Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - COMPLETE Item Box?!

TL;DR - I picked up every single item in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis because Internet.

Yes, I've been replaying my 2nd favourite Resident Evil title (the first being 4, obviously,) on the GameCube. Nemesis used to frighten the ever-loving shit out of me - but after managing to squeeze through the game on hard mode for the first time this year - I of course unlocked The Mercenaries mode... After spending hours standing on a pallet avoiding dogs, I mean, legitimately completing the campaign - I finally scraped together enough money to buy all of the infinite weapons and ammo for the main story campaign.

If you've never managed to unlock these - I'll break it down for you. They make the game LAUGHABLY EASY. I was pissing all over the zombies and bio creatures with the infinite ammo assault rifle and firing handfuls of red-hot explosive shit into Nemesis' face with the infinite rocket launcher. Just for fun, I decided I'd still pick up ALL of the items - and see how quickly I could fill up the item box.

The answer to that was, very quickly indeed. I didn't use a single herb, fire a single bullet, apply a single first aid spray or use up any of the gunpowder bottles. In order to fit it all into the item box however, I did have to combine a lot of the herbs and gunpowders into combination items. Naturally I discarded all of the keys and useless items out of habit, but was left with both S.T.A.R.S. cards and Jill's master of unlocking lockpick in addition to all of my heavy arsenal and bags of medicinal herbs.

By the way; when the protagonists of the Resident Evil games "use" herbs - do they eat them, or do they mash them together into a sort of poultice and spread the herby pesto paste onto their wounds? Answers on a postcard please.

As soon as I reached the final item box before the final fight with Nemesis, I dumped in every single thing I was carrying (bar my SECOND infinite rocket launcher) to see how much crap I'd actually gone around hoarding. I even took a bunch of screenshots and painstakingly pieced them together using Photoshop. Look:

Bearing in mind during this run I used no healing items, ink ribbons or any other items outside of keys and objects used to solve puzzles - I explored every single area, investigated all of the corpses and cars - there will no doubt still be *some* items missing here - and that's due to Resident Evil 3's unique live-choice sections. Depending on what choices you make throughout the game, items will either change places or not appear at all. One example I can see is clearly missing from my item box is a pack of freeze rounds one apparently acquires from Carlos during one of the routes I have literally never taken because it always seemed like a bloody stupid choice...

• So we've got a grand total of 33 ink ribbons - or 11 pick-ups in total, as they are always found in packs of 3. 
• (Amusingly, when your final "rank" score is being worked out upon completion of the game, you will only score 0 points for the saving section if you use over 31 ink ribbons. So you'd actually have to pick up every single pack in the game!)

• 240 total handgun bullets - and if you factor in that your initial equip handgun comes loaded with 15 bullets and so does the rare Eagle 6.0 you get from defeating Nemesis - add 30 and we've got 270 handgun bullets (without using any gunpowder...)
• 28 total shotgun shells (this seems surprisingly low) - again including the ordinary shotgun and the rare Western Custom from Nemesis both coming loaded with 7 shells each - that totals 42.
• 66 total grenade rounds for the grenade launcher - plus the 6 it comes already loaded with - a total of 72.
• 6 flame rounds, given as a gift by Carlos - as previously mentioned, he may also give you freeze rounds depending on what choices you make...
• 12 magnum bullets - plus the 6 the magnum comes ready loaded with - for a total of 18.
• 6 mine thrower mines (apparently you can find an extra box in a safe room, again based on in-game choices, I didn't find them) plus the 6 it already had loaded - total of 12.
• In your first playthrough you will be awarded with an assault rifle and 100% ammo for beating Nemesis 7 times. For your 2nd and subsequent playthroughs you will receive an infinite ammo box instead - so the only way to get another assault rifle with Jill is to buy the infinite one from Mercenaries mode or play on god-awful easy mode. Carlos doesn't seem to want to part with his...

Now onto herbs. As you can see, in order for all of the herbs to actually *fit* inside the item box, I had to mash them together. Interestingly though, if you do manage to find every single herb, they all mix together into nicely rounded packs of antiseptic, antifungal and anti-T-virus pesto paste - and not a single one is left over. In total there are:

• 25 green herbs
• 10 red herbs
• 10 blue herbs (there are also blue herb gardens in the garage and clock tower areas that allow infinite usage)

I have a bit of an (admittedly incorrect) bias about first aid sprays. When I was about 5 or 6, I used to watch my big brother Ian play Resident Evil games a lot. I watched him play the first 3 on PS1, Survivor and Code Veronica before I started playing them myself. 

He always avoided using first aid sprays - as he thought, and so did I until recently - that if you used even a single one, you'd forfeit your chance of ever receiving an A ranking. There is *some* truth in this, as your ranking is based on how much HP you actually heal, and first aid sprays heal the most out of any healing item... In total, there are:

• 6 first aid sprays that come with the 2 first aid boxes Nemesis drops
• 9 loose cans of first aid sprays - for a total of 15

Now gunpowder. You start with the reloading tool in your item box - and using gunpowder bottles you find strewn around and being clutched by corpses, you can hand-load your own bullets - and there's literally hundreds of different combinations of bullets you can make if you manage to find them all. In total there are:

• 21 gunpowder A bottles
• 17 gunpowder B bottles 

Now for some fun with maths. Ugh. Using these bottles of gunpowder to make a single type of bullets... it's possible to make:

• 385 handgun bullets (using 7 bottles of gunpowder AAA)
• 168 shotgun shells (using 5 bottles of gunpowder BBB and one bottle of gunpowder BB)
• 170 grenade rounds (using 17 bottles of gunpowder C, which is made by mixing A+B)
• 126 flame rounds (made by combining 7 bottles of gunpowder AAA with grenade rounds)
• 90 acid rounds (made by combining 5 bottles of gunpowder BBB with grenade rounds)
• 90 freeze rounds (made by combining 5 bottles of gunpowder CCC with grenade rounds)
• 120 magnum bullets (using 5 bottles of gunpowder CCC)

Obviously there's literally hundreds, if not thousands of ways you can use the 38 bottles of gunpowder found throughout the game - as you can pick and choose and make whichever bullets you personally need or like to use - but if one were to go to make purely one type of ammo - these are the maximum numbers I've come up with. However I do suck at maths, so if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.