Overview
Tired of those pesky barriers blocking you from exploring Paradise? Don’t want to wait until Friday to see Uncle Dave? Or maybe you just want to see how little RWS really playtested their game?
Introduction
In order to enforce some sort of linearity onto their sandbox game, Running With Scissors divvied up the world map with barricades that wouldn’t disappear until later on in the week. Unfortunately for them, the map designers weren’t keen enough to catch these exploits that would allow you to hop past the barriers and let you collect some extremely-powerful loot as early as Monday.
Most of this guide is intended for possible new players. Experienced players will obviously know the locations of the weapons even if they didn’t know about the glitches beforehand. Note that all these glitches are written for Monday. Any area you sequence-break into considers it Friday, so barriers that would be there on Tuesday or Wednesday won’t be there on Monday.
Note: this guide refers to “duck jumping” a lot. If you’re new to the game, duck jumping is when you hit the crouch button in the middle of a jump to reach a ledge you wouldn’t normally be able to get onto.
Home > Suburbs/Meat World (opens on Thursday) > Ghetto/Forest (opens on Wednesday) > Fairgrounds (opens on Tuesday):
In the starting area “Home”, go down this alleyway towards the western side of the level near the Suburbs barrier.
From here, jump onto the roof of this large house.
Now you’re going to have to duck jump onto the lower end of this rock wall.
Carefully duck jump up each rocky step of this wall until you reach here. It might be a good idea to quicksave if you’re new to this game and are not adept with the controls.
Now what you’re going to have to do is jump along this wall. You will get stuck in mid-air and slide right over the invisible wall.
If you do it wrong, you will get stuck and teleport back onto the road. If you do it right, you’ll soar right into the load zone. I suggest jumping normally with some running speed and crouching at the peak of your jump to get in. Welcome to the Suburbs, an area you wouldn’t normally be able to get into until Thursday!
If you check the map, you can see that this area is grayed-out, meaning we’re not supposed to be here.
I hope you stocked up on doggie treats, because this area alone has 2 rabid pit bulls with AIDS guarding a house. After befriending or killing these dogs, go inside the first house on the right. You’ll collect an assortment of powerful weapons from the get-go, some of which wouldn’t even be available until Tuesday or Wednesday: a machine gun, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, a Bali, and a pair of knuckle dusters.
Go up the stairs, go towards one of the houses on the right, and look for these cinderblocks.
Up here, you can collect a diseased cow head quite a few days early!
We have one last stop to go to before leaving the Suburbs. Continue up the stairs until you find Meat World. It’s the large building with this spinning cow on it:
If you go in here, you can fight your way through the slaughterhouse very early. It’s important you have a lot of ammo and a dog or 2 before you attempt this, because it can be tough this early on in the game.
The intro cutscene does not trigger. The path is linear of course, but there are a lot more goodies that you don’t want to miss! Take one of the side paths to find some Napalm canisters.
Continue along the path until you reach a big, U-shaped hallway overlooking the entrance. At the end of this hallway, you’ll find a desk with many great items on it: grenades, a shotgun, a pistol,
sniper rifle ammo, 2 Molotov cocktails,
and most importantly, the machete, perhaps the coolest and most powerful melee weapon in the game! Make sure you hop onto the box with the sniper rifle ammo to find it.
In the final room, look for these two boxes.
Climb onto them and duck jump onto the second stack of boxes. Walk along the boxes until you reach this, the ultimate weapon in the game: the sawed-off shotgun! That’s right, you can get the strongest gun in the game on the very first day!
Now, unlike the proper mission, you can leave early. You don’t have to fight the cops and the SWAT team unless you pick up the SIC body armor. On the way out, you should also find a baseball bat, another one of the strongest melee weapons in the game:
We’ve pretty much completed everything we can do in the Suburbs for now, but I’d say the large arsenal we’ve picked up was worth it. Anyway, there are 3 exits to this area. The first is the way you came in from Home, and that’s probably the best bet on Monday. You’ll enter behind the wooden barricades, but you can easily duck jump over them.
The second way is through the Ghetto.
When you enter, you’ll be stuck inside the barrier! But don’t worry, you can walk out of it easily as long as you avoid the yellow sign.
The third way is through the Forest, another area you’re not meant to enter on Monday that also has some goodies.
When you enter, you’ll be stuck inside the barrier, but as long as you don’t move, it will teleport you out.
You can leave through the Ghetto, or you can go to the Fairgrounds from the Forest. Don’t worry about the gate being closed off behind you,
there’s a second exit on the opposite end of the level that leads to the Ghetto.
The Fairgrounds is strangely empty on Monday aside from the NPC who sells you the fast food.
Suburbs > Parcel Center (opens on Friday)
Ooh, now here we have the coolest and hardest sequence-breaking glitch in the game! To access it, we need to take advantage of a particular quirk of the dog enemy. You see, the dog enemy exerts a certain amount of force upon attacking. Usually this is to push away anything that gets bitten, but we can take advantage of it to make extremely-high jumps and access areas that we’re not meant to. Start off by shooting one of the 2 dogs by the entrance of the Suburbs. Lure it all the way to this green fence on the right side of the parcel center.
Now, this is the hardest part. You will need to jump right as the dog is attacking you in order to boost over the fence. You might need to crouch in mid-air to make the jump. If done correctly, the dog will send you soaring into this area!
If you explore the area, you’ll find some quite weird, unfinished scenery. The far-away building has a gap you can fall through. It’ll teleport you to the back part of the Parcel Center.
The goal is to land atop the fence. If you landed behind the fence like in this guide, you can get back on by duck jumping from the sloped part of the cliffside.
Once on the fence, carefully jump over the pointed parts of the fence so you don’t fall off. Make it to the brick wall.
From the brick wall, walk along the top of it until you reach the back of the building, and jump on.
Now from here, you can jump onto the octagonal part of the rooftop,
and then jump onto the main part of the roof with the three windows.
By breaking the glass, you can fall into the Parcel Center. You can also fall in from the octagonal window, and you’ll actually land inside the unloaded Parcel Center!
If you walk towards the counter, it’ll load the level as usual. When you try to exit, it’ll look like it is barricaded,
but by kicking the door open and running up against the shutters, you will exit the building.
This area is extremely difficult on Monday and there’s not much of a reward for beating it early except a lot of Pistol ammo, a box of Scissors, a Rocket Launcher, a Diseased Cow Head, and a Glock on certain difficulties like Manic. It’s still fun to explore, though.
The package is missing:
The shutters don’t activate, and the SWAT team doesn’t burst in through the windows strangely enough.
There’s also an alternate entrance in case you missed the fence. Head around towards the far-away building and look for this spot with the empty void.
This entrance is really difficult to get into, so quick save often. Jump over this gap:
You will land in this area:
Head over to this part and jump over the gap:
You will land here:
Carefully make your way to here and jump into the building.
Ghetto > Forest (opens on Wednesday) > Suburbs (opens on Thursday)
While you cannot bypass the Suburbs barrier in the Ghetto, you can easily bypass the Forest barrier.
Simply jump onto the left cliffside by the barrier
and hop over it.
Here’s another error in Running With Scissors’ level design. You can also enter the Suburbs from the Forest. If you’re playing the X-Mas Tree mission on POSTAL difficulty or higher, I highly recommend you to use this glitch if you’re low on health.
Simply jump along the left wall and you’ll slide over the barricade, it’s even easier than the Home method!
It’s possible to get stuck and teleport out, though.
Ghetto > Fairgrounds (opens on Tuesday) > Forest (opens on Wednesday) > Suburbs (opens on Thursday)
Here’s a new sequence-break that I completely overlooked, but is very easy to do. Come up to the entrance to the Fairgrounds on Monday towards the left side.
Duck jump onto this hill:
From here, duck jump onto the sign:
Then, jump over the wooden fence,
and you’re in!
Interestingly, the level transition sign that says “closed until Tuesday” is on the other side of the fence where no one would ever see it. Maybe RWS should patch this and put it where everyone can see, like literally every other barrier in the game. Anyway, like I said, there’s only 2 or 3 cats and the guy who sells you food:
Run through the empty fairgrounds until you reach this end of the benches:
If you stand on the top level and duck jump, you can get onto the brick wall surrounding the area and reach nothingness!
This might be my new favorite spot in all of Postal 2 besides the skylights of the Parcel Center:
But ignore that. Continue along the wall and you can bypass the closed-off Forest area entrance.
Down here is a floating sign, strangely enough. Just walk towards the backside of the shutters and you’ll warp to the Forest.
And of course like before, you can take that same Forest > Suburbs exit by hopping the left side of the barrier.
Greenbelt > Napalm Factory Exterior (opens on Thursday) > Junkyard (opens on Friday)
Assuming you came from the Ghetto by way of the Suburbs glitch, you can also get into the Napalm Factory Exterior easily, and I mean really easy. It’s as if Running With Scissors actually wanted you to do this. Anyway, come to the entrance over here.
See this rock?
Simply duck jump onto it and then duck jump over the barricade! It’s that easy!
Welcome to the Napalm Factory Exterior, a full 3 days early! Now, it’s not as simple as it seems. You can actually get stuck in the jump and have to kill yourself with a Molotov Cocktail, as the suicide button doesn’t work in mid-air. Make sure you quicksave before this jump. From here, you can go to the Junkyard with no barrier whatsoever.
If you come here on Thursday normally, this would be blocked off, but as stated earlier, all sequence-breaks consider it Friday for some reason except the Parcel Center.
There’s not a whole lot you can do here besides steal the alternator 4 days early and make a lot of dog friends.
I’d actually advise against doing this, because I have a feeling it would permanently screw up the Friday mission. I haven’t tested this, though. If you feel like you’ve got the balls to spit in Running With Scissors’ faces and completely break one of their missions, then at the very least I’d advise you to do it after “Piss on Dad’s Grave” on Wednesday. Your inventory gets taken away in that mission.
Continue through the maze to find the Sledgehammer. It’s one of the most powerful weapons in the game, and it can be yours on the very first day!
Don’t forget to look for the hidden Postal III copy and show Akella what you thought of it!
Anyway, one last bit of fun. See this cliffside by the entrance?
You can duck jump along this wall and bypass the level transition. There’s a whole lot of weird unfinished geometry back here.
Check out these hollow mountains!
You can exit normally just by running towards the entrance of the Junkyard from within the Junkyard. It will just take you back to the Napalm Factory Exterior.
Napalm Factory Exterior > Napalm Factory Interior alternate entrance
There’s an alternate entrance to the Napalm Factory. First, jump over the roadside barrier and collect the hedge trimmers a few days early.
Duck jump onto the post near the building’s roof. It’s tricky and requires good timing. From there, you can reach the top of the building.
Jump down into the hillside area blocked off by invisible walls.
You’ll have to continuously duck jump until you reach the farthest cliffside. If you get stuck here, it’ll actually teleport you past the level transition into the Napalm Factory Interior! Kind of useless, but an interesting bug nonetheless.
From here, you can follow the signs all the way to the napalm launcher! That’s right, vanilla Postal 2’s BFG is available right from the start!
And the best part? No one has to die! The mission event doesn’t trigger, so you can just stroll out the building with one of the most deadly weapons in the game…hmm, wait a second. If no one dies, then isn’t that a bad thing by the Postal Dude’s logic?
On Friday, you can simply jump onto the roof as mentioned earlier to get inside the building.
Interestingly, when you get to the Napalm room this time, the event actually will trigger! It’s almost like a programming safeguard they implemented in case someone were to sequence-break on Friday.
Napalm Factory Exterior > Industrial Area
Somewhere in the level, you’ll see a door with three wooden planks covering it. Kick them off and enter it.
You’ll traverse through a nondescript building maze before finding a room with three homeless men. Either kill them for their police batons or ignore them.
Continue from this room and you’ll find the load area for the Industrial Area.
When the level loads, you’ll be stuck inside chairs and junk, but it will teleport you out.
Napalm Factory Exterior > Clinic Area (opens on Wednesday)
From the Napalm Factory Exterior, you can get to the Clinic Area with no barriers blocking you.
The area is more or less the same as it is normally, but the Vend-A-Cure produces nothing:
There’s also some missing items on the ledge near the Clinic.
Napalm Factory Exterior > Trainyard Area (opens on Tuesday) > Church/Trainyard area (opens on Tuesday)
From the Napalm Factory, you can easily reach the Trainyard Area with no hassle and no barriers. But first, inside the Nondescript Warehouse,
You can collect a can of Stynx in the ladies’ restroom.
In the men’s bathroom, you can jump-kick the window and duck jump outside.
There is a Rocket Launcher on the ledge over here. That’s not a big deal, though: any hardcore Postal fan knows where to find the secret Rocket Launcher on Monday, anyway.
Ordinarily, there’s supposed to be a train here that blocks the entrance to the Napalm Factory, but again, all the areas you can sequence-break into consider it Friday for some reason. If you tried this glitch on Tuesday, you would get stuck inside this train and be unable to freely go back into the Napalm Factory.
From there, you can also shoot left into the Church.
The Church is actually the only buggy area on Monday, strangely enough. No matter what you set the population to, it’ll always be nearly empty with only a few NPCs. There’s no junk food or sniper rifle, nor is there the terrorist who spawns when you enter that area.
The Cemetery is also completely empty. There are only 2 tombstones that spawn in.
Trainyard Area > Clinic Area (opens on Wednesday)
A little bit further down from the Napalm Factory Exterior is the entrance to the Clinic area with no barrier at all.
Clinic Area > Industrial Area
Just like in the Napalm Factory, you can end your little sequence-breaking sidequest by taking the entrance to the Industrial Area, only to find boulders blocking your way back.
Trainyard Area > Office Complex
Just like before, you can take the unblocked entrance to the Office Complex by the Sexxoco, only to find a barricade blocking you on the other side.
It makes a good stopping for this guide if you get tired of sequence-breaking and you want a quick way back into the main campaign.
Office Complex > Trainyard Area (opens on Tuesday)
In this never-before-seen sequence break, it’s possible to bypass the invisible wall that blocks the Trainyard Area on Monday in the RWS Office area. Go to this old house:
Head down this alleyway on the right side of the building.
Duck jump onto this hillside near the back of the building.
From here, duck jump onto the roof:
Then jump onto the highest part of the roof:
From here, we can jump forwards towards the hill and to our goal, but first,
Turn around and jump behind the concrete wall. You will end up past the level transition border!
If we head down this alley, we can see some interesting unfinished geometry.
In the far-off distance is an entire unused portion of the Chicken Queen Estates, left floating in the void for no reason other than to mess up any optimization this map had in the first place.
Anyway, back to our main goal. Jump onto this hillside from the top of the roof:
Climb up this cliffside. This is the hardest cliff in the game to climb, so Easy Save often. There are some invisible floors around the edges of the cliffs, so you have a tiny bit of leeway.
Once you reach the telephone wires, you’re almost there.
Head forwards until you see the tunnel:
On top of the tunnel, carefully look down at this point,
and fall down here. You will end up past the invisible wall and have access to the Trainyard Area.
Trainyard Area > Compound (opens on Friday)
From the Trainyard Area, you can reach the Compound with no obstacles blocking you. Note that again, this will only work if you sequence-break into the Trainyard Area on Monday.
If you come here on Tuesday or later, it will be blocked off:
The ATF cutscene will play as usual. There’s not much reason to go to the Compound on Monday, although you can earn 14 more sniper rifle rounds, and those are rare early on. Some of the ATF officers will also have rocket launchers and sniper rifles to collect.
In the back of the level is another diseased cow head to pick up, as well as this hill.
On this hill is a crate containing 2 submachine guns and 2 officers who have SMGs and a lot of health. That’s right, you can get the submachine gun as early as Monday, too! Not very useful without a lot of ammo, though, nor is it useful on POSTAL or Impossible! difficulty since NPCs will drop SMGs most of the time.
Some of the officers do have napalm launchers if you didn’t pick one up in the Napalm Factory already.
Trainyard Area > Compound #2 (opens on Friday)
This is a sequence-breaking glitch that can only be done on Tuesday-Thursday. Go behind the Sexocco and find this fence near the top of the tunnel:
Duck jump onto the fence then onto the top of the tunnel. It’s very tricky and you can get stuck easily.
Head towards the back of the tunnel and jump down onto the hills.
From here, we can jump in through the back of the tunnel:
It may look like a solid wall, but we can pass right through this texture.
Just head forwards and you’ll end up at the compound.
A word of warning: this sequence-break is one-way only. Once you leave, you’ll end up stuck inside the barriers behind the invisible wall with no way to escape.
Trainyard Area > West Mall/East Mall (opens on Tuesday)
Our final stop is the Paradise Mall. Both sides can be entered from the Trainyard area,
but there’s not much to do in them. The only real neat stuff is some food you can steal in the West Mall, as well as an SMG clip in the area that’s under construction. The secret areas behind the vent cover are actually missing items on Monday.
If you try to exit into the Office Complex, it’s actually fenced-off! You will need to backtrack to the Sexxoco in order to finally start your chores at the RWS offices.
Let’s see how those protestors enjoy the sweet taste of Napalm, shall we?
Heh heh heh…
Main Street > Library (opens on Tuesday)
It is possible to break into the Library on Monday with the exact same glitch as the Napalm Factory’s alternate entrance. We need to take advantage of the way the engine teleports you out of a “stuck” position. This is probably the toughest sequence-break in the game due to the random nature of it. Go to the Main Street area and find this cliff.
Duck jump onto each cliff one by one until you reach the top.
You will end up on top of this mountain overlooking both the Library roof and a huge chasm.
From here, jump to the roof of the Library.
Run all the way to the back and find this cliffside on the left.
Narrowly climb up this cliffside.
Then jump to the right into this chasm.
Climb up the right side of the chasm here:
You will end up here:
Cross the chasm,
until you find this exact spot on the rightmost part of the walkable area.
Carefully jump into this spot until it says “You look like you’re stuck.”
The pop-up might appear numerous times, but don’t touch the controls until it teleports you. You will end up inside the Library!
Head towards the stairs and you’ll see this bizarre dummied-out area.
Be careful, the stairs are not properly clipped, though it is easy to escape. Simply head towards the shutters to enter the Library area.
After the event on Tuesday, there will be flames in this area, but the level entrance is conveniently right before you could touch them.
On Monday, the area is devoid of any protestors or terrorist NPCs. There’s very little to do without the book to drop off. After the event, the protestors will be inside and will obviously shoot you on sight. Sadly, Gary Coleman’s autobiography will not trigger the event.
Main Street > Library (closes after Tuesday) #2
It turns out there’s an even easier way to break in after the place burns down. It’s all due to a glitch in the Postal 2 engine. Setting yourself on fire always does a set amount of damage, and it prevents you from getting hurt by any other fire damage.
All you have to do is set yourself on fire and run straight in!
Huge Burning Library shortcut
We can cheese this Tuesday mission the same way we can sequence-break in after Tuesday. Just set yourself on fire with the Gasoline (or Petrol in the UK version…well, not really) and you can run right through the insta-kill fire with no sweat.
Well, some sweat from the fire I’d assume, but whatever.
Skip Wednesday “Pick Up Laundry” mission
This is an extremely helpful and rather well-known sequence-break glitch in the Brewery mission. Run through this door after the starting Brewery room, but don’t go all the way in. Go to the right corner:
Wait for the door to close, then jump onto the table with the Medikit and Easy Save.
You will need to carefully run towards the edge of the table and duck jump onto the staircase. The trigger lines for the cutscene are extremely huge, so no doubt you will have to Quick Load often. Note that if you fail, you can shave 10 seconds off the wait time by quitting out of the cutscene and loading your Easy Save from the main menu.
This trick will make speedruns much easier, especially if you save the “Piss on Dad” mission for last as you will warp home and start Thursday as soon as you leave the Brewery.
Skip Napalm Factory Interior level
This one is so easy it almost feels like it’s common sense, but you’d be surprised at how few people know how to do this. All you have to is fill up your Wanted meter, collect the Napalm Launcher, and get arrested by a cop.
Usually cops will be beating you up during the cutscene, but if they’re not there, then lure one in before collecting the item. This trick will help you earn a super-fast speedrunning time on Thursday.
Huge Napalm Factory Interior shortcut
This one isn’t as useful as the previous trick unless you’ve already chosen to pay the Parking Ticket before doing the Napalm Factory mission. In any case, you can easily duck jump through the barricade from a certain position.
You can easily run back through the entrance. You will have to get around the closed-off gate in the Napalm Factory Exterior, though.
Avoiding the Police in Meat World
If you come into Meat World with the Police Uniform on, the cops won’t attack you at all nor will your Wanted meter rise. Obviously it’s best to do this when your Wanted meter is empty to begin with. Keep this in mind while planning your speedrunning routes, especially since the Ghetto is right next to the Suburbs. Sometimes the SWAT will shoot at you though, it happened to me while I was leaving on a No-Kill run.
Skip Friday “Cure Gonorrhea” mission
This is without a doubt the easiest sequence-break in the entire game and a huge oversight on RWS’ part. All you have to do…is never urinate on Friday. That’s it. The Postal Dude will constantly complain to bait you into it like the schmuck you are, but just ignore him. This is basically mandatory for speedrunning and will save you at least 5 minutes or more depending on your route.
Huge Junkyard shortcut
In the “Get Alternator” mission on Friday, the entrance will be blocked off after you steal the Alternator. You can jump over it with the help of the dog enemies similar to the sequence break into the Parcel Center. Make sure you thin the herd before attempting this, though.
This will save you at least 2 or 3 minutes on a speedrun.
Parcel Center shortcut
It’s actually possible to bypass the entire large room the SWAT team bursts in through in the Parcel Center. Simply find this box early on in the room:
Duck jump onto it,
then hop onto the wooden shelf and towards the exit.
On harder difficulties and speedruns, this can be a life saver. Note that the enemies towards the beginning of the room will still continuously respawn even if you don’t trigger the rest of the respawn flags.
Skip The Bridge
The final and most useful sequence-break glitch is in the final level of Apocalypse Weekend. After the third Army encounter on the bridge, you will see this stack on the right side of the bridge.
Simply jump onto the stack and duck jump onto the side of the bridge, and you can skip the entire level!
Running With Scissors got lazy and didn’t add clipping to the sides of the bridge, so you can run the entire length of the bridge without encountering a single enemy.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this little sequence-breaking guide as much as I had discovering all these glitches. Indeed, it’s possible to reach every area on Monday except inside the Brewery, which is exclusive to the “Piss on Dad” mission on Wednesday. The best part is that all the weapons you pick up will also transfer to later days! I would like to credit “Tehzim” for the first glitch (Home > Suburbs), as I first saw it in his now-deleted Postal 2 Let’s Play many years ago. I’d also like to credit “Renaissance1482” from the Postal Wiki for the Ghetto > Forest glitch and “home arcor de” for the thumbnail image. A huge special thanks to TVTropes for the Burning Library shortcut, Junkyard shortcut, and skipping “Pick Up Laundry” glitch!
The only weapons you will miss are the the Weapon of Mass Destruction, the beta shotgun, the dynamite, the scythe, the grenade launcher, and the chainsaw. Even then, the WMD can be obtained in the Tora Bora behind the Postal Dude’s house and the dynamite is on top of the Bank. Yes, you can get the axe in its usual place. I seemed to have picked it up without realizing it and forgot to take a screenshot.
The Paradise Lost sequence-breaking guide is out now! Many handy glitches, including the ability to skip all of Tuesday!
