I have been trying to do a frozen lab escape lately (not the deep-freeze) and I’ve been having quite a bit of trouble with it. So, I wanted to just throw my general strategy out there and maybe someone can tell me what I could do differently.
First off, get blankets for warmth. They will still be freezing to death, but at least their movement won’t be hampered much.
The general path is to go to the lab finale as quickly as possible for the ID card and head up to the top floor.
On the way through, I keep a lookout for warm headgear (only found a fur hat once), and the required components for an acid bomb or two (for the turret). Wolf suits, wool poncho, and capes are also good.
Try to avoid combat as much as possible since time is short and there will be no healing here.
I have been able to get close to escaping the Ice lab, but close doesn’t count. Generally, what ends up killing my characters is freezing to death (head), turrets in the finale, and getting grabbed by the ghoulies. I think this is a sound strategy, but it has yet to pay off for me.
What do you folks think? What could I be doing better, and are there any obvious tricks I am missing?
Also each scenario is different. I’ve played cannibals who didn’t find food a problem, hackers who raided the vending machines (are those always broken now?) and others who found hydroponic farms and they all didn’t really have any pressure to leave. Ice labs weren’t that cold on the upper level. Things might have changed…
To clarify, in the lab challenge, I’m selecting from the location selector and picking “Frozen Science Lab”.
I would very much like to have the option to start in the finale room of the Frozen Science lab, but it seems it’s random, or not at all. A shame.
It also appears to be the case that a Frozen Science Lab always has the small building with a turret at the top. I have yet to see one start me under somewhere else. Since there is no jackhammer or anything in the lab, the only way out is with a keycard.
Yes, they are quite cold. The upper level has me freezing to death even bundled up. The body is not a problem, but the head is. There are only two or three very rare spawns (fur hat, wolf suit) that offer any decent head protection. I’ve done more than 50 attempts now, and the fur/faux fur hat has appeared twice. With a fur hat, I can remain on the upper level till I die of dehydration, as all food and water in the lab freezes solid soon after game start, even on the uppermost level. With no reliable way to keep from slowly dying from head damage and no food or water from about 20 in-game minutes onwards. staying put is certain death. The upper level is about as cold as the dead of winter, and it gets colder from there.
With there always being a bunker with turret above, no food/water, and no way to prevent constant head damage, there seems to be only one course of action. Get to the finale for the key, kill the turret and get out.
To answer you question M1nks, yes Frozen labs would seem to have gotten much colder. I saw the only video I could find on Frozen labs, which was a Vormithrax video from 2 years ago. He did a Deep-Frozen lab, but I saw it was only slightly colder than any basement. So it appears that was an issue that got fixed. I can’t hardly even explore a Deep-Frozen lab even with a character coming from the outside of it, fully decked out in thermal gear. That’s why I’m just trying to do a regular Frozen lab start for now.
I hope this clears it up a bit. Sorry I didn’t explain it a bit better. Thanks for the replys.
Interesting, I am not aware of any explosives in frozen labs. Is there material to make some, or is there a source I’m unaware of? Not having to worry about the ID card and the turret would certainly help.
True, I forgot you can thaw food with fire. Still, one can’t bring the fire with them to keep warm all the time, and will continue to lose health from the cold the moment I step away from the fire. The only time food became an actual problem was in the two instance that I found a faux fur hat. The cold remains the main obstacle.
Thank you for your comments, I’ll look into the explosives angle a bit more.
Alright, I just did a little testing with the explosives. The two main ones that I have any hope of crafting in the frozen lab (dynamite and the can bomb) don’t leave a scratch. 2 or 3 c-4 seem to work just fine, but the only place to get c-4 in a frozen lab is to hope for a dispatch robot to spawn in a barracks and then somehow manage to take it or it’s grenade/c-4 hacks out. Having that line up is less likely than getting the faux fur hat to appear.
Sadly, this looks like explosives are a no go, unless you meant something else.
The only other exit I can think of is to hope that there is a subway connection, and manage to get past the monsters in the tunnels to get to a lab that isn’t colder than Dante’s 9th circle of hell.
That’s weird. I know I’ve escaped a lab before with dynamite, and when I’ve tested it right now - although in a version from about 1 month ago - it has blown out the door and damaged 2 of the walls closeby.
Once you get warm (or hot) it should take a while (a few ingame minutes?) to cool you down again to levels that will damage you, if I remember right…
A medium (or larger) fire should also heat the room it is in quite a bit, last I’ve checked.
Ah, I see my mistake, in testing I only used 2 dynamite. It took 6 or 7 to blow up the wall.
It’s bad enough scavenging in time for the acid bomb, but all the materials to make even one dynamite is a bit much. I can’t even figure out how to get the glycerol. There is no crafting recipe, so I assume it’s a byproduct of something else. I don’t know.
Yes, that works pretty much as you describe. That works well for temporarily respite, but the problem is that it is so cold that a few minutes isn’t a lot of time to work with. This will help a lot with crafting though, since it ignores piles of clothes for warmth when crafting for some reason. This way any crafting can be done without fear of losing half my health. Now that I think about it, this would improve surviving on the lower floors of the lab.
So far though, it looks like the best bit to incorporate into my general strategy is to light more fires. Unfortunately explosives seem to be out for the time being, as it’s more effort to get the materials for it than what I am already doing, even without the mysterious “glycerol”.
I’ll do a few more runs. Thanks again for the input.
When using explosives do you surround them with furniture to contain and direct the blast?
Have you tried increasing your skills? Crafting some warmer clothes while down there, a brazier to carry with you, a homewrecker to smash down the wall etc?
Well, it’s a new day and I have learned a few things.
First of all, I am a big dummy. The “Frozen Lab” and Deep-Frozen are not separate kinds of labs. There is just an Ice lab and “Frozen Lab” is the start-anywhere start, while “Deep-Frozen” is the start-at-the-bottom-of-the-ice-lab start. I learned that when I started looking into putting together a PR for a new location for starting at the bottom of the Ice lab only to discover the thing I want to do is already done. I feel kinda silly now.
The other thing I learned is that fires are only useful for warmth in the uppermost levels of an Ice lab, as by the time the fire gets things warm enough to not take damage, the character will have taken a big chunk of damage. I lost a few characters figuring that out. Froze to death in a small closed room full of fire. Oh, well. Still good for food though.
That said, I have finally managed to escape from an Ice lab. I just kept generating new worlds, and hoping for a small lab. The one I escaped from was only two floors. The finale was a bit tricky as it was fully lit with a bunch of those mobile turrets in it with only one entrance, Broke all the lights in the adjoining room, made a bunch of noise and dashed behind them. Closed the door, broke those lights and got the ID card. With the lights out, Sneaking back out was much easier than getting in. It feels good to finally be out of that Ice box.
Another thing, I’ve been doing this with a character with Ursine vision,Frail,pacifist and glass jaw, so they have 32 starting head health and can’t see in the light. I probably made it a little bit hard on myself, but both from a role play and challenge standpoint I wanted this to be brutal. It did not disappoint.
Oh, no I haven’t been doing that. I was unaware that was a thing that could be done. I’ll have to try that out.
edit: No that doesn’t seem to have made a difference. I tried piling various kinds of furniture around it including counters, desks, shelves and dressers.
In his recent “Road Roller” playthrough Vormithrax went with hacker build (6 computers), then the issue was finding the barracks before you freeze to death. Find the barracks, if there are bots it’s a nope; if it’s usual guards, lead them out to energy conduits; if it’s empty, perfect. On default item spawn settings there will be more than enough army gear to stave off freezing. You may even be lucky enough to find some winter army gear.
Now, to the turret (see ep.10 on explanations; maybe there were a few before that, idk).
craft spike on a stick - easiest reach weapon to make
get 2 large cardboard boxes
leapfrog-redeploy them to 1 tile away from turret (NOT adjacent, there should be exactly 1 tile space between you and the turret)
poke it till it dies
…
PROFIT!!!
Explanation: if this exploit hadn’t been fixed since the playthrough, turrets can only shoot at what they can see (which in this case they can’t: LCB makes you hidden from anything except 8 adjacent tiles) or at the tiles which they detect ranged attacks from (but poking is counted as melee ).
You can also try throwing heavy stuff at it from the box but it will require to have some strength and throwing skill
As mentioned above a high computer skill lets you get in barracks which have a small chance of explosives, law anti-tank launchers and a very good chance of a .50 caliber rifle which can blast through walls.
not sure if this still works to get out, but couldn’t you teleport yourself out, either by getting a teleporter from a transport pad, or getting your telesickness so high you start teleporting?
).