Kenshi.zoneWorld Encyclopedia

Lab RuinReport

English:Lab Ruin · Locations

An ancient lab in The Crater that was emptied long before you arrived. There is still loot in it now and then, but never the good stuff — and the Tech Hunters mapped it with great precision precisely because there is nothing left worth hiding.

🗺 See this place on the map ↗

A Lab Ruin is an ancient laboratory in The Crater — except that it is wrecked.

The difference from its relatives, the Ancient Tech Lab and the Ancient Labs, is blunt: somebody got here first. This lab was destroyed and/or looted before the player could reach it, and what remains is what other people passed over.

Why it is mapped so precisely

The wiki records one detail worth chewing on: the Tech Hunters have mapped these locations with great precision.

That is a statement in itself. The Tech Hunters live by picking over ancient ruins; nobody knows better which sites still hold stock and which are stripped. A place that is charted in detail and shared openly is usually a place that is no longer worth keeping quiet about.

What is still in it

The spawn distribution is simple: everything is equally likely except three items.

BandItems
Extremely likelyRaw Stone
Normal oddsArmour Plating, Copper Alloy Plates, CPU Unit, Damaged Book, Gears, Generator Core, Iron Plates, Medical Supplies, Motor, Power Core, Press, Robotics Components, Skeleton Muscle, Steel Bars, Tools
RareElectrical Components, Skeleton Repair Kit

On a good day this place hands you a CPU Unit or a Power Core. On a bad day you walk out with a sack of rocks.

NoteMedical Supplies cannot heal anyone. It is a pure trade good, and it is a different item entirely from the first aid kits and splint kits filed under Medical Items. If it cannot treat a wound, it is Supplies; if it can, it is Items.

The lab is not the hard part — The Crater is

The Lab Ruin has no permanent garrison: no Security Spiders, no Skeletons. The barrier is the region it sits in.

The Crater is an enormous bowl with sheer walls and a flat floor. Getting in is easy; getting out depends on your luck, because those steep walls wreck character pathfinding. There are no people in it, no water and no plants — only Beak Things and the things Beak Things eat.

The same bowl also contains several Empty Labs, plus one genuine Ancient Lab to the north — and that northern one is the version that actually holds AI Cores.

TipIf you are going down into the bowl anyway, do not make the trip for the Lab Ruin alone. Put the northern Ancient Lab on the same route and the journey starts paying for itself.

What it means for the player

The Lab Ruin is a "walk in while passing" kind of place: no guards, no puzzle, no risk premium — and correspondingly ordinary rewards. Its real value is twofold:

  1. It is one of the few structures in The Crater where a squad can stop and breathe.
  2. It occasionally drops a high-unit-price part such as a CPU Unit, which is real money to an early or mid-game squad that cannot yet buy components.

As for the sack of Raw Stone, take it only if you have the backpack space.

See also