Crawling Lab: Weapon and Enemy Guide

After several runs, I’ve noticed the game has an almost pseudo rock-paper-scissors system to it, where certain weapons are far more effective on certain enemies than others. This isn’t so important for the first two difficulty levels, but Crawling Lab difficulty and especially the special challenges will DESTROY YOU if you don’t go in with a solid plan.

And as much as it pains me to say it, no; knife only runs are entirely unviable in these modes use your guns! >:o (Unless you unlock Aura skill, in which case have fun)

Especially early in a run, there is no weapon that’s a win button. Ammunition is going to be scarce, the knife is going to get you hit by enemies ignoring stagger or simply missing, and pain is in your near future overall. Later into the game you can make almost any weapon viable thanks to talents and skills, but almost every run is ended either before room 15 or after room 30.

For the sake of not having too many sections, I’ll list the weapons and how they can be used against each enemy type. If you do not know which enemy is which, scroll further down. 😮

Knife:

Unfortunately, a bit of a noob trap. Finding a beefy knife and boosting it with upgrades, talents and skills feels great and at least in early difficulties it’ll hard carry you for a majority of the time. At least until you run into one of the many late game enemies that will kick the ♥♥♥♥ out of you for daring to bring a knife to a gun fight. It works well on early dolls but will do nothing at all against Temptation, Crawling Queen and Specter, will get you needlessly damaged by Enhancer, and take too much durability damage against Enforcer until she’s berserked.

Note that it is a VITAL sidepiece for the challenge against Revivers, as if you get the skill “Discharge Material” you only have to hit a Reviver once (Q for quick melee) to permenantly disable their revival ability. Also if you can complete the challenge that unlocks “Aura” skill the knife suddenly becomes overpowered and viable again. 😀

Pistol/Handgun:

Your crutch weapon for the early rooms. It’s surprisingly accurate even hipfired, but you still want to aim for headshots as much as you can. THE priority target for “What equipment piece should I take with me?” into any new run, as it not only has reliable ammunition gain each round but is effective against almost every enemy and has some of the best skills in the game. Try to prioritise Handgun damage+ in your choices!

With the combination of Hawk Eye and Barrage skills, you will essentially have a powerful, if inaccurate, short range machine gun that only uses 30% of the ammunition it normally would. With the ammunition you save, you can even use it to deal with Enforcer and Temptation shields! You can even add Peacemaker to it, and when your shots miss you get free healing.

Assault Rifle:

An all-round weapon that unfortunately needs heavy investment to be viable. The main problem is ammunition, or the total lack of it. Ammunition Supply skill is completely mandatory, and you need to try to aim for headshots as much as possible until you get Hawk Eye to use as little ammunition as you can.

If you have a solid Assault Rifle equipment piece and some ammunition gain upgrades and skills however, it becomes the best overall weapon in the game, excellent at any range thanks to the scope and effective against every single enemy in the game!

Shotgun:

The unloved step-child of weapons. Awful damage unless you’re point blank, TERRIBLE ammunition conservation and gains, and on top of all of that the skills are mostly worthless with terrible drawbacks! D:

Currently the shotgun has only three uses; breaking Temptation+Enforcer shields up close, pulling all enemies with the Party Time skill, and as a desperate final weapon when you have absolutely nothing else left to use. I hope the next update will show the shotgun some love with some new skills or slightly less punishing versions of the current ones.

Sniper Rifle:

Also known as the best side weapon in the game. High damage, but low ammunition mean you should use it for dealing with priority enemies from afar like Enhancers and Crawling Queen. Do NOT use it against Temptation or Enforcer with their shields.

It does not require much investment, but if you take some SR Headshot damage+ after beating rooms and pick up Hawk Eye+Headhunter skills, you’ll be able to deal with elites from afar easily. Bunker Buster skill in particular makes Crawling Queen a total joke, and Ghillie Suit lets you enter new rooms without being jumped as well as escape combat by dropping aggro.

Electric Grenade:

Feels terrible to use, honestly. If you take the skill Electronic Grenade Supply you get a free grenade to use (G) each floor, stackable. On paper they sound great but in practice it feels like you throw it into a crowd of Dummy Dolls and maybe two fall over. The throwing distance and detonation time are deceptive and make it easy to miss, too. I guess it’s better than absolutely nothing, but it’s outclassed by almost everything else and can’t be strengthened in any way.

Just A Dance Gun:

You heard that right. If you activate the JAD in the testing room you can get it as a weapon in the main game. I’m not entirely sure if this is MEANT to be possible, because the JDA makes any single enemy you hit with it completely vulnerable and stop moving or attacking until you attack them first.

Like the Electric Grenade, you gain +1 charge for each floor you pass. But surely you aren’t so cheesy that you’d use it to disable strong enemies and bosses with dancing while you clear the area out, right…? >.>

The most common enemy type. Slow moving on lower difficulty, but surprisingly fast on high difficulty. Not really a threat on her own and easily dispatched, but can be very dangerous bodyblocking your escape from stronger enemies. You will fight many of these, so it’s a good idea to have a pistol that does more than 50 damage in one shot/headshot or a reliable knife that does at least 25 damage. Any weapon is effective against her.

Her attack is a medium speed punch of low damage, and the elite version isn’t anything to really write home about. Just beware of her sometimes not staggering when you go for the knife attacks. Taking early damage pointlessly will make you waste capsules on healing that you could be using for ammunition instead.

A bit more durable and annoying to deal with than Dummy Doll, due to her missing head stopping you dealing bonus damage until you get Hawk Eye skill. Not a big threat to your health, but a threat to your early ammunition count. Any weapon is effective.

Her attack is a slow windup, but has surprising range and damage so deal with her before she gets too close if you don’t have bonus movement speed to back away in time. The elite version looks pretty cool!

Basically a stronger Dummy Doll. Gaining arms and a head has increased her attack speed, but made her vulnerable to headshots. Always try to aim for her head, and if you have spare Sniper Rifle ammunition consider using a shot or two to soften her up from a distance.

Her attack is the same as Dummy Doll only it hits harder, so be careful letting her get close in a mob. Nothing else to note apart from the fact her tanned skin looks great. 😡

Lowest threat of the special dolls, as her attacks are easily avoided by sidestepping or backpedalling. Can be quite dangerous if there are multiple dolls in front of her however as she can attack through them. Also beware of her sneaking up on you as she makes no footstep noise. Any weapon is effective against her, but it may be worth going for a sniper headshot from a distance.

Her attack is very slow to come out and can be entirely avoided by moving any direction but forward.

Also known as The Run Ender, alongside Crusher. Temptation is simultaneously low threat and the highest threat at the same time, based off of how close she gets to you. She will always try to gas you at first, and only starts to kick when you’re affected by the gas. The gas lowers all of your damage by over 50% for dozens of seconds. This makes her horrifically dangerous when paired with any enemy you need to kill quickly like Crusher or Enforcer, and makes you have to either evade until it wears off or waste over double your ammunition to fight.

On top of all that, Temptation has a special shield that absorbs 5 attacks of any type before she can even take damage, making her impossible to snipe or knife. The shield also refreshes whenever you get too close and she uses the gas attack. The best counter by far is to get close and shotgun her, breaking her shield instantly and leaving her vulnerable to follow up attacks. Alternately, use the handgun if you have the bullets to spare. If there are other enemies aggro with her, prioritise them first.

In terms of her own offensive ability she walks slowly and can only do her heel drop if you’re affected by the gas already. It hits quite hard with surprising range, so if you do get caught by the gas just run away until it wears off! Temptation is also the current candidate for the best chest in the entire game.

Another high threat nightmare. The Enhancer’s aura will heal and boost the power of any non-Enhancer enemy in their radius, while also causing you constant low damage if you enter the radius. When she’s defeated the radius shrinks but the effects remain so be careful where you defeat them. The Sniper Rifle is basically required to fight her, though Assault Rifle is an acceptable alternative.

The big danger from Enhancer comes from her medium range attack however, not her aura. She will summon fire underneath you, and if you don’t move very quickly you will take HEAVY DAMAGE. An elite Enhancer will be able to oneshot you unless you have incredibly high health and defence. Therefore she is THE highest priority target in any room, you should immediately look for Enhancers and snipe them from a distance in the head. The circle of the aura will make it easy to spot her at least.

One annoying note is recovery of weapons, ammunition and her body will lead to you taking damage from her weakened aura. It’s usually worth it though, as she has a very high value in the capsules.

Feels like a miniboss at first, she’s incredibly dangerous if you don’t know how to deal with her. Once you do, she’s the third lowest threat of the special dolls though. She will slowly walk after you with her shield up. In this state, ignore her and clear the surrounding dolls so you have some room to maneuver. Don’t bother trying to snipe as she has shielding for 5 shots like Temptation.

Sentinel will try to slowly swing her weapon at you when she is very close. The range is low but the damage and stagger are incredibly high. It’s very easy to get hit by her again due to the stagger so avoid being hit as much as possible!

Once you have some room to move, shoot her in the head 5 times to make her go berserk or “Overrun mode”. (You can hit her body too, but headshots will strip armour afterward) Stop shooting, as she is invincible until she finishes her animation. Now she will SPRINT at you and have increased attack range. It’s very scary but there are two straightforward ways to deal with her. The first is to simply make sure you are far away when you enrage her and then shoot her a lot. The second is to just backpedal.

Sentinel’s range increases when she enrages, but her attack speed is still slow. If you have movement speed increase, hold S and you can even defeat her with a knife if you want to.

The final boss, and unfortunately for her, quite easy to deal with. By the time you meet her in floor 35 and floor 40 you’ll already have a full build and strong equipment. She appears in rooms filled with enemies, and is capable of spawning enemies while you fight her as well. The biggest danger is the mob so the first priority is to peek out of the doorway and clear as many dolls as you can.

Once you’ve cleared the room safely, it’s time to take her on. The most important thing is to have weapons with range and high damage as her attacks are surprisingly low range. A strengthened Sniper Rifle is ideal for dealing with her.

She has three different attacks that are all variants of “slowly summon a damaging AoE attack on the player’s position”. It’s entirely countered by keeping distance, moving a lot or even just stunlocking her with attacks. Without her backup dolls, Crawling Queen is surprisingly weak! There isn’t more to really say, although I wish we would get a special ending where we can let her live or join her or something. 😮

THE top run ender, alongside Temptation. By far the most irritating enemy in the game to deal with if your damage is low, as she not only has armour but she will not stagger from any attack. On top of this, her attacks hit hard, come out very quickly AND she can infinitely attack if you’re backed up against something. It is guaranteed death if she backs you against a wall. She also moves fairly fast and uniquely is the only enemy in the game apart from Crawling Queen herself that will move around without being aggro’d.

Any weapon will work on her, but you really want to try to blast her down ASAP before she locks on to you. Take advantage of the forced animation she has of pointing at you when she sees you and unload all over her face as fast as possible. (Pun intended)

Cute and harmless for the most part. Reviver doesn’t resurrect nearby enemies like you’d expect but rather she revives herself. This sounds terrible until you find out that she moves slower than almost anything in the game, and you only need to KO her once for it to count as a “kill” for opening the door. She’s more of a threat to your ammunition with her high health and armour if anything; try to go for Sniper Rifle headshots on her when possible, or the Shotgun at point blank to save sniper ammunition.

The real danger from Reviver comes from her disabling all of the lights. It’s VERY hard to see, and hitting X to scan is a necessity. The darkness can make other special enemies incredibly dangerous, especially Specter and Enhancer.

Her attack is a fairly fast palm strike that does low damage. Special things of note are that regular Reviver can only revive 3 times, and elite Reviver has infinite revives. The number spawning in increases by 1 every 10th floor, and they can be easily destroyed by taking the Discharge Material skill for the knife. Hit them once with Q, and their revival is completely disabled so they will die with a single KO. Reviver also has the cutest lazy dance in the entire game if you shoot her with the dancing gun from test room. :3

Gimmick special enemy that’ll have you tearing your hair out until you know exactly how she works. The most important thing to note is she has an enormous evasion rating from any attack that isn’t aimed. If you don’t aim your guns you’re looking at pissing away dozens of bullets pointlessly, and you can forget your knife build completely. Stay calm, and aim and shoot at her with any weapon you want.

Specters spawn according to how many capsules are in each room, disabling them. This can cause a huge trouble for early ammunition gains and health refills but there is a workaround. Taking the Hacking Tool skill will let you hit E on a single capsule per floor and use it as though you deposited a high level enemy. Another vital thing to mention is she starts each floor aggro’d and will very, very slowly move towards you at all times. This would be fine if she wasn’t quite hard to see and didn’t appear on scans. You need to be careful and alert!

Fortunately her attack is a slow, high damaging shove. It’s easy to avoid if you know she’s coming, but if she somehow sneaks up on you while you’re fighting other dolls it could get very dangerous. It should be obvious, but don’t try her challenge at the same time as the Reviver challenge unless you want real survival horror.