Chapter 3-4

It's Ashley!

When the fireworks at the beginning of this cutscene are over, grab everything you can from the periphery of the room; there's 5,000 pesetas behind the portrait of Lord Saddler on the wall, if you check it. Ashley's here, finally, but she'll need a bit of help to get free of her restraints. In order to pop her out, you'll have to shoot them off. This is obviously easiest if you have a rifle, but if you don't, you'll have to use a pistol. Very, very gently. Aim off to the side, obviously enough, as a single bullet is all it takes to kill her.

After Ashley's free, you'll have to contend with two waves of enemies. The first is a simple bout of three cultists; shoot them down from your perch before they can haul off Ashley. The second includes a near-infinite flow of cultists, a pair of crossbowmen, and a red-robed leader with a key around his chest. You'll need to prevent the cultists from hauling off Ashley, protect yourself from the crossbowmen, and kill the red cultist so that Ashley can get his key. Until you kill the red guy, the black cultists will continue to flow in, so he should definitely be a priority for you.

Interlude

After Ashley does get the key and escapes from the room, you'll take over as her. For this little section of gameplay, you're obviously not going to have any weapons, so you'll have to enter combat with an eye towards improvisation. To begin with, pick up the Spinel and Yellow Herb in the room where you begin, then save your game before heading up to meet with the cultist near the fireplace.

Now, these guys obviously aren't going to go easy on you just because you're a girl; they seem to have missed the memo stating that you're to be taken alive, so they will indeed attempt to kill you. You'll just have to try and kill them back. In order to do so, you're gonna need to throw the lanterns scattered around at them. There are three for each cultists, and you'll need to land three hits to finish them off, leaving you with no real margin for error. You can yourself be hurt by the flames of the lanterns, making this a risky proposition indeed, but they will sometimes drop green herbs when killed.

Try to lock yourself off from the cultists, and you won't have to deal with them at all.

Luckily, you only have to deal with one cultist at a time, as they're separated by a wrought iron gate. You can use this to your advantage, and indeed the easiest way to proceed here is to just trap them both on one side of the gate and shut yourself off from them. To do so, you'll need to find the crawlspace leading from one side of the gate to the other; it's behind a cabinet on the right side. If you crawl through, flip the switch to open the gate, then get the attention of both cultists and run them all the way back to the first room, you should be able to run down the long line of desks, crawl underneath the one closest to the gate (making sure you're not facing off against a Throw prompt first), get through the gate and shut it before they can get back around the desks. This will let you loot the far room (there's some money in the one of the cabinets) and rotate the levers here to open the next corridor in peace.

Puzzling

As you head down the corridor here, you'll come to a door on the left, which apparently leads to the butler's chambers; there's nothing you can do here yet, but you should be able to pick up some gems and some handgun ammo by rooting around in the cabinets and furniture. You'll be coming back later, so grab the red herb from the hallway and proceed to the next area.

In order to proceed through this room, you'll have to maneuver through a series of gates which are controlled by pushbuttons. The first is located in the northwestern corner of the room; push it to gain access to the middle area, then grab the Stone Tablet from above the fireplace and push the button nearby. This will open the gate leading back to the beginning of the room. A seeming dead-end, but not if you push the cabinet near the door out of the way. This will reveal another switch; hit it to raise the red gate and give you a free path to the far door. Grab any items from the cabinets there before heading through.

Luckily, this puzzle is always the same when you first encounter it, meaning this solution should always work. Hopefully.

The next little puzzle is a bruiser, but isn't too difficult to do when you realize that the start pieces aren't randomized; they'll be in the same place every game. If you happen to screw around with the puzzle, though, then leave and come back, they'll be in whatever position you left them in after messing around; if this happens, then you're kind of on your own. You should be able to eventually get the puzzle worked out on your own, but if you don't want to have to, you can use our screenshot and this solution. If you start at the upper left corner of the puzzle and start numbering the tiles from left to right (i.e. like the numbers on a telephone pad or a computer's number pad), the solution is as follows: 6, 3, 2, 5, 4, 7, 8, 9, 6, 5, 2, 1, 4, 7, 8, 5, 6, 9. After the last move, you'll be able to place the Stone Tablet to gain access to the room nearby.

Inside, grab the Gold Bangle from the chest and the Spinel from the cabinet before examining the painting; this will net you the Salazar Family Insignia and the Serpent Ornament. It'll also rouse the suits of armor from their slumber; they'll attack you with their huge axes, but can rather easily be dodged thanks to their huge wind-up time. We're not entirely sure how a viral organism can account for reanimating pieces of metal, but hey - you don't play Resident Evil games looking for crap like sense or reason. In order to escape, though, you'll need to both outrun the armor - and they're plenty fast - and dodge the attacks of three upcoming stationary armor suits. We mean a capital-d Dodge here, too; it'll either be the B+A buttons or the L+R buttons, since it's random. After you get past the three of them, you'll be able to return to the butler's room and use the Insignia on the post there. Doing so, then pushing the dias, will reunite you with Leon.