The Labyrinth is a new game mode in Whiteout Survival.

"Beneath the ground hides a forgotten world, and the explorers are determined to uncover its mysteries. The underground world is shrouded in mist that shifts over time, causing the available exploration zones to change daily. You will overcome the challenges in different zones with different Expedition stats."

Table of Contents

Basic Information

The Labyrinth unlocks when you reach Furnace Level 19. You can access it via Command Center.

  • In new servers, it seems to open after week 2.

Picture from character of Furnace Level 19 on Server 316 days old (GEN 5).

Some zones might be unavailable to you if you haven't unlocked certain parts of the game yet which provide Expedition stats in those zones.

  • Land of the Brave - Unlocked right away.
  • Cave of Monsters - Unlocked with first generation of Pets (Server Age ~54 days).
  • Glowstone Mine - Unlocked at Furnace Level 25 when you gain access to Chief Charm.
  • Earthlab - Unlocked right away.
  • Dark Forge - Unlocked at Furnace Level 22 when you gain access to Chief Gear.
  • Gaia Heart - Unlocked right away.

Labyrinth Zones

Each day of the week, a different zone will be open for you to explore:

   

  • Land of the Brave - Monday, Tuesday
  • Cave of Monsters - Wednesday, Thursday
  • Glowstone Mine - Wednesday, Thursday
  • Earthlab - Friday, Saturday
  • Dark Forge - Friday, Saturday
  • Gaia Heart - Sunday

And in each zone you will be using Expedition stats provided by different sources:

  • Land of the Brave - Heroes, Hero Gear, Hero Exclusive Gear
  • Cave of Monsters - Pets, Pet Skills
  • Glowstone Mine - Chief Charm
  • Earthlab - Research Center Tech, War Academy Tech
  • Dark Forge - Chief Gear
  • Gaia Heart - Heroes, Hero Gear, Hero Exclusive Gear, Pets, Pet Skills, Chief Charm, Chief Gear, Research Center Tech, War Academy Tech, Skins, Daybreak Island, VIP Level

Note! While Gaia Heart says "All Stats" it does specify which don't work there, so no need to activate Minister position or wait for a Facility to be taken over. Pet skills are also active automatically both in Gaia Heart and Cave of Monsters, meaning you do not need to activate them manually and waste their cooldowns.

Squad Configuration

In every zone, except Gaia Heart, you will be using Lv. 10 Troops provided by the Labyrinth Explorers (by the game), everyone will be on equal footing in terms of raw troop strength. Stats from various bonus sources will be the key to progress.

In Gaia Heart specifically, you can use your own troops, meaning higher tier Fire Crystal or Helios troops will have an advantage. If your troop level is too low or your deployment capacity insufficient, the Labyrinth Explorers will supply additional troops to help you reach the minimum deployment capacity.

It is paramount to understand that the combat in this game mode is using Expedition stats and skills, not Exploration. This is not an Arena combat, this is basically a PVE combat (think solo attacking Beasts or Mercenaries) with visual representation of the combat itself.

The AI is using a default troop ratio of 33/33/33 Infantry/Lancer/Marksman for every stage except the 10th where it uses ~53/27/20. With this in mind, you might want to adjust your troop ratio for the 10th fight if you are not getting through it.

  • In Land of the Brave and Gaia Heart you and AI will be using up to 3 armies. This is similar to Canyon Clash squad setup where you will be using up to 9 heroes, three for each army.

Going with the broadly used troop ratio for attacking of 50/20/30 should give you a good starting point.

In the zones where we fight 2v2 or 3v3 and where the turn order of "who attacks who" adds additional RNG, a ratio of something like 52/13/35 or 60/12/28 worked better for me because the same army might fight twice or even three times so you need to account for the troop losses suffered in previous "rounds" for them to stay relevant. At least for your main squad that is. But it will of course also heavily depend on the strength of your Heroes, their Expedition skills and gear. A different ratio might work for you because of it, but due to the randomness of the order of attacks, it is very difficult to draw any conclusion about how much of an impact has adjusting troop ratio on the final result.

In the zones where we only fight 1v1 and without Heroes, by tweaking troop ratio you can see the result almost immediately, because there is a lot of RNG removed in this instance. I have found that actually reducing the Lancer numbers even more performed better for me. So something like 50/10/40 or 60/5/35, because often times the fight is decided on the back of unique Lancer and Marksman skills - Ambusher and Volley - since Hero skills and turn order do not play a role here.

  • Ambusher - Attacks have a 20% chance to strike Marksman behind Infantry.
  • Volley - Attacks have a 10% chance to strike twice.

So if these skills trigger more often in general, or in favor of AI, the results will vary.

Look at this example, I am using a ratio of ~54/6/40 vs 33/33/33.

  • 1st attempt: Ambusher triggers 5x for me and 9x for AI. Volley triggers 3x for both of us. I lost.
  • 2nd attempt: Ambusher triggers 10x for me and 8x for AI. Volley triggers 1x for me and 3x for AI. I lost.
  • 3rd attempt: Ambusher triggers 10x for me and 6x for AI. Volley triggers 5x for both of us. I won.

You can see how much of a difference these triggers made on kills made by Lancers and Marksman and the final result.

But in the end, The Labyrinth has a similar stop-gap as Exploration where at certain point you simply need to wait to get stronger before you can beat the next stage and no amount of RNG can save you when the raw stats are just too low.

Challenge Attempts

You have 5 challenge attempts for each zone daily, the attempts are used to challenge the enemy again after you get defeated. They refresh at 00:00 UTC.

You can use your attempts to try and overcome a challenge which turned out to be too strong for you. You can try using a different troop composition adjusting ratio of Infantry, Lancers and Marksman. Or you can try different hero combination. Or you can use some upgrade materials to enhance the Expedition stats for the respective zone to increase your bonus. Or you can simply try to brute-force the RNG of hero/troops skills, maybe another attempt will simply work without changing anything at all (see my example in the previous paragraph).

Rewards

There are various rewards to be gained in this game mode.

First Win Rewards

You will earn First Win Rewards the first time you clear a stage.

When you first enter a zone, you will get an option for a "Quick Challenge" through multiple stages at once up to a point the game determines is your current limit.

This limit decided by the game is similar to something like when you go hunting Beasts or Mercenaries and the game tells you that "This deployment is almost certain to fail" in scary red warning text when in fact there is a good chance that you can beat that enemy. This is because the game is unable to account for strength and RNG from skills and other sources so it just compares your squad's power with the enemy.

For example, when I first entered the Land of the Brave, the game stopped me at stage 14-6, but through manual challenges I managed to go up to 19-9 which was my true limit at the time.

Raid Rewards

Zones will cycle in a weekly schedule so subsequent completion of the same stage will earn you Raid Rewards based on the maximum stages cleared in each zone.

You can very easily count how many total Glowstones you are getting each week, just multiply the number of cleared stages by 10. For example, in the picture below you can see I cleared 197 Stages in Gaia Heart and I am getting 1970 Glowstones. To make this even easier, Progress Rewards show you the total number of stages cleared, so just multiple that number by 10 and you have your total amount of Glowstones you'll get next week from Raid Rewards.

Labyrinth Treasure chests are a bit trickier to count, since you get them only for every X-5th and X-10th Stage cleared, so in that case it is easier to just count them from the progress page.

Progress Rewards

Clearing stages across all zones also gives Progress Rewards.

Hero's Sanctum

The Labyrinth introduced two new Daybreak Island Decorations and one of them is Hero's Sanctum.

  • It gives +0.5% Troops Defense per level and can be upgraded up to level 5 for a total of +2.5% Troops Defense.
  • To max this Decoration you need 15 copies of it, obtainable via Progress Rewards.

Luminary Citadel

The second Decoration introduced is Luminary Citadel.

  • It gives +1% Troops Attack per level and can be upgraded up to level 10 for a total of +10% Troops Attack.
  • To max this Decoration you need 58 copies of it, obtainable via Labyrinth Treasure and Splendid Labyrinth Treasure.

Labyrinth Treasure and Splendid Labyrinth Treasure

You obtain these treasure chests from First Win Rewards and Raid Rewards.

Raid

After defeating stages 1-10 of each zone, the raid feature will be unlocked. You will be able to raid your previously cleared stages for rewards when the zone opens again and then proceed to more challenging stages.

Stage Reset

"When the underground world is shrouded in mist, your stage progress will be reset, and you can re-challenge your previously cleared stages for Raid Rewards once the mist clears. This reset won't affect your raking on the Labyrinth Leaderboard."

You can look at it like this, the First Win Rewards are similar to clearing a level in Exploration - you defeat the level, you get the rewards, you move on to the next stronger level. When a zone resets, you automatically get the Raid Rewards equal to the highest stage you have reached previously and then can continue further.

Labyrinth Shop

For obtained Glowstone you can buy various items in The Labyrinth Shop.

Depending on the amount of Glowstone you get from your Raiding Rewards, you might be able to buy most of the items in this shop every week. Which is great news!

  • Mithril is probably added only after your server is old enough to have Legendary Hero Gear unlocked (~40 days; Hero Generation 2). (need to confirm)