two glass display cases sit in the fishing room on Mansion 2F. You need three things from the room and one combination:

1. Take the Fishhook from the bee display near the desk.
2. Take the Lure without a hook from the case by the door and combine it with the Fishhook to make the Lure of a bee.
3. Take the original Bee Specimen.
4. Put the Lure of a bee into the left case and the Bee Specimen into the right case.
5. Press the switch.

The display raises and exposes the Wind Crest. A live wasp comes out of the case at you when you reach for it — expect it, and do not panic-fire into the room.

The Wind Crest, the tombstones and the Magnum

Scenario: both. Fixed. This is optional and it is the single best optional reward in the game.

In the cemetery area there are two tombstones.

1. Place the Wind Crest on the right-hand tombstone. It opens and yields the Moon Crest, the Star Crest and the Sun Crest.
2. Place all three of those crests on the left-hand tombstone.
3. The tombstone opens on the Magnum Revolver.

If you are running for 100% you do this. The Magnum is what makes the Hunter phase and the Tyrant survivable without hoarding.

The signpost / weathervane path

Scenario: both. Fixed.

On the path down to the cemetery there are two signposts, and two guard-dog statues at the bottom of the slope that swivel in sympathy whenever you turn a post. Set them to:

• Red signpost — west (the Path of Revenge)
• Blue signpost — north (the Valley of Destruction)

The gate at the bottom unlocks.

The Golden Arrow

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The Golden Arrow rests on a statue partway down the Mirror Corridor (Mansion 2F). Take it and examine it in the inventory — the head comes off as a separate Arrowhead. The arrow itself does nothing; the Arrowhead is the key.

In the cemetery, slot the Arrowhead into the notch on the angel statue. The statue moves aside and opens the stair down to the Crypt.

The Crypt — all four Death Masks

Scenario: both. Fixed.

A coffin hangs suspended over the Crypt floor. Four stone faces are set into the wall beside the entrance, each with a different set of holes where features should be. There is no arbitrary sequence to memorise: each mask has exactly one face it fits, and you match mask to face by the features it is missing.

The four masks and where you get them:

With all four seated, the coffin drops. A Crimson Head Prototype 1 climbs out of it — see the boss section; do not walk in here with an empty shotgun. Once it is down, the Crypt gives you the Book of Curses (the Sword Key is fixed to the back of it), the first Stone & Metal Object from inside the fallen coffin, and a small ammunition pickup.

That Stone & Metal Object opens the door in the Roofed Passage, which gets you to the Garden Shed and out into the Courtyard.

The Mirror Room — Jewelry Box 2, the Broach and the Emblem Key

Scenario: both. Fixed.

Jewelry Box 2 sits on a shelf in the Mirror Room (Mansion 1F). It has a small round indentation. Press the Red Gemstone into it and several flat metal plates fall away from the box; rearrange those plates into the hexagonal recess so the shape closes up. The box surrenders the Broach.

Examine the Broach in the inventory and it unfolds into the Emblem Key, which opens the Courtyard Study.

The Courtyard Study — the Metal Object

Scenario: both. Fixed.

Inside the study, switch on the desk lamp before you go hunting the shelves. The light reveals the Metal Object on the bookcase against the west wall. Without the lamp the shelf reads as empty.

The library books — the two Medals

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The library holds Last Book Vol. 1 and Last Book Vol. 2. Examine each of them in the inventory: Vol. 1 contains the Medal of Eagle and Vol. 2 contains the Medal of Wolf. The books themselves are packaging — do not carry them around after you have opened them.

Residence (Guardhouse)

Rooms 001, 002 and 003

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The dormitory keys chain into each other. The Key for Room 002 comes out of the plughole in the bathroom once you drain the tub, and Room 002 in turn holds the Key for Room 001. The Key for Room 003 is the reward for clearing the beehive (below). The Control Room Key and the Gallery Key come later in the same building.

The beehive and the Insecticide Spray

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The Residence Gallery has an enormous nest built into the wall and a permanent stream of wasps pouring out of it. Do not fight them — the supply is endless and the ammunition is not.

Take the Insecticide Spray from the body in the far corridor, then use it on the hole in the wall at the end of that hallway. The nest dies, the wasps stop, and the room becomes safe to loot. The Key for Room 003 is the payoff.

Related trap in the same building: in the central corridor there is a map of the mansion hanging on the wall. Pull it off and examine the wall behind it and you release a permanent wasp swarm into the corridor. Take the map if you want it, but do not go poking at what is behind it.

The Room 003 bookshelf

Scenario: both. Fixed.

Room 003 has a shelf that wants seven red books, and one slot is empty. The missing volume — the Red Book — is in the Recreation Room. Bring it back and slot it in.

Now the arrangement itself. The seven spines together form one continuous painting of a reclining nude, and your job is to make the picture line up. Counting the books from one end:

• Swap 1 and 4
• Swap 2 and 6
• Swap 3 and 7

If you would rather solve it than follow it, just read the spines: each fragment of the image has an obvious neighbour, and there is only one arrangement in which the figure is continuous. Get it right and the shelf slides aside, opening the way into Plant 42’s room.

While you are at the shelf, take the white book out of it. That one is the V-JOLT Report — the mixing instructions.

THE DRUG STOREROOM DOOR — RANDOMISED. Derive it, do not copy it.

Scenario: primarily Jill’s; in Chris’s game the chemistry behind this door is Rebecca’s job.

The door to the drug storeroom (the chemical mixing room, where V-JOLT gets made) is held by a panel of coloured keypads. Each colour needs a number.

The numbers are always 3, 5 and 6. Which colour takes which number is regenerated every single time you start a game. A printed code belongs to whichever save file it was read from — yours has to be read off your own lamps. There are only six possible assignments, which matters in a moment.

Deriving your own:

1. Go to the Recreation Room — the room with the bar at one end and the pool table at the other.
2. Light the three oil lamps with the Lighter. Each lamp burns in a colour, and each throws a silhouette of an eye beneath it. The eyes differ from one another in the number of lashes or notches around them. Write down: colour → eye.
3. Examine the pool table. The balls arranged on it pair each eye pattern with a number. Write down: eye → number.
4. Chain the two halves together — colour → eye → number — and you have the full assignment.
5. At the door, highlight each colour panel in turn and set its number, then cycle to the next colour with the icon above the panel.

Practical notes. The lamps and the table are in the same room, so record both in one visit rather than walking back and forth. On Very Easy and Easy the keypad displays the colours for you, which removes most of the work. And because the digit set is always 3, 5 and 6, the absolute worst case if you have lost your notes is six attempts — 356, 365, 536, 563, 635, 653 — which is faster than a round trip across the Residence.

V-JOLT — the full chemical chain

Scenario: Jill mixes it herself. In Chris’s game Rebecca does the mixing, and she will only do it if Richard has died — see the Richard note below.

The drug storeroom holds a wall of reagents and a supply of Empty Bottles. You start with Water, UMB No. 3 and Yellow-6. Everything else you build. The chain is fixed and it is the same in every playthrough:

1. Water + UMB No. 3 → NP-004
2. NP-004 + Yellow-6 → UMB No. 10
3. Water + Yellow-6 → UMB No. 7
4. UMB No. 10 + UMB No. 7 → VP-017
5. VP-017 + UMB No. 3 → V-JOLT

Read that as two branches that meet: one branch turns water and UMB No. 3 into UMB No. 10 by way of NP-004, the other turns water and Yellow-6 straight into UMB No. 7. Marry those two products into VP-017, then dose VP-017 with one last measure of UMB No. 3.

Mixing it wrong. Some pairings produce POISON — notably NP-004 + VP-017 and NP-004 + UMB No. 10. Poison is a dead end: the bottle is spent and the contents are useless. You have a finite number of empty bottles and a finite supply of base reagents, so a poison batch can cost you the V-JOLT for that playthrough. Mix slowly and check the inventory name after every combination before you commit the next one.

Using it. Carry the finished V-JOLT down to Plant 42’s exposed root in the basement of the Residence and pour it on. This is not a cosmetic choice — it strips most of Plant 42’s health before the fight even begins.

THE AQUA RING CONTROL ROOM — RANDOMISED VALVE. Read your own memo.

Scenario: both. Needs the Control Room Key.

The Aqua Ring is flooded and there are Neptunes in the water. Nothing you can shoot will help; the answer is plumbing.

Before you touch anything, read the memo/whiteboard on the table in the Control Room. It names the valve you must open if oil pressure drops — 1, 2 or 3 — and that number is different from playthrough to playthrough. Write it down. If you skip this, you will get halfway through the sequence, the pressure will fail, and you will have to come back for it anyway.

The sequence:

1. Side-window console — start draining the tank. It malfunctions partway.
2. Console by the black chair — release the safety.
3. Main-window console — lower the pressure doors. They stop halfway; oil pressure has dropped.
4. Out into the hallway — open your valve, the number from the memo, to restore pressure.
5. Console by the black chair — release the safety a second time.
6. Main-window console — lower the pressure doors again. This time they seal.
7. Side-window console — drain the water.

Once the tank is dry the small Neptunes are dead. The large one is not; see the boss section for the generator.

The Gallery Key is in the drained tank, glinting on the floor — it is the key the big shark knocked into the water earlier.

Courtyard and Underground

The Square Crank and the water pool

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The Square Crank is on top of the trapdoor at the back of the Cabin. It fits the square socket on the column beside the pool in the Water Pool area, and it both drains and fills the pool depending on which way you work it. You will use it in both directions, so keep it.

Taking the Square Crank is also what wakes Lisa Trevor up in the Cabin. Have an exit plan before you grab it.

The Battery and the waterfall

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The Battery is on the shelf in the Materials Room (Mansion 2F). It powers the elevator in the Falls Area, which is how you get to the space under the waterfall — but only once the water has been stopped. Stop the flow first, then insert the Battery, then ride down.

The Hexagon Crank

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The Hexagon Crank comes off Enrico’s body. It fits wall sockets throughout Courtyard B1 and rotates whole segments of the passageways — you use it in the Mining Area, in the second boulder passage and in the Underground Statue Room. It is a permanent tool for that whole region; do not box it until you are done underground.

The Cylinder, the Shaft and the Generator

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The Shaft comes off the lid of the elevator’s power unit; combine it with the Cylinder to build the Cylinder Shaft. Slot that into the machine in the Generator Room.

Now the button panel. Examine the Cylinder Shaft itself and rotate it: four Roman numerals are engraved around its side, and the order in which they read off is the order you press the four buttons. That reading is IV, II, III, I — press the fourth, second, third, then first button. Power returns to the underground elevator.

The garbage compactor and the Broken Flamethrower

Scenario: both. Fixed.

Push the wooden crate into the Garbage Compactor Room in Courtyard B2 and run the compactor. The crate splits open on the Broken Flamethrower. Its muzzle is wrecked and it cannot be fired — it is a key, not a weapon. Mount it on the hooks to unlock Lisa’s Room.

Lisa’s Room — Jewelry Box 3 and the Stone Ring

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The box on the table beside Lisa’s bed — Jewelry Box 3 — has no lock at all. Open it and take the Stone Ring and the family photograph.

The two Stone & Metal Objects and the Altar gate

Scenario: both. Fixed.

Combine the Stone Ring with the Metal Object from the Courtyard Study to make a second Stone & Metal Object. You now need both of them — the one from the Crypt coffin and the one you just built — for the metal gate behind the stairs in the Main Hall. Fit both and the gate opens onto the Altar.

If your first Stone & Metal Object is still sitting in the Roofed Passage door, go and take it back before you come here.

The Altar — the four stones

Scenario: both. Fixed. This is Lisa’s arena; see the boss section for how to survive it.

Four stone pillars stand around a covered sarcophagus. Push each of the four off the edge. With all four gone the sarcophagus is exposed, and what is inside it ends the encounter — Lisa is not something you shoot to death here, she is something you resolve.

Underground Laboratory

The Slide Filter, the projector and the keypad

Scenario: both. Fixed.

Find the Slide Filter and fit it to the projector, then run the slides through. With the filter in place the final slide resolves into a four-digit number: 8462. Enter that on the code panel to open the room holding the Laboratory Key.

The X-rays and the word CELL

Scenario: both. Fixed.

In the visual data area you are given a set of X-ray plates and a lightbox. Turn the room’s lights off and arrange the plates in order — read alphabetically, the labelled plates spell out the word CELL. That word is the passcode for the image preparation room.

(If you have already finished the game once, the old password MOLE is still accepted here, and it produces a small joke rather than an error.)

The laboratory computer

Scenario: both. Fixed.

At the terminal:

• Login: JOHN
• Password: ADA
• Second passcode: CELL

That opens the electronic locks on the image preparation room and the researcher’s private room.

The three MO Disks

Scenario: both. Fixed.

There are exactly three, and you need all three:

1. Tiger Statue Room, Mansion 1F — behind the tiger, revealed by the gemstones.
2. Laboratory Stairway, B2 — on the desk beside the door to the Visual Data Room.
3. Visual Data Room, B2 — on the shelves next to the entrance.

Each disk goes into a Pass Code Output Terminal, and the three terminals are in different rooms of the laboratory. Each one transmits a fragment of the passcode for the Cell Entrance. With all three transmitted, the cell opens and you can free your partner — which is a hard requirement for the best ending.

The Fuel Supply Capsule

Scenario: both. Fixed. This is the most dangerous walk in the game.

You collect the Fuel Supply Capsule (Empty) in X-Ray Room B on B3 and fill it at the machine in the north-east corner of that room. It then has to be carried to Power Maze A to restore power.

While you are carrying the full capsule: walk. Do not run. Do not draw a weapon, do not fire, and do not let anything get its hands on you. Running, being attacked or attacking all detonate the capsule, and detonation is an instant death — not a health loss, a game over. Clear the Chimeras out of the route before you pick the capsule up, then make the trip with an empty trigger finger.

The Fuse Unit

Scenario: both. Fixed.

The Fuse Unit lies on the floor near the elevator at the far end of the Passage to Heliport on B1. Fit it into the elevator’s power housing to restore the lift and reach the surface. This is the last key item of the run; by the time you are placing it the self-destruct is already your problem.

A note on Richard Aiken, because it changes your puzzle route

Richard is dying of Yawn’s venom in the mansion. Fetching the Serum in time saves him, and whether you do it rewrites several later beats.

As Jill. Save Richard and he turns up at the Attic during the Yawn fight; damage Yawn until the scene triggers and Richard leaves you the Assault Shotgun. Break off too early and Yawn takes him and the gun together. If Yawn poisons Jill, saved-Richard means she doses herself; if you let him die, Barry carries her to the Chemical Storage safe room instead. Saving him is simply better.

As Chris. Save Richard and he reappears at the Aqua Ring, where Neptune takes him and leaves the Assault Shotgun behind — and if Yawn poisons Chris, you play as Rebecca to fetch the serum. Let Richard die and you get the V-JOLT instead: Rebecca does the chemistry and she also arrives to help at Plant 42. You cannot have both. Decide before you reach the Residence: the Assault Shotgun, or V-JOLT plus a Rebecca assist on Plant 42.

Enemies

A general rule for the whole game: health is randomised per individual. Two zombies standing next to each other can differ enormously in how much punishment they absorb. That is why shot counts in this game are always ranges and never a single number, and it is why “two shotgun shells kills a zombie” is advice that will eventually get you killed. Budget for the bad roll.

Zombie

Behaviour. Slow, relentless, and — unlike the enemies you may be used to — willing to follow you through doors. They stand up from lying positions, grab at close range, bite, and vomit. A zombie that has knocked you down will go for an ankle bite.

Threat. Individually low; in a corridor with two or three of them, high. Their real cost is not the damage, it is the Crimson Head they become later.

Killing it. Handgun is the honest answer for a single zombie in open space — five or so rounds, more on a bad roll. The shotgun is the efficient answer when you actually want the body gone: let it get to grabbing range, aim up, and fire. A point-blank upward shotgun blast frequently takes the head off, which both kills it and permanently retires it. Decapitation is not guaranteed, so check the corpse.

Worth killing on a 100% run? Selectively. Kill the ones standing between you and a room you will pass through repeatedly. Leave the ones in dead-end rooms you will visit once. Every zombie you kill and do not dispose of is a Crimson Head with your name on it, so an unkilled zombie in a room you are never returning to is cheaper than a killed one.

Crimson Head

Full mechanics in the next section. In combat terms: faster than you are comfortable with, hits far harder than a zombie, and it charges the moment you enter the room rather than waiting for you to get close. Its health band is wide and overlaps the zombie band at the bottom and goes far above it at the top.

Killing it. Shotgun at close range, Acid rounds from the Grenade Launcher, or the Magnum (which usually ends it in one and never needs more than two). It does have a weakness: it takes corners badly and gets stuck on geometry, so a long corridor is a viable escape route when you have nothing to spend.

Worth killing? Only when you cannot get past it. Prevention is enormously cheaper than cure.

Cerberus

Behaviour. Fast, erratic, and it comes at you in a straight-line lunge. Cerberus will dive for your arm the instant it is in range, and its worst attack is a throat bite that is an outright kill rather than a health loss.

Killing it. Two or three handgun rounds only knock it down; they do not finish it. The shotgun is the sane choice if you have committed to fighting.

Worth killing? Usually not. Most Cerberus encounters are in transit corridors and gardens, and dogs are the single most skippable enemy in the game — line yourself up with the far door and walk through. The exceptions are the Main Garden and the Falls Area of the Courtyard, which you will cross many times; clearing those pays for itself.

Crow

Behaviour. Perched, in flocks of five to seven, and passive until provoked. They react to gunfire and to you barging around underneath them. Individually feeble; six of them pecking at once is a real health loss.

Where. The West Wing outer stairway rafters, the Large Gallery railing, the headstones in the Courtyard and the Falls Area.

Worth killing? No. Walk through calmly, do not fire, and they stay on their perches. If you are forced into it, nothing bigger than the handgun.

Web Spinner

Behaviour. Walks on walls and ceilings; you hear a low bass thumping before you see one. It tackles, and it spits an acid that carries a real chance of poisoning you. When it dies it bursts, and the splash can poison you even though the spider is dead — so do not stand over the corpse.

Killing it. Six handgun rounds minimum, and that is the optimistic figure. Shotgun or Grenade Launcher is much better value.

Worth killing? Yes, generally. They occupy rooms you have to work in, they are hard to dodge because they climb, and poison costs you Blue Herbs you would rather spend elsewhere. Kill them at range so the death-splash cannot reach you.

Black Tiger

The oversized Web Spinner. Treated as a boss below.

Hunter

Behaviour. The moment Hunters enter the game the mansion becomes a different place. They are fast, they read your movement, and they jump. Two attacks matter: a low swipe at your legs and a leaping slash at your torso. The leap has a decapitation property — if your health is low enough when it connects, it is an instant kill regardless of how much life you had left in theory. Hunters replace zombies in a number of rooms once they appear.

Tell. They crouch and audibly wind up before the leap. That crouch is your window to move sideways, not backwards.

Killing it. Chris: shotgun or Magnum. Jill: Acid rounds in the Grenade Launcher are outstanding against Hunters. Expect five or more shotgun shells for a stubborn one.

Worth killing? Yes, in any room you have to use. A Hunter you run past is a Hunter that follows you and lands its jump while you are fumbling a door. This is the enemy the Magnum exists for — the Hunter phase is exactly why you take the tombstone detour.

Chimera

Behaviour. Laboratory-only. They live in the ceiling ducts and they are not in the room when you enter — they drop in when you cross the wrong patch of floor. They crawl on floors and ceilings equally, they claw, they can grab you from above, and their pounce is a struggle you can lose outright.

Killing it. Shotgun. Their bones are soft and they come apart quickly for their health total.

Worth killing? Yes, and specifically in advance. The Fuel Supply Capsule route runs through Chimera territory, and being attacked while carrying the capsule kills you instantly. Sweep Power Maze A and B and the connecting rooms before you ever pick the capsule up.

Neptune

Sharks. Treated as a boss below. In the water they cannot be meaningfully hurt.

Wasp

Behaviour. Enlarged and venomous, and in the two main nest locations the supply is unlimited. They are fast enough that outrunning them in a straight line is not really an option, so plan the shortest path to the door.

Worth killing? No — ever. Ammunition spent on wasps is ammunition thrown away. Deal with the Residence Gallery nest using the Insecticide Spray, leave the wall map alone, and run through anything else.

Adder

Behaviour. Small snakes that drop from trees and ceilings in groups. They bite, they poison, and they are slow to actually connect.

Where. The zigzag path and water pool in the Courtyard, Lisa’s Room, and twenty of them in the Tiger Statue Room if you put the Red Gemstone in the tiger.

Worth killing? No. Walk out of the room. The only cost of an Adder is a Blue Herb, and the only cost of a fight with Adders is a Blue Herb plus ammunition.

Fountain Plant

The creeper in the Greenhouse. Immobile, whips at anything walking past for minor damage, and cannot usefully be shot. Kill it with the Herbicide and the water pump on red, which is required anyway for the Mask without eyes.

Lisa Trevor

Not an enemy you defeat. See the boss section.

Forest Speyer — “One Dangerous Zombie”

Availability. A mode you unlock by completing the game.

With it switched on, Forest Speyer’s zombie roams the mansion — the Dining Room 2F, the Dark Corridor, the Tea Room, the Outside Balcony, the west wing inner stairway and the small dining room among others, with his appearances keyed to your progress on items like the Book of Curses and the Armor Key. You will hear him before you see him: he clinks, because he is wrapped in grenades.

The Crimson Head System

This is the mechanic that separates a controlled playthrough from a spiral, so it is worth understanding exactly rather than approximately.

What actually causes a revival

A zombie that you kill without destroying it leaves an intact corpse. That corpse is on a clock. When the clock runs out and you next enter the room, the corpse is gone and a Crimson Head is coming at you — faster than the zombie was, much stronger, and aggressive from the instant you cross the threshold rather than waiting to notice you.

Three things prevent it, permanently:

1. Decapitation — the head is gone, so nothing gets up.
2. Destroying a limb while the zombie is still active — a body that has lost a leg cannot complete the transformation.
3. Burning the corpse — kerosene and a lighter, or an Incendiary round.

Anything else — a body dropped by handgun fire, a body dropped by an ordinary shotgun blast to the chest — is a Crimson Head waiting to happen.

Note also that Crimson Heads themselves are final. Kill one and it stays killed; there is no third stage.

The timer

Revival time is set by difficulty, and it is measured in in-game clock time, so time spent in the inventory or standing still counts.

That last row is not a typo, and it is the single most important line in this section. In the laboratory, a body you leave behind can be standing up again before you have finished the room you walked into next.

Certain corpses are also raised by story events rather than by the clock, so a room you cleared and burned five minutes ago is not a guarantee of safety after a major plot beat.

Burning: the kit and the arithmetic

You need two items at the same time: the Fuel Canteen and the Lighter. The Fuel Canteen is on the floor near the typewriter in the East Wing Storeroom (Mansion 1F). Neither item does anything on its own.

Capacity. A filled canteen carries enough kerosene for about five burns on Easy and four on Normal, with less on Hard. You refill it at kerosene tanks, which are scattered across the mansion, the Residence and the laboratory — the Greenhouse area, the eastern save room, the Residence save room and the laboratory among them.

The tanks are finite. Each tank holds a fixed quantity of kerosene, not a fixed number of refills, so topping the canteen off early wastes nothing — refilling after a single use draws only that one unit out of the tank. Refill whenever you pass one.

Stacking. Kerosene burns everything at the point where you pour it. If two or three corpses have fallen in roughly the same spot, one application takes all of them. If you are going to burn a room, kill the zombies so that they drop together rather than scattering them across the floor.

Decapitation as the free alternative

Kerosene is limited; ammunition, if you are disciplined, is less so.

• Shotgun, point-blank, aimed up. Let the zombie get into grabbing range, aim upward, fire. This is the standard method. It works most of the time on lower difficulties and it fails often enough on Hard that you must check the body afterwards.
• Stomp. Blow the legs out from under a zombie and then step on the head.
• Jill’s Incendiary rounds. One hit typically kills and burns in the same action, which is the best of both worlds and the reason Jill has an easier time with this system than Chris does.
• Chris’s Flash Grenade. Let a zombie grab him, let him force the grenade into its mouth, and the head is gone. This is not a waste of a defense item — it is a decapitation you were going to pay for anyway.
• The Dagger. Also destroys the head when the follow-up connects, and you can pick the dagger back up afterwards.

A practical burning policy

Do not try to burn everything. You do not have the kerosene, and most of it would be wasted.

Burn, without hesitating:

• Any corpse in a hub you cross constantly. The main hall approaches, the dining room, the corridors that link the east and west wings, and the stairways. These are rooms you will pass through dozens of times, and a Crimson Head in one of them ruins every subsequent trip.
• Every corpse in the Underground Laboratory. The five-minute clock down there makes leaving bodies indefensible.
• Any room where you are going to be standing still — solving a puzzle, working a panel, waiting on a mechanism.

• Anything in a one-visit dead end. If you are never coming back, the Crimson Head never happens to you.
• Anything you already decapitated. Check before you pour; a headless body needs nothing.
• Anything you can simply walk past. The cheapest zombie is the one you never killed.

Prefer decapitation over kerosene whenever the shotgun is already in your hands and the zombie is already at grabbing range. Save the canteen for bodies you killed at range and for stacks.

Finally: Very Easy through Hard all have Crimson Heads. There is no difficulty at which you can ignore this system, only difficulties at which the clock is more forgiving.

Defense Items

What the system is

Every playable character carries something to jam into an enemy’s face when it grabs them. When you are seized, a prompt appears and you get a very short window to trigger it. Land it and you break the grab, take no damage from it, and in most cases badly hurt or outright kill the attacker.

Two rules that catch people out:

1. The item must be equipped, not merely carried. Having a dagger in the inventory does nothing. It has to be in the equipped defense slot — if the model box on the status screen is blank, you are not protected.
2. There is an automatic and a manual mode, and you choose which. On automatic, your character uses the item without input the moment they are grabbed. On manual, you must press the defense button yourself, immediately — zombies overpower you fast and the window is not generous. Change the setting in the options and confirm it; toggling without confirming leaves you on the old behaviour.

Not every grab in the game can be countered. Some scripted and boss grabs will simply take you.

Who gets what

The Dagger — both characters

A small blade. When you counter with it, you drive it into the enemy’s head and break free. It is spent by default — but if the counter decapitates the enemy, you can pick the dagger back up, which makes it the only defense item in the game that is sometimes free.

How many. Between roughly nine and fourteen across a playthrough, depending on character and difficulty — Jill finds a couple more than Chris, and Hard mode cuts the count to around ten for Jill and nine for Chris. They are strewn everywhere: the Dining Room, the Art Room, the Living Room, the bathrooms, several basement rooms, the Courtyard and the laboratory.

When to use it. Freely, on zombies. It is the most plentiful defense item and the one most likely to be recoverable.

The Stun Gun — Jill only

Jill begins the game with it. Pressed against a grabbing enemy’s torso, it discharges and leaves them disoriented long enough for her to get clear.

Ammunition. It runs on Battery Packs, which you find around the mansion. Without a Battery Pack loaded, the stun gun is dead weight — check it the same way you check a firearm.

When to use it. It is Jill’s default counter and it is reliable. Its weakness is that it stuns rather than destroys: the enemy is still there and, if it was a zombie, still on the Crimson Head clock. Follow up.

The Flash Grenade — Chris only

Chris’s counter is the nastiest in the game. When an enemy grabs him, he forces the grenade into its mouth and the resulting detonation takes its head off.

Why that matters more than it sounds. A decapitated zombie cannot become a Crimson Head. Chris’s defense item is therefore also a free, ammunition-free permanent disposal — which is exactly the compensation he needs for not having Jill’s Incendiary rounds.

How many. Around thirteen on Very Easy and Easy, twelve on Normal, and only eight on Hard. They are spread across the mansion, the Residence storeroom, the Courtyard and the laboratory.

When to hold one rather than spend it

• Going into the Underground Laboratory. The five-minute Crimson Head clock down there means a grab you cannot break is far more likely to cascade. Arrive with a defense item equipped and spares in reserve.
• On the Fuel Supply Capsule run. Being grabbed while carrying the full capsule kills you. An equipped defense item is your only insurance if something you missed drops out of a duct. Clear the route first, then carry a counter anyway.
• Before a boss. Not because you can counter the boss — you often cannot — but because you do not want to be caught by a trash enemy on the way in with an empty slot.
• As Chris, before a room you intend to clear permanently. Deliberately letting a zombie grab you to spend a Flash Grenade is a legitimate tactic: you get the decapitation, you spend no kerosene and no shells, and on Hard where grenades are scarce it is still often the better trade.

When not to hold back. Do not die with a full inventory of daggers. Defense items are not a resource you are scored on, and a run that ends because you were saving a grenade for later is a run you have to do again.

Boss Strategies

Yawn — first encounter (the Attic, Mansion 2F)

Scenario: both. Reached with the Shield Key.

What it does. An enormous snake that fills the room. It coils, it lunges, and its bite carries a venom that ordinary Blue Herbs will not cure — you need the Serum. It also has a wrap-and-crush move that is a kill rather than a health loss.

Tell. It rears and holds still for a beat before the strike. That pause is when you move, not when you shoot.

The best play: don’t fight it. The Mask without a nose is on the floor in the north-west corner. Go in, take it, get out. This fight is optional and skipping it costs you nothing you need.

If you do fight it — and as Jill you may want to, because staying long enough triggers Richard’s scene and the Assault Shotgun — use the shotgun and keep the room’s width between you. Leaving too early forfeits the gun.

If it poisons you. Jill with Richard saved doses herself. Jill without him gets carried to safety by Barry. Chris with Richard saved switches to Rebecca, who fetches the serum. In all three cases the run continues; being bitten here is a setback, not a disaster.

If you lose. Standard death, reload from your last save. There is no unique failure state.

Yawn — second encounter (the Library, Mansion 2F)

Scenario: both. Mandatory. It attacks as you approach the ladder.

What changed. The venom is gone. This is now purely a damage race with a very large snake, which makes it simpler but not shorter.

Best weapon. As Jill, the Grenade Launcher with Acid rounds — it goes down in about four of them. The Magnum also works. As Chris, the Magnum Revolver, fired from as far back as the room allows; the shotgun works but keeps you inside its strike range for far too long.

Pattern. It circles the room’s perimeter and strikes on the approach. Keep moving in the same rotational direction it is travelling, fire on the recovery, and never let it corner you against the shelves.

If you lose. Reload. Nothing is permanently forfeited.

Plant 42 (Residence 1F)

Scenario: both. Mandatory.

What it does. A vast bulb hanging from the ceiling with vines anchored around the room. It is stationary; the vines are not. They sweep, they knock you across the room, they secrete acid, they drop pollen that damages over time, and the worst of them lifts you off the floor by the neck. The bulb periodically opens, and that is the only part of it worth shooting.

Tell. The bulb’s opening is unmissable and it is your entire damage window. Shooting the closed bulb or the vines is wasted ammunition.

The V-JOLT route — take it. Pour V-JOLT on the root in the basement before you ever open the door. The plant enters the fight already gutted and folds in a fraction of the shots.

Weapons and cost. As Jill, fire from the balcony opening when the bulb opens: three to five Incendiary rounds, or six to seven Explosive rounds. As Chris, the shotgun is enough — especially after V-JOLT — with the Magnum as a fallback.

Your partner. In Jill’s game Barry arrives with a flamethrower to finish it. In Chris’s game Rebecca appears only if Richard died; if Richard lived, you are on your own here and you also have no V-JOLT, so bring more shells than you think you need.

If you lose. Reload. The V-JOLT you poured stays poured.

Black Tiger (Spider Room, Courtyard B1)

Scenario: both. Spawns as you enter.

What it does. Everything a Web Spinner does, scaled up: stronger, faster, and its acid spit reaches much further. Its tackle knocks you flat. Like its smaller kin it turns badly.

Tell. It plants itself and rears slightly before spitting. Break the line by circling rather than backing straight up.

Best weapon. Incendiary rounds for Jill, the Flamethrower for Chris. Failing fire, the Magnum is the reliable answer. The shotgun will do it but takes noticeably longer, and time in this room is health.

Cost. A handful of shots with the right weapon; a magazine’s worth of patience with the wrong one.

Worth fighting? Yes, and preferably before you have to move anything fragile through the area. You do not want it alive behind you when you are managing the underground.

If you lose. Reload.

Neptune (Aqua Ring)

Scenario: both.

What it does. Three sharks patrol the flooded Aqua Ring, plus one much larger specimen in the pool by the generator. In the water they are effectively invulnerable and their bite is lethal — the large one’s grab is an outright kill.

The fight is not a fight. Run the Aqua Ring rather than engaging it, get to the Control Room, and solve the valve sequence above. Draining the tank kills the three smaller Neptunes outright.

The large one. It survives the drain, flopping in the pool by the generator. Do not get into the water. Push the generator into the pool and throw the switch — the water conducts and the shark dies.

Ammunition cost: zero. Any bullet you fire at a Neptune is a bullet wasted.

If you lose. You will most likely lose by entering the water. Reload and use the generator.

Lisa Trevor

Scenario: both. Multiple encounters.

Can she be killed? No. Not at any encounter, not with any weapon. What you can do is knock her down — put enough firepower into her and she collapses — but she gets up, every time, and she does not stay down long enough for a second person to matter. Shooting Lisa is a way of buying seconds, not a way of winning.

Her attacks. She swings the manacles and the block of chain welded to her arms, in a horizontal sweep and an overhead drop. Both hit extremely hard; a small number of connections will kill you outright from healthy. She is slow, though, and slow is exploitable.

The encounters.

• The Cabin (Courtyard 1F). She wakes when you take the Square Crank. Do not engage. Take the crank and leave; there is nothing to gain in this room.
• The winding underground passage and the storage areas beneath the Courtyard. She patrols and she actively follows you. She is slow enough to lose in the caverns — keep moving, use the loops, and do not let yourself get pinned in a dead end while you are carrying key items.
• The Altar. The real encounter.

The Altar fight, step by step. The objective is the puzzle, not the damage. Four stone pillars ring a covered sarcophagus in the middle of the arena.

1. Deal with Lisa only as much as you must. Handgun rounds are enough to stagger her — you are buying a window, so do not burn Magnum ammunition here.
2. In each window, run to a pillar and push it off the edge.
3. Repeat for all four pillars, breaking off to stagger her whenever she closes.
4. With the last pillar gone the sarcophagus opens and what is inside it ends the fight. Lisa leaves.

Jill players: watch Barry. If Barry is still alive he is on the platform with you, and Lisa can knock him off the edge and kill him. Losing Barry here costs you the best ending. Keep the fight on the far side of the arena from wherever he is standing.

If you lose. Reload. Nothing about Lisa is permanent except Barry.

Crimson Head Prototype 1 (the Crypt)

Scenario: both. Triggered by seating the fourth Death Mask.

It comes out of the coffin the moment the puzzle resolves. It is a Crimson Head that has been locked away and mutated further, and it soaks up substantially more damage than the ones roaming the mansion.

How to fight it. Keep moving, let it commit to a lunge, and fire during the recovery. Chris: shotgun, aimed at the head to stagger it. Jill: shotgun, or the Grenade Launcher with Explosive rounds. Do not let it back you into the coffin alcove.

Tyrant — first encounter (Main Laboratory, B4)

Scenario: both. Mandatory.

What it does. It bursts out of its tank and it hunts you at a steady, unhurried pace around a room full of capsules. Its exposed heart is not a weak point — do not aim for it. Close range provokes a heavy claw attack, and it has a head grab that kills outright.

Tell. The claw only comes out when you are near. If you are never near, the claw never happens.

Strategy. Use the capsules. Circle the room in a consistent direction, keeping the fixtures between you and it, and never let yourself get walked into a corner. Fire on the straights.

Best weapon and cost. Magnum Revolver or the Grenade Launcher. This is what you saved the Magnum for; two or three rounds of it are worth a dozen shells.

If you lose. Reload. It is a straightforward fight if you respect the distance and a very short one if you do not.

Super Tyrant (the Heliport)

Scenario: both. This fight only happens if your partner is alive.

If Barry or Rebecca survived to the end, the mansion goes into self-destruct and the Tyrant lands on the helipad for the finale. If they did not, there is no final fight, the facility does not detonate, and the Tyrant is left alive — which is the ending you do not want.

What it does. Bigger, faster and freer than the laboratory form. It runs. It has a wider set of swipes and a rush attack. It does not have the laboratory form’s instant-kill head grab, but it does not need one.

The clock. You have roughly three minutes before the facility goes up with you in it.

Strategy. Survive. Keep the helipad’s width between you and it and stay mobile. If you want to contribute, the Magnum and the Grenade Launcher with Acid rounds are your best options, but killing it with conventional weapons is not the plan.

The finish. With the timer nearly out, Brad Vickers drops the Rocket Launcher from the helicopter. Pick it up, get a clean line, and fire. One rocket ends it. On higher difficulties the Tyrant can deflect a badly-timed shot, so wait until it is committed to a straight approach rather than firing at it side-on, and be aware that you have very little margin for a second attempt.

If you lose. The timer running out is a game over. Reload and be less brave — evasion is worth more here than damage.

Weapons

At a glance

Defense items are listed separately under ITEMS & KEY ITEMS; they are not equippable weapons.

Relative damage

From weakest to strongest, in practical terms:

1. Knife — near-worthless offensively, but free forever.
2. Handgun / Samurai Edge — fine on zombies, poor on everything else.
3. Flamethrower — low damage per second, but it hits continuously and it burns.
4. Grenade Shells — the weakest of the three launcher rounds.
5. Shotgun — the first weapon that genuinely changes the game.
6. Assault Shotgun — the Shotgun’s damage with a tighter spread and a bigger tube.
7. Incendiary Shells — heavy damage plus a burn, with extra effect on Plant 42 and Black Tiger.
8. Self Defense Gun — one round, but it hits far above its size.
9. Acid Shells — the hardest-hitting launcher round, with extra effect on Yawn and the Tyrant.
10. Magnum Revolver — one shot removes almost any ordinary enemy.
11. Barry’s .44 Magnum — kills the Tyrant in a single round.
12. Rocket Launcher — one shot kills anything in the game.

The knife

Both characters start with one and it costs a permanent slot on Chris. Chris’s Combat Knife hits substantially harder than Jill’s Survival Knife — roughly half again as much per swing — which is the entire reason a knife-only run is far more sane on his scenario. Even so, treat the knife as the answer to crows, to a downed body you want to finish, and to nothing else. Knifing a zombie’s head while it is grappling you makes it let go.

The knife never breaks and never runs out, so on Jill it is the one thing you can safely leave in the item box for stretches of the game.

Handgun (Beretta M92F Custom)

Fifteen rounds, ammunition everywhere, and the only gun you can afford to fire casually. Jill opens the game holding hers. Chris does not — the Handgun appears on the Main Hall floor beside the staircase once you have looked into the Dining Room, and until you grab it you have no ranged option at all.

The handgun can blow a zombie’s head clean off on a lucky shot, which is a permanent kill that costs no kerosene. That is the best thing about it. Against Cerberus, Hunters or Chimeras it is a way to lose a fight slowly.

Samurai Edge

The S.T.A.R.S. custom Beretta, awarded for a fast clear. It behaves like the Handgun with two differences that matter: the ammunition is infinite, and it decapitates zombies far more often than the standard pistol. Between those two properties it turns the early game into a formality and removes almost all of your Crimson Head housekeeping, because heads you destroy never come back.

Unlockable reward — see UNLOCKABLES.

Shotgun and Broken Shotgun

The Shotgun hangs on hooks in the Living Room on Mansion 1F, loaded with six shells. Lifting it off the hooks arms the room’s ceiling trap and the ceiling starts coming down.

Bring the Broken Shotgun with you. It is standing in the cabinet just inside the entrance of the Small Storeroom on Mansion 1F — behind a simple lock, so Jill picks it and Chris spends an Old Key. Hang the Broken Shotgun on the empty hooks and the ceiling stops.

• Chris has no way out of that room other than the swap. Walk in without the Broken Shotgun and you die.
• Jill can be pulled out by Barry and survive the mistake, but she still leaves without the Shotgun and has to come back.

The Shotgun itself is the workhorse of the whole first half. Fired upward at point-blank range it takes a zombie’s head off, which is a permanent kill for one shell and no kerosene. Its weakness is range — at anything past a couple of paces the spread wastes most of the pellets.

Assault Shotgun — missable

Richard Aiken’s weapon. Ten shells, tighter pattern, useful out to mid-range, and comfortably the best sustained-fire gun either character gets.

You only receive it if you save Richard. Find him poisoned in the Pillar Room, run to the Mansion Drug Room for the Serum, and get back before he dies. If he lives:

• Jill — Richard turns up in the Attic during the Yawn fight and shoves her clear of a bite. He dies doing it and leaves the Assault Shotgun behind. He only appears once Yawn has taken enough punishment, so do not sprint for the death mask and run out of the room; finish the fight.
• Chris — Richard turns up on the Aqua Ring walkway and is taken by a Neptune. His weapon ends up on the floor of the Water Tank on B2, roughly halfway along, and you collect it after the water is drained.

If Richard dies of the poison, neither character gets the weapon on that file. There is no second chance and no alternative source.

Magnum Revolver (.357)

Six chambers, and one round kills nearly any standard enemy outright. It is inside the stone slab of the left-hand headstone in the Small Headstone Area of the Courtyard, and it only opens after you have run the crest chain: Wind Crest into the right-hand headstone to produce the Moon, Star and Sun Crests, then all three placed correctly.

Both characters can get it. Examine and turn over each of the three small crests before you use them — they are not in the right orientation as found.

Magnum Rounds are the scarcest ammunition in the game. Bank the revolver for Lisa Trevor, the Crimson Head Prototype, the second Yawn and the Tyrant.

Barry’s .44 Magnum — Jill only, and it costs you the good ending

At Jessica’s Tomb in the Altar, Barry hands Jill his personal .44 and then asks for it back. Hand it over and he lives. Keep it and Lisa Trevor kills him, and you also pick up Barry’s Photograph where he fell.

The gun is worth exactly one thing: it kills the Tyrant in the Main Laboratory with a single round. There is no .44 ammunition anywhere in the game, so whatever is in the cylinder is all you will ever have.

Keeping it locks you out of Jill’s best ending and out of the self-destruct escape route — on that branch Wesker’s body carries the Master Key instead, and you have to let yourself out manually. Do this on a dedicated run, not on your 100% run.

Grenade Launcher — Jill only

Propped against the wall next to Forest Speyer’s body on the Outside Patio, Mansion 2F, already loaded. Chris finds a Handgun Magazine at the same spot and nothing else — the launcher does not exist in his scenario.

Six rounds in the tube, three round types, and you switch between them by loading a different shell:

• Grenade Shells — the common round and the weakest. Perfectly good on zombies, Hunters and Chimeras, and the type you will have the most of.
• Acid Shells — the rarest and the hardest-hitting. Yawn and the Tyrant take extra damage from them, and a single acid round is enough for some Hunters. Barry gives Jill her first pair in the Main Hall before she has the launcher, so keep an inventory slot free or he cannot hand them over.
• Incendiary Shells — napalm. Heavy damage, extra effect on Plant 42 and Black Tiger, and a zombie killed by fire burns up completely and can never rise as a Crimson Head. That last property is worth more than the damage: it is a permanent kill that does not spend kerosene.

The launcher is the single biggest advantage Jill’s scenario has, and it makes every boss in the game shorter.

Flamethrower — Chris only, and you cannot keep it

Mounted on a wall panel in Boulder Passage 1 in the Courtyard underground. It carries a fixed internal fuel supply that drains fast, and once it is empty it stays empty.

It exists for two jobs. The first is the Spider Room — Web Spinners and Black Tiger burn extremely well. The second is structural: the two-hook wall panels down in the caves are door mechanisms, and hanging the Flamethrower on one operates the door. You cannot leave the underground carrying it. Spend the fuel before you give it up.

Jill’s equivalent down there is the Broken Flamethrower from the Garbage Compactor, which is a door handle and nothing else — it cannot be fired.

Self Defense Gun

A tiny two-chamber derringer on the desk beside the bookcase in Room 001 of the Residence. One chamber has already been fired; you get exactly one shot and there is no ammunition for it anywhere in the game. Picking it up also gives you the Suicide Note.

For its size it hits absurdly hard. Spend the round on a boss — the second Yawn and Black Tiger are the usual choices — rather than on a zombie in a corridor.

Rocket Launcher

Brad Vickers drops it onto the helipad during the final Tyrant fight, after you fire the Signal Rockets. Four rockets, enormous blast radius, and one hit ends anything. You get it in both scenarios, and you only ever need one shot from it before the helicopter leaves.

The Tyrant only appears on the helipad at all if you still have a surviving partner. On a route where your partner is already dead, the helicopter simply lands and this weapon never appears.

Rocket Launcher (single barrel)

The unlockable one: a slim single-tube launcher with infinite ammunition that kills anything with one shot. It appears in your item box on subsequent playthroughs, and in a replay it takes the knife’s place in your starting inventory.

Unlockable reward — see UNLOCKABLES.

Missable and unlockable — the short version

• Assault Shotgun — requires saving Richard with the Serum. Both characters.
• Barry’s .44 Magnum — Jill only, and only by letting Barry die.
• Self Defense Gun — one shot; once fired it is gone for the run.
• Flamethrower — Chris only, and it must be surrendered to a door mechanism before you leave the caves.
• Magnum Revolver — behind an entirely optional puzzle chain in the Courtyard.
• Grenade Launcher — Jill only, and the Outside Patio is easy to skip entirely.
• Rocket Launcher — no partner alive means no Tyrant fight and no rocket launcher.

Unlockable rewards, not found in the world:

• Samurai Edge (infinite handgun ammunition)
• Rocket Launcher, single barrel (infinite rockets)

Items & Key Items

Healing

First Aid Boxes sit on floors and benches throughout the game and are worth opening on sight; you will find them in the mansion Bedroom, on the Rec Room bar in the Residence, in the boulder passages of the Courtyard underground and in several laboratory corridors. What is inside varies by difficulty.

Serum is a special case. It lives on the shelves of the Mansion Drug Room and it has two entirely separate jobs: it cures the poison Yawn inflicts, and it is the only thing that saves Richard Aiken. You cannot do both with one bottle. Saving Richard is worth more — it is the only route to the Assault Shotgun, and Yawn’s poison can also be handled with blue herbs.

Rebecca heals Chris for free at whichever room she has settled in, a limited number of times, and she can also be found there when you are hurt and out of herbs. Barry does not heal Jill; instead he hands her supplies and ammunition at scripted points — always with a free inventory slot, or the handover fails.

Ink Ribbons

Saving costs an Ink Ribbon and there is no other way to save. Ribbons come in stacks: three per pickup on Easy, Normal and Hard, six per pickup on Very Easy. One slot holds a whole stack.

Ribbon pickups are in the Dining Room, the East Wing Storeroom, the Small Storeroom, the Living Room, the Bar, the Residence Storeroom, Room 003, the Large Art Room desk drawer, the Mining Area, X-Ray Room B and the laboratory Item Box Room, among others. On Hard there are simply fewer of them, so plan your saves around the rooms you know you will pass through.

A typewriter with no item box beside it is a save point only. The Dining Room is the obvious example.

The Lighter and kerosene

Fire is the only fully permanent answer to a downed zombie other than destroying its head, so this kit is not optional.

• Lighter. Chris always has it equipped and it costs him no inventory space — one of the few places his scenario is more generous. Jill has to find hers, on the desk opposite the east entrance of the Small Library on Mansion 2F, and it occupies one of her eight slots permanently.
• Fuel Canteen. On the floor beside the typewriter in the East Wing Storeroom, Mansion 1F. A full canteen holds two burns.
• Kerosene tanks. Fixed refill points — the East Wing Storeroom, the Outside Boiler, the Small Storeroom, the Residence Storeroom next to the item box and the Laboratory Stairway are the reliable ones. A tank gives you five doses on Very Easy and Easy, four on Normal and Hard, then it is dry for good.

To burn a body, stand over it with the Lighter in your inventory and use the Fuel Canteen. Two corpses lying close together go up on a single dose — worth arranging deliberately.

Burn the corridors you will walk repeatedly. Do not burn dead-end rooms.

Defense items

These are consumed automatically when an enemy grabs you.

Battery Packs for the Stun Gun turn up in the Small Storeroom, the Residence Storeroom, the Courtyard Study, the Sliding Trap Room alcove, the Underground Storage Room, the Morgue, Power Maze B and the Operating Room back room. One pack, one use.

The Flash Grenade is quietly one of Chris’s best tools: because it destroys the head, a zombie killed with one cannot rise again as a Crimson Head. Used deliberately it is a kill, not an escape.

Maps

Six maps, each picked up as an object in the world:

• Map of the Mansion 1F — Art Room, in the urn on the statue (push the chest over and climb)
• Map of the Mansion 2F — Resting Room; light the fire, then use the Wooden Mount on the panel above the hearth
• Map of the Courtyard — Cabin, on the wall above the small stairs
• Map of the Residence — Central Corridor, north wall past the Room 002 door. Do not look through the hole behind it or you flood the room with wasps
• Map of the Aqua Ring — Control Room, north wall behind the lower table
• Map of the Laboratory — Visual Data Room, bookcase by the door

Collecting maps also matters mechanically: one of the game’s completion awards is for visiting every room on every map.

Key items — Mansion

Key items — Residence and Aqua Ring

Jill’s Lock Pick opens five doors, all of them in the mansion. There is no Lock Pick door anywhere in the Residence, so both characters need the same four Residence keys.

Key items — Courtyard underground and Altar

Key items — Laboratory

Where Jill and Chris differ on items

• Lock Pick vs Old Keys. Jill’s is permanent and free; Chris’s five are consumable, and the Large Gallery shortcut gate into the Graveyard will eat one of them if you let it.
• Lighter. Always equipped for Chris at no slot cost. A found item and a permanent slot for Jill.
• Defense items. Jill has the reusable Stun Gun plus Battery Packs; Chris has Flash Grenades, which kill outright.
• Chemistry. Jill mixes V-JOLT herself. Chris cannot touch the chemicals — Rebecca does it, and only if Richard was not saved.
• The piano. Jill plays it. Chris needs Rebecca in the Bar.
• Slots. Eight versus six. Chris cannot carry a full puzzle chain and a full weapon loadout at the same time, so plan short loops back to item boxes.

Herb Mixing

Rules worth memorising:

• A red herb on its own does nothing. It has no effect and cannot be consumed; it only exists to be mixed.
• Red and blue cannot be mixed together directly. Every mixture needs at least one green in it.
• Green + Red is the efficient full heal. Two herbs and one slot instead of three herbs for the same result — always prefer it over three greens if you have the red.
• Green + Red + Blue is the best single item in the game per slot, and the one to build before a boss.
• Mix as soon as you have the components. A mixture takes one slot; the components take two or three.
• Blue herbs are common enough that carrying a spare into snake, spider and wasp territory is free. Poison drains health continuously, so cure it immediately rather than racing it.

Yawn’s venom is a special case in Jill’s Attic fight and in both Library fights: it can be cleared with a blue herb, or with the Serum. Use the herb and keep the Serum for Richard.

Files & Documents — 24 Pickups

Twenty distinct documents, four of which arrive in multiple parts, for 24 pickups in total. They are numbered below in the order a completion run reaches them, and every file badge in the two walkthroughs carries the same number. Every one of them appears in both scenarios except where marked.

Mansion

Residence and Courtyard

Laboratory

The ones people walk past

• Trevor’s Diary part 2 and part 3. Part two is behind a key door most speed routes skip; part three is at the dead end of a passage you fall into.
• Family Picture & Notes part 2, sealed inside a jewellery box in Lisa’s Room.
• Botany Book. The Small Library visit is normally a grab-the-whistle-and-go, and the book is on the other desk.
• Body Disposal. Because it moves depending on your route, players who read it in one room assume they have missed nothing when they later find the other room empty.
• Keeper’s Diary. Under a desk in a room with a zombie playing dead on the floor and another in the wardrobe — the natural instinct is to leave.

The Trevor material

Read together, Trevor’s Diary (three parts) and Family Picture & Notes (three parts) are the whole backstory of the family that built the mansion: the architect who designed its traps and was sealed inside them, his wife, and his daughter Lisa. They are the connective tissue behind the Crypt, Lisa’s Room, Jessica’s Tomb and the creature that will not stay dead. None of them is required to finish the game and all six pickups are optional, which is exactly why so many runs end without them.

Clear Times

This game does not grade you with a letter. There is no S/A/B/C/D screen, no accuracy percentage and no item-usage tally. What the game records is your total clear time, and that single number is what every reward is keyed to.

What the clock is

• It is total playtime on that save file, not the length of your last session. It accumulates across every load and carries with the save.
• Dying and reloading rolls you back to the time stamped on the save, so a death costs you the progress between saves, not a penalty on top.

What does not count against you

• Saving. Ink Ribbon use has no effect on any time-based reward. Save as often as your ribbons allow.
• Retries and continues. They cost you the replayed minutes and nothing else.
• Item box use. Unlimited and free on every mode except Real Survival, where the boxes are no longer linked to one another.
• Healing items. Using First Aid Sprays, herbs or Rebecca’s treatment has no effect on your reward tier.

In other words: the only thing you are being graded on is the clock, and the only way to influence it is to walk a shorter route.

The thresholds

The difficulty requirement is the trap. The menu reads Mountain Climbing / Hiking / Walking, which is Normal / Easy / Very Easy — not Hard / Normal / Easy. Countless sub-three-hour clears have earned nothing because the player picked the second option believing it was Normal. Choose Mountain Climbing or Hard.

Both rewards are cumulative and both are per-file, not per-character: a sub-three-hour clear gives you the sub-five-hour reward as well. Unlocked weapons show up in your item box on later runs, and in a replay the launcher occupies the slot the knife would normally take.

The self-imposed challenges

Two completion awards do impose the restrictions people expect from a rank system, and they are worth planning separate runs for:

• A full clear with no saves at all. No ribbon may be spent from the first room to the helicopter.
• A full clear using only the knife — no firearms, no Lighter, no defense items, and no stomping downed heads.

Unlockables & Secrets

Difficulty modes

The menu never uses the words Easy or Normal. It describes each setting as an activity and leaves you to work out which is which, which is how most first-time players end up on Easy without meaning to.

Very Easy is a genuinely different experience: enemies fold in a couple of shots, several enemy placements are removed altogether, ammunition and healing items are heaped on you, and Ink Ribbon pickups come six at a time instead of three. It earns you costumes, but it does not earn you the Rocket Launcher, the Samurai Edge or any of the unlockable modes — those all require Normal or Hard.

Hard keeps Normal’s enemy counts but makes everything soak far more damage, thins out ammunition, healing and defense items, and reduces kerosene tanks to four doses. Auto-aim still works on Hard; it is only removed on Real Survival and Invisible Enemy.

Once Again… appears once you have finished the game and is how you replay a completed file, carrying your unlocked bonus weapons in place of the knife.

Weapons

• Samurai Edge (infinite ammunition) — finish in five hours or less on Normal or Hard.
• Rocket Launcher, single barrel (infinite ammunition) — finish in under three hours on Normal or Hard.

Both appear in your item box on subsequent playthroughs.

Costumes

Costumes are not selected from a menu. After your first clear on any difficulty, a Closet Key appears in an item box. It opens the hidden wardrobe behind the painting in the mansion’s east-side art area, and you change there, mid-run.

Clearing once as Chris also unlocks Rebecca’s alternate outfit. Having every costume unlocked on a single save file is its own completion award, so do not scatter your clears across several files.

Real Survival

Unlocked by completing the game on Normal or higher.

What changes:

• The item boxes are no longer connected. Whatever you put in a box stays in that box. Everything you leave behind has to be walked back to.
• Auto-aim is switched off. You aim manually at everything.
• It runs at a single fixed, high difficulty.
• Enemy and item placement otherwise tracks Hard mode.

It is the hardest legitimate way to play the game, and the box change is what does it — routing suddenly matters more than shooting.

Invisible Enemy

Unlocked by completing Real Survival, or by clearing the game on Normal or Hard with both Chris and Jill.

Every enemy is invisible. Auto-aim is off. You track things by:

• dust and debris kicked up by large enemies
• ripples and splashes in standing water
• reflections in the Mirror Corridor’s mirror
• defense items and knives left sticking out of a body

Finish Invisible Enemy in under five hours and you are given three bonus pieces of content after the credits: a commemorative photograph, a message from the director, and concept art of costume designs that never made it into the game. These appear only on that post-credits screen and cannot be recalled from a menu afterwards — save before the final sequence if you want to look at them again.

One Dangerous Zombie

Unlocked by finishing the game with both Chris and Jill on Normal or higher, on the same save file.

Forest Speyer comes back. He is strapped with grenades, he moves at Crimson Head speed, and he will usually charge the instant you enter a room.

How to survive him:

• Never attack him. Ever. Any damage you deal sets off the grenades and kills you instantly, no matter how much health you have. This is not a health check — it is an immediate game over.
• Do not use a defense item on him. A Dagger, a Flash Grenade or the Stun Gun counts as an attack and detonates him.
• If he grabs you, take the bite and shake him off. Struggling free costs you health. Fighting back costs you the run.
• Listen. The grenades on his harness rattle as he moves, so you can usually hear which room he is in before you see him. The exception is the Tea Room, where he stays inert until you walk up to him.
• Running is always correct. There is no reward for dealing with him.

He appears in the Dark Corridor from the very beginning, in Dining Room 2F once you have the Book of Curses, in the Tea Room and briefly on the Outside Balcony once you have the Armor Key, in the West Wing Inner Stairway on 1F, and hidden in the alcove behind the cupboard in the Small Dining Room. He is gone for good once you have the Helmet Key and return to the mansion.

Secrets

• The Tofu line. At the laboratory terminal, log in with JOHN / ADA as normal, then enter MOLE instead of CELL. You get a voice from elsewhere in the series. The door does not open, so enter CELL afterwards.
• The Capcom headstone. One of the graves in the cemetery carries Greek lettering that transliterates into the company’s name. The same text appears beneath a statue in the underground.
• The disk readers. The MO Disk authentication units in the laboratory are deliberately shaped like a GameCube.

The Trevor and Lisa reward content

There is no separate unlockable for this — the reward is the story itself, and it is assembled by hand out of six optional pickups plus three optional rooms:

1. Trevor’s Diary parts 1–3 — the Bar’s hidden room, the Large Art Room, the Secret Passage.
2. Family Picture & Notes parts 1–3 — the Cabin, Jewelry Box (3) in Lisa’s Room, the sarcophagus in Jessica’s Tomb.
3. Lisa’s Room itself, at the bottom of the Courtyard underground.
4. Jessica’s Tomb and the Altar, behind the two Stone & Metal Objects.
5. Lisa Trevor herself — she cannot be killed anywhere except at the Altar, where you knock the stones down on her. Everywhere else in the game she is an obstacle to be escaped.

Do all six pickups on one file and the mansion stops being a haunted house and becomes a crime scene with a named victim.

100% Completion Checklist

Work down this list in order. Steps are grouped by the run they belong to, because several of them are mutually exclusive within a single playthrough.

Run 1 — Jill, Normal, best ending, exploration run

• [ ] Choose Mountain Climbing (Normal). Do not choose Hiking by mistake
• [ ] Take the Emblem from the Dining Room fireplace on your first visit
• [ ] Collect Kenneth’s Film, Book of Curses, Crumpled Memo, Botany Book, Body Disposal, Keeper’s Diary, Researcher’s Will, Mail to the Chief of Security
• [ ] Find the Lighter in the Small Library and the Fuel Canteen in the East Wing Storeroom
• [ ] Take the Broken Shotgun before going to the Living Room; collect the Shotgun
• [ ] Take the Grenade Launcher from the Outside Patio and load all three shell types into it at some point in the run
• [ ] Save Richard with the Serum from the Mansion Drug Room
• [ ] Fight Yawn in the Attic to the end and collect the Assault Shotgun
• [ ] Solve the piano, the clock, the Armor Room box, the Greenhouse, the Large Gallery pictures — all four death masks
• [ ] Kill the Crimson Head Prototype in the Crypt and take the Stone & Metal Object
• [ ] Run the Courtyard crest chain and collect the Magnum Revolver
• [ ] Collect Trevor’s Diary parts 1, 2 and 3
• [ ] Take the Self Defense Gun from Room 001 and the Suicide Note with it
• [ ] Collect Plant 42 Report, Organic Chemistry Lab Experiment
• [ ] Mix V-JOLT and use it on Plant 42’s root
• [ ] Collect Family Picture & Notes parts 1, 2 and 3 — do not leave Lisa’s Room without opening Jewelry Box (3)
• [ ] Give Barry his Magnum back at Jessica’s Tomb
• [ ] Collect Researcher’s Letter, V-ACT, FAX, Security Protocols, Observation Note
• [ ] Authenticate all three MO Disks and free Chris from the cell
• [ ] Collect the Fuse Unit, fire the Signal Rockets, take the Rocket Launcher from the helipad
• [ ] Finish with both Chris and Barry alive — Jill’s best ending
• [ ] Collect all six maps and visit every room on each

Run 2 — Chris, Normal, best ending, exploration run

• [ ] Take the Handgun from the Main Hall before doing anything else
• [ ] Budget the five Old Keys: Outside Balcony, Small Storeroom, Outside Boiler, Fish Tank Room, and only then the Large Gallery shortcut
• [ ] Collect every file listed for Run 1 that is not Jill-exclusive
• [ ] Take the Broken Shotgun before the Living Room — Chris dies in that room without it
• [ ] Save Richard with the Serum, then collect the Assault Shotgun from the Aqua Ring Water Tank
• [ ] Get Rebecca to the Bar to play the piano
• [ ] Run the fishing-lure chain in the Fish Tank Room for the Wind Crest, then the Courtyard crests for the Magnum Revolver
• [ ] Take the Flamethrower in Boulder Passage 1, spend its fuel on the Spider Room, then hang it on a hook panel
• [ ] Collect the Broken Flamethrower from the Garbage Compactor and open Lisa’s Room
• [ ] Save Rebecca from the Hunter in the Small Library
• [ ] Defeat Lisa Trevor at the Altar
• [ ] Free Jill from the cell with all three MO Disks
• [ ] Finish with both Rebecca and Jill alive — Chris’s best ending

Run 3 — Jill, Barry-dies branch

• [ ] Keep Barry’s .44 Magnum at Jessica’s Tomb
• [ ] Collect Barry’s Photograph where he falls
• [ ] Take the Master Key from Wesker’s body in the Main Laboratory
• [ ] Kill the Tyrant with a single .44 round
• [ ] Leave by hand — there is no self-destruct on this branch

Runs 4 and 5 — speed clears

• [ ] Clear in under 5 hours on Normal or Hard → Samurai Edge
• [ ] Clear in under 3 hours on Normal or Hard → Rocket Launcher, infinite
• [ ] A single sub-three-hour clear satisfies both

Difficulty coverage

• [ ] Complete a run on Very Easy
• [ ] Complete a run on Easy
• [ ] Complete a run on Normal
• [ ] Complete a run on Hard (available only after your first clear)

Costumes — all on one save file

• [ ] Clear once as Jill → military outfit
• [ ] Clear twice as Jill → Resident Evil 3 outfit
• [ ] Clear once as Chris → casual outfit, plus Rebecca’s alternate
• [ ] Clear twice as Chris → Code: Veronica outfit
• [ ] Collect the Closet Key from the item box and change at the hidden wardrobe to confirm each one

Unlockable modes

• [ ] Clear on Normal or higher → Real Survival unlocked
• [ ] Complete Real Survival
• [ ] → Invisible Enemy unlocked
• [ ] Complete Invisible Enemy
• [ ] Complete Invisible Enemy in under 5 hours for the photograph, the director’s message and the unused costume art. Save before the ending
• [ ] Clear with both Chris and Jill on Normal or higher on the same file → One Dangerous Zombie unlocked
• [ ] Survive a full run of One Dangerous Zombie without ever attacking Forest

Every weapon, at least once, across the file

• [ ] Knife
• [ ] Handgun
• [ ] Shotgun
• [ ] Assault Shotgun
• [ ] Magnum Revolver
• [ ] Grenade Launcher, loaded with Grenade, Acid and Incendiary Shells
• [ ] Flamethrower (Chris)
• [ ] Barry’s .44 Magnum (Jill)
• [ ] Self Defense Gun
• [ ] Rocket Launcher
• [ ] Samurai Edge
• [ ] Rocket Launcher, single barrel

Endings

• [ ] Jill, both survivors saved
• [ ] Jill, nobody saved
• [ ] Chris, both survivors saved
• [ ] Chris, nobody saved

Challenge clears

• [ ] Finish the game without saving once
• [ ] Finish the game using only the knife — no firearms, no Lighter, no defense items, no head stomps
• [ ] Burn two zombies with one dose of kerosene
• [ ] Visit every room on every map