Resident Evil Village is finally here. While most of us can’t wait to get chased around a big scary castle by Lady Dimitrescu, there’s another important new character you shouldn’t overlook. The Duke allows you to purchase ammunition, weapons, and other supplies. Each item the Duke’s shop costs Lei, the game’s Romania-inspired currency. You can earn Lei simply by defeating other enemies, finding it lying around the village, or selling other items in your inventory throughout the 10-hour game.
You can also upgrade your weapons too, so here’s a handy guide on what to prioritize in the Duke’s shop and how to make the most out of your limited amount of Lei. Also remember that Lei, as well as any upgrades you purchase, are permanent and carry over through New Game Plus in future playthroughs.
The Duke’s best upgrades in Resident Evil Village
You have three options when it comes to the Duke’s store: Supplies, Gunsmithy, and the Duke’s Purse. The first option, Supplies, is where you’ll find things like spare ammunition and weapon attachments.
One thing that sticks out the most in the Supplies portion is Extra Baggage. Purchasing this increases the number of item slots available in your inventory. This should absolutely be your number one priority so that you can store more items as you progress. You can purchase Extra Baggage up to three times, and each time costs more Lei but adds more space in exchange. The first one starts at 10,000 Lei, then 30,000 Lei, and lastly 50,000 Lei.
The second kinds of items you should prioritize are the ammunition recipes. You’ll start off only being able to craft pistol ammunition, but the shop offers recipes for every other gun in the game, including shotgun ammo, as well as snipers, pipe bombs, and flashbangs. You’ll definitely be using all different kinds of guns during your playthroughs, and crafting from all 11 recipes in the game will net you the Artisan achievement.
Best Resident Evil Village guns to upgrade
What to prioritize next depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re looking to earn all of the achievements in the game as soon as possible, be sure to purchase the S.T.A.K.E Magnum that appears in the shop late in the game. This item costs a hefty 300,000 Lei, but it’s by far the most powerful and efficient gun in the game. It’ll make future playthroughs much easier, especially on the hardest difficulty, Village of Shadows. At its base, it has a power level of 2000, which is just as high as, if not higher than, many other starting snipers and shotguns in the game.
When you go use the Gunsmithy, you can upgrade aspects of each weapon such as its power, rate of fire, reload speed, and ammo capacity. The S.T.A.K.E Magnum, in particular, has a staggering 4500 damage output with maximum upgrades. The GM 79 is a grenade launcher that does relatively good damage at the beginning of the game on higher difficulties but tapers off dramatically as you go further. Unfortunately, GM 79 also can’t be upgraded in the Gunsmithy either, so it’ll always stay at its base 1200 firepower.
Once you complete your first playthrough, you’ll be introduced to Completion Points (CP), which can be used to purchase perks for your subsequent playthroughs, like infinite ammo for specific weapons.
How to get infinite ammo in Resident Evil Village
Once a perk has been purchased using CP, then it applies to all of your current save files. So here’s a nifty trick that can be exploited:
In order to unlock the option for infinite ammo for a specific gun, you need to fully upgrade that gun. That means going into the Gunsmithy and spending enough Lei to max out all aspects of your weapon. In the case of the S.T.A.K.E Magnum — as well as any other gun — you can fully upgrade the weapon and then save your game in a separate slot (you have 20 save slots). Now you have a save slot where you didn’t fully upgrade your S.T.A.K.E Magnum and one where you did.
So what’s the point of that? Since you have a fully upgraded S.T.A.K.E Magnum in one of your save files, you can now purchase the infinite ammo perk for the weapon in the bonuses menu. Remember how perks from the bonuses menu apply to all of your current save files? That also includes the save file where you didn’t fully upgrade the S.T.A.K.E Magnum. So in that previous save file, you’ll still have all the Lei from before you fully upgraded the weapon, but at the same time also still have the infinite ammo perk applied.
It takes about 2.1M Lei to fully upgrade the S.T.A.K.E Magnum, and using this trick lets you keep all the Lei for anything else you want to buy. At some point, you should purchase every single customizable gun part from the Duke’s shop and equip them, which unlocks the Veteran Gunsmith achievement.
How to get more Lei in Resident Evil Village
The last option in the Duke’s shop that involves Lei is the Duke’s Purse, which is just a fancy term for you to sell the treasures you find throughout the game.
Bosses and sometimes regular enemies will drop “Crystal” items that you can turn in and sell to the Duke for Lei. Besides combining certain treasure parts to make a complete one and earning the Repairer achievement as a result, there’s no other use for treasures and Crystal items besides giving them to the Duke.
