General Tips

Essential Resident Evil 2 (Remake) tips for health, resource, crafting, and time management. Learn how to conserve ammo, combine herbs, and optimize your playthrough for S-ranks.

Health Management

Your current health is colour-coded. If you are in the green, your health is above 67%. If you are in the red, it is 30% or below. Between 30% and 67%, your health meter is amber. So long as you are not in the red, you can only be killed by instant death attacks (such as from an Ivy). If your health is red, on the other hand, you are typically one hit from death and should do something about it.

A single Green Herb restores 33% of your health, but you should never use just one. Instead, you should generally combine herbs: G+R fully restores health while G+R+B fully restores health and halves incoming damage for a few minutes. A Blue Herb on its own will cure you of the poison status (inflicted by G-Adults) but will not restore health so you should generally use it in combination. If you're going for the Frugalist trophy, note that an R+B Herb gives you damage protection without invalidating the trophy.

You should generally carry a full health restore at all times to guard against things going awry. If you are going into an area where there's little danger and can pick up health restoratives along the way, I will tell you in the walkthrough and you can leave restorative items behind.

Resource Management

All ammo is precious but some ammo is more precious than other ammo. By and large, MAG Ammo and SMG Ammo should be reserved for boss encounters. Claire's Flame Rounds can only be found and not crafted and should be used against the tougher non-boss enemies like Lickers, G-Adults and Ivy Zombies. Leon's shotgun, on the other hand, is rather ineffective against these same enemies and can instead be used to conserve handgun ammo when fighting zombies. Flamethrower fuel, on the other hand, does work against the enemies that shotgun shells are ineffective against and should be conserved accordingly.

In the B scenarios, Large-Caliber Ammo is somewhat limited and you'll generally be running low. Use your Combat Knife against enemies on the ground and craft 9mm ammo to make up the shortfall.

Crafting

You will make up for the shortfall of found ammunition by crafting it using various grades of ammunition. Here is the crafting matrix for Leon:

Type	Gunpowder	Large Gunpowder	High Grade Gunpowder
Gunpowder	Handgun Ammo x13	Handgun Ammo x 25	Shotgun Shells x 3
Large Gunpowder	Handgun Ammo x 25	Handgun Ammo x 50	Shotgun Shells x 5 or 6
High Grade Gunpowder	Shotgun Shells x 3	Shotgun Shells x 5 or 6	MAG Ammo x 5 or 6

Leon should use ordinary Gunpowder to craft Handgun Ammo rather than combining it with High Grade Gunpowder to make Shotgun Shells. Most High Grade Gunpowder should be used to make MAG Ammo. This means that two lots of High Grade Gunpowder and two lots of Gunpowder will make 5 or 6 magnum rounds and 26 bullets which is a _lot_ better than 6 shotgun rounds. When you start finding Large Gunpowder, you can use this to make Shotgun Shells since that allows you turn two lots of High Grade Gunpowder into 10 or 12 shotgun rounds which is better than 5 or 6 magnum rounds.

Here is the crafting matrix for Claire:

Type	Gunpowder	Large Gunpowder	High Grade Gunpowder
Gunpowder	Handgun Ammo x 13	Handgun Ammo x 25	Acid Rounds x 3
Large Gunpowder	Handgun Ammo x 25	Handgun Ammo x 50	Acid Rounds x 5 or 6
High Grade Gunpowder	Acid Rounds x 3	Acid Rounds x 5 or 6	Submachine Gun Ammo x ~85

Claire should use a couple of lots of High Grade Gunpowder to make Acid Rounds at the start of her A scenario only. This allows her to use them against the first boss since they're quite effective against him. Otherwise she should use High Grade Gunpowder to make SMG Ammo which is a much more effective boss killer in my experience. In her B scenario, she doesn't need to make Acid Rounds at all.

Time Management

Since there are bonuses for completing scenarios in as short a time as possible, it is best to avoid wasting time. The most effective method is to run everywhere. If you die, quit to the title screen to load your most recent save. Otherwise, the timer doesn't get reset.

It is quite straightforward to S-rank all four scenarios on standard difficulty while picking up all goodies so long as you run everywhere and have a good idea of where to go next. You can use my in-depth S-rank guide to help. If you want to get the S-rank on Hardcore difficulty, you are going to have to leave a bunch of stuff unclaimed:

• Spare Parts for the Safety Deposit Room are absolutely optional. The ultimate reward (a Hip Pouch) is good, but you have to do a lot to get it. If you choose to skip this, you don't have to unlock the Linen Room or open Portable Safes. In the B scenarios, you can avoid the Observation Room / Interrogation Room and in Leon's scenarios, you don't have to pick up the Diamond Key either.
• The police cruiser in the Parking Garage contains a so-so accessory for Leon and an indifferent weapon for Claire. If you choose not to bother, you don't have to go into the Firing Range either.
• Developing the "Hiding Place" film and picking up the loot is very much optional.
• If you're really Hardcore, you can avoid using the Safety Deposit Room altogether since the Shotgun / Grenade Launcher will be found in the Umbrella Laboratory if you don't pick it up in the Police Station.
• In the A-scenarios, the Nap Room Hip Pouch requires significant backtracking. This is not such an issue in the B-scenarios.
• In the B-scenarios, you can create a more efficient path through the first part of the game by going to the S.T.A.R.S. Office earlier. The critical path would be something like Operations Room -> Spade Key -> S.T.A.R.S. Office -> Lounge -> Library -> West Storage Room -> Library -> Landing -> Goddess Statue. Since you'll be chased by Mr. X and ganged up on in the Library, this will require luck and in all likelihood a G+R+B Herb to survive. Using the