Chapter 2: The Quarantine Zone - Half-Life: Alyx Guide - IGN (2024)

Welcome to the Chapter 2: The Quarantine Zone section of the Half-Life: Alyx IGN Wiki Guide. You just met with Russell who got you set up with your pistol and your pair of gravity gloves, now you're heading into City 17 in pursuit of your father, Eli.

Starting off, you'll be on a moving train car which will stop shortly. Sit in the train car for a few moments while Russell briefs you. Once the train stops, step off of the train car and onto the gravel. Turn immediately to your right, where you’ll see a dead zombie. You can pick up the helmet next to the dead zombie and put it on by physically placing it over your head, if you want to.

Helmets and facial gear give you slight protection against barnacles, which will scoop them off your head instead of doing damage to you, so these are definitely worth picking up and equipping.

Jump down onto the platform and turn left. Walk down the walkway to the next dead zombie, which will be leaning into a fenced door. A crate nearby contains a single unit of Resin. You redeem Resin to upgrade your guns at ‘Combine fabricator’ weapon upgrade stations scattered throughout the campaign, so it’s worth picking up every single Resin that you find. Pick this Resin up and stow it on your back, the same way you would stow ammo magazines.

You can also check the quantity of Resin you’re carrying by holstering your weapon and looking at the GUI display next to your health bar, which will be situated on your non-primary hand. You can holster your weapon by pushing inward on your dominant hand’s analog stick or thumb pad until the weapon wheel appears, then hovering your controller over the hand icon and letting go. Likewise, this is also how you switch between weapons.

Tap the analog stick or thumbpad to quickly switch between/holster your weapons. Hidden on the ground next to the Resin crate is a clip of pistol ammo. Hidden in the next crate, with a cardboard box stashed on top of it, is another clip of pistol ammo. Move the box to collect the ammo. Shoot the lock to open the door, then move the corpse out of the way and continue forward.

At the end of the next room, open your weapon wheel up to equip your Multi-Tool. Press the end of it against the lit-up red and white sensor on the left hand side of the wall, and connect the power circuit to open the door. You’ll want to make sure the power is connected in this order:

Next, you’ll find a health machine with a grub already stuck inside. Pull the handle on the machine to smoosh the grub, then place your hand on the panel to heal yourself. You won’t have taken any damage at this point, but it’s worth learning how this works early on. Take a left and continue moving down the hallway. A Resin is located on top of a crate, on top of a nearby shelf.

In the next room, pick up one of the barrels blocking the doorway with both hands and throw it to clear a path. Shoot the lock on the next door and keep moving. You’ll enter a small room with several boxes and a barnacle. A Resin will be sitting behind some grates to your left as you enter the room. Another Resin is hiding under a crate to your right as you enter the room. A clip of pistol ammo will be sitting on a box in front of you as you enter the room. Another clip of pistol ammo drops from the barnacle after you shoot and kill it.

Kill the barnacle and move the boxes aside to clear the crawlspace, then teleport underneath to get past it. In the next hallway, a Resin will be stored behind some fencing to your right. Continue down the stairwell and shoot the next barnacle you come into contact with. It’ll drop a Resin upon death. The next cluster of barnacles will drop several pistol clips, so it’s worth killing them all. Behind the cluster of barnacles is an open train car with a dead zombie clutching onto a Resin. Move on past the cluster of barnacles and out into the open. There isn’t much going on here, but there are several pickups hidden throughout the area.

A pistol clip can be found on the nearby zombie corpse as you clear the overpass tunnel. A Resin is located inside of some piping to your right. Another Resin is hidden behind a wooden spool table if you take a u-turn directly into the tunnel to the left of the one you just came out from under. A pistol clip is located inside of a nearby porta-potty. Another Resin is situated right behind the porta-potty that you found the pistol clip in. Yet another Resin is inside of a dumpster directly to the right of the porta-potty that you just found the pistol clip inside of.

One more Resin is located on the zombie corpse hanging over a concrete divider. Grab the corpse and push it off the side to reveal the Resin. Move up the stairsteps on the left-hand side of the area you’re in and find a Resin on the ground between an oil drum and a wooden parcel.

Move to the far end of the platform on the left-hand side of the area you’re in and find a Resin inside of an open cardboard box. Move all the way to the giant vaulted doors, and a dialogue between you and Russell will initiate. From that point, turn immediately to your right and head up the stairs alongside the checkpoint building. A Resin is waiting for you inside of a crate as you move up the stairs. Move the box alongside the window with the dead zombie hanging out of it, then climb on top of it and teleport your way inside. A pistol clip is located on the zombie corpse that’s hanging out of the window.

Once inside of the building, you can go in a few different directions. Your goal here is to operate the machine that opens the door, but there are several pickups to find, as well as a container to open. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to turn on the machine without a battery, which you’ll find inside of the container.

Use your Multi-Tool to open the nearby container. Press the end of it up against the sensor on the container and press the trigger button on your dominant controller to initiate the puzzle start. To solve the puzzle, manipulate the two blue points to connect at the same spot. You’ll fail (I.E. reset) the puzzle if you touch a blue point with a red point while manipulating the blue point, but you can let the red points pass on their own without failing the puzzle. A pistol clip is located inside of the container.

The battery required to operate a nearby machine is located inside of the container. You aren’t able to store batteries on your back, but you can put them in storage slots on your left and right wrists. This makes it easy to carry things like batteries, grenades, and healing syringes around when you don’t have free hands. A healing station is located against the back wall, directly across from the container and to the right of the machine that opens the door.

Touch your Multi-Tool to the sensor on the bottom-left of the machine, and it’ll open up into several manipulable wheels. Grab the handle on the first wheel to the far left, and slot the battery into the enclosure. Align the following two wheels until the laser is shooting all the way through to the opposite side. Each of the red lights on the right-hand panel will turn blue when you’re finished. Congratulations! The giant vaulted door is now open, and you can make your way inside. But first, you might want to check out the opposite side of the house for collectibles you missed.

A Resin is located in the lowest drawer of a nearby drawer cabinet, if you take an immediate left from the entrance to the building. Two pistol clips are located on a desk in the small room across from the entrance to the building. A Resin is located inside of a bucket, if you take a left immediately after picking up the two pistol clips on the desk.

Exit the building and get back on the main road, where the previously closed vault door will now be open, revealing coral-like xenobiological structures lining the wall, ceiling, and floor. Continue through the passage into the next room. An open yellow crate holds a single pistol clip. Open the door and proceed through into the next room. On the table to your left is a pistol clip and a syringe. Continue through the next section to where you have to shoot the barnacle and have your first encounter with a live headcrab zombie. Shooting the barnacle will drop a Resin. Shoot the lock, kill the zombie, and loot a pistol clip from its corpse.

Enter the train car to your right and collect a Resin hidden in the corner of the car. Turn around and travel counterclockwise around the train opposite to you, with the doors latched shut. Travel under the overpass and shoot, feed, or evade the nearby barnacles blocking the stair steps. Once inside the train car you’ll find a crate with a Resin inside of it, a wearable gas mask, and a ladder. Climb up the ladder to get on top of the train car. You’ll find a bunch of explosive gas tanks in a row, as well as a bunch of barnacles. You can use your gravity gloves to feed the gas tanks to the barnacles, thereby blowing them up and killing them, or you can walk right on by.

Travel to the opposite side of the train car and leap into the hole in the ceiling to get into the interior. You’ll immediately run into a headcrab zombie, which you can shoot through the window before it gets to you. Continue through the train car and pull the metal bar off of the door, allowing you to open it and get through. Fight off more headcrab zombies as you travel down the corridor to the opposite end of the train car.

Pry the wooden planks off of the doorway with your bare hands, then continue on to fight more headcrab zombies. Note that the zombies are slow, but can take quite a few shots before going down. They can also throw objects at you, dealing damage. Your best bet is to shoot them in the head until their headcrab captors die and fall off, or shoot the green pustules growing on their arms and legs. Sometimes, headcrabs will survive even if their zombified human hosts die, so make sure you kill them both.

Check the next room to find a grub, some Resin stored away in the nearby lockers, a yellow crate which you can open by grabbing and pulling the latches, and a weapon upgrade station. To solve the puzzle when you attempt to unlock the weapon upgrade station, you’ll want to manipulate the glowing blue holographic ball with your Multi-Tool until it’s positioned like this, with each ray shining through a red point until it turns white:

When you’re ready to upgrade, just place your pistol into the pistol-shaped slot, choose your upgrade by pressing your virtual finger down on the corresponding button on the panel, pull your Resin out of your backpack by reaching behind you and gripping, and then slot your Resin into the Resin-shaped slots until the machine has what it needs. It will begin upgrading your pistol with the selected upgrade automatically. Grab your newly upgraded pistol and voila, you’ve successfully upgraded your first weapon!

You can insert the grub into the health station on the wall nearby if you’re running low on health, or you can keep it and carry it with you to the next health station. Note that each health station you find has a corresponding grub situated nearby, so it might not be worth carrying a grub with you everywhere you go.

Continue back into the main passage when you’re ready, and shoot the headcrab zombies that approach you. You’ll find a Resin on one of the nearby seats, and a pistol clip on a nearby corpse. You can use a nearby explosive oil canister to blow up the zombies. Take a left at the next train car opening, then take an immediate right (after killing the zombie inside) and unbar the door by reaching through the broken window and pulling the bar out. Slide the doors open with your hands and shoot your way through the next train car.

Once you’re out into the open, take a detour right to find a hidden enclosure with a barnacle, a Resin, and some pistol clips. On the opposite side is a doorway that’s been sealed shut with wooden planks. Rip those off with your hands (or shoot them if you feel like wasting ammo) and continue down the next corridor. Ignore the lone headcrab that drops out of the vents, then grab and move aside the garbage can that’s in your path and continue through the next door.

Your best bet to take on the headcrab in the next room is by ducking down next to the crawlspace and shooting it through the opening, then teleporting through. You’ll find some pistol clips and a medical syringe laying around in this next room as well. There’s also a Resin hiding in a crate on a nearby table. Just continue on through the open doorways until you come to a corridor with a wheel and a closed garage door. You’ll know you’re in the right place when you land in a loading screen.

Open the garage door with the wheel with one hand, then teleport through with the other hand before the door shuts again. There’s some Resin on the shelf to the left, and a pistol ammo clip behind a nearby sleeping bag. Shoot the office window to your right (after the zombie leaps through it to their death) and teleport inside to find some Resin in a crate under a computer, as well as a pistol clip and a grub on a shelf. The grub corresponds with a nearby health station.

Continue on the main path until you see a bunch of cardboard floating in mid-air in the shape of a giant eye. Take a detour to the room to your right and find two Resins hidden in a crate and on a shelf. In the next section, you’ll see a closed off door, a blue box covered in knobs, and a giant mural.

Walk forward onto the shanty platform to find must pull open the cage underneath the shanty platform to unleash another floating pile of cardboard, which will also form into the shape of an eye. Looking at where the eye is placed will tell you which mural has the correct configuration of knobs pressed. But if you can’t find it, it’s directly to the upper left of the mural of Black Mesa. Or, you can simply press the knobs in this order:

Go through the door after it opens up, and continue on down the corridor. Teleport over the rails once you come to them, then ring the bell at the end of the passage. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself standing face to face with a living, breathing Vortigaunt. Hang out with them while they chat with you and brief you on your next steps, then continue down through the sewer pipes until you reach the next level.