What to do after lab?

[Duhuh123]

I found an entrance to a science lab at the basement of a house.
But the entrance is locked by a card reader.
After looking all over the place for a science id card, I found an id card.

Now I am busy raiding the science lab for all the books and cbm.
I even get a bio-diesel book, and robots for fun and profit.

But… after I finish lab, is that all?
Are there anything else to do without mods?

[ecchi_squid]

Hmm, as far as I know that’s about it. Unless There’s military bases or something.

[Mantar]

Necropolis for rare loot, though wanderer spawn rates are still ludicrous there. There’s the new base building stuff.
My main run is driving ever eastward in a deathmobile, it’s fun seeing new building types get generated as the game is updated. I ran into a campground for the first time, and a beautiful cabin with a pool for swimming in just this morning.

[normanoid]

I was actually wondering how the map gets generated - so if you move to a new area of the map the map is generated as you explore it? I have been wondering because of the new Autodoc requirement for CBM installation - I assume that the lab i’m currently exploring doesn’t have one because I started exploring it before the Autodoc change was introduced. I also already searched through the hospital in my starting area before the change.

[Duhuh123]

normanoid, probably not completely that way because when you use a road map, you can see a lot of towns.
But the specific special features like toxic dump, fungal tower might be generated when you get close, or not.

[Duhuh123]

Does the lab have an infinite number of levels?

[Trigon]

No. I think generally they have like six or so. But it’s randomized.

[Mantar]

Well there’s two levels to it, the overmap, and the map tiles themselves. As you move towards the edge of your currently generated overmap, it adds new overmap tiles at the edge, so that’s how you can get new building types into an old world save.
But that’s just the general type of structure, like “There’s a hospital here,” the contents of a given map tile are only generated when you get close enough to have it hit your reality bubble. At that point the hospital tile stops being abstract and gets filled with zombies and loot, and an autodoc.
So all you really need is a hospital you haven’t visited yet. Even if the 3x3 H overmap was generated before the change, it’ll have an autodoc now because the new code will put one in when it creates the hospital’s floorplan.

[Mantar]

No, all labs are supposed to have at least one end room with some nasty enemies and either some good loot, or a CVD machine (for diamond plating weapons), or a portal machine or nether-creature containment facility.

[Aabbcc]

With the modifications on the latest experimentals, there is a chance of a ‘lab hub’ to spawn, only accessible through underground rails that connect to other labs. I haven’t seen it yet, but it should have even more loot.