RE4 Remake Merchant Requests: All 19 Locations and Rewards

Here is the arithmetic nobody does until their second playthrough. The Resident Evil 4 remake has 19 Merchant requests, and cleared end to end they pay 84 spinel. An Exclusive Upgrade Ticket costs the Merchant's asking price of 30 spinel for the first and 40 for the second. Clear every blue note on the board and you can buy both, with 14 spinel left over for treasure maps and a laser sight. Walk past six of them and you are choosing which single weapon gets to be special.

That is the whole reason to care about a system that presents itself as "shoot some medallions for the nice man." Requests are the only dependable source of the one currency pesetas cannot buy, and the remake gives you exactly one shot at each. There is no chapter select and no free roam after the credits — miss a request and it is gone for that save file.

This is the full index: which chapter each note appears in, the area its objective lives in, what you actually have to do, and what it pays.

The 19 requests in one table

Rewards and objective wording below come straight from each request's in-game file text on the Resident Evil Wiki. Chapter numbers are cross-checked against PowerPyx and Game Rant, which agree on all 19.

Four chapters have no requests at all: 6, 8, 13 and 16. That matters more than it sounds. Chapter 16 is the finale, so if you reach it holding an unfinished request, it is already dead. Chapter 5 has exactly one request, while Chapters 3 and 14 carry three each — the most the board ever puts in a single chapter.

Clearing all 19 unlocks the Jack of All Trades trophy and achievement.

What a request actually is

A request is a blue note. You find it pinned near a Merchant stall or on a wall in the area it concerns, you read it, and it enters your file log with four lines that tell you everything:

• Request — the objective, in the game's own wording.
• Area — the zone the objective lives in.
• Reward — the spinel payout.
• Progress — a running counter, so a half-finished medallion hunt tells you how many you still owe.

The line that decides your route is Area. Seventeen of the 19 pin the objective to a place — fifteen name a zone outright, and two point you at an attached photograph — which is the game quietly telling you the objective does not follow you out of it. Two do not: Viper Hunter and Egg Hunt both read "Area: None specified" — they are sell-an-item requests with no zone attached.

Completing the objective does not pay you. You have to walk back to the Merchant and hand the request in — the reward is claimed at his stall, not the moment the counter hits full. On the island in particular, where Merchant stalls are spread thin, that is a real walk you need to budget for before you trigger the next story beat.

There is one point of friction in the sources worth flagging. Game8's missables list says flatly that you can only complete a request in the chapter you found it. PowerPyx's version is softer: most must be finished in their own chapter, but a few span more than one. The safe operating rule is Game8's — treat every note as due before the chapter ends, because the downside of being wrong in the other direction is a permanently failed request and no way back.

Where the 84 spinel comes from

Nineteen requests, but only five shapes of task. Splitting them this way makes it obvious where a lazy run leaks the most currency.

Two entries account for 61% of every spinel a request will ever hand you, and they are the two that need the least backtracking: shooting medallions you pass anyway, and killing three marked enemies. The rat hunts, which are the fiddliest thing on the list — small, fast, easy to lose in a dark room — are the least valuable at 9 spinel across all three.

Three bounties pay 8 spinel each

Three requests share the exact same objective line — Defeat the strong threat — and each pays 8 spinel, the highest single payout in Leon's campaign:

• A Savage Mutt (Chapter 5, Village Chief's Manor). The wiki identifies the target as a Colmillos, and the note describes it as "not like normal dogs."
• Merciless Knight (Chapter 10, Mausoleum). An Armadura, per the request file's own link, and the note warns it is "much stronger than the others."
• The Wandering Dead (Chapter 14, Incubation Lab). The note only calls it "a strange corpse," the result of "some immoral experiment"; Game Rant names the target as an Iron Maiden.

Three requests out of 19 carrying 24 of the 84 spinel is the strongest argument in this guide for not sprinting. Each of these is one enemy in one room, and each is worth nearly three rat hunts. If your run is going badly and you are triaging what to bother with, these are the three you never skip.

The four requests that say sell

Four requests are completed by handing an item to the Merchant, and the wording is the trap. Every one of them says Sell, not find, not obtain:

Picking the item up does nothing for the counter. Eating the Lunker Bass — and it is a large heal, so the temptation is real — burns the request for the rest of the run, because there is only one of it and no way back to the lake. Same logic for the Gold Chicken Egg, which is a throwable, and for the Scratched Emerald sitting in a crow's nest in the Courtyard.

Hold all four until you are standing at a violet flame. Fourteen spinel is a sixth of the run's total and it is the easiest sixth to throw away by pressing the wrong button in an inventory screen.

Thirty-two medallions across six requests

Six of the 19 requests are medallion hunts, and their Progress counters add up to 32 blue medallions across a full playthrough — 5 at the Farm, 5 in the Quarry, 6 at the Castle Gate, 6 in the Grand Hall, 5 at the Cargo Depot and 5 in the Cliffside Ruins. Together they pay 27 spinel, the single biggest slice of the board.

The payout is not flat, and it climbs with the game. The Chapter 1 Farm set pays the least at 3 spinel for 5 medallions. The two six-medallion castle sets pay 5 each, as do both island sets. So the same task is worth 67% more later in the run than it is in the village — which is a reason to make sure the castle and island hunts in particular do not get abandoned when the chapters start feeling tight on ammo.

Every one is destroyed by shooting it, and the handgun is enough. Bring the Bolt Thrower if you want the bolts back, but medallions are not worth a scoped shot or a rifle round.

What 84 spinel actually buys

Spinel is a currency in the remake rather than a treasure — its inventory description says it can be "traded in to the Merchant for special items," and there is no exchange rate from pesetas. The wiki lists its non-request sources as rare finds in treasure containers like hanging pots and occasional enemy drops, which means 84 is your reliable floor for a full run, not a hard ceiling.

The number that makes 84 meaningful is 70: an Exclusive Upgrade Ticket costs 30 spinel the first time and 40 the second, so a complete request board funds both with 14 spare. Miss anything and the second ticket is the first thing to fall off the list.

For where those tickets should go and what else is worth the crystals, the Merchant and spinel guide covers the spending order — this page is only about earning them.

Separate Ways adds seven more and 55 spinel

Ada's campaign runs the same system on a much better exchange rate. Seven requests, 55 spinel:

Run the averages and the gap is stark: 7.9 spinel per request in Separate Ways against 4.4 in Leon's campaign. Ada's cheapest request pays 6, which beats every request in the main game except the three strong-threat bounties. Beautiful Beetles at 10 spinel is the largest single request payout in either campaign, and it is two collectibles inside Facility 1 — one hidden in Dissection, one that the note says was stolen.

Chapters 5 and 6 hold four of the seven between them and 35 of the 55, with Chapter 6 the richest at 19. Sweep the castle waterway and the island facility properly or you have handed back most of Ada's request income. The wider economy Ada is spending it into — no magnum, a grapple gun that stands in for Leon's kick — is in the Separate Ways guide.

Quick Action Checklist

• Read every blue note the moment you see one; there is no chapter select, so an unread note in a sealed chapter is 2 to 8 spinel gone.
• Treat every request as due before the chapter ends. Only Viper Hunter and Egg Hunt say "Area: None specified."
• Walk the reward back to the Merchant. Finishing the objective does not pay.
• Never skip the three strong-threat bounties — A Savage Mutt, Merciless Knight, The Wandering Dead. They are 24 of the 84 spinel.
• Sell the Lunker Bass, the Gold Chicken Egg, the Scratched Emerald and three vipers. Do not eat, throw or hoard them.
• Shoot medallions with the handgun as you pass; 32 of them are worth 27 spinel.
• Chapter 14 has three requests and Chapter 5 has one — plan the island Facility sweep before you trigger the next story beat.
• Budget against 70: two Exclusive Upgrade Tickets at 30 and 40 spinel are what the full board is for.
• In Separate Ways, clear Chapters 5 and 6 thoroughly — they hold 35 of the mode's 55 spinel.