For those looking for more of a challenge in Resident Evil Village hardcore mode, enemies deal more damage and are tougher to take down, and Ethan will have fewer resources to work with. To survive, players will need to scavenge and ration their resources even more and approach combat encounters even more skillfully.
Resident Evil Village follows the events of Resident Evil VII: Biohazard, in which Ethan Winters travels to Louisiana after receiving a mysterious message from his wife, Mia, who has been missing for three years. There, Ethan experiences the horrors of the Bakers, a once kind family infected and possessed by biohazardous, sentient mycelium. Resident Evil Village picks up three and a half years after the events at the Bakers house, and Ethan must face even stranger horrors in a style reminiscent of Leon Kennedy’s adventure in Resident Evil 4.
Players who have completed Resident Evil Village on Standard difficulty will have the option to start New Game+. This means playing the game again from the beginning, but starting off with all the equipment, purchases, and upgrades players had by the end of their first game. Additionally, by virtue of playing through Resident Evil Village at least once, players will also have amassed a large number of Challenge Points, which they can use to unlock Village's power weapons like an actual lightsaber. While many of the same tips, tricks, and strategies can be applied to a New Game+ run, players can also use them to survive in hardcore mode when starting with a completely new save and no access to post-game weapons.
Treasure Hunting Helps Players Survive Resident Evil Village's Hardcore Mode
Resident Evil Village takes a lot of elements from Resident Evil 4. One such element is treasure hunting. Just like in RE4, RE8 has a merchant to whom Ethan can sell treasures. While this might not seem related to survival at first, the money earned through treasure hunting will help players obtain the resources they need, including new guns, upgrades to guns, gun modifications, healing items, crafting recipes, and larger inventories. Getting as many treasures as possible will be hugely beneficial to resource management.
The best way to keep track of collected resources is by using the map. Each room Ethan explores will be either red or blue. A red room signifies there are still items that players can collect, while a blue room means everything that could be collected has been. If players have searched all the drawers, boxes, and pots in a room but the map is still red, there could be a treasure hiding there. On the walls or even the ceiling of those rooms, players may spot a sparkle. If Ethan shoots it, a sellable crystal will fall, and players can collect it. Other treasures in Resident Evil Village may require players to solve a puzzle or backtrack once they have collected a certain key item.
Finally, the most valuable treasures are Resident Evil Village's combinable treasures. These kinds of treasures can be combined with one another to make the total selling price much higher. It is possible to sell combinable treasure pieces on their own, but the money received will not be as much as the completed treasure. It's recommended that players hold off until they have all the pieces to the whole treasure.
In the same vein as treasure hunting, players should always be looking for resources. Using the map again, players can identify which rooms may have ammo or materials for crafting. Additionally, ammo, materials, and even treasures can be found in locations outside of color-coded rooms, such as in the wells or the RE8's ten outhouses scattered around the village. Picking up as many crafting resources as possible will help players stay on top of their resource management. Because items players can craft pull from the same pool of resources, it is good for them to save their crafting materials for when they need certain items, like health or ammo, the most. If they spend it on handgun ammo immediately, they won’t be able to craft shotgun shells when they need some.
Understanding Enemies Helps Players Survive Resident Evil Village's Hardcore Mode
Another good strategy for playing hardcore difficulty mode in Resident Evil Village is knowing when to fight. Because resources are limited and enemies take a lot of bullets to put down, it’s not always the best idea to eliminate every single enemy. Enemies should be killed when players know they have the ammo to spare or when leaving them alive hinders progress. Players can otherwise do their best to just avoid enemies.
Blocking and pushing enemies is vital to playing more defensively. There is a window after successfully blocking an attack in which players can push an enemy back, putting space between them. While pushing, Ethan is also invincible to other enemies’ attacks, so players can use this to their advantage if they are getting surrounded.
If players must fight enemies, the best places to shoot are weak points. If the players shoot a moroaica or lycan in the leg, for example, it will fall, leaving it vulnerable to easy headshots. Some enemies, like the soldats from the lengthy Resident Evil Village factory level near the end of the game, are weakest when shot in a glowing red zone on their bodies.
Finally, Resident Evil Village has a lot of different weapons types, and each one has a purpose. Handguns have a lot of ammo but are relatively weak, making them good for whittling down enemy health or taking out their legs. Shotguns do lots of damage but have slow firing speed and require players get close to the enemy, making them good heavy-hitting and finisher weapons. Resident Evil Village's rifles are best at long range due to their scope and high damage, but this comes at the cost of having firing speeds even slower than shotguns. The grenade launcher is good against large groups of enemies and big enemies with lots of health, but ammo is costly and sparse. Finally, magnums are some of the highest damage-dealing weapons in Resident Evil Village, but their ammo is also costly and sparse, requiring players to make every bullet count. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each weapon and when each is most effective to use will help players defeat enemies efficiently, even on the most difficult settings.
Resident Evil Village is available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
