The release of Resident Evil 3 today brings with it many staples of the survival horror series, and no game would be complete without herbs to keep our survivors healthy and among the living. Green herbs can still be consumed by themselves to heal around 25% of a player’s health, but there are other options as for more potent healing.

As always, players are free to mix herbs together, which saves on inventory space and is crucial for subsequent speed runs to get higher ranks. Two Green herbs will combine to heal for about 50%, and three Green Herbs mixed, or one Green Herb and one Red Herb mixed will fully heal a character from any health state.

We did not locate any Blue herbs during our playthrough, and if Capcom has decided to do away with the Poison status effect in this game, we can only say good riddance. Becoming Poisoned in any Resident Evil game was always little more than an annoyance, causing players to deviate from their path just to find one of the few blue herbs in the game.

The original Resident Evil 2 has several poison-afflicting bioweapons towards the end of the game, and the developers placed a permanent Blue herb installation not far from a save room because if poisoned and run out of these herbs, players would not be able to reach the end of the game. At some point someone must have understood that with the potential to be poisoned over and over, there was a need to have Blue Herbs available at a moments notice, and it only feels like a tedious piece of game design.

Players can use First Aid sprays to fully heal as though they were using the strongest mixtures of Herbs. These are by far the most efficient methods of healing a character, and since they require no mixing, feel like an ideal healing solution. On the other hand, using First Aid sprays has often been tied to receiving a lower ranking after completing the game, because they are the easiest way to heal.

This may not be the case in Resident Evil 3, as the conditions for receiving an S rank are not yet known with absolute certainty. On the upside, Herbs can provide all the healing one needs, especially on subsequent playthroughs when players have learned how each bioweapon moves and attacks. This is to say that the best healing options are to not need healing altogether, which will become easier with each playthrough.

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