Schedule I Cocaine Guide: The Full Supply Chain From $80 Coca Seeds to a $735 Payout

Cocaine is the most expensive product line to unlock in Schedule I, and most players approach it the same way they approached weed: grow it, dry it a bit, sell it wherever. That leaves money on the table. Cocaine has its own supply chain — a single supplier, a single leaf variant, and a quality mechanic that behaves differently from what the patch notes say it does in theory versus what actually happens at the point of sale. This guide walks the entire chain: from the $80 coca seed to the $735 payout on the game’s most profitable mix, with the quality-control and sales-method decisions in between.

Verified against the Schedule I Anniversary Update (2026-03-31). Prices, ranks, and NPC names may shift with future patches — cross-check against your own save before committing resources.

Quick Start: Unlocking the Cocaine Supply Chain

Before you touch a coca seed, you need rank, a relationship, and a region unlocked. Do these in order:

1. Grind to Enforcer I rank by delivering to high-spending customers and keeping your dealers stocked daily.
2. Unlock the Docks region — this is where the cocaine supply chain lives.
3. Befriend Javier Cooper or Mac Cooper to get introduced to the supplier (see the NPC relationship guide for the fastest way to build trust).
4. Meet Salvador Moreno at the Mayor’s House once the introduction goes through.
5. Buy your first coca seeds at $80 each, or order a bulk drop of up to 160 seeds for a flat $200 delivery fee.
6. Buy a Cauldron and Lab Oven from Oscar in the illegal warehouse.
7. Set up suspension racks, air pots, full-spectrum grow lights, and drying racks for your coca crop.
8. Grow, harvest, dry for quality, then process leaves through the cauldron and oven.

The Supply Chain: From Coca Seed to Salvador Moreno’s Bulk Drop

Coca is the only crop in Schedule I with a single fixed variant — there’s no strain-hunting like there is with weed. That simplifies sourcing but raises the stakes on yield, because you can’t breed your way to a better base plant. According to Dualshockers’ sourcing breakdown, coca also has the longest grow cycle of any crop in the game, which makes every wasted plant a real time cost, not just a cash one.

The seed math matters more here than for any other product. A dead drop caps you at 10 seeds per pickup — fine for testing a strain, useless for scaling. Once Moreno is unlocked, his bulk order of 160 seeds for a $200 delivery fee works out to $1.25 per seed in fees on top of the $80 base price, which pays for itself the moment you’re running more than one grow room.

Yield per plant is where sources disagree, and it’s worth flagging rather than picking one number and hoping it holds. Dualshockers reports 9 leaves per plant naturally, rising to 16 with Plant Growth Regulator (PGR) applied. Other community guides put the natural yield closer to 12, rising to 18 with PGR. Both figures could be accurate for different versions or grow setups — PGR application timing and pot type both affect final counts. Treat 9–12 leaves as your natural baseline and verify your own numbers in-game before you plan a harvest around them; don’t take either figure as a guaranteed floor.

What isn’t in dispute: PGR is worth buying. At roughly a 60–75% yield increase for a $30 item, it pays for itself on a single plant. Dry leaves on a drying rack before processing — this is the step most new cocaine producers skip because it doesn’t feel necessary the way it does with weed, and it’s the single biggest lever on the quality score that determines your street price later in this guide.

Extraction: The Cauldron-to-Oven Pipeline

Cocaine is the only product line that runs through two dedicated pieces of equipment instead of one. Coca leaves don’t go straight to a mixing station — they go through a cauldron, then a lab oven.

The ratio is fixed: the cauldron cooks 20 coca leaves per 1 can of gasoline in a single batch, and the cauldron itself holds up to 80 leaves and 20 cans of gasoline at once — enough to queue four batches back to back. That output becomes cocaine base, which then goes into the lab oven for the second cook that turns it into finished cocaine. Community timing guides consistently put each stage at roughly 6 in-game hours, though exact figures can shift between patches, so budget your production day around a same-day turnaround rather than an instant one.

The practical takeaway: don’t buy a cauldron and lab oven as a pair and assume 1:1 throughput. If you’re running a full 80-leaf cauldron load, you need oven capacity to match, or cocaine base will sit queued while your gasoline-cook cycle keeps running. Scale ovens to your cauldron output, not the other way around.

Budget for the equipment cost before you commit to a full production line. A single cauldron and lab oven pair is a meaningful upfront spend on top of the seed, grow-light, and drying-rack costs already sunk into the sourcing stage — and unlike weed, there’s no way to skip a stage by buying a more expensive pot or fertilizer. Treat the two-stage cook as a fixed cost of entry, not something to optimize away.

Quality Control: What Actually Moves Your Street Price

This is the part most guides skip, and it’s the reason two players selling the same cocaine can earn wildly different money per batch. The Anniversary Update patch notes are specific about how quality is evaluated: the customer product-enjoyment algorithm was tweaked to exclude quality when generating a theoretical deal offer or evaluating a counteroffer — but quality still fully affects the outcome of the actual completed sale. In plain terms: a low-quality batch won’t scare off a deal offer, but it will tank customer satisfaction and your repeat business once the sale goes through.

That makes drying-rack time a direct investment in retention, not just a one-time price bump. Skipping it to save 12 in-game hours per quality level looks free in the moment and costs you in loyalty over the following week.

Effects stack on top of the base quality score, and this is where the real money is. The highest-value cocaine mix reported by GameRant’s profit breakdown sells for $735 against $42 in ingredients — a $693 profit per batch, once you’ve hit Hustler III rank to buy the ingredients at Gas Mart.

Follow that exact order — mixing sequence changes which effects land, not just which ingredients you use. A batch mixed correctly and dried to full quality is a different product, economically, than the same ingredients rushed through at low quality: same $42 cost, a fraction of the $735 ceiling.

Who Should Actually Run Cocaine

Cocaine’s high entry cost (rank grind, two-stage equipment, $80 seeds) isn’t the right call for every playstyle. Here’s how it breaks down by player type:

Packaging: Baggies vs. Jars for a $735 Product

Packaging choice matters more for cocaine than for cheaper products because the gap between a successful and failed sale is larger in dollar terms. A Baggie costs $1 and holds one unit, but it carries better odds of closing a sale on premium, high-value mixes. A Jar costs $3 and holds five units — efficient for clearing cheap bulk stock, but it lowers your odds of moving expensive mixes, which is exactly the category your top cocaine recipe falls into.

The rule of thumb: bag your $735-tier cocaine individually for personal, high-loyalty customer sales. Reserve jars for lower-quality batches or early-game cocaine you’re moving in volume rather than for margin. If you’re handing product to a dealer instead of selling it yourself, a Brick Press converts batches into bricks and skips packaging costs entirely — see the packaging breakdown in the production and packaging guide for the full baggie-vs-jar-vs-brick math across all products.

Best Sales Method: Personal Sale, Dealer, or Hold for Cartel Risk

Cocaine’s price ceiling changes the dealer math you’d use for cheaper products. Dealers sell at the game’s fair price rather than your marked-up personal price, and take their cut on top of that — fine for a $35 weed unit, expensive for a $735 cocaine batch where the gap between fair price and your maxed-loyalty price is the entire point of grinding the mix in the first place. Route your highest-quality cocaine through personal sales to loyal, high-spending customers first, and only hand off overflow or lower-quality batches to dealers for volume and time savings.

Worth planning around: the developer roadmap covered by Dexerto confirms cartel members are planned to interrupt sales, ambush players, and attack properties directly — with players able to steal supplies from cartel meetups in return. None of that is live yet, but it signals that cocaine’s supply chain is about to get an adversarial layer that cheaper products won’t have. If and when it lands, expect the calculus to shift further toward moving high-value batches fast rather than stockpiling them.

FAQ

Should I dry my coca leaves every time, or only for high-value batches?
Every time you’re planning to sell personally rather than dump on a dealer. Since quality doesn’t affect whether a deal offer is generated but does affect the completed sale and repeat loyalty, skipping the drying rack is a false economy — you’re trading a one-time time cost for a recurring loyalty tax on every future sale to that customer.

Is the 160-seed bulk order worth the $200 fee over dead drops?
Yes, once you’re running more than a single grow cycle. Dead drops cap you at 10 seeds, forcing repeat trips and repeat $80-per-seed spend with no economy of scale. The $200 flat fee on 160 seeds amortizes to roughly $1.25/seed in fees — cheap insurance against downtime between harvests.

Why does my cocaine batch sell for less than the $735 example recipe?
Two likely causes: you didn’t hit the mixing order exactly (sequence changes which effects land, not just which ingredients are present), or your base quality was low going into the mix because the leaves weren’t dried. Both compound — a perfect mix on low-quality leaves still underperforms.

Do I need both a cauldron and a lab oven, or can I skip one?
Both are mandatory. Cocaine is the only line that requires a two-stage cook — cauldron leaves-to-base, then oven base-to-cocaine. There’s no shortcut that skips a stage.

Should I sell cocaine through a dealer once I’ve unlocked one?
Only for overflow. Dealers sell at fair price and take a cut on top, which is a much bigger absolute loss on a $735 batch than on a cheap weed unit. Keep your highest-quality cocaine for personal sales to loyal customers, and route lower-quality or excess batches to a dealer instead of letting them sit in inventory.

Key Takeaways

Cocaine rewards players who treat it as a pipeline, not a crop. The seed source is fixed, the leaf-to-base ratio is fixed, but quality and sales channel are both fully in your control — and they’re where the $42-to-$735 gap actually gets decided. Dry your leaves, hit the mixing order, and route your best batches to personal sales before dealers or a future cartel encounter takes the decision out of your hands. For the wider production and pricing systems this guide builds on, see the full Schedule I beginner’s guide.

Sources

1. TheGamer. How To Get Coca Leaves In Schedule 1. TheGamer
2. Dualshockers. Schedule 1: How to Get Coca Leaves. Dualshockers
3. The Game Haus. Schedule 1 Anniversary Update: Full Patch Notes. The Game Haus
4. Dexerto. Schedule 1 updates roadmap with map expansion, fishing & cartel interactions. Dexerto
5. GameRant. What’s the Best Recipe in Schedule 1? (Most Profitable Mix). GameRant
6. TheGamer. Should You Use Jars Or Bags In Schedule 1?. TheGamer
7. TheGamer. Schedule 1: How To Use The Cauldron. TheGamer

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.