Resident Evil 7 Guide: Tips for Beginners

Make Use of the Crafting System

New to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a crafting system that allows you to synthesize healing items, ammunition, and other helpful substances that will make your nightmarish trek through the Baker residence a little less hellish. For starters, you’re going to be finding a lot of raw materials like Gunpowder and Chem Fluid. In fact, as you progress through the game, you’ll find that you have an abundance of these materials more so than you do ammunition and first aid drinks themselves.

When you’re just getting started in Resident Evil 7, I recommend crafting ammunition whenever you can. Healing items can be found pretty easily at the start of the game, while ammo seems relatively scarce. You never know when the game will throw you into a sudden combat situation either, so it’s always good to have some extra firepower on hand, at least until you find more weapons you can use.

Block Enemy Attacks

Another new feature introduced in Resident Evil 7 is the ability to block enemy attacks. Simply by pressing and holding down the L1/ LB button, Ethan will raise his hands defensively, allowing him to reduce the amount of damage he takes from foes. On Easy and Normal difficulty modes, the block actually works rather effectively, so it’s definitely wise to take full advantage of it. Be sure to block whenever you’re out of ammo, or if you need to create space between yourself and an enemy so that you can retaliate.

If you tap the block button at the right time, you can also significantly reduce the amount of damage taken. Just before an enemy swing hits you, hit the block button for optimal blocking results. If you time it right, you can get away from the confrontation almost unscathed, and either run away or retaliate with a counterattack.

Manage Your Inventory

Now that inventory management is back in Resident Evil 7, you’ll have to be extra careful with the items you want to take with you. First things first, it’s important to note that you can save a bit of inventory space by assigning items to the shortcut buttons on the d-pad. When you open your inventory menu, move key items like weapons and herbs to the shortcut spaces at the top of the menu. A larger item like the shotgun will only take up one inventory spot when it normally takes up two.

As a general rule of thumb, you should never carry around puzzle pieces or key items around with you unless you know exactly where to use them and are planning on utilizing them immediately. If you pick up a new puzzle piece and have no clue where to use them, make a note of it, and put it into the item box at a save room. You can always come back later to retrieve it when you finally find the puzzle itself, but you can never have too many healing items or ammo on you.

Fairly early on in the game, you’ll receive a pocket knife. I recommend keeping this with you at all times and assigning it to a shortcut button as it’s your only means of executing a melee attack during those early hours. Every so often, you’ll come across breakable crates that might contain useful items. Instead of wasting ammo to shoot them, use the knife instead.

Consider Crouching

There are tons of useful items hidden away in the world of Resident Evil 7, and not all of them will be obvious to the human eye at a glance. Items will be hidden in dark corners, and some can only be accessed if you examine your environments from all sorts of angles. To that end, I recommend crouching every once in a while as you’re scouring your surroundings. You might find items hidden on lower shelves that will help you on your journey. Besides, your movement speed isn’t really severely compromised when you’re crouching. Ethan moves at almost the same speed when he’s walking normally and crouching, so you won’t lose a lot here.

Not only that, crouching is also great for hiding from enemies. The enemy AI in Resident Evil 7 doesn’t exactly have the best situational awareness, and their lines of sight can be a little wonky at times. Crouching while moving around will conceal you from their prying eyes, allowing you to sneak up on them for a surprise attack.

Rotate All the Objects

This is probably the most important tip, as a lot of key items in Resident Evil 7 are very cleverly hidden within unsuspecting environmental objects. Whenever you come across an item that the game allows you to examine, make sure to rotate it and look carefully at it from every angle. You’ll occasionally see a button prompt, allowing you to interact further with that object, revealing key items that you might need for a later puzzle. You don’t want to hit a dead end, and have to backtrack, looking for that one elusive item you didn’t examine enough, or passed over too quickly.

What other tips do you have for players just starting their journey in Resident Evil 7? Feel free to sound off in the comments down below.

For more tips, tricks, and information on Resident Evil 7, be sure to check out our ever-expanding wiki guide.