Resident Evil 4 – Tips for Hardcore and Professional

Hardcore and Professional Tips

Sell pistol when you can get TMP

• TMP completely replaces pistol and is superior. More ammo efficiency if you math amount of bullets picked up, or crafted, as well as bonus frequency and dmg total from that set of bullets vs what pistol offers. Example based on the amount of ammo picked up / crafted typically:
  • TMP 30 rounds x 1.65 dmg = 49.5 dmg
  • Blacktail 10 rounds x 3.6 = 36 dmg
  • It only costs 1 more gunpowder.

I picked Blacktail because only the Red 9 is higher and all others are actually weaker, giving a slight middle ground and bias towards HG despite most handguns doing even worse. Due to the odd issue of TMP believed to get bonus frequency more often than any other gun by a rather noticeable margin and its high clip capacity for ammo drop rate manipulation. This isn’t confirmed officially by any method, as far as I’ve seen, but it occurs considerably enough that me and multiple others even on launch immediately noticed the clear discrepancy which seems to be significant enough to not be coincidence. Take it for what you will.

However, this isn’t the end of its ammo efficiency gains. There are charms that benefit it further like crafting bonus frequency, -1 gunpowder, etc.

Then there is the melee factor… If you kill enemies frequently with melee (which dmg scales based on progress through game always becoming increasingly stronger to keep up with guns) then you aren’t using bullets. This is even more true considering Leon’s ability to AoE melee very reliably plus on special mobs like chainsaw/bullmask/hog the stunned prompt knife multiplier is a massive x48 (x72 with wolf tail). What is the best gun for causing enemies to be stagger stunned?

By far the TMP. If you equip the melee crit chance medallion as well (esp if you also then use wolf tail, but hardly necessary) this becomes absurd levels of efficient and there is simply no weapon that competes with it, not even the BAR. Granted, whether you actually have the crit key chain or wolf tail will decide between it being strong and absurd, but it is always going to be at least strong.

The overall DPS, too, is quite good even for bosses.

What about the Red 9? It is rather ammo efficient among the pistols but the truth is the Red 9, without going into lots of detail (see other threads for that) just isn’t that reliable or good. All weapons in the game can beat the game readily, but the Red 9 has some issues, especially for newer players, that make it simply not a good pick especially when dealing with multiple enemies in rapid succession.

Be warned, you DO have to swap your case over to a different case such as L resource, Gunpowder, etc. otherwise the default Handgun ammo case will taint the ammo drop RNG pool and defeat the purpose of this method. The same applies to making sure NOT to equip the handgun ammo key chain. You can easily delay getting the stock until later on to save space/currency, but try to get it by the time you are going to the water room in the castle.

Pick a Rifle and get good with it, preferably the famous Bolt-Action Rifle (aka BAR)

The rifle class is too good in the remake, particularly the BAR. The Stingray is an easier learning curve due to faster fire rate (but also wastes more ammo if you miss and less dmg) and while very viable on Professional and easily enough for hardcore to be strong the BAR definitely stands well above it if you try to get used to it which isn’t hard.

The BAR’s dmg is so high it is considered a more economical Revolver replacement and actually dethroned Revolvers so hard in RE4 Remake they’re considered “bad” here on top of their scarce ammo issues where they’re normally dominant in other RE games. It can get up to 31.8 dmg per shot iirc yet it has very common ammo, especially when manipulating ammo by getting rid of pistol ammo drops (carrying no pistols, no pistol drop rate case/charm) and then only carrying 2-3 (preferably 3 as a worst case RNG drought back up, but usually so full on ammo most of the time you only get ammo for the two preferred guns).

Further, the rifles penetrate targets by default and there are plenty of corridors, stairs, and also the fact you can back up causing them to shuffle together (think as you back up they narrow like the tip of a triangle going after you) that you can 1-shot groups of 2-5 enemies regularly with a single bullet but get 7 per craft and plenty picked up. It also decimates bosses, almost always 1-shots plaga (or groups of plaga) even on professional, and is great vs specials as well.

Tip: Do not use the scope most of the time. Keep it removed and only equip it for the very very few instances it is actually relevant. Treat it more like a longer mid range to even close range weapon, often actually replacing the shotgun’s role (speaking of which shotgun makes an excellent third backup, notably the Riot Gun).

Remember to equip the free knife items you find around and use them before using your real knife.

Bolt Thrower Trick

This weapon is great for two famous cheeses. YouTube for the specifics but basically when upgraded properly with dmg (and yes it does require some ammo capacity and fire rate upgrades to work) you can use it on the chainsaw sister boss as well as village chief Mendez to instantly win those fights in under 5 seconds. Then sell it for around 95% of your spent money on it and its upgrades refunded back to you and use in your permanent weapons. Win, win, win.

Beyond that, bolt gun sucks in Professional for anything else so sell it after those two encounter cheeses. In hardcore and lower it can stun but ought as well use your TMP or BAR, instead. Due to proper ammo drop rate manipulation you will not have ammo issues so using this weapon to “save ammo” aside from the two cheeses is actually not saving you ammo realistically while making fights harder.

Miscellaneous Tips

There are two locations involving Red Cloak enemies that chant where you can kill them just right to trivialize their areas. One is where you are in a room full of people it keeps transforming. Here you absolutely got to grenade and then kill it before it runs off otherwise you will chase it wasting tons of time. If you do screw up flash grenade = instant kill of all exposed plaga (great place for the achievement if you care, too).

The other one is easier when you get to a bridge while collecting the animal head pieces (room directly above merchant in fact) there will be a bridge. It will drop down if you go to far but if you prepare a grenade and then walk towards it and throw the grenade at the lever just before you get to the spot that triggers the cutscene dropping the bridge down (get as close as you estimate > throw grenade > sprint to activate cutscene) it will kill or crowd control the enemy preventing the lever. If they are still alive quickly shoot them with the rifle to finish the job.

Another trick with the grenade is the anti-air turret that you have to destroy involving the helicopter. Simply throw some grenades/heavy grenades up there to destroy it skipping the entire turret section. Always good to carry extras or have resources to craft them.

Garrador fight just throw a flash grenade, or better yet grenade for extra dmg (Heavy Grenade being best) all of which stun it and then shoot it in back. If using BAR you may 1-shot it. If using another weapon like TMP/Riot Gun it may take a second try depending on if you get lucky or not (don’t stand too close if using either of those weapons or it may swipe you). For the double Garrador fight make them wake up and then as they get to the stairs throw the heavy grenade. Kill them both. If you only kill one shoot the bell (note where they are before waking them up) and wait until they run to bell to hit it. Then kill it from behind.

Grenades can be used (or bullet for first one) to dmg the balls that open the gates in the segment involving the giant throwing ogre enemy skipping the first two sections easily.

You can buy resources (S & L) from merchant and he restocks one per chapter if relevant to you. I’ve never needed to care but might be worth it for extra grenades or other ammo crafting if you need.

You can buy three rocket launchers in the game, one per major region (village, castle, island). After you buy one you cannot buy the next until you are in the next region but also until you’ve used up the prior. Ex. Buy village rocket > use on Verdugo > buy rocket > use on 3rd Krauser fight > buy rocket > use on final boss Saddler. The one for Verdugo is particularly worth it on Professional because of both his immense health resulting in a massive waste of ammo resources and likely healing but also his dmg reduction mechanic (massive dmg reduction when not frozen, so massive on Professional ti takes multiple rockets to kill him if not frozen…).

Remember, all guns bought / upgrades can be sold for around 95% of your money back to swap to a better one as you progress so upgrade as necessary.

Water room grab shotgun and don’t kill but rather sprint through > shotgun anything getting too close for knock back purposes, not killing purposes, and easily just run through the place rather than engaging in drawn out wasteful fights. Once back and needing to spin the wheel to lower bridge throw a flash grenade and use wheel.

If not doing speedrun than kill all of the bugs. They have a high frequency of dropping sapphires and the more ammo/herbs you hold (aka are not missing for any of your guns nor herbs) than the more drop rate biases towards sapphire. In fact, if you got enough resources that the game would prefer to drop ptas normally they will almost all drop sapphires and it is possible to get around 40-50 sapphires from the bugs.

For the lab regenerators (not the spiked ones) unless you simply want to kill them for the gem just take a shotgun out and literally blow off their legs and walk past them ignoring them. You can also stand behind the one in the freezer when it is knocked to the ground to be safe.

Parry, imo, isn’t necessary if you aren’t good at it so don’t worry about it on pro, plus Krauser 1st fight has very relaxed parry mechanics for intended balance reasons as if it is normal difficulty unlike every other encounter in professional mode.