Roughly how many playthroughs to buy infinite weapons?

[Heyjuannypark]

I played RE2 to the ground, and read that RE3 uses the challenges as currency for unlockables.

I gave a quick glance at the infinite weapons, and was wondering on how easy or tedious this is.

I'm planning on playing it from easy, and then work my way up.

[James.Havoc]

If its just about the weapons, its rather simple and doesn't require that many runs.

A single playthrough on "assisted" will earn atleast ~4000 points. This amount can be increased to ~10.000 points in total, for collecting (all) files, weapons, weapon parts, open lockers etc. defeat certain enemies and of course: Kills.

The cheapest infinity weapon, the infinity MUP, costs 8000 points. Based on how you do it, you can afford that one after your first run on assisted.

After that its mostly the "Kill"- Challenges, that'll give you lot of points. And those can be exploited fairly well.

Easiest ones are the pistol and assault rifle challenges. Load a savegame with Carlos at the end of the hospital (TIPP: Always have multiple savegames) and mow down the horde. After that, reload and do it again.
That'll grant you 6 challenges and is worth 31.600 points.
Enough for the RAIDEN or the inifinty CQBR.

Pick the RAIDEN, since it counts as Magnum, and reload the hospital scene again. Carlos has access to all infinity weapons too, so you can complete the magnum challenge as well.
17.000 points for the two magnum challenges and at that point you'll most likely have killed more than 1.100 enemies soo....+ 10.400 points.
That would be 47.000 points.

Contiune that stuff and you can get two last Kill- Challenges. (Kill 1400 enemies; kill 2000 enemies). +22.600 points
Enough for the infinty rocket launcher.

Sounds like it takes forever?
No.
The sequence can be done in 5-10 minutes, based on your weapon and aim. And there lots of zombies to kill.

Overall its not tedious to unlock the weapons. It can be tedious, to unlock every single item in the shop since you have to do every single challenge. But if its only the weapons you want, I would say you might have to play through the game once in Assisted and once in Standard.
Make use of the shotgun and the grenade launcher and by the time you can go for Hardcore, you'll have every single Infinity weapon.

[Heyjuannypark]

Good to know, thanks a lot.

[Van]

Very useful guide! With slight improvement, took me about couple of hrs to grind enough points to buy the infinite rocket launcher, all coins, both bags and that hand fighting book. First important observation (reading forums, not doing myself) is that initial points of beating game's 1st run aren't very much dependent on difficulty level but more about how thorough and how efficient you do the run. So, playing first run Assisted pays off in time and efforts vs. points.

The key approach to grinding was to start it from lucrative MAG kill points, which was acquired easy on the NEST2 level in the room with 5 habitats (2 normal zombies, 2 parasite ones and 1 palehead). As this was near end of game, I carefully stockpiled MAG ammo keeping them to boss fights, so it was available at the time of handling that room. The joy of this method is the autosave just before that room and relatively small required number of required kills. Then rinse-n-repeat for grenade launcher. Then shotgun. So, it's over with Jill, now bringing the benefit of all shiny new points to Carlos.

The points earned from Jill's round (and some initial points after 1st run) were enough to buy: a) infinite pistol and b) both assault coins. Carlos started from the save before defending the hospital and operated by pistol through whole 1st half of the zombie siege. Couple of odd hunters were dealt with rifle. Pistol shots were strong enough (with the coins) to make final blow at mid and close ranges (at long range was far worse). Till the time of arriving to 2nd part (and couple of deaths before that), I completed both pistol kills (points!) and still had rifle with full stock of ammo as almost didn't consume it at 1st stage. Combination of autosave and dense hordes against assault rifle was just a godsend to complete rifle kills. Guess what? Enough points for infinite launcher! But that's not all, now phase 3.

Back to Carlos before defending battle to access the item box, get rocket launcher from there and put aside all other, now unneeded, weapon (and most of the unneeded health aid too). Now, same battle with rocket launcher - to complete all remaining grand kill targets. 1st part of battle comes without sweating at all, then autosave and 2nd part of the battle. Now rinse-n-repeat: first shot on the initial frontline horde, then coming a bit close to the inlet window and spamming shots with approx. frequency once per 2 sec, just enough time to wait when incoming zombies respawn to get immediately killed. 128 zombies per each round: the grand target of 2000 kills was reached quickly. Result: enough points for another rocket launcher, :-) which I carefully spent to buy the most practical of remaining utilities (because still not enough points to sweep out the whole shop).

Next plan: abbreviated run on Standard, relying only on rocket launcher and coins (maybe, with exception of boss fights needing other items) and fitting it to 2 hours. Will get just enough points to buy most interesting of remaining non-practical stuff (Jill's costume, etc).

Hope this will help to all who looks forward to quick fortune. :-)