Wiki · The Underworld

Drugs

The drug trade is the fastest money on Life — and the most dangerous. Grow it, dry it, cut it, and move it before a rival gang or the cops catch up. Every finished batch is also a powerful buff you can pop yourself.

The Drug Trade

You can run drugs solo on your own property — but a gang hideout makes it far smoother, because the recycler and mixing table you need to finish product are sat right there. A crew also means people to defend your grow.

The payoff is huge, but every step exposes you: grow sites can be found and looted, the money arrives dirty and needs laundering before it's spendable, and the police can confiscate product right off your body. High risk, high reward.

Solo or gang?A solo player can grow, dry and sell just fine. The two trickier stations — the recycler (diesel-powered) and the mixing table — are most easily reached at a gang hideout, though you can run your own recycler once you unlock a Personal Recycler. Bottom line: possible alone, better with a crew.

Setting Up a Grow

Before you can "grow drug plants," you need somewhere to grow and something to grow in. Here's the part new players always miss:

  1. Buy a grow-capable propertyPlanter boxes can only go inside a property you own, and not every property allows them. Storage units, apartments and shops can’t grow at all. The cheapest place you can grow is a Tier 1 House (~$15,300, 3 large planters); for a real grow-op a Tier 1 Warehouse (~$16,800) holds 12 and warehouses scale up from there. See Property types.
  2. Buy planter boxesHead to the Construction Store (the "IKEA"). A Large Planter Box is $1,950, a Small Planter Box $730. Grab a composter and some water catchers while you're there to keep plants fed and watered.
  3. Get seedsSeeds aren't sold in shops. You get them by harvesting the plants themselves (each pick gives fresh seeds) — grab your first ones from the plants growing at the Barn. Seeds can only be planted into a planter box.
  4. Plant & growDrop seeds into your planters. A plant takes roughly 25–30 minutes to reach harvest. You don't need grow lights here — planters are always fully lit — but water and fertilizer raise your yield.

From Plant to Product

Once your plants are ripe, it's a four-step chain. Do them in order — skip the furnace and the mixing table won't take your leaves.

  1. Pick the raw productHarvest your ripe plants for their raw product (and more seeds). Heads-up: raw pickings look like ore — that's normal.
  2. Dry it in a furnacePut the raw pickings in any furnace to dry them into a usable ingredient — Dried Cannabis Bud, Black Tar Opium, Dried Coca Extract, Fentanyl Extract.
  3. Mix it at a mixing tableTake the dried ingredients to a mixing table (found at gang hideouts) and combine them into a finished drug. The stronger drugs also need Heating Coils, which you craft at a workbench first.
  4. Sell to the Illegal DealerCash out your finished product at the black market.
The furnace step is mandatoryRaw pickings must be dried in a furnace first to become a usable ingredient. New growers skip this and wonder why the mixing table won't accept their leaves.

The Plants & Ingredients

Raw Cannabis BudCannabis plant
Coca LeavesCoca plant
Poppy FlowersOpium poppy
Cerulea RootFentanyl plant
Baking SodaCutting agent · $100
Syringe KitFor injectables · $150

Baking Soda ($100) and Syringe Kits ($150) are sold at the Medical Store. Heating Coils are crafted at a workbench.

Recipes & Buffs

Finished drugs aren't only for selling — each is a consumable buff lasting around 10–15 minutes. Pop a Cocaine Powder before a big harvest, or a Marijuana Joint before a mining run.

Marijuana Joint+10% ore · +10% HP
Heroin Syringe+35% wood
Liquid Fentanyl+25% max HP
Cocaine Powder+35% harvest
Liquid Meth+50% ore
DrugRecipeBuff (~10–15 min)Sells for
Marijuana Joint10 Dried Cannabis Bud + 2 Baking Soda+10% ore yield, +10% max health$350
Heroin Syringe10 Black Tar Opium + 5 Baking Soda + 1 Syringe Kit+35% wood yield, +HP regen$700
Liquid Fentanyl15 Fentanyl Extract + 1 Syringe Kit + 1 Heating Coil+25% max health, +HP regen$1,350
Cocaine Powder15 Dried Coca Extract + 10 Baking Soda + 2 Heating Coil+35% harvesting yield, +HP regen$1,700
Liquid Meth5 Crystal Meth + 5 Pseudoephedrine + 3 Heating Coil+50% ore yield, +HP regen$2,100
Meth is its own operationLiquid Meth doesn't come from the garden — its precursors, including Pseudoephedrine, are stolen from the Belksville clinic. It's the priciest, most involved drug to make, and it sells accordingly.

Selling & Laundering

The Illegal Dealer buys everything — from a Marijuana Joint at $350 up to Liquid Meth at $2,100. Prices are dynamic: flood the market with one drug and its price dips, so spread your sales around.

Drug money lands as dirty cash. You can clean up to the standard ATM deposit limit of $20,000 every 6 hours, but larger stacks should go through a launder box, a captured checkpoint or a gang laundering mission before they count as real bank money — see Money & Banking.

Going pro? Both the personal skill perks and gang skills include big upgrades: boost your drug harvest, raise the price dealers pay, and speed up the processor.