Overview
Welcome to my guide where I attempt to explain why the Lab Assault challenge is one of the best ways for farming items and mana in Dungeon Defenders.
Introduction
Lab Assault is the latest challenge map released as DLC for Dungeon Defenders. It’s similar to other Assault-type maps, as instead of defending Eternia crystals from waves of enemies, you have to destroy all Eternia crystals on the map before the timer runs out. You must fight your way through enemy monsters and defenses such as towers, auras and traps. However, unlike other Assault challenges, Lab Assault also adds a boss wave at the end, consisting of 20 powerful Series EV robots. You then have to use what little time you have left and defeat all of them in order to complete the challenge.
Because it’s quick, easy and offers excellent rewards. You also don’t need high stats to successfully complete the challenge. Unlike other Assault challenges, where you just blast through the enemies with sheer firepower, this map has a very unique approach that allows the player to beat it with very little effort. When comparing the rewards gained from the map with something like playing mix mode hardcore survival, Lab Assault can actually end up being more beneficial for the player.
There are multiple videos showing the exact method, but one of the best video guides I’ve seen is wat’s guide right here on Steam, link HERE. It’s the most optimal path I’ve seen so far. The method involves using a Jester with the BF Drill weapon to completely avoid all enemies and defenses by exploiting the fact that the BF Drill can shoot through walls. You can destroy all four crystals on the map without ever having to deal with any of the actual defenses or enemy monsters.
You don’t really need high health or resists, as it’s possible to destroy all crystals without taking a single hit. It’s still advisable to have at least moderate health and maxed generic resistance just in case. The BF Drill is earned by completing the Volcanic Eruption challenge as a Huntress. Pretty much any Drill with 7k+ base damage and 30k projectile speed will suffice. Because pets can’t attack in Assault challenges, it’s best to use either a Giraffe, Kobold or Skeleton for the high stat boost.
Farming the Map
The average Lab Assault run takes about 3-4 minutes, depending on the boss wave. It’s possible to consistently destroy all four Eternia crystals in about 60 seconds with an average BF Drill. You will then have to wait for about 25 seconds until the boss wave begins. The joy of unskippable cutscenes…
In nightmare difficulty, each of the bosses has 22,6 million health, so it’s impossible to actually kill all twenty of them within the time limit. You need to abuse the AI by forcing the bosses to jump off the map and essentially kill themselves. You do this simply by shooting at them. The bosses will attempt to dodge by jumping to the side, thereby falling off the conveyor belts and to their doom.
It’s a lot easier to do than it sounds, because the bosses are very quick to jump at the slightest provocation. They also don’t attack unless you move into point-blank range. I once left the computer for about 30 seconds as the boss wave started, came back and saw that I had taken no damage and four bosses had already killed themselves without any effort on my part.
When there are only a few bosses left, you can bring in extra heroes with the controller emulator to get more rewards. If you have four heroes in the game as you defeat the last boss, each hero is awarded the full set of rewards, for a total of 36 items instead of just 9. This is what makes Lab Assault such an easy map to farm. Just remove the extra heroes from the game once you’ve won and either restart the challenge or return to the tavern to check out your rewards. Speaking of which…
Reaping the Rewards
Upon completing Lab Assault, each hero is awarded 7 random items and 2 accessories. The exact statistical breakdown and examples are provided in the next section, but here’s a quick overview of what you can hope to gain from this map.
Lab Assault can only award three types of pets as rewards – Tigers, Hawks and Dragons. These pets often have extremely high hero stats (overcapped close to 400 or higher), very high starting base damage (often around 15-20k) and a large number of upgrades (300+). Supreme, Ultimate and even higher quality (Ult+/Ult++) pets are not uncommon. While these pets are still inferior to the Mega Chicken in terms of sheer DPS, they can be extremely useful for any hero who doesn’t yet have a powerful DPS pet. They also sell for a huge amount of mana at the shop (about 30-60 million apiece).
The weapon rewards in Lab Assault are, to put it mildly, junk. It’s very common to get Ultimate or even higher quality weapons as rewards, but they are all common drops that can’t compete with high-end map rewards, like the Obsidian weapons from Akatiti Jungle, campaign rewards from Sky City, etc. Still, they can easily have 15-20k starting base damage and 300-400 upgrades, but don’t expect these weapons to be anything other than a source of mana, as you can often sell Ultimate weapons to the tavernkeep for 10-20 million mana apiece.
This is where Lab Assault really shines, as you can get excellent armor with much less effort compared to farming survival maps. High-end mythical armor is very common, as are good transcendent armor pieces. Even ultimate armor is awarded every now and then, but don’t get your hopes too high. Finding decent ultimate-quality armor is always completely down to luck, no matter the map or method used. Still, you can easily outfit a lot of heroes with great armor by farming this map. Note however that pristine armor is never awarded on Lab Assault.
There are 88 unique accessories in the game, assuming that we consider items like Warrior Guise, Pillager’s Guise and Nordic Mask to be the same item, because they look identical despite the different name. Otherwise, the number of different accessories would be closer to 220.
Every single one of those accessories can be given as a reward in Lab Assault.
Their stats are also far greater than anywhere else in the game, especially for certain unique DLC accessories (Santa Hat, Bow, Top Hat, Defender’s Cornucopia, etc). Because of the wide variety of possible rewards, it’s hard to “hunt” for a specific item. For example, I didn’t see a single Defender’s Headdress for fifty straight runs, but then got three of them over the course of just ten runs. In any case, it’s quite easy to get even common accessories with an average of +100-150 to all builder stats, for example.
Statistics
The following stats are based on 100 consecutive Lab Assault runs with four heroes.
In other words, all the average values are calculated on the basis of 3600 rewards.
Pets
Weapons
Armor
Accessories
The following figures were calculated based on the first 30 runs, assuming that every item is sold.
Conclusion
To wrap things up, here are a few specific examples of the best items I got during those 100 runs.
Accessories (Builder)
Mask with 162 defense health, 54 attack rate, 187 damage, 47 range
Bracers with 188 defense health, 146 attack rate, 124 damage, 188 range
Santa Hat with 191 defense health, 263 attack rate, 293 damage, 0 range
It’s worth mentioning that the price of the accessory doesn’t always reflect its stats. Items with a lot of negative stats often have a cost of 53 mana. However, I’ve gotten a few 53-mana accessories that are very useful despite the negative stats. For example, I once received a Santa Beard that had five negative hero stats, but 273 defense health, 219 defense attack rate and 299 defense damage.
Accessories (DPS)
Brooch with 174 health, 188 damage, 139 hero boost
Brooch with 117 health, 168 damage, 188 hero boost
Armguards with 196 health, 173 damage, 175 hero boost
Like I mentioned before, Christmas and Valentine’s Day themed accessories often have the highest stats. For example, during one of my previous runs, I got a Bow with 300+ hero health, 200+ hero damage and 100+ hero boost.
Armor (Builder)
Mythical boots with 206 health, 277 attack rate, 298 damage, 198 range, 249 upgrades
Mythical chest with 276 health, 120 attack rate, 305 damage, 206 range, 185 upgrades
Transcendent gloves with 196 health, 324 attack rate, 233 damage, 310 range, 225 upgrades
Transcendent gloves with 126 health, 325 attack rate, 247 damage, 326 range, 258 upgrades
Transcendent chest with 229 health, 315 attack rate, 287 damage, 220 range, 256 upgrades
Supreme chest with 305 health, 127 attack rate, 277 damage, 307 range, 255 upgrades
It’s very easy to get high-quality mythical armor as rewards. I once even got a “perfect” mythical armor piece, with all four builder stats above 300 and enough upgrades to max out all of them.
Armor (DPS)
Ultimate chest with 327 health, 299 damage, 241 hero boost, 311 upgrades
Ultimate gloves with 179 health, 319 damage, 304 hero boost, 331 upgrades
Transcendent helm with 235 health, 298 damage, 178 hero boost, 234 upgrades
Transcendent gloves with 139 health, 265 damage, 230 hero boost, 223 upgrades
Transcendent gloves with 197 health, 317 damage, 219 hero boost, 271 upgrades
Transcendent chest with 261 health, 328 damage, 315 hero boost, 231 upgrades
Mythical chest with 251 health, 297 damage, 312 hero boost, 252 upgrades
As you can see, even transcendent armor can get fairly high stats, so you could outfit any hero in full transcendent gear and be fine. Transcendent is more than enough to beat any map in the game anyway and the higher-quality armors are exceedingly rare. I have only seen a single Ultimate+ quality armor in over 800 hours of play.
I hope that this little guide has given you an idea what to expect from Lab Assault and has explained why it’s one of the best maps for farming items.
May the RNG gods smile upon you!