Schedule I: 10 Beginner Tips for New Empires (2025)

With its early-access release, Schedule I has players addicted to selling drugs. The roadmap has been shared by the sole developer, Tyler, who updates and details upcoming features. The game’s grind reveals itself early: buy seeds, plant, water, harvest the plant, bag it up, and make sales. However, there’s more to the game than simple drug deals. It’s well known that pickpocketing a customer after selling a product allows the product to be stolen and resold. This beginner’s guide will explore more obscure and lesser-known tips to help skyrocket drug empires.

Take Van Items Before Leaving

While hitting the streets early is tempting, some plants need tending first. One is over half finished, and the other is under half. A pair of shears and a watering can are on the shelf opposite the door. Give each some water and time to grow. After harvesting the plants, pick up the plastic pot, the grow light, and the suspension rack. These will become handy later when moving locations. This growing system can’t be unlocked until later in the game, so taking it now and using it will benefit the early game.

Here’s what the inventory should have when leaving the van:

• • 2 Plastic Pots
  • 2 LED Grow Lights
  • 2 Suspension Racks
  • 10 Baggies
  • 1 Packaging Station
  • 1 Plant Trimmer
  • Over 20 OG Kush

Use Toilets as Trash Cans

Dealing with trash in this game can become tedious, especially as the operation grows. Instead of putting trash in the garbage can, purchase a toilet and a trash grabber at the general store. Put the toilet in a place where trash builds up, and use the trash grabber to collect the garbage around the room. Dump it into the toilet, flush, and it’s gone!

There is no need to replace trash bags and throw them outside into the compactor. Keep your station clean with a simple flush. You will lose out on the passive income from compacting trash. In the long run, that money is not worth the time invested. It’s better to keep your drugs flowing around the streets instead of recycling.

Choose Whether to Bag or Jar Products

Baggies can hold one item while jars can hold five. You won’t have many bulk sales in this game stage, and jars would lead to overselling. The only way to get full value from a jar is to always negotiate for deals of five products. This becomes easier in the game as customers become addicted to products. Stick to baggies while selling until the first dealer is unlocked. At this point, buying and packaging jars for dealers becomes cost and time-efficient as the dealers will break apart jars and sell the products individually.

Negotiate Prices of Products

After listing the product for sale, the customer will eventually seek a deal that can be accepted or counter-offered. Choosing to counter-offer gives a new menu and three options to alter the agreement. This becomes easier later in the game as customers become more addicted and dependent on your product.

Raising the price is always smart, but don’t get outrageous with it.

• Keep the counter-offer within reason of the product’s asking price.
• The quantity of the offer can be changed, but the price needs to be adjusted.
• The product of the deal can be changed to offer a new deal entirely.

Mix for New Products

After unlocking the mixing table, it’s time to start experimenting. Buy a few shelves, some ingredients at a gas station, and experiment! Each mixture can be remixed with something else, resulting in a new concoction. Each mix will add a new property to the product, so go crazy. Some customers prefer specific properties over others. Before hunting down potential customers, it would be handy to have a lot of different mixtures on hand to fit their preferences.

It’s easy to forget combinations throughout the discovery journey. However, any mixture you’ve made can be found in your phone’s product app. The product app can get cluttered if you want to create different mixtures. The only way to sort this menu is by using the star icon near a product to favorite it and save it at the top of the list. There are additional features on the roadmap for organizing, but favoriting is the only filtering option for now.

Purchase a Skateboard

Moving quickly around Hyland Point is essential. Showing up late to a deal will lead to unhappy customers. The best way to get around is to buy a skateboard. Jump on and off the board with ease by holding the mouse. Your speed continues when you get on the board, so try sprinting before riding. Saving up for a skateboard to increase speed early will save travel time while traversing the game and making deals.

The expensive skateboards are worth it because each improves on the previous one.

• Cheap Skateboard: Old wood with some wheels nailed to it. Not fancy, but it rolls.
• Skateboard: Classic double-kick popsicle skateboard. Use it to get around faster than on foot.
• Lightweight Skateboard: A low-weight plastic skateboard with increased jump height.
• Cruiser: Cruiser skateboard designed for high-speed, straight-line motion. Not particularly agile.
• Golden Skateboard: Tasteful gold-plated skateboard. High top speed, but slow acceleration.

Set a Reasonable Product Price

Speaking of the product app, you can change the price of each product, and each dealer will sell the product at the adjusted prices. Mixtures will raise the product price, but individual customers will also affect the cost. In the contacts app, you can find each of your unlocked customers who have their addiction levels and preferred mixture effects. If their relationship and addiction are high, chances are they will be more likely to pay more money for a product.

When a customer has high addiction, it’s easier to counter with a higher price. Same with mixture effects. If you remember a customer liking a specific effect, charge them a higher price. Addiction will passively take over the people of Hyland Point, and by that point, mass production can handle their appetite.

Offer Sales

Sometimes, customers are slow to text or hesitant to purchase products, and testing mixtures might result in an odd number of products. In this case, keep the odd products in the inventory while running around Hyland Point. Texts aren’t the only ways to make deals; any contact who hasn’t completed a deal that day might be interested in buying. By choosing these deals, a new menu is brought up where products can be offered and prices can be agreed upon.

This menu contains a percentage indicating the likelihood of the deal’s success. Remember, contacts will pay more if they are highly addicted or the product has qualities they prefer. Earlier mixing experiments may be helpful for specific customer needs and unlock them as a permanent contact, so hold on to any experimental mixtures.

Conserve Credit

There are two types of currency: green is cash, and blue is credit. ATMs are scattered around the town for depositing and withdrawing. However, the weekly deposit limit is 10,000. This won’t be detrimental until later in the game, but don’t spend too much credit if the deposit limit is exceeded. There are ways to avoid the limit later, but keep in mind that there is a deposit limit. Don’t spend too much credit without having a way to refill what you used.

This limit can be exceeded when playing with friends, as each player has an individual deposit limit. If one player reaches their limit early, they can leave cash on shelves for others to pick up and deposit into the shared account. Solo players won’t have access to this mass depositing, but this feature may be patched or adjusted. Bypassing the deposit limit through multiplayer sessions makes the difficulty of balancing credit almost non-existent.

When to Use Employees

Employees are crucial to any growing drug empire. In multiplayer, it’s easy to divvy up the work and spread responsibility. However, playing solo, sometimes things can get backed up, and time can run out. The option to buy employees comes early in the game once the warehouse is unlocked. If you want an employee early, start with the botanist to automate your growing process. Using employees can be confusing, but it’s simple to understand. Buying an employee adds the clipboard to the ninth item slot. With the clipboard, you can select an employee to assign them to stations.

Before they can start working, each employee needs to be assigned a bed. This assigns them a briefcase at the foot of the bed, where they must be paid a daily wage. Some employees require a higher daily wage than others.

Botanists

• Can be assigned eight growing stations, where to offload growing stations, and a resupply shelf.
• After assigning grow stations, go into their settings and pick a specific seed or additives if needed.
• So long as the resupply shelf stays stocked with seeds and soil, the botanist will work completely automated.

Chemists

• Can be assigned up to four stations. They can be mixing stations, lab ovens, or chemistry stations.
• Once assigned, settings on that station can be changed before the chemist can get to work.

Cleaners

• They can be assigned to trash cans to keep the radius around the can clean.
• Put the trash can in a centralized location. Once assigned, a large green circle will display the cleaner’s effective range.

Handlers

• Can be assigned to transfer items between shelves and loading bays, and can also be assigned to a packaging station.
• Handlers should prioritize moving product between shelves before diverting to packaging product.

Employees are recommended as the mid-game begins to emerge. Time becomes a constraint at this point in the game, so hiring employees to automate most of the work helps in the long run. Spending money to make money is the most important thing for growing a business, whether it’s a drug empire or a legal store.

These were some Schedule I beginner tips to help new players hit the ground running. Although these tips are not discussed or well-known within the game, they can completely change it. Toilets remove the need for trash cans, and the monotonous garbage bag feature will speed up the growing and cleaning process. Keeping the credit high early in the game and raising contact addiction levels will skyrocket the early game by bringing in more money. Ultimately, don’t sweat this game so much. It’s meant to be enjoyed in its glory. Making mistakes and learning how to improve is part of the fun!