Guide: Lab Challenge

Escaping

There are 2 reliable escape options: fire and bashing. If you choose bashing, you'll probably need a lot of strength at char creation. You may luck out and find dynamite and/or a teleporter, which makes escaping much easier - just use it on topmost level at night.

Bashing

You need 18 to bash down walls with 2-by-sword or 11 to use a quarterstaff. You have (str+bash-29) in 180 chance to break a wall with each hit, where "bash" is BASE bash damage (reinforcing and chipping doesn't count), so low strength will heavily slow down the process.

To acquire a quarterstaff, you need 2 fabrication and 2 bashing weapons. Grinding fabrication is trivial - just craft wooden stuff. Grinding bashing weapons is harder, but can be achieved by bashing weak (broken cyborgs) enemies with harmless items (rags, cans etc.) or missing harmless enemies with planks (or anything else with at least 10 bash damage).

It is possible, but not very easy to craft a homewrecker. Crafting it from cotton thread requires disassembling 24 rags, which takes 24 hours total. Crafting it from wool is much faster, as each felt patch takes only 10 minutes to disassemble. Best way to get chunks of steel is grabbing a hacksaw or similar tool and disassembling lumps of steel (each gives 3 chunks). Those can often be found in crates. Homewrecker is clearly superior at bashing walls - even the weakest 4 str survivor will be able to bash down walls with it.

If you're really lucky, a zombie might spawn a sledge hammer.

Once you get the tool, just wait for the night, go up and bash the wall down. It's 2 tiles thick. If you manage to kill the turret, you can instead destroy the walls next to metal doors to the outside - those are only 1 tile thick. Don't attack the doors, they're more resistant than walls.

Fire

Fire method is easier - just start a fire where the turret won't see you and wait on the stairs until it burns down walls. It is also more risky and luck-dependent, but can be attempted much earlier.

You'll choke on a lot of smoke and will have to go down stairs a few times to cool down and you will have to push through smoke and rubble before smoke disperses or the turret will shoot you. Better haul a lot of bandages, because that smoke will damage your torso for long after you escape. You'll also have to manipulate reality bubble to acquire a rain to speed up flames going out. The turret is immune to fire and probably won't be destroyed by the falling ceiling, so expect it to survive.

You will need to stand on the stairs until the ceiling collapses. If you stand in the hallway, the ceiling will fall on you, start burning and the fire will kill you. If you stand in one of the rooms behind metal doors, you'll choke to death on the smoke - unless you've got a gas mask, in which case it is entirely possible to survive without any real damage (only pain).

A burning building is loud. If there are animals/zombies nearby, they'll probably come to watch. Better hope they're dumb enough to get into the fire or weak enough not to be dangerous (my first escapee immediately got attacked by 2 wolves at 20% torso hp and survived only due to good stats and thick clothing).

Matchbomb

If you manage to acquire (or start with) a 20 charge matchstick pack, don't use up any charges. At 3 fabrication you'll be able to produce a match head bomb, which can destroy walls or the turret.

Safety

• You can tell a room has a turret because it will have lit up walls. Big rooms can have turrets far from doors, but those won't see you if you don't have a light source and stand in the darkness while opening the door.
• Peek around corners X if there are no walls/doors.
• You can tell room has mobile creatures in it by knocking on (smashing) its wall and waiting for reaction - zombies will hear the knock and get angry and start whacking the wall, robots will start moving around.
• Metal doors can take all zombie hits (except maybe hulks, but those don't spawn here), so if you see something scary, just close the door.

If you're going the bash route, you'll have enough strength to take all but the strongest zombies (bio-ops, brutes) without a lot of damage. You still want to avoid unnecessary battles with zombies because while bandages and cotton balls are plentiful, disinfectant and first aid kits aren't. Cauterization is very unreliable, so infection may often be a death sentence.

• Skitterbots are dangerous if you have low dex, low melee skill and bad weapons. They have quite a bit of armor, so light weapons aren't all that good against them. They have no light source (unlike manhacks or turrets), so telling them apart from zombies requires being close.
• Manhacks are hard to hit, but very weak. They also have hit and run flag, so they'll disengage after every hit. Just hide in the darkness if you don't want to fight them. You can train bashing and melee by missing them with a plank.
• Broken cyborgs are great punching bags. Don't pulp or butcher their corpses before you get bashing to lvl 2 if going bashing route. You can miss them with heavy weapons (10 bashing or more) or hit them with light ones (a 0 dmg item will train bashing, but won't deal damage unless you're hulk mode strong). If you've got 0 torso encumbrance and didn't gimp yourself by lowering DEX, you will dodge most of their hits and even those that hit are very weak.
• Zombie bio-operators are highly dangerous zombies with zapback defense (like shocker zombies) and a knockdown attack. Zapback makes it so that the best weapons can't be safely used against them - you'll need something purely wooden (or purely plastic). They are also heavily armored and hit accurately. It is possible to beat one up with a plank without high skills, but without a good armor or huge (18) dexterity, it is very risky. They're faster than a hungry, cold survivor, so plan your escape before you open the door.
• Turrets just stand there and wait for you to come. You don't need to kill any of those, not even the "boss turret" on 0 z-level. They have really good armor and (at this point in game) incredibly powerful burst attack. Explosives and firearms will take one out, but longbow with fletched field point arrows won't even scratch it. If you're desperate, throw 2-by-swords at it to slowly chip away at its hp.

Robots can't smell you, but some of them can hear stuff. If you see/hear a dangerous bot creeping around, stand still and throw something to lure the bot away.

Food

You have to go fast before it all runs out. Human corpses are nutritious, but morale penalty from eating them will stack and prevent crafting. If you get famished, cut up one of those naked corpses, cook it all up (make sure you cook enough before starting eating) and eat until full. It's a good idea to eat before sleep - even if you get -400 morale, most of it will go away before you wake up. Water isn't exactly rare and there are rooms with infinite water, so thirst is only a problem if RNG hates you or you go slow and don't map out enough of the lab before starting grinding skills. When cooking food, keep the flame tiny and stand far from it. You'll still choke on smoke, just much less.

Misc tips

• Lab characters can be even better than Really Bad Day ones, because they can pick mutant traits. The only mandatory trait is Night Vision, but it's an amazing trait on everyone.
• You don't need INT to escape. Go full hulk. PER is useful if you haven't memorized where dissectors spawn and for goo pits. DEX is amazing for early combat.
• You can lie down on blankets to warm up. If you do it on solid rock while not tired, you're unlikely to fall asleep.
• Minor Radioactivity won't trigger Radiogenic. In fact, it won't do anything to you. Free 4 points, but make sure it doesn't mutate further - non-minor Radioactivity is PURIFY IT RIGHT FUCKING NOW kind of mutation, unless you want to wear a cleansuit/hazmat/full power armor every time you want to take a nap or craft something. Radiogenic and iodine won't help much here.

In the end if RNG decides that you're supposed to die and places upstairs in sight of a turret, sends bio-ops at you, spawns you near alien containment (flaming eye can free all the other stuff) or does other similar bullshit, there's not much you can do. But those are rare cases and a great deal of lab survivors can actually escape and mutate into free people. Free people with better stats than most other free people.