Tips on how to make your Scientology Level: OT VIII run easier [POSTAL difficulty guide]

To begin with: if this is your first time ever playing POSTAL 2, stop right here. Start a game on the "Average" difficulty and explore the world, learn where weapons spawn, familiarise yourself with what each errand entails, check how beefy each enemy type is (Normal pedestrians, Faction members, Police officers, SWAT, National Guard, Taliban, Elite Taliban). Once you complete the game on the "A Week in Paradise" gamemode, come back here. I know it is possible to complete many FPS games first time on the hardest difficulty, but without the knowledge of the game environment, your time with the POSTAL difficulty will be much more painful.

NOTE: This guide will contain a lot of loosely connected tips. Feel free to skip through it as you like.

The main thing to remember once you start your run: Until you collect a reasonable arsenal of weapons and ammo, you are the prey, not the hunter. Everyone's against you, and that means that errands such as collecting your paycheck or confessing your sins can only be done by murder (I'm sorry Vince, but I need my money).

Furthermore, the lack of the possibility to store health pickups (unless using an exploit, more information in Wednesday section) will force you to be cautious at each gunfight, unless you want to search through every possible nook for health.

Each time I tried to play the game on the POSTAL difficulty, I did the same thing as usual - raid the neighbour's house, then run out on the main street and then... get shot to death and ragequit back to Hestonworld.

This happens once we collect our first one-hit melee weapons (as in weapons that disable enemies with just one hit) and the beloved, overpowered sawed-off shotgun, after which you can play POSTAL 2 pretty much like a linear shooter. However, such melee weapons spawn on Tuesday, and the sawed-off spawns on Wednesday. We need to survive until that.

A starting step towards that means that you have to change your playstyle for now. Entering houses through their windows gun-blazing is no longer a choice, at least at the beginning, as pretty much everyone nearby will hear you and come after you.

Furthermore, you need to learn to focus on the radar given at the start, which is permanent and never runs out of juice.

Every single blip on your radar packs some serious heat and a single person is able to tank down your body armor to zero. 3+ people shooting at once at you? Time to run for cover or you're dead. Let's take a quick look at it.

• Red - Hostile, will either actively hunt you down or stay in place and wait for you to come to them.
  
• Yellow - Alerted by your noise (mainly breaking windows or doors). In most cases will become hostile in a few seconds.
  
• White - Unaware.

You might say - duhh, everyone's against us anyway, what's the point in differentiating the alertness states of the NPCs? Well, the point is simple - this allows you to decide whether you are able to perform a silent kill via melee weapons, or if you need to switch to louder weapons in exchange for the fire rate.

However, keep in mind that the radar has a limited range and you will not see enemies firing from a long distance. Therefore, you need to keep on the lookout for enemies that are located further away.

Reading the previous section might make you fall into the hands of paranoia and start shift-walking, or even worse, crouch-walking everywhere. However, do not be afraid.

Hostiles will not be provoked by hearing you run at your regular pace. You can just run up to a hostile's behind and tase him to death or cut his head off without alerting anyone.

Remember that destroying windows or doors (with a sledgehammer) will usually alert residents inside and a ton of people outside.

Every one-hit kill from a melee weapon (not counting the chainsaw of course) or disablement (i.e. cutting off someone's arm with a machete and making them run away in fear) will not alert anyone in the nearest vicinity. This is mainly useful when you see a bunch of unaware hostiles going in the opposite direction from you, or when you're exploring houses for loot.

Also, you might think: hey, the cat "silencers" must have a great usage in this difficulty! And well... kind of? They get overshadowed by melee weapons on Tuesday, so any real benefit from them comes by using a shotgun with the silencer to perform headshots on Monday, as we don't have any sensible melee weapons on that day.

There is a ton of guides in regards to where you can find weapons and items, so this guide will not cover this. One that I personally recommend is linked here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1958189461
The point here is simple, and you probably already do that: explore what you can. Houses, buildings, rooftops, bushes - especially bushes! The developers love to hide weapons in areas where you can't see anything. I found my run to be quite more extensive in this regard to my, let's say, normal ones, as I searched everywhere for catnips and doggy treats. And even if you don't find anything valuable, you will usually find a location of a medkit or food items which you can pickup later if you later get shot somewhere in the level. Champ, the hero. The game recommends using dogs as your assistants during the run, by dropping doggy treats to befriend dogs that you meet along the way. This is further reinforced by the fact that enemies will often drop a doggy treat for you to pickup when killed. The dogs also usually go through level transitions with you, although that does not always happen, so don't rely on it. And when the dog mechanics work, they actually help quite nicely with your combat, mauling your opponents.

The main issue is that once an enemy becomes hostile (i.e. changes from white to red on your radar), you need to wait for them to fire a bullet at you for the dogs to begin chasing the opponent. This means that while you know that you're about to get shot, the dogs will just chill out until you get a cap in your ass. By the time the dogs actually make any kind of damage, you usually will be done with the hostile by making a pasta a'la bolognese from them.

I recommend dropping doggy treats whenever you see a nearby dog, but, to be honest, the usage of the dogs has an extent to it. I found the dogs to often bug out and be stuck in a single position, and even kicking them did not change anything in their state (PETA pls don't come after me). Also once you find the sawed-off shotgun, the dogs will most likely get in your line of fire and get shot, meaning that they will run away to be never found again.

I found the main advantage from using dogs was once the army comes to Paradise, as even the sawed-off shotgun will not be able to deal with groups of them even with two shots.

Remember that doggy treats also heal your dog, so if you're hearing constant whimpers, give your dog a treat.

You get only one save per level (besides the auto-save).

Therefore, what I recommend to do is that once you feel like you're closer to finishing a level than its beginning, do a quick save (F5 by default).

You need to essentially remember to do this quick calculation per each level: If I die now, will it be painful to start again from the autosave? If yes, then hit F5. Simple.

Every health item in the game can only be used instantly by picking them up to heal wounds. You can no longer store them in inventory. Here's a list of the HP points cured by each of them:

• Health pipe - 30 HP
  
• Medkit - 30 HP
  
• Fast food bag - 10 HP
  
• Pizza - 5 HP
  
• Doughnut - 3 HP
  
• Doggy treat - 1 HP

The enemies will often drop fast food bags, pizza and doughnuts as health items when killed (doggy treats too). Therefore, you are actually able to replenish health via killing enemies, if you approach them from a distance or kill them silently.

Try to use health pipes and medkits mainly when below 70 HP, as with cautious play you will often return back to 100 HP after dealing with a group of enemies by just picking up the health items they drop.

To be honest, I don't think I need to explain the armors if you have already played the game, but anyway. There two types of armor in the game: SiC Body Armor, which gives you 200 armor, and Kevlar Vest, 100 armor.

SiC Body Armor is found only via exploration, while the Kevlar Vest can be dropped by enemies, usually by killing them with a one-hit kill (melee weapons or headshots).

The body armor will tank a lot of damage to your HP (unlike Doom 3), but any gunfight will diminish it very quickly on this difficulty. Do not reload your save in panic once your body armor drops to 0 by being blown to bits with bullets just a while after picking it up, as you can easily win fights without it, even if the Postal Dude is a weakling in this mode. Just be on the lookout for food pickups when without armor.

Starting from Tuesday, you are able to pick up the Largemouth radar plug-in. Whilst not necessary to finish the game, it will make your life a bit easier by showing up law enforcement on your radar.

Although it will not make much difference early on, once SWAT and National Guard shows up on the levels, you will be able to prepare beforehand for a tougher gunfight. Check the guide I linked in the Exploration header to find spawn locations of it.

Transitioned to another level while you have 5 HP remaining and there's a bunch of hostiles facing you already, with no other save? Hope is not all lost. Use the catnip for such sections. If you seriously cannot find any health, and enemies haven't dropped anything, you can always use the doggy treats for health... but this should be really your last resort, if not a reload.

Before we even start playing, there is one necessary thing to do.
Go to Options -> Performance. Find where Bystander Population is and slide that puppy right down to 0.

By doing so you will mostly encounter law enforcement and scripted spawns (such as Taliban, vendors and queues to them), and heavily reduce the amount of normal pedestrians. Therefore, the frequency of gunfights and the possibility of you dying will be lower than usual.

Of course, this means less weapons dropped from NPCs - but who cares? Just explore the levels and you will find a ton of useful stuff. Unless you are a pr0 player, then leave the bystander population at 30 and have a go at it, I won't force you to anything :P

Monday is pretty much the hardest day as we begin with no real weapons and need to claw our way out to gather an arsenal.

Go to your neighbour's house in front and pickup the standard stuff - kevlar vest, shocker, gas can. Kill your neighbour for his weapon by tasing him down and using the shovel. Try not to alert anyone nearby, and if you do, try not to waste too much ammo on them. You might try lighting the resident up on fire with the gas can, but if he runs away from the house, then it's a bit of a game over, as other people from the street will most likely spot you.

Then go to the house on the left from your trailer and loot it up, as well the house next to it and its rooftop. If you do not have the shotgun yet, use the shocker/gas can on its residents. You should slowly be gathering some weapons, enough to be able to respond to aggression from anyone nearby. Move onto the dealer's house in front and loot it. Explore the rest of the houses for weapons. Your assault rifle ammo should be stacking up nicely if you really searched everywhere in the starting area.

From now on, you should be able to move onto errands.

Your best friends for this day are going to be the assault rifle, MP5, shotgun, pistol and gas can. Don't even bother with the Glock.

When you're at the sole beginning of collecting ammo, try to use other weapons than the pistol for gunfights. Due to its accuracy, it's going to be your miniature sniper rifle.

Once you collected about 30 ammo for the pistol, whenever you see a hostile far away unaware of your existence, shoot them down with headshots (depending on the distance, 2-5 will be enough). Don't worry if your crosshair is not pixel perfect, the game will usually register the shot onto a hitbox. Even though the enemy will usually respond by opening fire on you, their spread will be terrible, and you won't be hurt too much. This will allow you to collect their weapons and health without fear.

If you see an enemy chasing after you, and you're low on health, go to a house and wait near a door. Wait for them to walk inside, then blast their head with the shotgun.

See the queuing NPCs on the radar? They will come after you once you make enough noise. Since we don't have any weapons of mass destruction yet, your gas can comes into play here. Set a nice puddle inside the shop.

Go inside, trigger the hostiles to become aware of you and light it up on fire, then wait for them to come.

This is how your end result should look like. Use weapons on Habib or any hostile that didn't get caught on fire.

Once you're near RWS, go through the offices nearby and loot it, as there is a ton of weapons there.

When you're ready to fight the protesters, set yourself at a position in a distance and use the pistol to pick them off.

Destroy RWS (and especially Vince) for not performing a nuclear strike on Akella for releasing Postal III paying you enough. They're quite beefy, so use direct shotgun headshots or the assault rifle.

Before collecting the paycheck, again make a nice puddle using the gas can.

Upon collecting the paycheck, immediately start the fire to burn the protesters coming to raid your ass.

The protesters at the RWS lobby will spawn only when you come closer to the entrance, so after doing that just lure them to the fire.

After collecting all of their weapons, you should have an arsenal big enough to hit the bank now.

While you're near the bank, you can collect the grenade launcher. It is an useful weapon, however I find it much more useful in tight corridors that are more often found in Apocalypse Weekend. Check the guide linked in the Exploration header to find where it is located.

What I usually do here is just go through the window at the rooftop and run towards the vault. Once I am there, I just do a gas puddle at the wooden door leading to the vault and light it up so the chasing NPCs burn down.

Get the money from the vault. Fight the incoming law enforcement. Remember about the medkits that are located in the bank. Afterwards, just go to the hidden bookcase opening.

Walk up to it or kick it down, I never know what triggers it to open.

Remember to get the weapons from the room on the right, there's a ton of useful stuff there.

Now just run to any level transition and Monday's done, phew.

You survived Monday. Fantastic!

Here we will do a bunch of platforming - just warning if you're not a fan of that.

Here we finally get a good melee weapon. For starters, head to the neighbour's house on the left.

Head towards the garage.

Kick those boxes.

Voila, you have the shears. They will one-hit any enemy. I didn't find myself using them much due to the second weapon we will find soon enough, however they will be fine for this short period of time.

Once you're done looting your neighbourhood, head towards the library.

Follow this path on the left side of the library.

You'll find the beautiful, magnificent axe here.

Due to the cutting speed of the axe, I found myself using it throughout the rest of the run for silent kills, except for some fun with the scythe and machete. But, you're pretty much settled as for the melee weapon. The only disadvantage is that you're unable to throw it, but hey, we'll take what we can find for now.

As by now you should have enough weapons in your armory, from now on, today and in the later days, you can just decide for yourself to complete the errands in any order you wish. You can go firstly go for the beta shotgun, skip it entirely, or... if you wish to follow what I did for this day, then since we're pretty close to the library, return the book and fight the protesters. Then go and get Gary's autograph. Remember that there's a queue waiting to Gary in the mall which means a line of angry pedestrians for you. Try to use Molotov cocktails or any kind of explosives to dispatch of them before engaging Gary head-on. Upon leaving the mall, it's time to say goodbye to our standard shotgun and exchange it for something better. Go to the trainyard area.

Jump onto the barrier.

While on the barrier, jump to make it raise. Once it's raising, try to jump over to the top of the shed opposite of it. It might take you a couple of tries, so don't stress too much over it.

From the shed, jump onto the fence opposite of it.
Get on the rooftop.

Now, we will need to make a jump to the other part of the rooftop. What I usually do is try to jump with W pressed, then once I'm past the blocking edge, I press D to strafe closer to land on the second part. This might also take you a couple of tries.

And here's what we came for. The beta shotgun. Why was it worth all the pain? It does more damage than the regular shotgun and has a lower spread, although having a need of a reload every 6 shots, which still makes it a viable choice even at longer distances.

Let me straight away demonstrate it to you.

See that? It took me only two shots to dispatch of that police officer at that distance. This weapon is a significant upgrade over our regular shotgun... until we find the sawed-off, at least.

If you did everything in the same order as I did, this will be your last errand for the day.

Remember that there's another queue of NPCs waiting to the confessional. However, as they are all having their backs turned to you, just use a Molotov cocktail to dispatch of them. Then blast the priest with a shotgun to the face. You'll have Al-Queda storming the place soon after that. Use the beta shotgun and MP5 when faced with too many of them. You can also try using Molotov cocktails to disable them for a second and cut them down with your axe.

Today is the blessed day, where we are (nearly) saved from the pain of this unforgiving world of Paradise.

We get the sawed-off shotgun.

Once you are done with exploring and looting your neighbourhood (this should be your daily schedule on every level you go to!), head towards the police station.

Go to the right and follow this path.

In these bushes you will find the sawed-off shotgun. This will eliminate most of your troubles during your gameplay, although you need to remember that when you're encountering groups of beefed enemies (National Guard, Taliban), you'll be sometimes better off sacrificing the damage of the sawed-off shotgun for the rate of fire of the MP5 for example.

Use the hunting rifle or the pistol if you only see the enemies head. You will lose a ton of shotgun ammo, and then potentially assault rifle ammo, trying to hit the enemy. While the sawed-off tears apart pretty much everything in sight, its spread makes it hard to hit an enemy a few pixels wide. Similarly with the assault rifle, while it is accurate, it's not accurate enough for perfect shots. Once you complete the Piss on Dad errand, you'll be in the gimp suit. If you're having trouble at the beginning when you wake up without weapons, try to have one of the rednecks shoot the other one in the back, whilst you are shoveling the face of the one in front.

The gimp suit will actually cause the hostiles not to trigger on you, as they'll decide that laughing their asses out at your ridiculous outfit is much more fun than shooting you to death. Fantastic, thank you game.

This, besides lowering the difficulty for one day, has an unexpected effect of allowing you to trade with merchants.

If you feel like it, you can cheese the game a little and use your otherwise unspendable cash to now stock up on health pipes and fast food. Whatever you stock today, you'll be able to keep until the beginning of Saturday (as you won't be able to pick up the health items).

Since you're pretty much set with everything by the end of Wednesday, there's not much I can add for the rest of the weekdays.

Beware of the National Guard which will spawn from Thursday. By this point, you should have a hunting rifle and enough ammo for it to feel comfortable to dispatch of them via headshots. You may try to use the pistol, but the damage falloff and the beefy HP of those guys is a bit of a discomfort at this point.

Remember that nearly all of the errands, maybe except for the Clinic one, cannot be completed peacefully. Getting Napalm, Krotchy, an alternator, the package, paying the ticket, it's all a bloodbath. I actually thought that maaaaybe Uncle Dave will be nice to me, but no, he just wanted the sawed-off in his face that much.

With the amount of doggy treats you should have at this point, you might try to drop them during the Junkyard level to gain, what I would call, a dog cult following for the rest of the level, however getting the dog that is currently attacking you to eat your treat, while you have 2+ friendly ones running for it, is quite hard.

You might be tempted to visit our old Taliban friends and give them a warm welcome to the sound of BOOM BOOM CLACK of your sawed-off.

Personally I did it twice, on Tuesday and Friday, as on any other day than Friday you'll get the Weapon of Mass Destruction, and a Mini-Nuke Launcher on Friday.

Is it worth the hassle to go through the whole sewers for them? Well, kind of. I used the WMD a few times and Mini-Nuke twice during the legendary Army Base episode of Apocalypse Weekend, but that was mainly just because I felt lazy and didn't want to abuse catnip that much. However, you receive the mini-nukes anyway on Sunday.

I can say for sure that you are able to go through those levels and live (since you'll have to go through similar Al-Qaeda training camps anyway in Apocalypse Weekend), especially with the beta shotgun or sawed-off. It depends on you whether you just want to be done with this gamemode or if you actually like mind-numbing gameplay and going through the base.

It's time for your enema!

Anyway, the hospital isn't that bad. Kill the Gary at the beginning to get a weapon. You'll usually not find any kind of hospital personnel here (at least I did not on the minimal bystander population). While most of the weapons will be in the Lobby, your Glock and Pistol with their ammo are located in another area once you're dropping from the window ledges. Just explore enough, and you'll find it. Unfortunately, we have to say goodbye to our good old friend, the beta shotgun, which, as far as I am aware, does not spawn in the Lobby. :( Well, he served us well. However, the sawed-off shotgun is still with us, and that's what counts.

To dispatch of the zombies and cows, use the baseball bat rather than the sledgehammer, as it has a faster wind-up animation. The cows on this difficulty really freaking hurt, and I took two deaths to them, thinking they won't be able to deal that much damage to me.

With the OP weapons we have, I don't even need to waste words on Phraud (game publisher). He's easy enough to deal just with the regular assault rifle.

Remember that Vince will immediately trigger onto you at the beginning of Sunday when his house is raided by zombies. This means that you will actually have to kill him twice during the same day, as he respawns for another cutscene later.

The M79 grenade launcher comes handy in the next sections of the Al-Qaeda's training camp and military base. Spamming a corridor with it usually easily dispatches of incoming foes. Once you raid Al-Qaeda's training camp and you're captured by the military, remember to explore the military base to find your lost weapons, as they will be dislocated all over the place. The sawed-off shotgun is hidden a little behind a crate, but you'll surely find it easily due to its glow (just like Civvie 11 did).

When fighting Mad Cow Mike J, my sawed-off did not seem to make that much damage anymore (did RWS patch this for the boss fight?). As I had the max amount of ammo stored for the Glock (1000), I just set it on Auto-fire, took off my headphones and blasted it at him until he died.

Best of luck to you! If you do everything correctly and do not underestimate the hostiles, here's what will wait for you at the end:

Thank you for reading this guide. Since this is my first time writing one, and I do not think of myself as a Postal pro in any way, there might be potentially some mistakes or things I omitted that are probably valuable - let me know in the comments if that's the case. Also do so if you liked it or if it helped you. You're the best. Cheers.