Inescapable Labs

[crazykiddeath]

Labs with the Nanofabricator finale room don’t contain a scientist ID card, it makes them inescapable during the lab escape without being lucky on drops. An oversight? or intentional?

[Krisu]

I usually find them somewhere in the room, maybe it’s buried under rubble due to the tribots?

[crazykiddeath]

I’ll have another look.

[crazykiddeath]

Double checked the whole room and can’t see a card anywhere, everything is dead so it isn’t like I have to creep around.

[SirPendrak]

Harder does not mean inescepable. Drilling or mining, ramming with small handmade vehicle, blowing up with explosives or rocket launcher taken from armoury, using electrohack. Of course not all options are gonna be availbe, but maybe at least some.

[crazykiddeath]

Explosives require drops, electrohacks requires (multiple) drops. vehicles require drops, hacking the armours require drops (unless you start with the required skills).

[QuietCoyote]

Find scientist zombies and go to town, then you can get out, I would suggest sooner than later, as food is going to run out sooner than you think.

[crazykiddeath]

I’ve killed everything I’ve found barring turrets, I’m currently grinding my way up to fab 6/7 to see if I can get access to a pickaxe without a book, it’s going to be tight but fingers crossed.

[crazykiddeath]

Saved thanks to a looted pair of tongs and the lawn dart recipe Batteries are almost completely bottomed out though (with my standard 1.5 spawn rate no less) and I’ve used them for nothing but the forge work I needed so I think my point still stands. Getting out shouldn’t be luck based, it would of sucked if I did everything right but literally had no way out based on RNG.

[QuietCoyote]

I think tbh it’s just bad RNG, it shouldn’t happen that often if you restart, plus you can make a rock forge by just making a fire to collapse some useless parts of the lab, and making charcoal from two by fours…

This would suck though, thank god my past two long lasting survivors have been basically hybrid starts, with one being a city start to survival start, and a cabin start to a lab start.

Knowing I can leave the Lab whenever though, almost had to too, since I wasn’t finding any vending machines for food.

[crazykiddeath]

Good point about the rock forge, I actually forgot that was a thing.

[Saladofstones]

One thing that can help is if you get lucky with a fingerhack, as it is a bionic. There may be a crafting recipe for one. Other than that, I will say that the card reader itself can be smashed, I don’t remember if its easier or not, but one potential out is to take out the card reader tile and escape that way.

If you have z-levels enabled, one tactic is to break the ceiling and use some furniture to climb out. Related to this, and this is RNG, a giant mole rat can be your friend here since they tend to do a lot of damage. Even if you can’t lure it up a z-level, they usually destroy things down to the rock walls surrounding the labs, which can be used to tunnel upwards.

if all else fails, use fire.

[QuietCoyote]

Yeah, it shows up everywhere as a “charcoal forge” instead of its actual name, also don’t forget that you can convert power supplies to different sources. I’ve so far converted all of my tools to atomic power, and loading them up with any plutonium cells I scrap from robots. You can also convert this to UPS and use a ups to power your electronic.

[kevin.granade]

Just to be clear, it is intentional that the game does not guarantee a way out. If you don’t like that, don’t play lab starts.

[Aluminumfoil]

Just because you don’t have a card doesn’t mean there’s no way out. Pickaxe, jackhammer, high explosives, fingerhack CBM, teleportation or tunneling CBMs, teleporter traps, potentially high strength with a bashing weapon (beating up the card reader itself, haven’t tried in over a year), possibly .50bmg (same)…

[crazykiddeath]

I had forgotten you can make a forge/kiln from stone which allows the pickaxe/sledgehammer route but pretty much every other method you mentioned depends on drops or starting your character a certain way.

It doesn’t matter anyway as Kevin has already stated it’s intentional.

[Tazeell]

Lab starts can be pretty frustrating sometimes when you spawn in a 1 floor lab with nothing to get you out. Sometimes you get lucky and get an ant lab and that’s probably the best case scenario you can get because escape becomes completely item independent.

[Dredd501]

Had a new experience in a lab start today. Turns out, it was a research facility. Didn’t even need to find a science id card. Wound up having to go all the way up to the top floor and then make my way back down a different stairwell. Walked right out the front lobby.

Now I’m just having a heck of a time finding a town. The facility was apparently in the middle of nowhere, and my city spacing is set at 9. Just keep finding Missle silos and hotels.