There doesn’t seem to be a recent thread for this so I thought it would be cool to start one and share techniques. I think I started out with a more urgent approach, trying to escape as quickly as possible. But the last few lab starts I’ve gone for a more relaxed approach. Here’s my current strategy:
Character build: whatever you prefer, but definitely no points in any skills, not even trapping (for teleporters) or cooking (for explosives). They’re a waste with the relaxed approach. Dex should preferably be maxed (until the point where additional points cost 2), and per fairly high as well. I like str around 12 and int around 10-11, but it’s up to you.
-
Mark where the entrance to the lab should be, and begin bee-lining toward that location.
-
On your way, smash a table for a two by four and nails whenever you see it. Smash a display rack for a pipe. Smash a refrigerator for a chunk of steel (i.e. a hammer). Turn the pipe into a makeshift crowbar. This is your primary weapon until you find a better one (you almost certainly will).
-
During the initial beeline to the entrance and search for clothing and weapons, AVOID ALL COMBAT. This is pretty key and generally most maps allow for it. There are usually a few stairs to connect each level so being pincered in by enemies is rare.
-
Wear practically everything you find that is useful, warm, has storage, etc. Don’t worry about encumbrance. You can strip before any required combat, if necessary. Mark the locations of any bedrooms, terminals, or teleport traps you encounter.
-
Once you find the entrance, find the nearest terminal and make that your loot pile. From this point you will make trips down into the lab to bring as much useful stuff back as possible. You can now go to the nearest bedroom for rags, nails, and 2x4s and make a few useful things if you want. I want to stress that you should NOT waste tons of time leveling up tailoring or fabrication at this point. Your limited time is much better spent exploring the lab and finding better items than you could ever hope to craft yourself.
-
Once you have enough armor/clothing for combat to be safe, you can begin to clear rooms that have enemies. The crowbar should be sufficient to take out most enemies. Skitterbots should probably be avoided. Eventually you will be able to upgrade to the machete (seems to be a common find in the lab) or the combat knife (almost sure to drop from manhacks). If you have extremely bad luck, your best bet is probably to use the crowbar until you get bashing 2 then make the quarterstaff. With the next tier of weapons, every enemy in the lab that isn’t a turret (or locked up in barracks or prisoner containment) should be easy game.
-
Now, proceed to raid every square inch of the lab that isn’t turret-guarded for any books, useful weapons, useful apparel, clean water, food (it’s rare but there are fridges in the breakrooms that have some), goo canisters, and drugs. Make map notes of any human corpses or gallon jugs of chemicals, and as ever, any teleport traps. All the good stuff you find will leave you better prepared for the game than a non-lab start, to the point where starting in the lab isn’t even really a disadvantage.
-
Eventually you will get famished. Wait until you are dead-tired, then make cooked creep and gorge until full, then sleep. When you wake up the morale penalty will be gone, and you can continue unimpeded. You can do this two or three times before the corpses go to rot, so that should be more than enough time to explore the lab, including a few extra days of time reading books or training skills for whatever escape method.
-
After you finish raiding the lab entirely (every floor, all rooms excluding turrets and locked rooms), you can begin the endgame for escape. Basically you have the following options: a) You found an acetylene torch, dynamite, teleport bad, jackhammer, or electrohack. This is auto-win, proceed. b) You found a book with the electrohack recipe. Train electronics and computers appropriately, then proceed. c) You found the ingredients to dynamite (they’re rare). Train the appropriate skills, then proceed. d) You found some auto-win CBM. Max your electronics and first aid, eat drugs, and proceed. d) You found none of those things. See 10.
-
I tend to regard the teleport trap as a lame way to escape the lab, but at this point there is no other way out. It is possible to remove the luck from the equation though. Make sure that you find a teleport trap that isn’t located near any locked away areas (teleporting there will result in instantly losing). This includes, hilariously, the flooded chamber with the fire ax. Yea, I died there once. Next, make sure you build nailboard traps to get trapping to level 1. Optionally, you can attempt to disarm every slime trap you find. There should be tons and tons of them. Depending what books you found, you might be able to make other traps to get to 2 or 3. If you found any hard drugs, especially the adrenaline shot, eating those with your already high dex and perception and a trapping skill of at least 1 should make it very easy to disarm the trap in just a couple of tries.
-
The turret. You can use goo canisters to distract it and waste its ammo, or you can layer a ton of armor to tank its ammo. It’s not difficult to handle it.
-
Wear every storage item you’ve found, load yourself up with everything worth taking, and teleport out of there. Then leave a huge cache of useful items outside the lab walls and proceed with the normal game.
Optionally:
-
You can try to raid the locked up lab areas if you are feeling adventurous. There should be plenty of books and ways of training computers up. In particular it might be worth trying your hand at the bionic access, as the penalty for failure isn’t that large, you just bolt and close the door behind you.
-
It’s probably worthwhile to take on one turret at the end just to reveal the map.
