Ahh Apocalypse Weekend, not really a favorite for most, but certainly an interesting part of the week. But for Ludicrous? We're really going to be pushing ourselves here!

If you're starting with this guide, please refer to the previous guide walking through Monday to Friday if you haven't already done so. Both because a lot of useful tech we're going to be using was introduced there, and also to prep you for the road ahead, as this guide's going to be split into (fittingly enough) 2 sides: AWP side and AW Side.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2994223301

For those who are on the AWP side, you're following up from Friday and more or less should have a full build ready to take on the weekend following the hospital segment, for those on the AW side though, we've got a LOT to catch up on! Most segments will be written here assuming you're on AW side, but for those on AWP I'll make some special notes that stand out for you.

Starting with, our first real challenge: The Hospital!

We're already starting strong without any weapons, but thankful this sequence is mostly scripted and easy to avoid fights up until the cats get unleashed. Which is actually going to be great for us since the buff the cats gained on Friday (whereby throwing any cats you have in your inventory) is kept through the weekend! And these cats are key to making this segment less painful, but much slower then usual.

First, before anything else, take a right and go into the rooms where the two scientists died to pickup both a few cats and most importantly catnip. There's a precious few amount of these during the weekend, and using them at key points is going to make this much less painful.

Afterwards walk back out and deal with the three gary's outside with the cats, if you're patient enough the cats should kill them off and the go back into being passive, allowing you to pick them back up. Truth be told: this is how we make this segment all the less painful. Each time you run into a few garys, drop a cat and run back to hide whilst the cat does all the work. You waste no ammo (even if we don't get a gun until much later), usually not a lot of health, and thanks to the level layouts it's pretty safe to do for most of the rooms.

When you're out the windows, be sure to slowly drop down a level before jumping across to get both a BIC body armor and another tin of catnip, and right after we get back inside go into the bathroom and grab another tin. You can also wait out each of the cats if you wish or just run past them.

The kamikaze gary's do tend to be less effective with the cat strats I find, but usually some careful movement doesn't make them all to bad to deal with. You should still be paying attention to the auto-saves and checkpoints, as thankfully the weekend is full of checkpoints. Which saves us some trouble of spending our one manual save!

Don't forget to kick the soda machines as we walk our way through, unless you're playing on '03 mode we can still get a free akimbo powerup from these.

To jump ahead, once we hit reception at the ground level it should be as easy as shooting the powerbox next to the desk (peeing and kicking doesn't work on this one, melee does though!) to escape and get on with our first real challenge of the day.

AWP Bonus: For making it past the rest of the week before now, all of the weapons you were carrying before on Friday will be lying around here! Have no fear about having to choose what to take at this point since you've probably got into a nice groove, but take my advice now and keep at least 1 melee slot open until the end of Sunday.

Once you're out, walk forward enough to trigger the two extra cats that spawn from the hospital, pick them up if you like, though I'd say the machete's a higher priority here. Especially if you're starting from AW. Once we've gotten our bearings stick to the left side of the wall and try to take out a few of the npcs here quietly, we're really not in the position to fight right now.

Getting into the restaurant is going to be tricky with all these roaming npcs, so it's time to put to use a trick I learned much after my normal week run: Flipping the bird! See, if you don't have any weapons out and still use your fire button (so left click), you'll flip off npcs. You wouldn't think this is really relevant, but if you do this before they finished their "Hey you!" state, then you can get them laughing and buy some time to keep running away!

Once we're in and after the cutscene we've gotta kill 20 zombies and bust their heads, not too hard actually thanks to the free baseball bat lying around! And right after we got to deal with 21 infected cows, also not too bad! Though the protesters can genuinely be a threat, so either use the cows against them or drop some cats to thin the herds.

I'd also save here once you're at 20/21 cows, I've often had some crashes following the next scene. Now, The Pigeon hunting mission! Its-

Whew! What a crazy detour huh? Anyways, we're actually in a pretty bad spot starting here, so turn around quickly and head back into the Chinese restaurant we killed those zombies in. All the boarding up and fortification plays in our favor here as we need to clear the streets a bit in order to get to our next location.

On the second floor, use the machete to kill off the army guy watching the street, after that I'd throw a grenade to the closest car (and maybe try to throw one further for the pack of army guys ahead) or make use of our rocket launcher to fire off some heat-seekers to clear the way!

Don't stroll the whole way there though, there's going to be a few more watching the street directly there, so either clear 'em out quickly with whatever you have on-hand or find a way to flip them off before they start firing. The path into the publisher isn't an easy one, especially with a perma-kimbo rocket spamming army dude blocking the path, and once we're inside it's going to get much worse so try to avoid using your catnip until we get in there.

Personally after chopping the army guy and clearing out some of the roamers I took a hard right from where the car was and flipped off whoever was there to buy time to get inside. After some explosions and clearing out whoever was following, I saved at the top floor of this small two-story building, and then proceeded to chop around and go down the alley close to the hospital. If you look to the left there's a small cutaway to get back to the road, but also a few npcs here that will bring some trouble. Kill them off and also throw the machete towards the rocket-spamming army guy here too, then it should be a relatively safe walk to the publisher. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Oh Ludicrous, how I (didn't) miss you so!

Where to begin? A start with next to no cover, 8-10 npcs with one most of the time facing you? A forced security section that spawns in 4 more assuming you live past the first? Yep, this sucks. In all my playthroughs this is generally first time I'd use catnip in AW, as straight up this segment sucks to power through otherwise.

It is possible to clear out the first few rooms with the many grenades and rockets we have on hand (and making use of what cats you still have to kill around corners), but keep in mind the length of this section and the many tight spaces we need to get through and pray someone doesn't have the sawed off. Great fun!

If you can make it without, good. But for me, I used catnip and b-lined to the first gary segment to despawn a good amount of npcs and make some distance. Can't stress this enough though, keep some catnip on hand for later.

Past the first room things get easier, I got lucky with someone firing a WMD and clearing out a good chunk of the next area, reminder to still shoot crawling npcs as they can and will still try to fire at you if you're nearby. Guards will also drop some armor here so take advantage of that whenever applicable. Really a high amount of the rooms leading from the cafeteria were made easy by using WMD'd corpses as bait and leading the next room's npcs into them. I can't say much since that's luck based, but on this difficulty someone spawning with one or two of 'em only gets more likely overtime. Or you can attempt to reroll what npcs are carrying if you still got a save before this map.

The small park area's generally not great to me, I wasn't really lucky baiting npcs to the wmd bodies here and just booked it up the stairs using whatever I had on hand to kill the 3 security guards up here. This is also where I used my first health pipe of the run, which thankfully doesn't really come back to bite me here.

The boss at the end of this section may seem like trouble, but if you still have a cat on hand getting here you can actually cheese this entire battle! By tossing it onto 'em, he'll throw out all his weapons and you're free to kill 'em however you want! I'd use this to farm some cash since any and all atf machines (should they exist past this point) are going to help if you're starting on AW. It might take a few attempts since the cash he drops can stop the cats from working, but keep at it and you'll break his AI enough to where he becomes just a normal npc. Meaning you can flip him off to stun him with laughter too!

Once he's down we have the master copy in hand and end Saturday! This took me around 3 or so hours (a mix of replaying the hospital segment twice because in trying to learn how to play on a controller I opened the functionally useless cheats menu and it marked the save as a cheat file, and general Ludicrous moments), but we haven't even seen the weekend's final form yet.

Oh no, we've got one more day of the week. And it's the worst one yet.

What a great way to start the day, an easy task of killing 50 zombies! Though you'll need to survive the RWS crew from nearly killing you the moment the cutscene ends, hold S to walk backwards right as you see the armory and turn around to go downstairs and get it yourself.

If you're on AWP side, this is a great time to restock on all that ammo you just spent at the end of Saturday! If you're on AW side, here we can gather some new weapons to make our lives easier, namely the sniper rifle (unless you got lucky with cash drops to buy one yesterday), the grenade launcher (if you didn't pick one up after the intense pigeon mission) and the blessed Sawed-off shotgun!

Now you might think you need to actually kill 50 zombies to get through this, but here's the funny thing: You don't have to actually kill any of them, Vince can do this whole task for us! One enough zombies get inside, Vince will turn immortal and keep shooting at zombies (and you) when they get close. But once they're in melee range Vince will switch to the sledgehammer and kill all the zombies for us! It's slow sure, but we can use this time to restock on whatever's not nailed down and not within Vince's range. Feel free to still pick off some zombies with the sledgehammer though, our next task won't be so easy. Believe me when I tell you: FINISH THIS TASK WITH FULL HP AND ARMOR!!

Missed all of 2 tasks ago when we started with near zero cover right in front of several npcs? Well, here we are! I used to use my second catnip here and hide either behind the tree to let the elephants go clear out the npcs nearby, but using the bird flipping trick we can get into the concessions stand really easily and kill the server with the scythe to make it our temporary bunker.

Let the elephants do most of the work, generally you can snipe agro them no problem with the pistol. And with some luck and flipping the npcs nearby off (really, really wish I knew about this trick a long time ago...) we can get out of this segment at full hp and armor!

No seriously, this used to be a really tough segment before this bird trick, but now it's just a filler segment before... Ugh...

Now we're getting to the real serious stuff, the terrorist base trek is going to be tricky, but a good rule of thumb is take it slow. Generally you can trigger the spawners and backtrack them into a trap. We've also got our precious scythe to back us up in places where we want to save ammo but not put us at risk when dealing with all these targets.

Speaking of targets, don't forget the 3 or so terrorists on the other side of the shooting range. Since we've now got a sniper in our hands, we can make these long distance shots no problem! And the scythe helps cut down those who're running towards us with no plans either.

Once we go through a map transition, snipe/shoot the first 3/4 guards then get the two on the high ground, one in the pipe, and the last one at the far end of the mine field. Instead of crossing that though; if you can get it right, you can jump from the ladders area to the right and go over the hillside. Skipping the killhouse segment entirely and saving us some trouble as when you go down you're near the map transition for the third part of the base! Be sure to still kill the guy in the watchtower though, even if he'll be back.

Once we make it into the level transition, remember to rekill that guy in the nearest watchtower again. For whatever reason he respawns each time we get in here. Personally I said "screw this" and used another catnip for this map, since there's too many terrorists on this map that slowly combing it each time sure is doable without using catnip, but not something I felt like grinding out. Especially since I lost some health just getting there, and tragically the killhouse we skipped at least had some medpacks for us. Also starting each life having to quickly move right to not get my head sniped off gave me flashbacks to the publishers office.

Now that we're down in the bunker, stealth kill the first red guy and take a left. Bait the terrorists down this hallway and enter their small storage room here for some ammo and a BIC armor. Don't use everything here though, we'll be back soon. Despite how it looks, you can kick open the vertical doors here just like any other door, so use this to bait and kill off the terrorists who're chasing you. They do this a lot in this segment.

When the coast is clear, keep going down until you reach the main storage room, here you'll want to snipe off the high ground and clear out the low ground with homing rockets. Keep in mind there's two medkits down bellow near the stairs upward if you need them now. If you remember that radar we got a long time ago, these cramped hallways are a good excuse to put it to use while we still have it.

Escaping the bunker is about as tricky as getting in here to begin with, take your time, snipe out the worse offenders, and maybe see if one can fire a WMD in your favor. Once you get back to the ladder, climb up and down getting everyone in the watchtowers, as if you can crouch-jump up the hill to your right, you can actually go over and skip the entire return trip segment! If you need to, use either your second or last catnip here to get over the hill. As after the cutscene ends, we get the absolute worst part of the weekend started.

There's a lot of segments in Postal 2 that make me think: "This was not designed with these rules in mind". The base is one of these moments, as beating this on POSTAL and above is outright suffering of the highest amount. Imagine the opening Hospital segment again, but this time the enemy has double the health, higher tier weapons, and you don't get any good melee weapons until the latter half of it. I hope you got a lot of practice with grenades, both kicking them back and throwing them at the right angle, as this segment's going to make you good at it.

We start out with a pistol with at least 50 bullets, a taser, and around 8 army guys we need to kill. 3 down the elevator, 4 on the upper levels.

I got lucky with a mini-nuke launcher killing off a bunch of enemies in the next few rooms, but for others once you get up the stairs take a right and grab the medkits in this bloodied room (and also the knife, it's not perfect but it's something for now). Once you get into the next, I personally saved in this room since the next floors are going to be tricky and you'll wanna preserve as much ammo as possible. When walking up here you should have around 12 grenades assuming you didn't use any on the army guys beforehand.

When you open the double doors throw a grenade to the left to kill the guy looking (on average this took me two grenades), then charge one to throw up stairs on the right (also drop one or two for the chasers that'll come down from doing this). The next room is hell, 3-4 dudes on the right in the boxes, someone watching guard behind boxes on the further path, and a faraway sniper on the high-ground.

Outright, this segment is rng based. Pray that the soldiers don't keep getting the sawed off and they keep killing each other off. There's nothing I can say about the halls and specific hall of hell, but make sure to poke around the shadows to get your own sawed off back.

Try to clear out the room with the boxes, restock in the sledgehammer room, and throw grenades forward as more soldiers will spawn in ahead of you. I have had several promising runs ruined by the crashes here. This segment also wouldn't be as bad if we were allowed to have a machine gun by now, but this suffering is what we signed up for.

After enough deaths, I find there's really only two ways to get through this map: Brutal RNG, or Pacifist (no seriously). Either keep rolling and see if the forward spawns aren't too dangerous and you've got the resources to power through, or keep flipping the bird while they're not shooting at you to run past them. The pacifist option isn't really pretty here and I've had a few occasions it doesn't work like it should, but it's a fair plan B if you're not making much headway on this map.

Mil-Base 2

Once you get through the small trainyard and into the offices, I personally saved here. Now that we have a sniper, we've got substantially more of a chance then ever before. Even more so when we can get the glock, smg, some dynamite, and a ton of ammo too going further up this hallway.

A major part of the difficulty on this map is less the amount of enemies, and more so the fact that it's so long. Because we've got the glock, smg and a good amount of sniper ammo, we're allowed to take this slowly and carefully with precise shots, but it never stops not-stinging getting killed and having to do most of the map back again. Don't skimp out on the grenade launcher by the way, it's more then good to use it compared to grenades when we're trying to get ahead.

Once you get outside be sure to put that sniper to use, but save at least one bullet so you have a way to zoom in for far off threats. If you've got the ammo you should be able to pistol 'em from afar with less risk to yourself. Clear out the hanger to the left and once you get past the hallways we make it to the next map.

Yet another infamous map, first we clear out the boxes room then need to take the elevator down, behind the desk is two dudes followed by a few more that'll come in from the left. Afaik the two dudes behind the desk are always agro but the guys to the left might be safe to flip off.

If you didn't know by the way, please avoid shooting the missile heads here. Get behind the desk for some health and pick up the machete that's lying around nearby. Once you get to the warhead and past the small hell sequence I recommend saving (make sure garys aren't following you either, less you bring them into the real world and have to deal with then every time you reload your save here). Now that we've got our own mininuke launcher, and we just saved in a good spot, feel free to waste a few lives using it a couple of times. It's going to be hard to run out of ammo for it here.

Mil-Base 4

This is a glorified victory lap, grab your old stuff and watch as the zombies make quick work of the army. There is a short section with the garys that could kill you once you return to the cafeteria part, but despite facetanking 2 grenades and a kamikaze gary I got out fine. Just don't overthink it and sledgehammer the zombies if they do get too close to you.

Once we escape, we watch a short cutscene and return back to the streets we walked around in Saturday. And unlucky for me and army dude spawned right behind me after the cutscene... I ended up making it out and saving between one of the tanks before the turn on this street. Getting out I had to hug the right wall to go back into the small 2 story building and took a quick stop at the atf-r-us to restock on ammo. Afterwards I went on the hospital side of the route to get back to the publishers. Same path as the first time we had to do this Saturday,

Once we're inside, first, kill the zombie ahead of you.

Okay, now we're back but in the parking garage this time. Let the zombies do a good amount of the work, snipe what they can't and get inside the back passageways. Make heavy use of the sledgehammer for the zombies and walk slowly to refill on health as you need it. The army is still here after all.

Not worth nothing there's actually a lot of medkits and pipes around here, so if you used a pipe recently now's actually an alright time to wait out the drawback timer since you can replenish really quickly. We do lose 75 hp when at 100, so might as well keep a pipe useful as a backup.

Honestly though this map's a pushover compared to what we're used too, take it slow and enjoy the apocalypse a lil'.

Various Vetting

Quick thing to note, this map likes to crash a lot on me. I'd recommend manually restarting your game before the last cutscene as it sucks to have to redo this segment even if it's pretty short.

This segment's more difficult thanks to the random frame drops then it is actual enemies. The rednecks at this point are pushovers, the dogs can either be tamed or chopped by the scythe, and you're out of this map in no time. This is just a short breather level before:

And here we are, just another map before the end! Pick off the three survivors at the entrance and afterwards it's pretty simple. Use the scythe for living enemies, sledgehammer for undead, and snipe living enemies if you don't really have cover ahead. Watch out for the airstrikes too, they're real and can in fact hurt you.

Past the airstrike we have one last challenge, or well, one last intended challenge.

The Milk Man

Much like we've been told, it's all about the heads. Shoot the floating gary heads, then try to walk up with the machete and spam kicks and chops. If you're lucky, you'll keep getting downward slashes that'll go out quick. And if you're really lucky like I was apparently, you don't ever have to worry about the Mad Cow getting his heads back!

No really, on my first try at the fight I just kept attacking and kicking, taking only a small break to get health back thanks to the invisible zombies being the only thing taking my health down. I can't really confirm if this is a universal thing, but hey I'm not complaining!

And that's Apocalypse Weekend! In all honesty looking back; Saturday wasn't all that bad and had some of the fun problem solving that made the Monday to Friday so interesting despite our linear tasks. And having less of a starting arsenal did made me think a bit more carefully about what steps I took getting the day done.

But Sunday, especially the back half, is just not fun at this high of a difficulty. Using grenades as a primary tool to escape was interesting the first time, but when rng can just roll you several WMDs and Mini nukes alongside the 3 times it crashed on me each time I got a good run going in Mill-1? I really stopped respecting the run at this point, as the grind became less about better and better execution and more about getting lucky accidents more often then not.

But hey, we did it. So take what you can get, and enjoy the feeling of beating either A Ludicrous Week in Paradise, or just a Ludicrous Apocalypse Weekend. Next time, maybe I'll tackle Paradise Lost. Or wait and see if that next patch that was mentioned to be in the works comes around and official support exists for it too. Who knows.

If you want to see the rest of the week before this, check out my first Guide to Suffering here!
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2994223301

Total Run time: 11.1 hrs. Realistically more like 7, not counting my first time trying to use a controller and unintentionally selecting the cheats option on the menu (I gave up on the idea right after the hospital segment, KB+M just makes things all the more consistent for me).