Resident Evil Requiem: 15 Beginner Tips I Wish I Knew Sooner

Survive the First Few Hours

Resident Evil Requiem doesn’t hold your hand for long. Between Grace’s scarcity and the tougher fights in Leon’s sections, the early hours can chew you up if you play careless. These are the things that actually matter, learned the hard way so you don’t have to. No spoilers for specific puzzles or codes here, just the mechanics that keep you alive.

1. Headshots Are Your Ammo Budget

On a standard zombie, aim for the head. A clean headshot drops them for the least bullets, and ammo is never plentiful. Spraying a zombie center-mass wastes shells you’ll want later. Slow down, line up the head, save the round.

2. Shoot the Legs to Run

When you don’t want to kill something, you want to get past it. A few shots to the legs or feet drops a zombie to the ground and buys you the window to sprint by. You’re not trying to finish them, just trip them up long enough to move. This saves more ammo than killing everything ever will.

3. Throw Bottles to Pull Enemies

Throwable bottles are a stealth tool. Lob one away from your path and the noise pulls enemies toward the sound. Now the route you actually wanted is clear. Use this whenever a group is clustered between you and a door.

4. The Hemolytic Injector Stops Mutations

Some downed zombies will mutate into something worse if you leave them. The Hemolytic Injector, jabbed into a downed zombie, permanently stops that from happening. It’s rare, so don’t waste it. Save it for the one corpse lying right across a path you’ll have to walk back through, where a mutation would ruin your day.

5. Grace Should Sneak, Not Fight

When you’re playing Grace, stealth is the default, not the backup plan. She has an 8-slot bag, no weapon upgrades, and limited firepower. Treat every encounter as something to avoid. Crouch, watch patrol patterns, and slip past. Fighting as Grace is what you do when sneaking has already failed.

6. Leon Earns Supply Box Credit

Leon has a Tactical Tracker that rewards kills with credit. That credit gets spent at the Supply Box for gear and items. So on Leon’s side, combat isn’t just survival, it feeds your economy. Don’t avoid every fight as Leon the way you would as Grace. Calculated kills pay you back.

7. Upgrade Leon’s Weapons, Don’t Hoard Resources

Leon can upgrade his weapons, and Grace can’t. If you’re sitting on upgrade resources “for later,” you’re playing it wrong. Invest in Leon’s arsenal as you go. The power compounds, and a beefier gun in your hands now is worth more than materials in a menu.

8. Grab the Blood Collector Early

The Blood Collector is part of Grace’s toolkit, and you want it as soon as it’s available. Don’t put off picking it up. Having it early shapes how you handle her sections, so make it a priority.

9. Learn the Save Rules for Your Difficulty

How you save depends entirely on your difficulty. On Casual and Standard Modern, the game autosaves constantly and you never touch ink ribbons. On Standard Classic and Insanity, you save at typewriters with ink ribbons, and Grace’s saves consume them. Know which world you’re in before you assume you can reload.

10. Parry on Leon for the Hard Fights

Leon’s axe melee comes with a parry. A well-timed counter can turn a guaranteed hit into a clean opening or a safe escape. The fights that feel impossible to outshoot usually crack open once you learn the parry window. Practice it early on easy enemies so it’s reflex by the time you need it.

11. Everything Is Missable

There’s no chapter select and no free roam in Requiem. The game runs in a fixed, linear order through its chapters. That means anything you skip can be lost permanently. If you care about collectibles, you have to grab them in sequence as you reach them. Don’t assume you can come back, because you usually can’t. For exact pickups, lean on a dedicated collectibles guide.

12. Manage Inventory Before Every Door

Grace’s 8 slots and Leon’s grid case both punish bad packing. Before you push into a new area, take a second to drop junk, combine herbs, and make room. Getting caught with a full bag right when you find something important is a classic rookie mistake.

13. Don’t Kill Everything

This is the core survival horror lesson. Killing every zombie burns ammo and health you can’t always replace. Ask yourself if you actually need this enemy dead or if you just need to get past it. Most of the time, slipping by is the right call, especially as Grace.

14. Conserve, Then Conserve More

Requiem rewards stinginess. Ammo, herbs, ink ribbons on the harder modes, all of it is finite. The players who struggle are usually the ones who treated early resources like they were infinite. Bank your supplies for the moments the game forces a fight on you.

15. Play Each Character to Their Strengths

Grace is stealth and avoidance. Leon is combat and upgrades. The fastest way to die is to play Grace aggressively or play Leon timidly. Once you internalize that these are two different games stitched together, both halves get a lot easier. Match your behavior to whoever’s in your hands.

The One Habit That Carries You

If you take one thing from this list, make it the avoidance mindset. The single biggest gap between players who breeze through Requiem and players who hit a wall is the willingness to walk away from a fight. Headshots, leg shots, thrown bottles, and stealth all serve the same goal: getting where you’re going with your resources intact. Survive first, clear the room only when you have to.