Climbing up a ladder, Gordon emerges at the site of an abandoned mining town, its creepiness only amplified by the darkness of the night. A sign on the ground bears the name "Ravenholm", confirming this to be the forbidden place Alyx talked about. The abundance of Headcrab canisters and zombies makes it clear that this town-turned refugee camp was at some point discovered and shelled by the Combine. Thankfully, there are also quite a few explosives and sharp objects lying around that Gordon is able to throw at the zombies with his Gravity Gun, as well as a few improvised traps he's able to lure them into.
Wandering further into the town, Gordon hears someone rambling off what sound like Bible verses. He finds himself at a plaza with a bonfire of dead zombies in the middle, and the mysterious person reveals himself on a walkway above to be a bald priest armed with a lever-action rifle. The priest is amused by Gordon's presence but nonetheless promises to keep an eye out for his new guest before disappearing into the building behind him.
Several zombie hordes and two more run-ins with the preacher later, he introduces himself as Father Grigori and claims that the zombies inhabiting Ravenholm are his "congregation" before disappearing once more.
Not long afterwards Gordon has his first run with the skinny, speedy Fast Zombies. Making his way to a rooftop, he sees Grigori on the roof adjacent. Grigori compliments Gordon on how he's stirred up hell so far, then tosses him a shotgun and suggests that he aim for the head for best effect. Before parting once again, he tells Gordon to meet with him at the church at the edge of town.
At the church, Grigori is ecstatic to meet his newest friend face-to-face. He commends Gordon for avoiding the many traps set up around the town, adding that he set them up in his extremely abundant spare time. The priest offers to escort Gordon to the mines so he can make an escape, but insists that he must stay behind himself to "tend to his flock".
Gordon and Grigori fight their way through a graveyard swarming with zombies. They make it to a gate on the other side, and Grigori holds the gate open so Gordon can pass through. The preacher says one last farewell to Gordon before blowing up a nearby explosive tank and disappearing into the flames, with another horde of zombies in pursuit.
With that, Gordon descends into the mines. Cutting his way through Headcrab-infested mines and flooded tunnels, he eventually steps out into the light of day.
This chapter contains examples of:
- Abandoned Mine: Being a former mining town, Ravenholm has one of these at its outskirts that Gordon uses to make an escape.
- Badass Preacher: Father Grigori. Whether or not Grigori is actually an ordained priest was intentionally left ambiguous: he's one hundred percent Laughing Mad. The crude but effective traps he designed and built all over Ravenholm offer little evidence either way — priests have historically had enough education and free time to do a lot of tinkering and inventing.
- Bleak Level: There are several very, very good reasons "We Don't Go To Ravenholm":
- Number one: The place is absolutely infested with headcrabs and headcrab zombies, who, in some places, infinitely respawn. These monsters are usually something that exists to tie up ammo/force you to pull out your crowbar/Gravity Gun and, in conjunction with point number two, very efficient at forcing you to use novel tactics such as using the Gravity Gun to help keep your ammo/health for later.
- If that wasn't enough, this level marks the first appearance of the fast and poison headcrabs and zombies, both of whom force you to keep on your toes to either avoid being swarmed/ambushed by fast zombies or survive/avoid being HP To Oned by poison headcrabs and the zombies that throw them.
- Number two: See Drought Level of Doom.
- Number one: The place is absolutely infested with headcrabs and headcrab zombies, who, in some places, infinitely respawn. These monsters are usually something that exists to tie up ammo/force you to pull out your crowbar/Gravity Gun and, in conjunction with point number two, very efficient at forcing you to use novel tactics such as using the Gravity Gun to help keep your ammo/health for later.
- Challenge Run: The "Zombie Chopper" achievement, which challenges you to complete "We Don't Go to Ravenholm" using only the Gravity Gun, of which the whole level revolves around with all the stuff the Gravity Gun can toss. Gets EXTREMELY difficult when you're on the rooftops; circular saws will pass right through zombies (especially fast zombies) and go clattering into the streets. Even if you carry a cinder block with you everywhere you go, there's still about a 50% chance that it will bounce off any given zombie and go flying over the edge. It helps considerably if you just run like hell through most of the level.
- Crazy Survivalist: The Laughing Mad Father Grigori. Except that he's nice. Father Grigori cobbled together a ton of traps around Ravenholm in anticipation of a disaster no one likely would've seen coming, and treats his culling of the zombie hordes like he's a shepherd tending to a flock of sheep.
- Drought Level of Doom: Ravenholm is a zombie-infested ruin without much ammo. The player is, however, provided a wide range of sawblades, explosives and environmental traps to use against the zombies instead, to get them used to the combat applications of the Gravity Gun they were just given. There is even an achievement for getting through Ravenholm using only the Gravity Gun.
- Easy Level Trick: If you plan on getting the achievement "Zombie Chopper"note , consider bringing D0G's ball in from the previous level. It never breaks after being launched with the Gravity Gun, its medium size means it's easily portable through doorways, and it deals enough damage to one-hit kill everything except poison zombies, which are all good traits on normal launchable objects. But it also has unique properties, like drawing aggro from enemies and being borderline unlosable between the noise it makes and its Rollermine AI's ability to follow Gordon. The only caveats are that it can get killed by explosions and it can't be brought into the cemetery due to an invisible wall, but the former only means the player needs to be a little careful with explosives and the latter is barely an issue since the cemetery is near the end of Ravenholm.
- Everything's Deader with Zombies: Headcrab zombies make up the majority of the enemy roster here.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Father Grigori, possibly, as towards the end of the chapter, he tells you to move on while he buys some time. It's possible that he was overrun by Headcrab Zombies and died, but given how good he is at killing Zombies, it's also possible that he lived. If you stick around to watch the battle, he adamantly refuses to die in front of you no matter how long you linger.
- Holy Hitman: Father Grigori.
- Laughing Mad: Father Grigori has had to witness numerous horrors in his time in Ravenholm, and his way of powering through the negative emotions that generated in him is clearly to laugh maniacally.
- Loon with a Heart of Gold: Father Grigori is clearly more than a bit unhinged, but at the same time, all his actions toward you in-game are very much intentionally helpful, from giving you hints, to tossing you a shotgun to help fight the zombies, to enabling your escape from Ravenholm.
- New Weapon Target Range: The entire chapter is this for the Gravity Gun, with plenty of explosive barrels, fuel cans, and sawblades to throw at hordes of slow-moving zombies. You get the Gravity Gun right before you go to Ravenholm, which is full of saw blades, explosive barrels, and other things that are exceptionally fun to throw at the zombie hordes. Additionally, Zombies don't carry guns and thus your only supply of ammo is what you can scavenge from the environment - so not only is the gravity gun all but required for the level, it teaches you to use it and the environment to conserve ammo when necessary. You'll even get an achievement for completing the chapter using nothing but the Gravity Gun.
- Out-of-Genre Experience: For this specific chapter the game drops its dystopian sci-fi pretenses in favor of a Survival Horror experience.
- Ridiculously Difficult Route: You end up having to go through Ravenholm (a zombie infested town on a route that "no-one uses anymore") because the other route you were originally going to take gets cut off by the Combine attack.
- Trap Master: Father Grigori has dozens of traps littered around Ravenholm for the sole purpose of killing headcrab zombies.
