Mercenaries is a special mode everyone can unlock after finishing Resident Evil Village. This weird bonus mode sends you through timed courses as enemies spawn, and power-ups appear. To clear each stage, you’ll need to defeat a certain amount of enemies without dying — but it isn’t enough to just complete these levels. You also need to get the best score possible. You won’t unlock new levels until you’ve hit those high score tiers, and to do that you’ll want to follow a very specific strategy. And after days of testing, we think we’ve found the simplest method for almost anyone.
And it involves the pistol. In Mercenaries, you’ll run through three stages — between stages, you can sell any items you’ve collect, restock on ammo, and upgrade your guns. Upgrades are way more important than you might realize, and the best way to win (while also gaining enough points to progress) is to upgrade your favorite gun and sell everything else. You’ll also have a huge stock of ammo, so there’s never any need to buy. And if you sell all the extra ammo you’ll get for each stage, you’ll get a nice bonus amount of lei to spend on the really valuable stuff.
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The Mercenaries | Easiest Strategy For Beginners
The Mercenaries is a bonus mode that can be unlocked for 10 CP after unlocking the CP Shop in the Bonus menu. The shop (and the mode) is available after completing the story on any difficulty. And no matter what, you’ll always have enough CP to purchase it ASAP. There are four levels to unlock with different difficulty tiers — and completing runs will earn you bonus CP you can use to get all the cool extra stuff.
The challenge is completing all four levels. Mercenaries is an overwhelming mode — you have to finish three stages, each one is timed, and you must defeat a certain amount of enemies to unlock the exit. Your goal is to get the highest score possible. To do that, you’ll need to kill all the enemies in each stage as fast as possible without dying. Between each stage, you can restock on free ammo and use the Duke’s store to purchase items or upgrade your weapons. I’m talking about all this for a reason. It’s very important for our strategy!
Mercenaries | Ranking Up Method
To make your first round of Mercenaries much easier, follow these quick tips.
- Focus on the Handgun. Get the best handgun available at the Duke’s Shop ASAP.
- Sell all shotgun ammo, sniper ammo, pipe bombs, mines, and health drinks. Use your lei to upgrade the handgun.
- Sell the free shotgun / sniper ammo you get between each stage.
- Focus on power and fire rate. The more damage you can do, the easier these will be.
- Focus on collecting blue power-ups that provide bonus damage / headshot damage.
Corpse Combuster is another good power-up. It causes enemies to explode when defeated, which helps clear out groups of enemies faster while you’re selling explosive weaponry. Don’t bother buying anything else, and try not to get hit or you’ll take a huge score penalty.
Each time you earn a higher score, you’ll be able to restart the level with more lei. This makes earning higher scores on subsequent playthroughs easier. Complete multiple runs, repeating these steps, and you’ll eventually work your way to the top rank. When you reach Tier 2, things get a whole lot trickier — I recommend purchasing a Magnum and a Handgun. Focus on upgrading the Handgun, and save the Magnum for special encounters where you need to deal huge damage.
And that’s it! Follow this extremely basic strategy, and you’ll start ranking up. Once you get the upper ranks, you’ll unlock extra levels. There are four levels total — Village, Castle, Factory, and Mad Village. They get harder, but it’s all possible if you rely on the power of the simple pistol!