A guide to the Labyrinth
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Welcome Exiles to my Labyrinth guide, I'll be explaining the fundamentals of the Labyrinth
 _________________________________________________________________________ So what is Lab? Labyrinth is the only place within the game which allows you to obtain your Ascendancy, there are 4 variations of difficulty; Normal, Cruel, Merciless, Eternal Not only does the Labyrinth provide you with access to your Ascendancy, it's also allows you to enchant; gloves, boots and helmets. (With the introduction of Delve and Betrayal, this is no longer the only way to obtain enchants but it is the only way to enchant Unique bases. What's needed to enter the Labyrinth - Completing Trials of Ascendancy, which are found throughout the story; - Normal Labyrinth requires 6 trials - Cruel Labyrinth requires 3 trials - Merciless Labyrinth requires 3 trials - Eternal Labyrinth requires 6 trials (All of which are found in maps randomly - Offering to the Goddess (Eternal Labyrinth only) - Sanity - Time What are the benefits of running the Labyrinth - It is one of the endgame activities in which players will run Eternal Labyrinth in hopes of items and enchants - Enchanting gear to sell for currency - Allows you to generate income while spending a minor amount to enter the Eternal Labyrinth - Izaro has some amazing quotes _________________________________________________________________________ What's inside the Labyrinth Each difficulty of Labyrinth hosts a different amount of traps, rooms and bonuses. When completing the Eternal Labyrinth though, you'll encounter a vast variety of extra traps and fonts which aim to slow you down or even kill you. Normal Labyrinth Starting with the Normal Labyrinth you'll find a short generally linear layout as seen below, the Normal Labyrinth also contains the least amount of traps and rooms, this allows low level players and new players to get a basic understanding as to how the Labyrinth works (Please note it will not always look exactly like this
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 Cruel Labyrinth Cruel Labyrinth isn't too different from Normal labyrinth but it does have a few small changes, for a start there are is an increase to side rooms and possible paths to take. It also introduces traps which are found in the final trial room, these range from darts to spikes, these are aimed at adding an additional layer of challenge. A typical Cruel Labyrinth layout can be found below
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 Merciless Labyrinth Merciless Labyrinth introduces a whole host of new features when compared to Normal and Cruel Labyrinths. One of these is the gold door, there's nothing special about this door overall though it's aim is to send the player to find the golden key to access one of two doors (Sometimes it's just one golden door, depends on the layout). It also introduces the player to a special feature to Labyrinth, Argus. Argus is another boss found within Merciless and Eternal Labyrinth he provides the player with an additional Treasure key when killed it's advised to always kill Argus due to it being a 100% drop rate for the key. Layout wise nothing much changes from Cruel just additional rooms and the addition of secret passages, these aren't always useful but in most cases it will allow you to skip an entire room and knock off a few minutes for your run, which for some is needed. A picture of a gold door, Argus and a secret passge can be found below;
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 Eternal Labyrinth Eternal Labyrinth (Often referred to as Uber Lab) is the final and most challenging form of Labyrinth, this is due to the level of the area coupled with the changes to traps and in some cases the length of the Labyrinth but with the extra difficulty comes extra rewards. Eternal Labyrinth has the special addition of allowing a number of additional Helmet enchants which can't be obtained in any other Labyrinths. An example of a font can be found below
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 _________________________________________________________________________ This section will provide additional information and help for the Eternal Labyrinth. Eternal Labyrinth builds The builds found within this section are what I think to be the best currently for running lab, there may be others you can use so feel free but for lab runners there are only a few builds.
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BV QoTF PF (Blade Vortex, Queen of the Forest, Pathfinder) BF QoTF PF (Bladeflurry, Queen of the Forest, Pathfinder) AW Totems (Ancestral Warchief) Slayer Cyclone BF Juggernaut (Bladeflurry) GC mines (Glacial Cascade) EQ/Sunder Jugg (Earthquake) There are many other builds to choose from which can lab safely but for now these builds have been the staple builds for Lab runners for a long time, so when picking a build make sure it suits your needs! _________________________________________________________________________ Flasks There are only a handful of useful flasks used within Lab, for example as a QoTF lab runner I use these flasks; These allow me to avoid basically everything the lab can throw at me, and you'll be looking to obtain some flasks with the same prefixes/suffixes you won't always want the same flasks as me due to it not suiting your build. So in place of a jade flask/stibnite you could use a Basalt/Granite flask. The main affixes you are looking for though will be Warding/Staunching/Adrenaline these alone will provide you tons of utility whilst running lab. Warding removes all curses given by fonts during a lab run and the fonts found on days it spawns with Izaro, this basically removes any extra difficulty and in turn rewards you with a free key! Staunching is one of the most desirable to obtain unless your build is already Bleed immune! The spike traps and the sentinel fonts (Only found in uber and map trials) due to these two traps bleeding it's highly recommended no matter what to keep a Staunching flask on you it will save your life. Your Quicksilver flask is the 3rd most important flask as this is one of your main ways to speed your lab times up. As a QoTF Pathfinder the rolls I currently have are better for me than others due to the amount of extra Flask duration/charges I have so again roll it to suit you but I would highly suggest the Adrenaline suffix as it provides even more movement speed! Last but not least your Health/Mana flask if you require one than again pick one that suits you,always aim to get one with the correct affixes as this is your only other form of defence aside from those used in your build or other flasks used. _________________________________________________________________________ Izaro and his weapons Izaro has a few different setups he uses which differ lab to lab and day to day, dealing with this can be a pain for some people due to each weapon having a different mechanic and changing the damage he can possibly do. Let's not forget about his green friend, The Goddess of Justice. There are a few ways to avoid his damage though, the main one being move around Izaro and try to keep behind him as much as possible due to this attacks having obvious animations and long wind up times this allows the player to move themselves way before Izaro attacks, this effectively removes any chance of dying unless the player ends up court between a fully charged Izaro and his big hammer or something equally as painful. There are some days when Izaro will receive some heavy buffs from the previous phases, if this is the case you have to decide for yourself which you will allow to buff Izaro.
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- Two Handed Mace Ground Slam: Deals area damage directly in front of him dealing less damage the further away you are from the point of impact Sunder: A melee attack that sends a wave forward damaging enemies in a line. Enemies hit by this attack trigger a shock-wave that damages the player a second time Spikes: Izaro strikes the ground and channels, shooting spikes from the ground where the player is standing. The spikes deal DoT dmg and slows the player. - Two Swords Radiant Slash: Similar to Reave, Izaro winds up his sword and slashes a projectile forward that deals heavy physical damage. Sunder: A melee attack that sends a wave forward damaging enemies in a line. Enemies hit by this attack trigger a shock-wave that damages the player a second time Spikes: Izaro strikes the ground and channels, shooting spikes from the ground where the player is standing. The spikes deal damage over time and slows the player. - Sword and Shield Shield Bash: Similar to Shield Charge, Izaro charges up, runs towards you, and then swings his shield at you. Radiant Slash: Similar to Reave, Izaro winds up his sword and slashes a projectile forward that deals heavy physical damage Sunder: A melee attack that sends a wave forward damaging enemies in a line. Enemies hit by this attack trigger a shock-wave that damages the player a second time Spikes: Izaro strikes the ground and channels, shooting spikes from the ground where the player is standing. The spikes deal DoT dmg and slows the player. - Goddess of Justice Mounted on the back of Izaro, The Goddess is un-targetable mob and aids Izaro during the fight. Mortar Barrage: The Goddess shoots a barrage of balls that deal fire damage in an array in front of Izaro. Summon Guardians: Similar to Mortar Barrage, but instead spawns skeletons on impact. Teleport: The goddess charges a green circle that teleports the player to a random location on top of traps. This skill is not used in Normal Labyrinth. _________________________________________________________________________ Traps There are many different things found within lab which will aim to slow you down and/or kill you, there are different ways to deal with certain traps but the majority of them require you to pay attention to how they work.
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- Blade Sentries: Blade Sentries AKA Roombas, are wide, circular traps that move along set paths that deal physical damage over time. The closer you are to the center of them, the more damage they deal. - Furnace Traps: Furnace Traps are areas of fire on the floor which deal massive fire damage over time. They turn off and on every few seconds. - Poisonous Darts are fired from walls or pillars either every few seconds, or when a pressure plate’s stepped on. They deal physical and chaos damage as well as applying a slowing poison to the player. - Sawblade Traps are saws that run in a straight line across the ground. They deal large amounts of physical damage over time. - Spiked Traps are either timed or pressure sensitive that shoot out of the ground. These deal physical damage and apply a bleed while locking the player in place for a short period of time. - Spinning Blades are similar to sawblades, these pillars with blades deal physical damage over time. However they move along set tracks that allow them to turn unlike sawblades which move in a straight line. - Guillotines are stationary large knives that cover a thin but long area dealing physical damage and can block the pathway - Sentinel Traps are exclusive to The Eternal Labyrinth and map trials. Sentinels apply various effects to a player within its range. They can be disabled for a few seconds by destroying them. Some sentinels cast fire/frost/shock nova as well as a physical nova and a bleed nova. Others apply hindering effects such as removing flask charges, increasing damage taken, hurting the player when they use a movement skill and cursing with temporal chains. _________________________________________________________________________ Darkshrines There are a handful of Darkshrine buffs you can obtain some are useless while others are the most desired while farming Lab.
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- Be twice blessed: One of the most desired buffs is this one, it simply provides you with an extra blessing chance thus not needing to hold a Twice blessed prophecy (which can add significant cost to lab runs if you desire to use that method) - To the worthy go the spoils: Izaro drops a unique on death, not that great since you'll mostly be getting vendor uniques but if you're lucky enough you can get some extra chaos due to this! - Discover what lies within: The second most important shrine you can obtain within the lab, this is literally an extra key on Izaros death thus boosting your minimum key count to 4 (If no phases were killed/skipped) adding in Argus and 2 possible keys from lockboxes provides you with a staggering 7 key count - Movement ceases, tension mounts: Traps are disabled in the final room, handy for those who struggle with Izaro and/or need the extra room for movement - Death doesn’t wait: Provides a permanent buff whilst inside that current lab, can range from the speed shrine to the diamond shrine. Again this is more an added bonus and doesn't always make a difference and due to the large amount of possible buffs it's hard to obtain one consistently that will help you - The heart quickens, the blood thickens: This buff isn't bad at all, it lowers the damage of all traps by 50% (Not the damage over time variants) making it much smoother to get through the trap areas found within the lab. Most builds will skip traps anyway but for those newer to lab this is a serious defence improvement. 50% reduced effectiveness of Damage over Time Debuffs from Labyrinth Traps on Players: This is the secondary effect from the shrine and only effects the DoT damage from traps (Bleed) - A portal to Izaro appears: This was recently added with 3.1, while it sounds great it isn't overall. It simply skips you to the next Izaro room and thus making you skip any extra keys/doors/loot along your path I would recommend skipping this. _________________________________________________________________________ Lab-aids (3rd party websites/programs) The main form of help you can get is a picture for that days Lab layout which are found over at http://www.poelab.com this site has being running for a long time and has provided the community with lab information every reset for every lab, if you're new to lab running I recommend using this site to help run labs until you learn and understand how layouts work. The other one is the new 3rd party program called Lab Compass, I've never used it myself and never will since it doesn't do anything for me but for newer players it will more than likely help, it works just like poelab does but instead of using a web browser to keep a track on what to do next the compass does it for you with an overlay which looks like a compass (Surprise!).
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 _________________________________________________________________________ How to run lab efficiently This is probably the single most asked question simply due to inexperience when running lab. Each day the lab resets the layout changes, this means silver keys, silver doors, darkshrines etc all move to a random location. Some days it's easy enough to hit majority of the shrines/gauntlets/silver doors but on other days it will be harder to do so. Gauntlets are generally not worth the extra time due to the low amount of loot possible from the Lab troves, I would only recommend doing them if your build is fast enough to complete the gauntlet without delaying your total time by a drastic amount for example the BV Pathfinder build can complete them due to its insane movement speed, I can't say the same for other builds as I have never done them. But if the Gauntlet provides you with a Curious Lockbox then yes it's worth doing as the end of lab chests have much better loot tables It is also worth noting that things will not always spawn within the same area each time you enter lab, there are 3 places within a room which the different items can spawn. I won't tell you how to identify each one as I would be here for a much longer time, that will come down to experience and time you will notice some rooms have certain layouts upon entering which will allow you to make a quick decision on which direction to head to obtain said object. _________________________________________________________________________ Treasure chests & Enchants Last but not least is the main reason we run lab, the loot! There is no special way to open chests as they are randomised every time. Possible loot is as follows; - An Offering to the Goddess - Two additional Treasure Keys - Multiple maps (Only in the Merciless Labyrinth and the Eternal Labyrinth) - Multiple Sacrifice Vaal fragments (Only drops with the corrupted item box) - Multiple divination cards - Multiple currency items - Multiple skill gems with quality (Silver door varients only drop level 1 gems with random quality while end of lab chests can drop with a variety of levels and quality) - Multiple amulets, rings, belts and jewels - Multiple body armours, gloves, boots and helmets. - Multiple weapons of all types. - 3 unique items - ilvl 84 items - Items with additional sockets - Quality currency chest (scraps, whetstones, gcp, chisels) - Chance for Lab only unique items; Chitus' Needle, Death's Door, Glitterdisc, Izaro's Dilemma, Izaro's Turmoil, Spine of the First Claimant, Viper's Scales, Winds of Change, Xirgil's Crank This will also apply to the Silver chests found behind Silver doors but with increased quantity as of patch 3.1, but these chests no matter how small the amount of loot you obtain will overtime provide more than enough profit for constantly running lab. If a key on average costs 4c and you bought 20 of them, you would only need to make 90c in 20 runs to gain a 10c profit this is obviously on the low end in fact I'm pretty sure you'd rarely see that sort of return due to the large range of drops possible. _________________________________________________________________________ Enchants These generally will change every league depending on which skills are meta but generally you're looking for skills most commonly used on the most commonly used base; Starkonjas Rat's Nest Any of the unique Nightmare Bascinets Shaper/Elder bases High iLvl rare bases commonly used I won't tell you which ones are good but you can tell by simply searching for the enchant and base on www.poe.trade if there are few listings you've more than likely obtained a bad one so re-roll it! Enchants while they can provide a metric ton of income aren't reliable enough to make profit they are simply the icing on the cake and provide extra sources of income every so often, for example 4th day of Abyss league I hit a +1 barrage on a Starkonjas which means I lost a lot of money due to the wrong base but still managed to sell it for 130c this wasn't on top of the other loot I obtained which included a Tukohama's Fortress netting me a hefty 500c lab run while this is an amazing amount it's not common enough to get constantly in the past 140 lab runs I have done since I haven't had such good RNG. It's also worth noting DO NOT WASTE UBER ENCHANTS ON YOUR GLOVES you can farm merciless lab for those, it's a minor difference stat wise at the cost of possible multiple exalts, you can if you so desire enchant your boots in uber but I prefer to either do it in Merciless or buy the enchant myself _________________________________________________________________________ Final notes All in all, lab isn't made for everyone and it does require a lot more patience than running maps due to the ever changing layout and rewards. It does pay off when doing enough of them though. The main idea behind lab is to roll the RNG dice as much as possible while spending as little time running the lab, the more you can do per hour means more chances of good loot per hour. [3.12] Lab runner build - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2972868 Ulab guide for noobs (Old but Gold) - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2055995 Last edited by Collide3011#7485 on Jun 7, 2019, 7:01:24 AM Last bumped on Dec 25, 2017, 5:39:00 AM
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Thank you.
I was looking for a more or less up-to-date guide for the Lab but did not expect to find one that was literally written today. Again, thank you. |
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Dont know if this still matters (due to Shaper/Elder items) but maybe mention some chests containing ilvl 84 items.
No wonder it's lost, it's in the middle of the jungle!
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Removed
Last edited by Jigsaw#4923 on Nov 25, 2021, 10:41:59 AM
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Nice post but I disagree about using uber enchants on gloves/boots. If you are gonna run merc lab instead you are just wasting time that could have been an uber lab run and you lose all the loot excluding helmet enchant. So you while you have a chance to miss that 10ex helmet enchant in uber lab, you actually also lose it if you do a merc lab instead but also lose all the other drops.
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Dual wield cleave crit gladiator also works really well here. The block chance is really nice, for defense and with iron reflexes, it would become even better for physical damage mitigation. Even better is the combination with arctic armour.
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" You're the second person to bring that up, I do agree with the statement you've made though. I guess I should edit in you can aim for boots or keep enchanting helmets and when you've got the currency to just buy the enchant on the boots you want. Again it's my own personal opinion for that matter, but I know others will disagree [3.12] Lab runner build - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2972868
Ulab guide for noobs (Old but Gold) - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2055995 |
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Do you do all the dark shrines in the path as well?
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" Anything that is on the path is pretty much always done varies on what it is/the person [3.12] Lab runner build - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2972868
Ulab guide for noobs (Old but Gold) - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2055995 |
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i personally like to do full runs every time regardless of layout. however i've noticed that lab troves are utter shit lately. like half of the ones i open are just filled with white items and a whetstone.
so i'll probably start skipping troves |
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