A lot of this is information I've been sitting on for quite a while, so I've decided to make it public. Each individual section will have spoilers and I will sum up the main points at the end.
All of the figures used can be trusted to be rather accurate - I've been a dirty powergrower for many years now and I like keeping track of my figures.
Planting drugs - Calculating hourly rates & what prices to buy seeds at
To preface this segment - I sadly don't have information for basic planters but if you're still using them at the point of needing this guide then you're doing something wrong pmsl
Any water level other than low is simply never worth it. If you use any other water level you're denying yourself much higher profit potential, and as such all figures will be based on a water level of low.
In conclusion cocaine > weed if you're gonna dry the leaves yourself instead of selling them, weed is better otherwise.
Buy cocaine seeds at $590 or lower and buy weed seeds at $397 or lower.
Drying leaves - misconceptions about power, profit from buying leaves, and the fall of meth
Closing points & TL;DR:
All of the figures used can be trusted to be rather accurate - I've been a dirty powergrower for many years now and I like keeping track of my figures.
Planting drugs - Calculating hourly rates & what prices to buy seeds at
To preface this segment - I sadly don't have information for basic planters but if you're still using them at the point of needing this guide then you're doing something wrong pmsl
Any water level other than low is simply never worth it. If you use any other water level you're denying yourself much higher profit potential, and as such all figures will be based on a water level of low.
Calculating the hourly rates of growing cocaine is slightly more difficult due to how it works. Instead of directly giving you cocaine upon picking, you receive coca leaves which you then have to dry to get the cocaine. While growing cocaine, you can dry all leaves on 0 power with time left between batches, so I would highly advise drying your own leaves.
Each batch of cocaine on a power level of low takes around 36 minutes - actually around 36min15s but for ease of calculation we will say 36 minutes. Calculating the average yield of each batch has proven difficult due to the large range and the low numerical quantity of leaves received, however from what I've been able to record I can say comfortably that an average of 28 leaves per batch will provide accurate figures. I'm keeping track of this on a daily basis and will soon have a much larger sample size to judge from - so if this is slightly inaccurate I will update it as soon as possible.
With this we can work out that, per hour of growing, you average around 46.7 leaves.
Six leaves comfortably averages out to 80 cocaine, making each leaf worth 13.3 cocaine, or $2000. However, lye & newspaper need to be accounted for - costing $500 per 3 leaves, or $166.7 per leaf, making the average profit per leaf equal to $1833.3. This means that, per hour, if you dry every leaf you get an average of $85555.6 per hour.
This, however, is only accurate if you always have seeds, and does not account for the necessity of seeding batches.
Seeding is always more profitable than buying seeds from the drug dealer. You average 120 seeds per seeding batch so every 10 batches, you will get 9 leaf batches and 1 seeding batch. Seeding batches take an extra 16 minutes, so to complete 10 batches it will take 376 minutes. In this time you will get your seeds back & get around 252 leaves, so accounting for seeding you get more like 40.2 leaves per hour - so $73722 per hour.
I'll save boring you with all the maths for much longer, but this means that essentially if you can buy seeds from other players for less than $590 each it is more profitable than doing seeding batches.
This all also means that, unless you have someone buying leaves for $1100 or more per leaf for some very odd reason, it is never worth it to grow cocaine just to sell the leaves instead of growing marijuana - which I will get into in the next segment.
Each batch of cocaine on a power level of low takes around 36 minutes - actually around 36min15s but for ease of calculation we will say 36 minutes. Calculating the average yield of each batch has proven difficult due to the large range and the low numerical quantity of leaves received, however from what I've been able to record I can say comfortably that an average of 28 leaves per batch will provide accurate figures. I'm keeping track of this on a daily basis and will soon have a much larger sample size to judge from - so if this is slightly inaccurate I will update it as soon as possible.
With this we can work out that, per hour of growing, you average around 46.7 leaves.
Six leaves comfortably averages out to 80 cocaine, making each leaf worth 13.3 cocaine, or $2000. However, lye & newspaper need to be accounted for - costing $500 per 3 leaves, or $166.7 per leaf, making the average profit per leaf equal to $1833.3. This means that, per hour, if you dry every leaf you get an average of $85555.6 per hour.
This, however, is only accurate if you always have seeds, and does not account for the necessity of seeding batches.
Seeding is always more profitable than buying seeds from the drug dealer. You average 120 seeds per seeding batch so every 10 batches, you will get 9 leaf batches and 1 seeding batch. Seeding batches take an extra 16 minutes, so to complete 10 batches it will take 376 minutes. In this time you will get your seeds back & get around 252 leaves, so accounting for seeding you get more like 40.2 leaves per hour - so $73722 per hour.
I'll save boring you with all the maths for much longer, but this means that essentially if you can buy seeds from other players for less than $590 each it is more profitable than doing seeding batches.
This all also means that, unless you have someone buying leaves for $1100 or more per leaf for some very odd reason, it is never worth it to grow cocaine just to sell the leaves instead of growing marijuana - which I will get into in the next segment.
This is much simpler.
Each batch of marijuana takes just over 18 minutes and gives you an average of 120 marijuana - meaning that you average 400 marijuana, or $60000 per hour if you don't need to seed.
If you do need to seed, each seeding batch takes an extra 8 minutes and gives you an average of 60 seeds - so you will need to do a seeding batch every 5 batches.
With seeding accounted for, you average $44081.6 per hour - making it more effective than growing cocaine to then sell the leaves at a standard price of $1000 each by around $4000 per hour.
This means that it is worth it to buy seeds from other players at any price below $397 each instead of seeding.
Each batch of marijuana takes just over 18 minutes and gives you an average of 120 marijuana - meaning that you average 400 marijuana, or $60000 per hour if you don't need to seed.
If you do need to seed, each seeding batch takes an extra 8 minutes and gives you an average of 60 seeds - so you will need to do a seeding batch every 5 batches.
With seeding accounted for, you average $44081.6 per hour - making it more effective than growing cocaine to then sell the leaves at a standard price of $1000 each by around $4000 per hour.
This means that it is worth it to buy seeds from other players at any price below $397 each instead of seeding.
In conclusion cocaine > weed if you're gonna dry the leaves yourself instead of selling them, weed is better otherwise.
Buy cocaine seeds at $590 or lower and buy weed seeds at $397 or lower.
Drying leaves - misconceptions about power, profit from buying leaves, and the fall of meth
Drying has two stages, and each stage takes a different amount of time at each power level:
- 0 power - 2 minutes 20 seconds per stage
- 3 power - 1 minute 45 seconds per stage
- 5 power - 1 minute 20 seconds per stage
0 power is an easy option for anyone who isn't interested in using propane. However, if you are going to use propane, it is ALWAYS better to use 5 power as opposed to 3 and here's why:
Each propane tank (at 1% tax) costs $1515 and can be resold to NPCs when empty for $750. This essentially means that the 3000g of fuel inside is worth $765, so each gram of fuel is worth $0.255 - not a lot.
Using 5 power as opposed to 3 power saves a total of 50 seconds per 6 leaves. For the sake of reference, if you were to equate time to money and you were making $60000 per hour - a very conservative sum with methods listed later - this time saved is equal to $833.3. This essentially means that you could use a whole propane tank worth of fuel extra to use 5 power instead of 3 and it would still be worth it - however the extra fuel used is more like 200 so it's a no-brainer.
Fuel is worth so little that saving it simply just shouldn't be of concern unless you're not able to get more propane tanks for any reason.
- 0 power - 2 minutes 20 seconds per stage
- 3 power - 1 minute 45 seconds per stage
- 5 power - 1 minute 20 seconds per stage
0 power is an easy option for anyone who isn't interested in using propane. However, if you are going to use propane, it is ALWAYS better to use 5 power as opposed to 3 and here's why:
Each propane tank (at 1% tax) costs $1515 and can be resold to NPCs when empty for $750. This essentially means that the 3000g of fuel inside is worth $765, so each gram of fuel is worth $0.255 - not a lot.
Using 5 power as opposed to 3 power saves a total of 50 seconds per 6 leaves. For the sake of reference, if you were to equate time to money and you were making $60000 per hour - a very conservative sum with methods listed later - this time saved is equal to $833.3. This essentially means that you could use a whole propane tank worth of fuel extra to use 5 power instead of 3 and it would still be worth it - however the extra fuel used is more like 200 so it's a no-brainer.
Fuel is worth so little that saving it simply just shouldn't be of concern unless you're not able to get more propane tanks for any reason.
Buying leaves to then dry them can be an incredibly effective method of making money quickly, assuming you can get a decent enough supply.
Using 5 power, you dry just around 135 leaves per hour if you're consistently replacing your leaves & placing your lye on time. I personally use a timer for this and would recommend you to do so too.
You use $25.5 worth of propane per leaf & $166.7 on lye and newspaper per leaf, making each leaf $1807.8 of profit.
With our past figures we can create a formula to work out how much this will make per hour:
p - price per leaf
Profit per hour: 135 x (1807.8 - p) - inserting $1000 as the standard price per leaf we get an hourly rate of $109053 just from the chemical table.
As we can see, this proves a very effective method of making money, as you then also have whatever money you make from your planter boxes to add on top of this.
But what about meth?
As I detailed in my previous guide on meth, it averages around $48000 per hour while carrying incredible risk. However, you could buy leaves at a maximum price of $1450 per leaf - an excessive price by anyone's judgement - and still outpace the profits of meth. This means that, at this point, meth is essentially obsolete. It only truly becomes a viable way to occupy your chemical table when you are unable to obtain any more leaves, which is an issue that is near impossible to run into in the current state of the economy. Don't die for mediocre rates.
Using 5 power, you dry just around 135 leaves per hour if you're consistently replacing your leaves & placing your lye on time. I personally use a timer for this and would recommend you to do so too.
You use $25.5 worth of propane per leaf & $166.7 on lye and newspaper per leaf, making each leaf $1807.8 of profit.
With our past figures we can create a formula to work out how much this will make per hour:
p - price per leaf
Profit per hour: 135 x (1807.8 - p) - inserting $1000 as the standard price per leaf we get an hourly rate of $109053 just from the chemical table.
As we can see, this proves a very effective method of making money, as you then also have whatever money you make from your planter boxes to add on top of this.
But what about meth?
As I detailed in my previous guide on meth, it averages around $48000 per hour while carrying incredible risk. However, you could buy leaves at a maximum price of $1450 per leaf - an excessive price by anyone's judgement - and still outpace the profits of meth. This means that, at this point, meth is essentially obsolete. It only truly becomes a viable way to occupy your chemical table when you are unable to obtain any more leaves, which is an issue that is near impossible to run into in the current state of the economy. Don't die for mediocre rates.
Closing points & TL;DR:
- Cocaine > weed if you dry the leaves, weed > cocaine if you're gonna sell the leaves
- Buy cocaine seeds at anything below $590 and weed seeds at anything below $397 for better efficiency than seeding batches
- If you're using propane tanks to dry, always use 5 power
- Buying leaves and drying them is OP
- buff meth pls
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