How does the Lab work?

[Waltorious]

Originally Posted by Lord Felix

I've got the hang of everything except the Lab. I just don't get it. And I don't want to spend too many resources randomly experimenting.

So, can anybody give me a primer on the Lab for dummies?

In the lab, you are trying to "guess" the recipe for an item that you don't know yet. You can place up to six different ingredients into one of the available "experiments", and then hit "test". This will consume 1 of each ingredient, but you will get a green checkmark if the ingredient is correct, and a red X if it is incorrect. So let's say you see three green checks and three red X marks. That means you've found three of the six correct ingredients for that recipe. You can then swap out of the ones with the X marks for new ones, and test again. Hopefully you'll start to find more correct ingredients. Once you get them all right, you learn a new crafting recipe!

Just keep in mind that every time you hit test, you consume one of each crafting part. So you may want to wait until you have a lot of crafting parts to spare before you go too crazy in the lab. If you do have a lot of crafting parts, you can even run multiple experiments at once in the lab.

Also remember that you can disassemble items on the salvage screen to recover one of each crafting part in its recipe. This can also increase you crew's crafting skill; if you see a ^ next to the name of the item in the salvage screen, it means that salvaging it will increase your base crafting level.