Laboratory and Surges

Surges are short boosts you brew at the Laboratory, Professor Vile's workshop. One might add a quarter to your Power for half an hour, pay more on the Streets, or make you dodge hits. You can only have one Surge running at a time, so the real choice is between a grind Surge and a fight Surge.

Taking a Surge

Brewed Surges are bottles in your Backpack's Lab section. Drinking one starts it right away. Taking a new Surge while one is running replaces the old one, after a confirm; the old one doesn't come back.

There is no daily limit on Surges you take yourself: your ingredients are the only limit.

Your running Surge shows as a small icon next to your name in the side panel (hover it for what it does and the time left), in your Lair, and in your Backpack. It never shows on your profile.

What you earn while a Surge runs is yours to keep. Gym gains, EXP, cash and rep stay. Only the boost itself ends. A +500 Speed Surge shows in the Lair as +500 next to your trained Speed and is gone when it ends.

Ending a Surge early

Neither gives the dose back.

Surges in fights

A combat Surge works in player fights (attacking and defending), the Arena, Boss Battles, the Gauntlet and event bosses. A fight log opens with a line for each fighter on a Surge, so you'll know what hit you.

A percent Surge adds a share of your trained stat, not of your gear. Gauntlet mirror opponents copy you without your Surge.

Fight cash losses stay half, whatever Surge you're on.

Surges in the MCC

Each MCC tournament either allows Surges or bans them, rolled with the other weekly rules. When they're allowed, the Surge you have running when you sign up is locked in for the whole tournament. Taking a different one later, or letting it run out, changes nothing in the MCC, and locking in doesn't use your Surge up.

Everything a Surge does in a fight works in MCC fights too: stat and pet boosts, Ghost Step's dodges, Nightfang's healing, Fallout's recoil, Slow Burn and Final Stand. Kingslayer (there are no bosses) and payout Surges like Gold Rush do nothing there, and the signup screen tells you when yours won't. Everyone can see each fighter's locked-in Surge on the bracket.

Ingredients

Every brew needs ingredients. They drop on their own while you play, with no effect on that activity's usual rewards:

A Torn Note can turn up anywhere ingredients drop, very rarely (0.1% on Explore moves, Streets runs and Junkyard rummages; 0.5% everywhere else). Reading one teaches you a recipe you don't know yet.

Buying ingredients

The common ones are also sold around the city, with a daily limit per shop that resets at midnight:

No shop sells Boss Ichor, Meteor Shards, Mutagen, Gauntlet Grit or Torn Notes. Other players can sell you any ingredient except a Torn Note on the Black Market, and The Fence auctions a lot of them every day.

Brewing

The Laboratory's Recipe Book lists what you know. Everyone starts with Night School, Gold Rush, Pre-Workout and Antidote. Every brew also uses an Empty Vial, and Common brews a Distilled Water too.

Chemistry is your Lab level, from 1 to 12. Every brew you collect earns its XP (level 2 takes 50 XP, level 10 takes 2,250, level 12 takes 3,300). You brew one thing at a time until Chemistry 10, which opens a second slot.

A brew with the right ingredients always works. Only an Experiment can fizzle.

Experiments

Mix 2 or 3 ingredients on the Experiment bench to find recipes nobody gave you (the vial and water go in on their own). If they make a recipe, you learn it and get that Surge straight away, whatever your Chemistry level, and you can brew more of it from the Workbench at any level from then on. A recipe from a Torn Note still waits for its tier's Chemistry level. If they don't, it fizzles: you lose one of the ingredients (the vial survives), and Professor Vile drops a hint about what's missing. A fizzle sometimes leaves a Mystery Vial, which gives a random Surge for half its usual time.

The Surges

As launched. Staff can retune the numbers, and the Laboratory always shows the current ones.