Insanity Mode is the ultimate difficulty challenge in Resident Evil Requiem, designed to test even the most hardcore survival horror veterans. Enemies hit harder, resources are scarcer, and item locations have been shuffled around to keep you on your toes. Here’s everything you need to know to survive Insanity Mode.

How to Unlock Insanity Mode¶

Insanity Mode unlocks after you complete Resident Evil Requiem once on any difficulty. That means you can beat the game on Casual and still unlock it, though we’d recommend completing Standard first to get familiar with enemy patterns and level layouts.

Once you finish the game, Insanity Mode becomes available as a difficulty option for your next playthrough. It’s a New Game Plus exclusive, which means you can bring your unlocked bonus weapons and cheats with you.

What Changes in Insanity Mode¶

Insanity Mode ramps up the difficulty across the board. Here’s what you can expect, followed by paragraphs explaining the key differences:

• Harder enemies
• Blister Head mutations are common
• Collectibles and currencies are different
• Safe codes are different
• Ink Ribbons are required

Enemies are obviously much harder in Insanity mode. Each has significantly more health, deals massive damage (often taking more than half your health in a single hit), moves faster, and are far more aggressive. Regular zombies can tank multiple headshots, and Blister Heads appear much earlier and more frequently. Some even show up in Leon’s introductory sequence as GG’s Ben discovered upon deciding to try it out after completing the game the first time.

Many items, collectibles, and currencies have moved to different locations. For example, Grace’s B934 handgun used to be in the Care Center’s 1F Dining Room on Standard difficulty, but it’s no longer there in Insanity Mode. Her S&S M232 handgun is still in the 2F Bar & Lounge though, so at least that’s consistent and you can grab that fairly early on. Just means you have to rely on sneaking around or using bonus content a bit more to get through her early struggles.

Antique Coins, Raccoon Statues, and other collectibles have also been moved around. If you’re hunting for everything, expect to do some thorough exploration. All safe codes are completely different in Insanity Mode. You’ll need to find the safe code file locations again and solve them from scratch. So, you once again need to go rummaging around like you’re learning the game again. Lastly, the Chef zombie no longer drops the Pantry Key when you kill him, so that blocks off a lot of Blood, charms and other rewards you could get early on using the Inhibitor on him.

Lastly, Insanity Mode uses the Ink Ribbon save system from Standard (Classic). You’ll need to find Ink Ribbons scattered around the map to manually save your progress at typewriters. Autosaves are also much less frequent, so you risk losing significant progress if you die.

The good news is you can unlock Infinite Ribbons by completing the game in under four hours, which removes this restriction entirely and makes Insanity Mode much more manageable.

Insanity Mode Tips¶

Insanity Mode is specifically designed with the expectation that you’ll be using bonus content from the shop. Enemies are tanky enough that trying to beat this mode with standard weapons and limited ammo is borderline impossible.

We strongly recommend unlocking Infinite Ammo before attempting Insanity Mode. Check out our How to Get Infinite Ammo guide for details on earning the 50,000 CP needed to purchase it. You’ll also want to unlock bonus weapons like the RPG (15,000 CP) and Infinite RPG (35,000 CP) for tough encounters.
Other helpful unlocks include:

• Infinite Ribbons (Complete game in under 4 hours) - Removes save restrictions
• Advanced Tuning (Destroy all 25 Mr. Raccoon Statues) - Adds extra weapon upgrade tiers
• Steroids and Body Armor - Increases survivability against one-shot kills

As for other tips, we recommend the following:

• Avoid combat where possible as Grace
• If you do need to fight as Grace, leg shots are key for stumbling enemies, as are Injectors for killing crucial Blister Heads in awkward spots.
• Parrying is key as Leon to survive hard hits.
• Plan routes carefully - Use our interactive map for instance and search nightmare to see some key nightmare changes on the map

Rewards for Beating Insanity Mode¶

Completing Insanity Mode awards the “Remarkable Agent” achievement and a massive 40,000 CP. Combined with other challenge completions, this should give you enough CP to unlock everything in the bonus shop.

That’s everything you need to know about Insanity Mode in Resident Evil Requiem. Stock up on bonus weapons, bring Infinite Ammo, and prepare for the fight of your life. Good luck out there!