Labs - Greatest Raid Ever

Customs 

I've been playing Customs a lot this wipe. For every spawn I have either a destination to rush where I can hopefully catch other players when they are moving, or a place to hide and wait for five minutes, so the scavs can spawn, the players can move.  Either way, I often spend the first part of the raid just sitting. I haven't died to an AI Scav in a long time. But I still die a lot. And on customs that death is usually just me walking by a bush or a dark corner and getting blasted unawares. Probably half of my deaths I don't see my assailant, and maybe in a quarter of them I don't even hear them beforehand. 

While I've had a lot of fun raids, it is tiring doing nothing at the beginning of the raid for five minutes and then getting killed later without much warning - without conducting a "real fight".

Factory

So I started running Factory, a map I normally don't like. It's been awesome.  I'm still dying. Killing too. Surviving a bit.  But having a LOT more fights where shots are exchanged, moves made. Best of all, when I die no time has passed. Instead of running two or three raids on an evening, I can run five, six or more. I'm mostly limited by my funds and my ability to kit out speedily.  I've only had one raid where I got blasted from nowhere.

I burned through more than a million rubles one evening. No problem, I'll just end the night with a scav raid and recoup that.  Except I died in that scav raid.  No problem, I'll just start tomorrows session with a scav raid.  Except I died in that scav raid too. 

Fortunately, my crafting had generated a little income and I had just enough to kit out with a new weapon, ammo, meds and armor.  Excellent!  But what will I do in two minutes when I die in Factory and end up back here?  Craft?

I was grumpy and fatalistic. I threw an access card into my rig, put a scope on my weapon and chose Labs.

Labs

Three wipes ago I somehow ended up with a couple of key cards for rooms on Labs. Maybe Blue, Red and Yellow? I don't remember.  But I remember I wanted to try them out, so I bought a Labs Access card on the flea market and began to learn the map offline.  That was going ok, but then the game wiped. I never actually went to Labs.

But I still remember it pretty well, right?  I guess I'll find out.  I loaded into Labs. When the countdown finished and I spawned in I realized I was in a lot of trouble. I don't remember anything. I started wandering around. I found a stairwell, I descended down and made my way into the basement.  It was deathly quiet.  

I started roaming the basement. I found some of those elevator switches. I pressed them as I roamed, but couldn't find the elevators they controlled. Still no sound of anyone. No sound of fighting. Nothing.

I kept wandering. There is an exit through an air vent, right? Is that even in the basement? What about that sewer exit? If I can find that tunnel, I can get out. The raid was getting later, I was roaming everywhere, but not finding the sewer exit. 

Someone in front of me. Shit. I think it's a raider. I put the crosshairs on his head and fired. He didn't die. But I made him mad. He came at me, I killed him. His buddy came, killed him too. And then there was more shouting and more raiders. They pushed. I may not know where I am on the map but I haven't been wandering these tunnels learning nothing. I backpedaled and swung the long way round to bring myself behind those same raiders and killed them. Two more came running, reloaded, jumped on a box. The raiders came in, and with a single fluid motion I swung my autofire across their faces and they crumpled. It was quiet again.  

I backed off, listening. Anyone coming? Seemingly not. I hustled to the first fight and started looting. What should I grab? A raider had an expensive helmet in his bag. Can I even sell that on the flea? Well, I think Ragman will give me a good price. I grabbed it.  Another raider - his Ulach, isn't that expensive? I couldn't remember. But I grabbed that too. Soon I had a bag full of mostly helmets and some magazines, AFAKs and grenades. Those helmets are heavy. 

Found my way, somehow, to the sewer exit. Pulled the switch. Flashlights in the tunnel. I threw a grenade, the raiders shouted and backed off. They did not reapproach. I extracted.  5392 XP and six raiders killed (four with headshots).  

That was so much fun I decided to do it again, but first I should relearn this map.  I've been playing Labs a bit offline. I'm slowly learning to navigate it again. And the raiders are just killing me. How did I manage to kill six?