SCP: Secret Laboratory – Gameplay Tips for New Players + Walkthrough

The first fifteen rules

• Rule Number One: Do not trust anyone. I wouldn’t even put too much faith in fellow SCPs, if you happen to have spawned as one. More to the point, if you’re a human, it’s highly likely that the reason you’ll die is due to the actions of another human player. This holds true most frequently when you’re playing as a Class-D or Scientist. You might think everything’s just dandy, but then someone will shut a door on you, or shoot you in the face, or otherwise sell you out. Don’t expect anyone to back you up, especially when you encounter an SCP. 99% of people who see an SCP will run, and probably try to use you as bait or a distraction so they can get away. Given the proper circumstances, anyone will betray you. 
   
• Rule Number Two: The only person who really matters is yourself. If you can’t trust anyone, then there’s reason why you should try to get them to trust you. You should sell out literally anyone and everyone you can in order to survive. This is chiefly important if you happen to be a D-Boy or Nerd, because your survival at the start of the game is typically halved for every extra person in your group. Inevitably, you’ll run into an SCP, and this is when you need to start outlining possible routes for escape. Don’t even consider other people unless you’re going to use them as bait, as a distraction or meat shield. 
   
• Rule Number Three: Bear in mind that the more people you sell out/kill, the fewer enemies you’ll have in the short-term, but the more enemies you’ll have in the long-term. Don’t count on the respawned waves of MTF/Chaos to be friendly to you; most people tend to seek revenge. 
   
• Rule Number Four: Hiding is not a long-term solution. Never hide when running is still an option. Eventually, someone’s going to find you. And if there happens to be a respawn wave (of players not on your team) then move immediately. It’s easy to forget, but people in Dead Chat probably saw your hiding spot and are coming to find you. The longer you wait, the higher chance you’ll die. 
   
• Rule Number Five: The safe room (914) is a tricky place to be. If there are a lot of people in there, leave immediately. SCPs nearly always come here first, and nearly everyone dies before they can escape. A good idea is to find a nearby hiding spot and wait for everyone to either leave or die, so you can escape with them or loot their corpses. 
   
• Rule Number Six: Since we’re on the topic, if you happen to be in 914 without an influx of people, you should be aware of the quickest route to an O5 card. Putting a Scientist card on 1:1 and then Fine twice gets you an O5. It’s a little known fact, but this method also works with a Janitor card, so you needn’t upgrade to a Scientist card first. However, if you need to escape early, you can skip the final upgrade step and you’ll have a Facility Manager card — the only difference from an O5 card is that you can’t open any armouries. 
   
• Rule Number Seven: Peanut is best avoided by maintaining eye contact and stepping back. Try not to close doors too often, because this will break the eye contact and Peanut can catch up. This is easiest done in HCZ, as Peanut has trouble getting past Tesla Gates whilst being watched. 
   
• Rule Number Eight: Larry can be avoided by the typical method: running and shutting doors. A pretty good idea is — once you’re out of visual range — send down an elevator and shut the next door behind you. This usually fools the SCPs into thinking that you went down the elevator, allowing you to lose them pretty fast. 
   
• Rule Number Nine: The Dog is a little annoying to avoid. Running and shutting doors only works for a while — 939 can sprint indefinitely and their sprint is faster than your sprint. Generally, you should try to avoid a conflict before it starts by holding C to creep so 939 can’t see you. However, there are several times this won’t work. People who play 939 tend to run around to see if they can find you, because if they’re close enough to you, they can see you. 939 will also see you, regardless of if you hold C, if they’ve already managed to bite you once. 939 can also see everyone on the surface regardless of movement — though it’s easy to avoid them since the surface is a large open area. If 939 does find you, use the same method as with Larry until you’re far out of range, and then you can hold C again. 
   
• Rule Number Ten: Plague Doctor is easy to avoid provided you stay far enough away at all times. Unlike the Dog, or Peanut, or even Larry to an extent, being too close to 049 is a guaranteed loss. Watch out for 049’s slower footprints; it makes them easy to identify. Using the common method as with Larry is the most effective here. The only issue is when 049 has amassed an army of zombies, which will make it much harder to avoid. 
   
• Rule Number Eleven: Shy Guy is the absolute worst to avoid, by a country mile. If you look at Shy Guy and set them off, there’s very little you can do. You can either keep running and hope Shy Guy goes after someone else long enough for their 15 second rage to run out, or you can pray there’s an elevator nearby for you to haul a*s to. Getting in the elevator is the most guaranteed method of survival. However, most people know how to prevent looking at Shy Guy: look directly at the ground. Especially if you hear crying nearby; it’s a sure-fire method. Looking at Shy Guy’s back doesn’t count as well, since you aren’t looking at his face. However, sometimes you just have consign to your loss, because there will be times where 096 will appear out of nowhere and you’ll accidentally look at him — boom, you’re dead. It kinda sucks. 
   
• Rule Number Twelve: Bear in mind where keycards spawn. In LCZ, they can spawn in the lockers in various rooms and also in the bathrooms. In PC15, you can both find them in the lockers and on one of the desks. A scientist card always spawns in the server room in HCZ, and a Lieutenant card always spawns in 096’s cell (which can be opened with the latter scientist card). You can make an easy escape from there, but the obvious issue is finding these locations, and before anyone else can, too. 
   
• Rule Number Thirteen: Use flashbangs. People often forget about them, but they can blind SCPs, opening your margin for escape. 
   
• Rule Number Fourteen: Onto some advice with SCPs. Starting with Peanut: avoid large open spaces with large groups. The surface is your weakest place to go, so avoid it if you can. You’ll die pretty quickly unless you camp. And nobody likes a camper. Chasing someone for as long as you can is usually a good idea, since it’s likely that they will find themselves in a dead end, or run into another SCP. 
   
• Rule Number Fifteen: Larry’s a bullet sponge. He’s a good tank for your SCP squad, since he only takes 2 HP for every bullet (regardless of the gun type). Placing a portal in key locations such as your containment room, the intercom, elevators, nuke room, the gates, or any location currently threatened by enemy targets.

The next set of rules [UPDATED]

• Rule Number Sixteen: If you’re the Dog, you are obligated to become a psychopath. Eating people is fun, you should do it more often. Trying to convince people to open doors by pretending to be human rarely works anymore, so it’s effective to keep chasing people for as long as possible. You run faster than they can, so they will inevitably run out of sprint and die. Always search hiding spots and always jump around to check for hiding humans. 
   
• Rule Number Seventeen: Shy Guy is pretty overpowered. The more people look at him, the more Hume Shield health he gets and the longer he can charge for. Your only concern is making sure you’re out of the way of gunfire by the time your charge runs out, especially if you’ve run into a huge crowd of people. 
   
• Rule Number Eighteen: Plague Doctor is, in my opinion, the easiest to play as. Corner people and touch them, and quickly convert them into zombies. However, bear in mind the obvious danger: you are immobilised whilst you do this. People can grenade you or otherwise attack you, forcing you to flee and preventing you from resurrecting someone. And obviously, if you kill a large group of people, you’ll inevitably run out of time before you can res all of them. 
   
• Rule Number Nineteen: The Computer is the most grossly misunderstood SCP. People complain it’s the worst SCP, and the weakest. It isn’t. SCP-079 is the deadliest player in the game but the easiest to kill. An SCP teaming up with the computer instantly becomes much more powerful due to all the closed/locked doors and elevators messed with. The blackout is pretty much instant death. A skilled player can easily get up to Access Level Four or Five and be your absolute nightmare. Closing doors near people who are about to die (SCPs, D-Boys, Nerds, et al.) will grant you a lot of XP, so even if you’re too late to aid an SCP, you can still get some XP from it. Take note of how much XP everything takes. Opening 914 costs 40 XP, opening the gates costs 50. Giving directions to places is super effective so that SCPs can kill people more quickly; if you’re an SCP and you have a computer, never ignore what the computer says unless they’re a noob. 
   
• Rule Number Twenty: Avoiding SCP-079’s wrath is important and worth noting. There’s a few tactics that I and fellow players have picked up. Check the cameras in every room — ESPECIALLY on Tesla gates. If it’s lit up blue, 079 is watching on the camera. He’ll try to kill you on Teslas if you’re not careful, so try to bait him by jumping forward and then moving back. Another thing — if you want to know if there is a Computer without ever encountering him, look at the cameras. If the camera has moved from its rest position — which is usually looking straight down or straight up — then 079 has looked on that camera and subsequently moved it. This is useful in 914, because a lot of computers have grown accustomed to using the camera outside of 914 and not the one inside — as this will allow the computer to remain undetected to people inside 914. However, most computers use the quick shortcut of going straight to 914 and then switching to the outside camera. Most computer players will still move the initial camera so it’s a good check to see if you were being watched at any point. 
   
• Rule Number Twenty-One: Killing Chaos is fun but stupid. Teaming with them as SCPs is the best idea, since if you kill them, they’re now more likely to respawn as MTF and become your doomsday. Even if they respawn as Chaos, they’ll probably seek revenge and attack you ASAP. It’s just more trouble than it’s worth to kill them. 
   
• Rule Number Twenty-Two: You are not Rambo. Even if you’re like me, with 1000+ hours on the game, you’re not any stronger than when you started, only smarter. If you take on a lot of enemies, then you’re going to have a lot of enemies to deal with. The same goes for avoiding or sneaking past SCPs. It can be done, and juking them is possible, but it’s worth noting that these attempts require as much luck as they do skill. 
   
• Rule Number Twenty-Three: When it comes to encountering an SCP, there’s always several options you can take. The best option is stay out of their way, but obviously this is not always possible. The worst choice tends to be running away, unless you’re unarmed and outgunned. Fighting an SCP should be a good instinct; try to break away from the habit of immediately running at the first sign of danger — especially when you’re MTF/Chaos. However, even if you do run away, bear in mind that you can run and fight at the same time. If you’re gonna run, at least contribute some by lowering the health of an SCP. Same goes for when your death is imminent: at least go out fighting and it might, in the end, contribute to your team’s victory. 
   
• Rule Number Twenty-Four: Never underestimate any opponent, because this is most commonly your undoing. If you’re an SCP, especially, and you think, “well, killing this one d-boy/nerd shouldn’t be hard”, then you’re just setting yourself up for defeat. They might have something on their hands that you don’t know about — e.g. a micro or a grenade — and one well-placed flashbang or grenade can seriously ♥♥♥♥ your ♥♥♥♥ up. This holds most true with Larry — one grenade is enough to take him out instantly. I was in a similar situation before, I was a Nerd in the LCZ armoury with a bunch of D-Boys and a Guard. Larry comes along, trying to take us out. He goes out of the Armoury into the adjacent hallway to tackle some D-Boys that are trying to escape. While this happens, I use a grenade I picked up and throw it in the corner beside the door. Larry comes back, and the grenade explodes, killing him instantly. Larry made the fatal mistake of not assuming I had picked up a grenade, or perhaps not even considering it, and this underestimation is what caused the SCPs to lose a vital team member. Larry should have hung back for a few moments, perhaps waiting outside the next door, instead of charging in immediately. Needless to say, I was pretty elated when I eliminated the SCP. 
   
• Rule Number Twenty-Five: Practice your aim. This one isn’t high up on the list but it’s still super important. 90% of what decides whether you’ll win a gun fight is your aiming. Most gun fights go the same way: you and your opponent are jumping around constantly, narrowly lowering one another’s health until the victor manages to kill the loser. Practice your aim and you’ll thank me later. 
   
• Rule Number Twenty-Six: This one is more on the behalf of other players: stop camping and stop hiding for long periods of time. It’s annoying for everyone involved when the last guy(s) is just waiting in one location, waiting for people to show up, or hiding in some secluded area where nobody will look. If you’ve been hiding for longer than five minutes, assume you’re the last one and go out fighting. I’ve died numerous times due to people camping in one area: in one scenario, the last MTF against Chaos and SCPs was hiding at the very exit on the surface. I was the last D-Boy and as I went to escape, he shot me dead. Everyone on the server hated him for this, because it’s such a cheap tactic. It’s not smart, it’s what you do when you know you’re so bad at the game that the prospect of trying is completely out the window. 
   
• Rule Number Twenty-Seven: This rule is less about tactics or strategy and more about general ethos: stop being toxic, stop micspamming (especially on the intercom), and STOP complaining about the class you were given. It’s fun to joke about how bad your class is — the Facility Guards, namely, prove to be the most useless class and nearly always die instantly — but nobody wants to hear the same people constantly complain about not being the SCP they wanted and ♥♥♥♥. Cry me a river; classes are given randomly, so suck it up and just play. 

This is all about SCP: Secret Laboratory – My tips for playing SCP:SL; I hope you enjoy reading the Guide! If you feel like we should add more information or we forget/mistake, please let us know via commenting below, and thanks! See you soon!