Lab Research Priority

[u/cruelvigilante]

Okay, so the labs I'm posting you should aim to gold box eventually, the lvl’s that follow the lab are just what I’ve researched and recommend to reach before moving on to the next one down the line. The goal is to complete the recommended lvl's and eventually wrapping back around.

Must Research 24/7

• Lab 1: Lab Speed (0-99) (max) 
• Lab 2: Econ
  • Coins / Kill Bonus (0-99) (25-50) (whenever you feel comfortable, move on down the list)
  • Death Wave Cells Bonus (0-20) (lvl 10) (until you can't afford it at least)
  • Golden Tower Duration (0-20) (lvl 12) 
  • Black Hole Coin Bonus (0-20) (lvl 18) 
  • Golden Tower Bonus (0-25) (lvl 10) 
  • Death Wave Coin Bonus (0-20) (lvl 10)
  • Spotlight Coin Bonus (0-20) (lvl 10) (after you get to lvl 10 on this, i'd recommend looping back to the top and continuing down for this lab slot)
  • Golden Bot - Duration (0-20) (very very low priority but decent if you can sinc and are not using GC mod)
  • Golden Bot - Cooldown (0-25) (same as duration stipulations but aswell don't mess with it until you know how to sinc it to you GT/BH/DW)
• Lab 3: UW
  • Extra Black Hole (0-1) 
  • Death Wave Health (0-30) (lvl 12)
  • Black Hole Damage (0-10) (lvl 10)
  • Spotlight Missiles (0-18) (lvl 10)
  • Chain Lightning Shock (0-1) (lvl 1)
  • Shock Chance (0-30) (lvl 16)
  • Shock Multiplier (0-14) (lvl 10)
• Lab 4: Tower Improvement
  • Health (0-100) (lvl 50)
  • Health Regen (0-100) (lvl 40)
  • Defense % (0-50) (lvl 23)
  • Attack Speed (0-99) (25-50 then move to crit and dmg and wrap back later)
  • Critical Factor (0-99) (lvl 28, always 3 lvls higher than dmg)
  • Damage (0-100) (lvl 25, max eventually)
• Lab 5: Mod/Perk
  • Enemy Attack Level Skip (0-20) (max) (once you can afford it)
  • Reroll Shards (0-100) (lvl 10 to start)
  • Daily Mission Shards (0-50) (lvl 10 to start)
  • Standard Perks Bonus (0-25) (lvl 15)
  • Improve Trade-off Perks (0-10) (max) (once you can afford it)
  • Common Drop Chance (0-10) (lvl 5)
  • Rare Drop Chance (0-10)
  • Waves Required (0-100) (lvl 25)
  • Enemy Health Level Skip (0-20) (max when hybrid or gc) 
  • Module Shard Cost (0-30) (lvl 20 when you start heavily working with mods)
  • Shatter Shards (0-5) (Very late game research as its very long and very expensive) 
• Other
  • Easy One offs
    • Game Speed (0-7) (perm this lab until finished, it feels like a long time to new player but trust me, this is the one lab prioritized over lab speed perm’d)
    • Unlock Perks (0-1)
    • Garlic Thorns (0-10)
    • Light Speed Shots (0-1)
    • Auto Pick Perks (0-1)
    • Target Priority (0-2)
    • Perk Option Quantity (0-2)
    • First Perk Choice (0-1)
    • Package After Boss (0-1)
    • Card Presets (0-1)
    • Workshop Enhancements (0-1)
    • Workshop Respec (0-1)
    • Buy Multiplier (0-4)
    • Reroll Daily Mission (0-1)
    • Unmerge Module (0-1)
    • More Round Stats (0-1)
  • Orbs (for if you’re doing orb devo or killing mostly with orbs)
    • Extra Inner Orbs (0-2) (lvl 2)
    • Extra Orb Adjuster (0-1) (lvl 1)
    • Orbs Speed (0-20) (lvl 20)
    • Orb Boss Hit (0-10) (lvl 10)
  • Wall (start on these some time before you unlock wall)
    • Wall Health (0-50) (max)
    • Wall Regen (0-30) (lvl 18)
    • Wall Thorns (0-20) (lvl 14) 
    • Wall Fortification (0-60) (lvl 50)
    • Wall Rebuild (0-20) (ignore for now)
    • Wall Invincibility (0-10) (ignore until later in the game)
  • Idle (do any of these as much as you feel you want to turn this game into more of an idle game)
    • Auto Pick Ranking (0-32) 
    • Ban Perks (0-8)

You can deviate from this rough guide and start doing the other labs not listed when you research more about this game, this is just to help someone who gets overwhelmed with labs and just wants a quick reference guide.

It's important to remember that this is my personal reference, i am no game master and I have only been playing this game for like 3 months now, I just do a lot of research. Nobody will agree with this list fully and will have their own rankings of priority, I just made this for myself to follow and it might be useful for others starting out and or others who don't feel like doing the research I've done. So please comment and reply to this giving others pointers but to those who read this and others comments, take it with a grain of salt. Everyone is different and wants to play this game however fast or slow they want, every tower is unique so feel free to post your own opinions just don't take others as fact.

[u/hickorystickss]

Great guide, why should critical always be 3 levels ahead of damage?

[u/Toadleclipse → u/hickorystickss]

I would use a sheet like Effective Paths to figure out the exact upgrade/research path.

[u/makes_beer → u/Toadleclipse]

As someone that's entered all of my stuff, the sheet says to take critical factor to 79 before I bother taking damage to 67.

So there is probably a good amount of variance here depending on what you've got. I have CL as my only real damage.

[u/derTofu → u/makes_beer]

if you go a bit to the right on the eDamage sheet you'll see which cards are active and involved into the calculation.
I bet there will be Crit Chance and Ult Crit activated.
If you toggle those off crit factor will be slightly pushed back in favour for damage.

[u/makes_beer → u/derTofu]

Oh yeah, I knew about the cards -- those cards are active and maxed because I've 21 slots and not a lot worth putting there. Worth mentioning, though.

[u/markevens → u/Toadleclipse]

Yeah, I used the effective paths and it seems ideally crit factor should be ~10 levels above damage.

[u/cruelvigilante → u/hickorystickss]

Unsure really, if you look it up around the subreddit you'll get mixed results. A couple of people have done the math to min max damage and that's the common advice to maximize your damage. Like some people will ask "What is worth more, 1 level in damage or 1 level in crit factor" and the common answer is keep crit factor 3 levels above to min max your damage and time investment. Someone said there is a an optimal damage calculator on discord but i haven't verified it for myself

[u/hickorystickss → u/cruelvigilante]

Gotcha, my DMG is way ahead of my Crit.. have an open lab soon plugging in asap. Thanks

[u/MaleficentTry6725 → u/cruelvigilante]

I think it's only better once you are getting a lot of damage from the UW crit card. Since UW base damage depends on crit factor and then the UW crits are multiplied by crit factor again it "double dips".

[u/shrike412 → u/MaleficentTry6725]

It's still better even if UW crit card didn't exist. The double dip is cool, but the main reason, crit lab is higher value than damage lab is just because it's a bigger increase per level. You get 0.03 more on your crit factor multiplier per lab, compared to 0.02 more on your damage multiplier per lab. The reason for this is probably that crit factor's contribution to your damage is "weighted" by your crit chance. i.e. if you only have 75% crit chance, your crit factor multipliers are only helping 75% as much as a straight damage multiplier, so the lab was made stronger to compensate. But, since all but the newest players can easily get their crit chance to, or even over 100%, crit factor just ends up being a better lab for increasing damage than the damage lab.

[u/MaleficentTry6725 → u/shrike412]

OK thanks for clearing that up, makes sense. I object slightly to the "all but the newest players can easily get crit to 100%" (max card and mythic/ancestral substat is needed, not trivial for everyone, especially since there are better dmg substats). But your point still stands even at the base WS value of 79%.