Storm Breaker: Preparation Guide — Getting the Lazarus Specimen Card
By MrPengujn · Updated 30 Oct 2026
Everything you need before the Storm Breaker (Apex Irradiated Valakkar): where to spawn, what ship to bring, and how to pull a Lazarus Specimen Card out of a Farro Data Center. The two-player route skips half the work, and the run takes about 20 minutes.
Storm Breaker: Preparation Guide — Getting the Lazarus Specimen Card
The Storm Breaker (Apex Irradiated Valakkar) is a Pyro-only event, and you can't start it without a Lazarus Specimen Card. This guide covers everything up to the moment you have that card in hand and you're clear of the facility.
The fight itself is covered in a separate guide.
At a glance
Where | Any of the 10 Farro Data Centers on Pyro IV |
Players | 2 is ideal. Solo is possible but much slower. |
Time | ~20 minutes with two people who know the route |
You need | Heavy armor, a decent gun, a lot of ammo, medgun + refills |
You leave with | 1× Lazarus Specimen Card (+ optional Farro Maintenance Card) |
One card is enough for the whole group. Only one person needs to pull a specimen card, no matter how many of you are going to the fight.
Before you go
Set your spawn at Gaslight
Gaslight is a space station in Pyro and it's the most convenient place to stage from. Set your spawn point there before you do anything else — you will almost certainly die at some point, and respawning across the system wastes more time than the whole run takes.
Gear up first. Have your armor sorted before you set off rather than planning to buy it on the way.
What to bring
Heavy armor. You will take a lot of damage in the final phase.
A gun you're comfortable with, and far more ammo than feels necessary.
A medgun with refills, plus med pens. Tier 1 injuries are easy to pick up here and healing on the move is a core part of the escape.
Choosing a ship
Your ship decides how the approach works, so pick deliberately.
A heavy ship (Perseus or similar) — the easy mode. You can ignore the facility's turrets entirely and park directly on the landing pad out front. If you have access to one, bring it.
A smaller ship with a hangar — bring a ground vehicle. Land at a safe distance and drive in.
A smaller ship with no hangar — land well away from the facility and run. It's a long way on foot, and the turrets are the reason you're not landing closer.
Step 1 — Approach the Data Center
Head to any Farro Data Center. There are 10 of them, all on Pyro IV, and they're all the same layout — so take whichever is closest or least populated.
Land according to your ship, as above: big pad out front if you're in something that can tank the turrets, far enough away to be safe if you're not.
Step 2 — The garage keycard (optional)
There's a small building in front of the main facility, between it and the landing pad — on your left as you approach on foot, marked by a pole with red glowing lines.
Inside is the Farro Maintenance Card, which opens the garage and gets you extra loot — including Grade A ship components.
Getting it takes seconds. The building is tiny: through the airlock, and the card is sitting on a table on your left. Nothing guards it.
The only real cost is the airlock cycle in and out. Worth it almost every time.
Step 3 — Getting into Data Processing
The Data Processing room is where the specimen card gets printed. It sits above the green space, upper right of the lobby as you face in from the front, and it's full of server racks.
There are two ways in. The two-player method skips a large chunk of the run.
With two people (recommended)
Get up to the balcony above the front desk.
Knock your teammate out.
Tractor beam them across to the Data Processing platform.
Once they're inside, they open the door from within for everyone else.
That's it. This skips the Farro Data Processing card entirely — no scientist, no safe, no laptop code. It's the single biggest time save in the run.
Solo
The long way round. You need a Farro Data Processing card to open the door normally, and that means a scientist.
Clear the hostile NPCs, but do not kill the scientists. A live scientist is required — this is the one thing in the facility you cannot replace.
Find a scientist and knock them out. Do not knife them — you need them alive.
Tractor beam them to one of three rooms: Storm Study, Exec Lounge, or Data Analysis. Each has its own scan door, its own laptop and its own safe, so use whichever is closest. You could collect all three cards; there's no reason to.
Drag them into the doorway that requires a scan.
Heal them.
Start the scanning process, then back off a short distance before going in. The scan can bug out otherwise — this is purely insurance, but it costs nothing.
Inside, find the laptop. The last message in the inbox has a code at the end of it. Note it down.
Enter that code into the safe in the same room and take the Farro Data Processing card.
Go to the Data Processing door and use the card to open it normally.
There are hostile NPCs inside the room. Clear it before you start anything.
Step 4 — Printing the specimen card
You're in Data Processing. Two things to find, in this order.
Find the code
Face the balcony, then look to the left of it. In the corner next to the door there's a group of tables with a monitor on one of them. It displays a 5-digit code. Note it.
Enter it
Look back at the balcony. There's a server rack with a screen on one side. Enter the 5-digit code there and confirm.
Hold the room
The moment you confirm:
All three doors open
The lights go red
NPCs start pouring in, in waves
This is the hard part of the run.
They hit hard. Tier 1 injuries are common here.
Stay away from the balcony. It keeps spawning snipers, and they do serious damage.
Watch the print progress. At roughly 50% it pauses and waits for you to confirm. You have 3 minutes to press continue. Miss that window and you lose the card and the whole run with it. Assign one person to watch the progress if there are two of you.
Once the waves are cleared, the doors close, the lights return to normal, and the card is waiting for you at the server rack. Take it.
There's a cooldown after you take a card. You can't farm these back to back, so plan around one card per run rather than expecting to stack them.
Step 5 — Getting out
Leave through the main door out of the facility.
Open the door and kill everything you can see immediately in front of you.
Run for your ship.
Ignore everything else and keep healing.
Don't try to fight your way out cleanly. The escape works because you out-heal the damage, not because you clear the path. Keep the medgun up the whole way.
Common mistakes
Killing the scientists. Run-ending if you're solo.
Knifing the scientist instead of knocking them out. Same result.
Missing the 50% confirmation. You get 3 minutes. Miss it and the card is gone — the most expensive mistake on this list.
Fighting from the balcony side during the print. That's where the snipers come from.
Landing close in a light ship. The turrets will punish you.
Next
You have the Lazarus Specimen Card. The fight happens somewhere else entirely — a different planet, in a different location — and that's covered in the Storm Breaker boss fight guide.