Today we are launching a series of updates and quality of life changes to the University laboratory.

A note for newer players: Your own University laboratory becomes available some time after obtaining a ship, as part of the mid-to-late game Watchful progression.

Originally, the Laboratory allowed making progress through an unlimited deck of mostly discardable cards. We’ve known for some time that this combination – discardable cards, infinite draw – doesn’t really work. To play optimally, players would discard the majority of their draws, in order to repeatedly play the best branch on the best card over and over.

This meant that making progress required a much greater number of clicks than usual, which was a significant quality of life problem. It also made the activity feel much more repetitive, and it meant that the vast majority of the cards and branches didn’t have an impact.

We’ve wanted to address this for a long time, but we wanted to do it right – not just reduce the amount of clicking but revamp the lab in a more comprehensive way to make it something we were happy with. We also chose to extend the update with a little new content and some additional polish – including a new lab experiment, new items, and new art for the Ambition-related lab assistants.

Cards in the Laboratory deck are no longer discardable – taking away the main source of excess clicking. But to support this change, we have made many more alterations and additions to the lab; simply making the existing cards non-discardable would not have led to the kind of experience we wanted the laboratory to be.

For example, the lab offered little incentive to recruit more than one lab assistant; with non-discardable cards, this effect would be even more perceptible, and players would be pushed to dismiss any assistant other than the very best one. So, this update includes several things to push towards having a more fully-staffed lab: Low-efficiency cards that appear only if you have two or fewer assistants; cards that get better with a better-staffed lab; and systems that encourage mixing students and experts together.

To fulfil these design goals, this update adds over a dozen new cards dealing with all aspects of the academic experience. You may find yourself having to entertain tedious University donors or washing your own glassware. You may rely on the aid of a Secret College, or shock and appal by mixing Latin and Greek roots. If you’re so inclined, you may find ways to perform ever more ill-advised experiments in the service of advancing science. So what if your eyebrows might get vapourized?

The lab now makes use of several new qualities. Research Preparations makes every Watchful check in the lab easier, helping players with less developed attributes ease into a project. Several of the new cards can be dismissed once they are no longer useful, giving you some control over the shape of the deck. Experiments now look more different from one another, too – some cards only appear on longer experiments; there are now more advanced skill focuses with appropriate cards.

Some of these qualities are novel resources. Unlikely Connections enable laboratory experts to contribute research at a higher rate even outside their fields of expertise, giving them greater utility. Unexpected Results and Unavoidable Epiphanies can be spent to generate bursts of research – the latter tends to be generated by experts, but can be most easily spent with the help of a fully-trained student. If you’re lucky, you may find yourself in possession of a few Unwise Ideas – follow them up at your own peril.

These items will become Collated Research at the end of an experiment, though at a fairly modest rate – it’s always best to spend them to generate research during an experiment, if you can. They add a new layer of complexity to the lab, for those of you who enjoy optimizing, but they are not required to complete any given experiment. You’ll always be able to make progress, but there’s room to strategise if you play your cards right.

This update will be going live today. It’s the product of a lot of work and iteration; we hope it revitalises the laboratory for players who already have access to one, and makes it a more delightful space for players who are just gaining access to it.