Yeah, though it’s also not too rare to have stairs in the sealed part so you can get to it from a different floor.
Edit: I didn’t think to respond to the first bit - you can get through with explosives, or a homewrecker/sledge hammer (bash the window), or a jackhammer, or a Probability Travel CBM, or a teleport… and probably some other ways…
If you didn’t spawn in the armor lab, then at least bringing an acetylene torch is a viable option.
The interior door of those security stations into the barrack armories have always been unlocked in my experience, so if you’ve got the strength and a sledge hammer or something, knocking out the windows to get in is an option.
Found a mine, fought the thing, got an artifact. A helm that lowers dexterity and intelligence when worn by 3, but allows to see through walls.
Not sure how useful it’ll be, since it’s vision range is about 1 tile better than normal night vision trait. Oh well. Might as well make a crate to store all the artifacts I find.
[quote=“Azrad, post:6344, topic:47”]Found a mine, fought the thing, got an artifact. A helm that lowers dexterity and intelligence when worn by 3, but allows to see through walls.
Not sure how useful it’ll be, since it’s vision range is about 1 tile better than normal night vision trait. Oh well. Might as well make a crate to store all the artifacts I find.[/quote]
I got one of those that produces smoke, makes me hungry, and lets me see through everything out to about 2/3 of maximum vision range… it’s AMAZING. Just seeing through walls a few squares can be very, VERY helpful.
Also, it lets you see things that aren’t rendered due to light and/or smoke - check you list of enemies in view in the dark, for instance, and you’ll see everything that’s in range, even if it’s outside your light radius and thus not rendered on the screen. Same with items on the ground, which can be REALLY nice in some situations.
Such disappoint, very hnng.
I’ve yet to encounter an artifact.
I’ve only ever found the one artifact: some scaly beads that lowered my speed by something like 20% (ouch!) while carried, but would spawn a bunch of friendly shadow snakes when I used them.
Only serum book I’ve found so far was for Raptor serum, but I found that just sort of lying around during my scrounging, so I can hardly complain. If I can get my cooking and first aid skills up a little higher I think I can work out the Purifier recipe from this book of patient records, which would be nice, since I ended up using some of my precious stash to reverse the changes caused by a Rat King. Note to self: the only reward for fighting Rat Kings is millions of rats. It’s not worth it. You do not need that much meat as much as you need to not be anywhere near a Rat King.
Now if only caves had additional silly mutant bosses…
Mutant cave bears would be funny.
I found an artifact from the thing too, behold, the Harp of Gelatinous Graves, takes 25 volume and on activation darkens the sky, gives you teleportation sickness and summons few friendly bugs, it’s exactly as powerful and useful as it sounds 
Died in the dumbest way possible. Had a motorcycle. Found a fungal tower. Had an ANFO charge.
The plan was to drive straight, activate the charge, drop it without ever stopping to accelerate.
So I done that, and promptly forgot to drop the charge.
Back in the lab. Okay start, so far first floor hasn’t provided a lot of useful stuff. Rucksack and L12 from the starting NPC, and electric circuit theory. Need to find under the hood so I can craft a jackhammer out of this place.
And thus I realize that fire is the best way to deal with fungals.
Shame. Found a natural artifact, the shimmering napkin. Three charges, does damage to recharge, and creates a blast of light which stuns everything in a fairly large radius. Seems to work on machines, too.
…shimmering napkin. o.O
Dang. What are the odds? So here I am searching for Under the Hood so I can get to crafting the motor for an electric jackhammer. I enter the crate room of the lab, and notice a CBM on one of the racks. Sonic Resonator, 55 percent chance for success. Might as well, I reckon.
Whoop. It failed, back to searching for under the hood… and there was a second sonic resonator just above the first one, hiding underneath a gas mask.
Weird. It always seems that there’s a duplicate of a CBM on the crate room. Found two thermal dissipation on a different playthrough.
Well, I died, underestimated those milspec turrets, killed me with one burst from max range, shame, had almost every bionic installed. Could have cloaked and emp them but I had a mental derp and had no idea what I was thinking.
Still, this run was very fun and I learned a lot. made it for 2 in game years which is longer than my usual month then die to moose. Rest in peace Reno Parker.
An almost death. Encountered an unkind NPC, didn’t have a tazer, but I still had the L12. Been saving up my shots for the riot bots, and been killing turrets with two by fours, so I had some ammo to spare. I shot him five times, point blank, almost died.
He had a S&W 619, and amazingly he also had 300 .38 specials for it. Almost died, but with that ammo it’s worth it.
And this lab is full to the brim with mutated limbs. Binged on them, got animal empathy, nausea, smart, beautiful, and fey vision. Since I got night vision and fey eyes, I guess the chances for getting at least vision is pretty good. After that, I decided to call it quits with the limb munching. Best to err on the side of caution before I get some bad mutations. At least until later on where I’ve set up a decent foothold in the area.
By the way, where do you find elf mutagens/serums? So far my only encounter with the branch is setting it up on lab challenges, and I’ve never seen the mutagens and whatnot for it before.
I think in labs you can only find the animal serums. The chimera, alpha, elf, raptor and medical ones you need to craft yourself after you learn them from books.
Yeah. I mean, where do you find the recipe book for the elf? Been through many labs, and haven’t seen a book for the elf yet.
The elf and alpha seem to be quite rare compared to the rest. In 15 labs I have only seen one of each while the medical, raptor and chimera were abundant. Just keep raiding labs and you will find it eventually.
Also, the elf book doesn’t have elf in it’s name, i think you can find two books, one called standpipe maintenance log and the second I don’t remember the name but in description of it you can see that it was denied by the scientists as a viable option of human enhancement.
Hmm, I see. I really should check those books. I rarely pay attention to those maintenance logs, assuming they were a quest item. D’oh.
Also, I mentioned before that I found 300 .38 specials from a dead NPC. I made use of nearly all of them, on account of a massive manhack spawn.
Seriously, three dang scientists and their manhacks. There were at least 100 of them, and I started with nearly zero handgun and marksmanship skills and ended up with 2 on both. Only two/10 plutonium cells out of that carnage.
Dang manhacks, scientists, and freaking mi-go.
On the bright side, spotted three barracks. Already crafted the electric jackhammer, so hopefully I get a cache of weapons.
Funnily, I only ever need one or two guns, yet I want to carry them all. All the guns, loaded and accurized.
Right now I’m trying to see if it’s possible to go around with a blindfold on 24/7 with the right mutations. I know if I get antennae I can see threats close enough but I’m wondering if very smelly would work well enough with scent vision to keep me from bumping into everything…
And out of another lab again. Bottom floor was that machine for making diamond blades. Set up base in a nearby mansion, but there’s a public works down south. Both places are near the same large city, and I kinda want to set up shop in the public works. So that’ll be my permanent base once I can transport all the goods easily, and for now I’ll stick to the mansion.
Of course I’ll still organize the mansion, because I’m seemingly cursed to not be happy piling up things uncategorized.