Runie Ruse Hunts a Pantry Key Through Randomized Resident Evil 9, Never Needing It

PHASE CONNECT — Runie Ruse of Phase Connect spent a large share of the grand finale of her Biorand randomizer playthrough of Resident Evil 9 (RE9) searching for a pantry key, only to learn she had never needed it. Biorand is a mod that shuffles items, doors and enemies, and the stream was the last of the series.

Runie had thrown the key away without meaning to. A check mark beside it in her menu made her think it was spent, and the game let her discard it. When she reached Raccoon City’s one remaining locked door, a pantry door, she explained the mistake and said the randomizer is still in early access, so she expected the final release to block that. She also said she believed the key would not spawn again, so she cheated for the first time in the run and spawned in an item.

“So, what you’re telling me is I didn’t even need the pantry key.” — Runie Ruse, on finding the missing part

The cheat did not turn out to be the fix. She then checked a body beside the gas station and found the part she had been missing. “So, what you’re telling me is I didn’t even need the pantry key,” she said. She added that she had not needed the emergency exit key or the Cedar Brook Apartments key either, and joked that she had been “aura farming.” She noted the detour left her about two hours into the stream and only now escaping Raccoon City.

The rest of the night ran on the mod’s surprises. A chainsaw-wielding enemy turned out to be a little girl, the enemies she had saved her acid bottles and RPG for were randomized into spiders, and Gideon appeared in the middle of a fight. She finished Grace’s section by using the RPG on a boss. The stream also featured a charm that sets kicked enemies on fire, which she called worth the mod on its own, and she dressed Grace as Rebecca and Leon as Billy Cohen after recently finishing Resident Evil Zero.

Runie said she had lowered some enemy spawns and switched to dynamic item drops on the balanced setting, and wondered aloud if she had made it too easy. She closed by thanking viewers for joining the finale, said she is working on a highlights video of the playthrough, and asked them to leave their thoughts on the randomizer and on the Resident Evil movie in the comments.