Developed by Asobo Studio and published by Focus Entertainment, A Plague Tale: Requiem launched in 2022 as the sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence. The story follows Amicia and her younger brother Hugo as they journey across a war-torn, plague-ravaged 14th-century France in search of a cure for Hugo’s blood-borne curse. The game blends stealth, puzzle-solving, and direct confrontation, but its defining feature is the overwhelming presence of rats — hundreds of thousands of them, rendered in swarms that behave like a living tide, sweeping across the landscape and devouring everything in their path. Requiem is a game about survival against impossible odds, and every system feeds into that theme.
Understanding the Rat Swarms
The most important mechanic in Requiem is the rat swarms themselves. Rats are not merely an obstacle; they are the primary environmental hazard, the central puzzle element, and the most effective weapon at Amicia’s disposal. Understanding how rats behave is essential to surviving the game.
Rats are deathly afraid of light. Any area illuminated by sunlight, torches, braziers, or other sources of fire is safe. Rats will not enter lit zones. The moment the light goes out, however, they will surge forward and devour anything in their path, including Amicia. This binary between light and darkness is the foundation upon which every encounter and puzzle is built.
Amicia can manipulate this dynamic in several ways. Ignifer, a mixture she can craft from sulphur and alcohol, can be thrown to ignite braziers or create temporary pools of fire. Tar, when spread on the ground and ignited, creates a lasting flame barrier that rats cannot cross. Exstinguis does the opposite — it extinguishes flames, useful for removing a guard’s torch and exposing them to nearby rats.
Hugo’s ability to control the rats directly is unlocked gradually throughout the story. Early on, Hugo can perceive the location of enemies through the rats’ senses, effectively acting as a living sonar. Later, he gains the ability to command the swarms outright, directing them toward specific targets. These abilities are tied to Hugo’s emotional state and are rationed by a cooldown, preventing you from relying on them exclusively.
Stealth Mechanics and Crafting Priorities
Amicia is not a warrior. She is a teenage girl armed with a sling and a limited set of alchemical tools. Direct confrontation with armoured soldiers almost always ends poorly. The game is designed around stealth as the default approach, and the crafting system reflects this.
Amicia’s sling is her primary tool, and it can fire several types of ammunition. Rocks are infinite and used for distracting guards or breaking chains. Ignifer pots create fire on impact. Tar pots slow enemies and prepare surfaces for ignition. Exstinguis pots put out flames. Odoris, a late-game addition, attracts rats to a specific location.
Crafting materials — Alcohol, Sulphur, Fabric, and Episanguis — are found in caches throughout each chapter, but they are finite. Resources do not respawn, and the game’s chapters are linear, meaning that materials you miss are gone for the rest of that playthrough. The core survival principle is to avoid using resources unless absolutely necessary. If you can bypass an encounter through stealth, do so. Save your crafting materials for forced combat sequences and boss encounters.
The workbench system allows you to upgrade Amicia’s equipment across several categories: sling speed, alchemy capacity, gear durability, and special abilities. Prioritise Sling Speed first. A faster sling means faster follow-up shots and a better chance of hitting moving targets. Next, invest in Alchemy Capacity, which allows you to carry more crafted items. Gear upgrades that reduce noise and increase stealth effectiveness come third. Never upgrade combat-oriented skills before survival-oriented ones; Amicia’s strength lies in avoiding fights, not winning them.
Chapter-by-Chapter Survival
Requiem is divided into 17 chapters, each presenting different environments and threat configurations. Several chapters stand out as particularly demanding for new players.
Chapter 3, “A Burden of Blood,” is the first real test of stealth. The area is a sprawling herbalist’s camp under occupation by soldiers. The rat density is moderate, but human patrols are tight. The key to this chapter is patience. Observe patrol routes before moving. Use rocks to distract individual guards and slip past one at a time. If you are spotted, do not try to fight — run to the nearest lit area and break line of sight. The soldiers will eventually give up the chase.
Chapter 5, “In Our Wake,” introduces the boat sequence. This chapter alternates between on-foot stealth sections and a boat chase in which Amicia must fend off soldiers while navigating rapids. The boat section is largely scripted, but the on-foot sections require careful management of Ignifer and Tar. The rats in this chapter are especially aggressive, and light sources are scarce. Always carry at least one Ignifer pot and one Tar pot before entering any unlit area.
Chapter 9, “Tales and Revelations,” features one of the game’s most emotionally intense sequences. Amicia is separated from Hugo and must navigate a fortress alone. Without Hugo’s rat perception, you lose the ability to sense enemies through walls. This chapter rewards slow, methodical movement and generous use of Exstinguis to extinguish torches carried by guards, leaving them vulnerable to nearby swarms.
Chapter 15, “Dying Sun,” is the game’s climactic siege. The rat swarms are at their maximum density, and the chapter throws multiple waves of soldiers at Amicia while she defends a position. Use tar pools and Ignifer liberally to create barriers. Hugo’s rat control abilities are fully unlocked at this stage and should be used on cooldown to thin out enemy ranks. The crossbow, acquired in the late game, is silent and retrieves bolts from corpses, making it invaluable for eliminating priority targets without alerting others.
The Sling Upgrade Priority
Amicia’s sling evolves significantly over the course of the game through workbench upgrades. The first upgrade path to pursue is Sling Speed. A fully upgraded sling fires more than twice as fast as the base version, allowing Amicia to chain headshots on unhelmeted enemies or rapidly ignite multiple Tar patches. The second priority is Double Ammo Capacity for the sling pouch, which lets you carry more crafted projectiles before needing to stop and craft in the middle of a tense sequence. The third priority is Recovery, which increases the speed at which Amicia recovers from being hit. Other upgrade paths — such as those focused on alchemical item potency — are situational and should only be pursued after the core survival upgrades are complete.
