Resident Evil 7 Beginners Guide: Tips for How to Survive

After delivering one of the most shocking and surprising debuts in all of video games, Resident Evil 7 is finally here. The game totally remakes the Resident Evil formula, returning it to its roots, while reshaping huge portions of the gameplay experience. With so many changes, even longtime veterans of the series should consider themselves beginners. To help those gamers and the legitimate newbies, here’s our Resident Evil 7 Beginners Guide full of tips for how to survive…and have the most fun.

Go Slow

Resident Evil 7 can best be described as one long haunted house experience. Sure, there’s combat and the usual video game stuff, but overall you’re best moments will be when you’re just exploring the house, avoiding danger, and jumping at whatever surprise Capcom has left behind the next corner. Go slow, would be the first and biggest tip I would give to any Resident Evil 7 beginners.

This isn’t a sprint sort of game where you rush through each section, completing objectives as soon as you can, then moving to the next to do it all over again. Many portions of Resident Evil 7 will open the world up to you, giving you many rooms to look through, with hidden items and surprises throughout. If you run by everything without actually looking then you’ll not only miss cool Easter eggs and surprises, but you’ll miss some really important items.

Conserve Your Ammo and Items

Yes Resident Evil fans, you are reading this correctly. Once again you will need to work hard to conserve your ammo and items throughout Resident Evil 7. This isn’t 4, 5, or 6 here where you’ll be finding ammo and health by the truckload. Nope, we’re back to true survival-horror actions here, with a decent amount of combat that is always tense thanks to the limited amount of ammunition that you’ll have going in.

Health items are also tough to find, and while you can craft both of these, they each require unique items as well as a shared resource. This means you need to make important decisions about which you need for the coming horror. If you work hard to conserve both your ammo and health items you’ll have less trouble deciding, and be able to deal with the monsters of the house all the easier.

And another point on items, be sure to watch your inventory. You might gather too many items while you explore and end up having to make a long trek back to the safe room to drop some stuff off.

Avoid Combat…When Possible

Another classic Resident Evil gameplay mechanic returns. Yes, it might be best for you to simply avoid that fight, rather than take on every single foe you come across. Sometimes…OK, often, this is unavoidable. In these moments it is usually clear that you’re trapped and have to fight your way out. However, many times throughout Resident Evil 7 you’ll be confronted with enemies that can be avoided. It’s at least worth a shot thanks to the fairly robust auto-save. If the fight is avoidable, be sure to use whatever stealth methods are available to you. Crouch down, hide behind boxes, get into other rooms, whatever you can to avoid being seen.

Save Often, and Don’t Always Trust Auto-Save

With that said, auto-save is not always the best. It was rare, but sometimes in my time with the game I found myself quite frustrated with where the game chose to save my progress. To avoid this you should save whenever possible via the tape recorders in your safe rooms. These are fixed saves, so you know exactly where you were and what was going on when you made the save. You also now have a nice way of backing things up, if your auto-save has you in a tough spot with little ammo or health.

It’s OK to Die

Resident Evil 7 isn’t Dark Souls or something, but it’s still a pretty tough game, especially compared to the last few entries in the series. The game can be very tough at times, both in its puzzles and its fights. Some bosses will give you a definite headache, so just be OK with dying on occasion and you’ll be alright. The auto-save should put you right near the beginning of the fight, and you can jump right back into it.

Pay Attention

Resident Evil 7 gets the series back to a place where you do need to pay attention to your surroundings. It does a good job of pointing things out for you, placing an on-screen prompt above most key items, but if you’re not paying attention you might miss something important and end up wandering around for long stretches of time, not knowing what to do.

And that’s it for now, but we’ll be sure to keep this up to date with any new tips or tricks for how to survive in Resident Evil 7. Let us know in the comments if anything has been a problem for you, or if you have any tips of your own.