SCP: Secret Laboratory Beginner’s Guide

Different classes, various ways to win (and lose), a diverse array of features and systems, and some of the most chaotic action and communication around – these are the elements that make SCP: Secret Laboratory something truly special. However, these factors can also be an overwhelming experience for newcomers. If you're a newbie, here's our SCP: Secret Laboratory Beginner's Guide to help get you started!

SCP: Secret Laboratory Beginner’s Guide

In this SCP: Secret Laboratory Beginner's Guide, we'll cover the different roles players can take on, how to win the game, and some key areas of the facility that can be your prison or home, depending on your team!

The Teams

First, it’s important to mention that you can’t choose a team or role in vanilla SCP: Secret Laboratory. Instead, the game selects the team or role for you, making each match as unique as possible. With that, SCP: Secret Laboratory has three main teams: Class D, Lab Personnel, and SCP.

Class D Personnel

Class D personnel are generally everyone’s enemy, and your only objective is to escape the facility. In particular, scientists and facility guards won’t hesitate to kill you on sight. Also, you’ll spawn with an empty inventory. However, there’s a silver lining if you spawn as a Class D personnel – the Chaos Insurgency. These soldiers have a job to safely escort you and other Class D personnel out of the facility.

Lab Personnel

This team typically consists of scientists, facility guards, and the Mobile Task Force (MTF). As a scientist, you’ll spawn with a yellow card. If you’re a facility guard, you’re essentially the first responder to the containment breach. That means you and your fellow guards will usually be the frontliners in finding and slaughtering/containing the SCPs. Additionally, you must help in escorting the scientists out of the facility. Facility guards also spawn with a high-level keycard, making them very useful during the game’s early stages. It’s also possible to open a file cabinet with a Facility Manager Keycard early in a match if you spawn with this role. Then, there’s the MTF, which also help in letting the scientists escape the facility. The MTF also consist of different roles, which are the Captain, Sergeant, Specialist, and Private. These soldiers spawn with different items depending on their ranks. For example, the Captain spawns with a Captain Keycard, Heavy Armor, and FR-MG-0. On the other hand, the Private has an Operative Keycard, Combat Armor, and Crossvec.

SCPs

SCPs are the horrific entities that escaped the facility’s heavy containment zone. Spawning as an SCP generally requires you to eliminate every player in the game except for those in the Chaos Insurgency. Unlike the humans, SCPs don’t have items. Instead, each creature has unique abilities to help it survive and eliminate opponents. For instance, SCP-096, also called the Shy Guy, has a mean swiping attack that has the potential to kill closely-grouped humans. Then there’s SCP-106, also called Larry, is a humanoid entity that can phase through walls and teleport short distances. Read our SCP: Secret Laboratory SCP Creatures Guide for more information on each entity.

Win Conditions

Playing a particular role in SCP: Secret Laboratory is reasonably straightforward. However, various winning scenarios exist for each game. Note that a round ends when one of the following conditions are fulfilled since Update 11.2.0:

• Only MTF and scientists survive
• Only Chaos Insurgents and SCPs survive
• Only Chaos Insurgents and Class D Personnel survive

After a game achieves one of these conditions, the victor will be decided based on three factors:

• The number of escaped Class D Personnel
• The number of escaped scientists
• The number of surviving SCPs

It's important to mention that disarmed scientists and Class D Personnel don't count toward the number of escapees at the end of the round. With that, the general winning conditions for each SCP: Secret Laboratory round are the following:

• The Foundation team, aka the Lab Personnel, wins if they’re the only surviving members in the facility or if the number of escaped scientists are more than the escaped Class D Personnel.
• The Insurgency team, aka Class D Personnel and the Chaos Insurgency troops, wins if they’re the only surviving members in the facility or if the number of escaped Class D Personnel is more than the number of escaped scientists.
• SCPs win if they’re the only surviving entities in the facility.

Additionally, a round may end in a stalemate if certain conditions are met. These scenarios include the following:

• If the number of Class D Personnel is more than the number of escaped scientists.
• If the number of escaped scientists is more than the number of escaped Class D Personnel while the facility still has surviving SCPs.

The message, “Site-02 is under certain control, but not without cost. The victor is undetermined” appears when the ends in a stalemate. Otherwise, every player knows which team wins at the end of the each round.

Respawning Mechanics

Players enter Spectator mode upon defeat and will remain in this mode until a respawn occurs. A respawn occurs every 280 to 350 seconds, and it happens in groups. Like the first time you spawn into a game, the game decides which role you’ll have during a respawn wave. However, each player generally spawns as part of either the MTF or Chaos Insurgency. Surviving players can help push the game into respawning a particular group. In particular, specific actions grant a particular team an unseen number of points or tokens. The group with more points will respawn in the middle of a round if that team has more points or tokens when the respawn event triggers.

Alpha Warhead

The Alpha Warhead is a mechanic in SCP: Secret Laboratory, and anyone with the right authentication can activate it. If engaged, a timer activates, and a message plays, indicating that the warhead is active. Then, players have 80 to 120 seconds (depending on the SCP: Secret Laboratory server settings) to escape the facility. The warhead will detonate and kill every player remaining in the facility when the timer reaches zero. Players can cancel the detonation of the Alpha Warhead. However, the countdown timer can resume in the middle of the round if a player reactivates it.

The Decontamination Process

A message plays during a round at the 11-minute and 3-second mark, indicating that the facility’s decontamination process for its Light Contamination Zone has begun. This process takes 15 minutes, and all biological entities in that area will be “disposed of” when the timer reaches zero. Unlike the Alpha Warhead, there’s no method to stop the decontamination process. Instead, players must escape the facility using the Remote Admin panel.