Mercenaries Reunion: Guide to leaderboard runs (RE5)

This is a very, very short guide to making competitive runs on mercenaries Reunion. You may consider it more of a checklist of things to work on to maximize you scores. This guide will NOT tell you that you must use this character or throw away that gun, Although i will throw out suggestions with details of why i suggest doing certain things.

First and foremost, the essentials

So the key essentials to getting that 900k+ on prison or 800k+ on PA is very simple for the most part. In practice, however, is a different story!

1. Getting the full 150 combo.

2. The boss enemy of the stage (for example, the executioner on PA or Reaper in the mines) must be pushed back as far into the combo as possible. For PA, you would like to push the first executioner to the 140th kill. the second one should die as soon as he enters, since the bonus points only go up in rank every 10 kills! The last executioner at 150. On other maps where you have more than 3 bosses, it's a global safety net to kill at 120. However, this is also dependent to how long you can push the enemies. If you think you can get the final executioner of prison to spawn around 148 (in time to kill at 150), then by all means kill the first executioner at 130.

3. Melee! For every second left on the clock when all enemies are dead, you get 300 points. If your playing as chris, the neck breaker may take 2 seconds to perform, but the 5 second bonus nets you a profit of 900 points in the end. However, in ordered fashion, the combo and pushing the bosses back take precedence. If you have to whip out the hydra to kill an enemy and save the combo, do so! Even losing the combo after the first kill is a huge detriment, because even if its just a majini, the 150th kill of a combo gives 60,000 bonus points. That's 40 melees thrown out the window.

4. Combo chests! I haven't investigated myself, but after a 50 combo they are useless. However, they are important early off guaranteed, so devise a route that can maximize getting these as early as possible.

5. Time bonuses! When you get these doesn't matter, however, get them. even a 30 second time bonus is 9000 points. In duo, depending on the stage, we'll usually get them while holding the combo, and in most stages wont start the combo until the chicken is ready to be killed or if one person has finished their route.

Things to work on to maximize efficiency

1. Note that melee's give invincibility during the action. If you stun an enemy by shooting it in the head with barry, it doesn't matter how many enemies are around him, as long as you get the melee off, your safe. knowing that you can get in the melee to save the combo rather than shooting to kill will net a small profit in the end

2. During melee's, climbing ladders, jumping out windows etc. you can access your inventory. If you hit the action button on ammo, then hit the action button on the associated gun, you will be able to reload during these scenes. This saves both the combo and time. Theirs no telling how many times i dropped the combo because reloading a shotgun manually takes so freaking long! Also, organizing grenades or healing items for quick access can be done during these scenes

3. Flash grenades kill plagas! Most maps have these positioned on the map. Make these part of your route and use them only for duvalias or character specific melee's. Barry benefits a lot from these, as his headbutt doesn't cause plagas and if enemies are wounded he will kill them with one headbutt. Note that barry can combo off his own headbutt into another headbutt. Rebecca flame spray kills without prior damage, and josh's alternate melee does as well.

4. Quick switching weapons. If you need to save the combo and your pistol or machine gun isn't going to do it, you will need to switch to either a shotgun or magnum. Before hitting the D-pad to switch aim your current weapon, then hit the d-pad. It's much quicker. In fact, if you aim your pistol, switch to josh's rocket launcher and immediately hit the shoot button, it will launch the rocket before even going into the scope. This helps A LOT when you have to save the combo.

Suggestions that aren't necessary to follow

From personal experience (quite recent for that matter), what most people would tell you is that you should get rid of fairy tale sheva's shotgun because it sucks, or rebecca's melee's are no good so you shouldn't use her. I disagree whole heartily, and so this section is merely suggestions with details to backup my points, but i leave also as debateable and/or situational. My experience, my highest score on duo prison is 999,022, and was done with rebecca!

1. As said, fairy tales shotgun sucks and you should get rid of it. HOWEVER, in the scenario that you have a partner who uses a shotgun, i would keep the gun. It's one inventory slot and holds 25 shells. In this instance, however, unless your partner is another fairy tale sheva, i would give all shotgun ammo over to him/her. Now, the only purpose i have found for sheva's shotgun is:

a. saving the combo early. If your close to a majini, and the combo is under 20-30, you can attempt to save it with the shotgun. this will save magnum ammo (still your boss basher and true combo saver), and other majini will more than likely be floored, setting up for a melee.

b. in the case that your partner is josh, you will have the double fang melee. This melee has a decent area of effect, and if you get 3 or 4 majini in a thin hallway, you could shotgun them to floor most of them in a group and indulge in a 2-3 kill double fang, netting 10-15 seconds for one melee.

as stated, her shotgun still sucks with all this backup details. It won't even guarantee a majini kill unless you are literally in their face. In later combos, the shot could still cause a plagas, which are a bit tough to kill with the shotgun.

2. Sheva business is not suitable for high scores. Her pistol is TOO powerful. This is easily debatable because headshot's are usually easy to triggering the stun that will allow melee. That being said, the weapon is a 2 shot kill, so if you don't get the stun reaction, you just lost 5 seconds that could have been gotten from a melee. However, if you have pinpoint accuracy and good with headshots, the second shot will kill and you can move onto another majini quickly and you'll run the combo counter up quickly, which isn't bad.

3. Drop weapons you don't need, and in Duo try to consider your partners preferred character before picking yours. 2 excella's are horrible at keeping the time up after combo 50 because the only reasonable melee is her legshot melee's, and with both of you using those melee's, the need for the flash launcher is dwindled down. in prison, i will never play with someone if they refuse to drop their sniper rifle. It's stupid to have. enemies are never too far, and the hydra or magnum are more appropriate for dealing with plagas.

4. Play with a mic. High scores are done often without a mic, but using the come and go commands are still wasting moments of time, thus dwindling your score a little bit at a time.


If you decide you want to try leaderboard runs with me let me know. I play on xbox, GT: Septic Tank53

Do not add me if you haven't read over the first two sections of this guide and gotten fairly good with those tips. parts 3 and 4 of the final section must be upheld for the most part, even tho they are suggestions. you must have a mic, and in all maps but ship deck and public assembly you must get rid of your sniper rifle if using barry or warrior chris. PA is still something i might argue about too. speak english clearly and live in the US, i'm not prejudice or racist, but i don't want to deal with too much lag and questioning what your trying to tell me.

Good luck and i hope this helps everyone.

SepticTank wrote:

This is a very, very short guide

...LIAR

lol.. i didn't expect it to be as long as it is, however, it could be much, MUCH longer. Details on specific maps and strategies for specific characters. In the end, i did only cover the basics for leaderboard runs, and depending on the popularity of this topic or guide, i may add more in depth details to it.

i guess you could try comparing it to the guides found elsewhere. gamefaq guides on reunion are much, much longer than this. I find a "short" guide like this shouldn't overwhelm people new to leaderboard runs (as opposed to simple SS runs).

this is a really good minigame oh good guide too

Wait, so you push bosses back down the list of kills by avoiding them..?

I never liked competitive gaming.

Mercy wrote:

Wait, so you push bosses back down the list of kills by avoiding them..?

Yes. The reasoning is the bonus points. if a boss is killed at combo 50, you get 7000 bonus points from the combo, whereas a majini nets 1000. That's a 6000 point difference. At combo 150, a majini nets 60,000 points for the combo bonus, but a boss nets 100,000, which is a 40,000 point difference.

So, if you want to truly get the best score possible, you must keep the first boss alive for as long as possible

When to kill them on maps like prison (where their is 5 boss spawns), is up for debate. A lot of scores over a million end up with the first executioner dying at 120. I do see that it's possible to do hold him until 130 if players go to where the executioners spawn. That being said, the 5 executioners all spawn within a small local at the very top of the map.

Note: holding an executioner till 125 or 135 is pointless, as the bonus points you get are the same across each set of 10 kills (aside from kills 2-9, they are each a different bonus). Thus, at combo 119, if you start killing the boss and your partner gets a kill, making the boss kill 121, it doesn't change your profit. kills 120-129 all give the same bonus points.

Quote :

I never liked competitive gaming.

I've never been competitive in any game other than re5. It's gives me self gratification, as well as it's very fun for me. I've been playing mercs reunion since it came out, with random breaks of a month or 2 here and their, but i have long time been desiring a coop resident evil game (didn't have online access with outbreak).

My point is I as well have never been competitive with anybody more than my own brother (those days when mortal kombat and street fighter were good games). It's still more of a matter of how much i enjoy pushing myself up in the leaderboards, trying to find areas to improve on, etc. I just recently changed my control type to B so i could 90 degree turn. I seems difficult at first, but when you get the hang of it, it actually makes the game a bit more fun.

People will cheat in the leader boards though. Over 2 million points? Uh uh.

RaviorStygian wrote:

People will cheat in the leader boards though. Over 2 million points? Uh uh.

And everybody knows this, theirfore everybody ignores those scores. If i'm rank 3 in public assembly with 1.1million, and the 2 above me have 2billion, i'm number 1 in pretty much everyones eyes. Also, mercs reunion doesn't have too many glitched scores, and if i remember correctly, public assembly is the only one that has glitched scores.

To addon to this specific matter, on village and ancient ruins you may see people with over 150 enemies killed. These are not glitched matches, as those maps always spawn more than the expected 150. You mush flash multiple plagas at 149 to get over 150. Grenades and josh's rocket launcher work well, but if the enemy sprouts into a plaga then that enemy won't count. it's better to save all the spiders (bui kichwa) you possibly can and then flash at the end. This is one of those maps that excella is a good choice, and your time at the end isn't too important as those kills over 150 are 60,000 points each (as long as they are also part of the combo).

What if you get a combo of 150? That would be easier in a level like the Mines.

RaviorStygian wrote:

What if you get a combo of 150? That would be easier in a level like the Mines.

i don't quite understand what your referring to here. To make leaderboard runs you have to get a combo of 150 regardless, and as stated higher in village and ancient ruins. I was simply pointing out that for those two maps, a combo of more than 150 is legit and not hacked.

I'm on the leader boards without having to get a combo of 150. Unless you mean being WAY high up on the boards.

RaviorStygian wrote:

I'm on the leader boards without having to get a combo of 150. Unless you mean being WAY high up on the boards.

lol.. sorry i thought it was rather obvious. Yes, i'm speaking of targeting top 100 on any given map. I've been in the top 100 on quite a few maps, but people end up knocking me back down.

My current goal is breaking 900k on PA and 1million on prison. This guide gives the absolute minimum information required to do such runs, but as the person who wrote the guide, i have yet to break these scores. As for other maps, i do have goals with them, but not very important until i do these other two.

EDIT: I should throw out that I only do leaderboard runs in duo. It's more fun for me that way, and i don't usually hop on re5 to play solo.

EDIT2: Are you interested in doing runs like this Ravior? if you have the dlc , a mic, and the 360 version you can add me. my GT is in the guide. i wanna get these knocked out before re6 comes, as re6 is confirmed to have a mercs mode.

SepticTank wrote:

EDIT2: Are you interested in doing runs like this Ravior? if you have the dlc , a mic, and the 360 version you can add me. my GT is in the guide. i wanna get these knocked out before re6 comes, as re6 is confirmed to have a mercs mode.

Sounds like fun, sure.

And RE6 will have Mercs? SWEET!

EDIT: Oh . . . so there's going to be two maps I won't be able to play? Oh well, they'll be DLC in the future probably. (RE6's mercs)

RaviorStygian wrote:

SepticTank wrote:

EDIT2: Are you interested in doing runs like this Ravior? if you have the dlc , a mic, and the 360 version you can add me. my GT is in the guide. i wanna get these knocked out before re6 comes, as re6 is confirmed to have a mercs mode.

Sounds like fun, sure.

And RE6 will have Mercs? SWEET!

EDIT: Oh . . . so there's going to be two maps I won't be able to play? Oh well, they'll be DLC in the future probably.

I went ahead and sent you the friend request. if you have reunion then their isn't any maps you cant play, however if you don't have certain dlc you will be missing characters. If you have the untold stories bundle you'll have all characters, and if you got the lost in nightmares dlc, you have to get the costume packs and desperate escape to get the rest of the characters.

SepticTank wrote:

RaviorStygian wrote:

SepticTank wrote:

EDIT2: Are you interested in doing runs like this Ravior? if you have the dlc , a mic, and the 360 version you can add me. my GT is in the guide. i wanna get these knocked out before re6 comes, as re6 is confirmed to have a mercs mode.

Sounds like fun, sure.

And RE6 will have Mercs? SWEET!

EDIT: Oh . . . so there's going to be two maps I won't be able to play? Oh well, they'll be DLC in the future probably.

I went ahead and sent you the friend request. if you have reunion then their isn't any maps you cant play, however if you don't have certain dlc you will be missing characters. If you have the untold stories bundle you'll have all characters, and if you got the lost in nightmares dlc, you have to get the costume packs and desperate escape to get the rest of the characters.

I was talking about RE6's mercs.

RaviorStygian wrote:

SepticTank wrote:

RaviorStygian wrote:

SepticTank wrote:

EDIT2: Are you interested in doing runs like this Ravior? if you have the dlc , a mic, and the 360 version you can add me. my GT is in the guide. i wanna get these knocked out before re6 comes, as re6 is confirmed to have a mercs mode.

Sounds like fun, sure.

And RE6 will have Mercs? SWEET!

EDIT: Oh . . . so there's going to be two maps I won't be able to play? Oh well, they'll be DLC in the future probably.

I went ahead and sent you the friend request. if you have reunion then their isn't any maps you cant play, however if you don't have certain dlc you will be missing characters. If you have the untold stories bundle you'll have all characters, and if you got the lost in nightmares dlc, you have to get the costume packs and desperate escape to get the rest of the characters.

I was talking about RE6's mercs.

I was asking about re5 mercs. lol