How Mixing in Schedule I Works

In Schedule I, you start with a base product (weed, cocaine, or meth), and add ingredients (additives) (e.g., cuke, banana, iodine, paracetamol, etc.) to it to create different effects. Each ingredient has a base effect, and sometimes an effect is transformed into another effect. But how is this transformation determined?

By manually mixing ingredients in game, many players have compiled a list of known transformations. However, a lot of online lists had errors or omissions, so programmatic anaylsis was needed to create a comprehensive and accurate list.

Every effect in the game is assigned a direction (a normalized vector) and a magnitude (a scalar value). These values are all found in the game files. The final position is the product of the direction and the magnitude.

When plotted on a graph, the effects are clustered in a circle around the origin.

The effects above are also assigned a tier from 1 to 5 in the game files, and the location of the effect around the origin corresponds to the tier, with tier 1 including the effects closest to the origin, tier 2 effects being those outside of tier 1, and so forth, until we reach tier 5 effects, which are generally the effects in the outermost area of the circle. However, I could not find a significance to the tier value, so references to tiers are omitted from the rest of the analyses.

Each base ingredient results in a unique effect. By drawing a line from the origin to the effect, we can determine the resulting vector for every single ingredient.

As you can see, not every effect is achievable with a base ingredient. To get to these other effects, ingredients and effects have to be combined in a meaningful way. However, by using these vectors, we can determine what combinations result in new effects (i.e., transformations).

A lot of this analysis was originally based on the efforts of others to compile a list of known transformations. Then, effort was made to identify and correct errors.

The above plot shows the base vector for the additive addy. Then, it shows the vectors that result from known transformations involving addy, such as from explosive to euphoric, foggy to energizing, and so forth.

As you can see, the greatest distance between the endpoint of the transformation vector and the target effect's position is 0.240 units.

The greatest distance for iodine is 0.390 units. If we do another...

We get an even greater value (0.396 for gasoline). In order to determine if a transformation occurs, we need to find out what this max distance can be.

To determine the maximum distance, we need to find the transformation that results in the greatest distance between the endpoint of the transformation vector and the target effect's position that still results in a known transformation.

Once we calculate all the vectors for every known combination, we can see that the maximum distance appears to be 0.400. That is, no known transformation occurs where the resulting vector is greater than 0.400 units away from its effect.

In the game, when you have a mix that has effects already in it, and you add an ingredient, the base effect is added and then that ingredient's vector is added to every effect that exists in the mix.

For example, if we have a mix that has foggy, spicy, bright-eyed, sedating, and tropic thunder, and we add energy drink to it, we can draw energy drink's base vector from each of those ingredients. If the vector lands in the radius of another effect, then that effect replaces the original effect. If the vector does not land in the radius of another effect, then the original effect remains.

We can determine the base vector for the ingredient (energy drink) by drawing a vector from the plot origin to the known resultant effect (athletic). This effect is added to the mix. Then, we redraw this same vector starting from every effect in our mix. After doing so, we can see that several transformations occur, as the resultant vector lands within 0.4 units on a new effect:

• Foggy → Laxative
• Spicy → Euphoric
• Sedating → Munchies
• Tropic Thunder → Sneaky

We also have an effect that does not transform:

• Bright-eyed

Using the Mixer, we can also see this. Note that the blue asterisks represent effects that replaced an existing effect, and the green asterick represents the base effect (athletic) added by the ingredient (energy drink).

Want to try it out for yourself? You can use the Mixer to mix your own products and see the transformations for yourself!

Since we know the vectors for every ingredient and the plot points for every effect, we can test every combination of effect + ingredient (544 combinations!). If any of them land 4.000 from or within 0.400 units of lethal, then we know lethal is possible.

There's a lot going on here! Let's zoom in to see the details.

Lethal seems to fall outside range of all combinations of effects and ingredients. The table below shows the ten combinations of effect and ingredient that get closest to lethal.

As we can see, the closest, disorienting + addy, results in a distance that exceeds our 0.400 threshold. The above plot can be shown in a more readable table format:

Now we can definitively see that, with the 0.400 tolerance, no combination of effect and ingredient result result in a vector that lands within 0.400 units of lethal. Therefore, lethal is currently unobtainable in the game at the time of writing this (April 25, 2025, or game version 0.3.4f8). Sorry, Beth, Donna, and Fiona.

The table below shows all current possible effect transformations in the game Schedule 1. These were tested programmatically, meaning the list should not contain incorrect data and there should be no omissions.

You can also view this list at the schedule-1-effect-transformations page.

In total, the table lists 117 transformations. When drawing an effect vector for every ingredient on every possible effect, similar to what we did to determine if lethal was achievable, we count 114 possible hits.

The discrepancy of three transforms is due to omitting those involving lethal from the table, as this effect again is not currently obtainable in-game.

While we know that, among the known transformations, the maximum distance we've encountered is 0.400, does this mean this is definitively the threshold for determining if a transformation occurs? We can test combinations that result in distances greater than this in-game to know for sure. Below are the closest over 0.400:

As we can see, none of these combinations with a distance greater than 0.400 units results in a viable transformation. Therefore, we can conclude that 0.400 is the maximum distance for determining if a transformation occurs.

However, to be sure this is true, we can look at the game files, which is how we found the plot points for the effects. Indeed, the radius for every effect, including lethal, is set to 0.4:

While each effect has its own radius, they are all set to 0.4. The calculations would have been a little trickier were they all different. And yes--we could have just used this game file to begin with rather than reverse engineer the effect radius threshold, but there's no fun in that (and I may have stumbled upon the game file confirming this after I already discovered the 0.4 limit).

Now, knowing that 0.4 is the limit, and with this limit lethal is unobtainable, we can increase this radius to see at what point lethal is obtainable. However, we need to ensure that in increasing the radius, we don't cause conflicting transformations, i.e., where the vector result for any transformation lands in more than one effects' radius. It is okay if the radius around effects overlaps, so long as a vector' final position does not fall inside this overlapping area.

If we incrementally increase the radius by steps of 0.001, we arrive at a new magic number: 0.461.

Importantly, this radius of 0.461 does not result in any conflicts. It does however, result in 48 new transformations that did not exist at 0.4. That's a lot!

We were hoping that 0.420 might produce lethal, but at least we found a solution that works! Modders should be free to increase the radius to 0.461 to try to see what the effect lethal actually looks like in game. Per the game code, it reduces health by 15 until the character dies. How fun!

If we keep increasing the threshold, we don't run into any conflicts until the radius is 0.504. At 0.503, we produce 193 valid, deterministic transformations. At 0.504, there are 195 transformations, but two of these are conflicting.

If we zoom in, we see that, with the radius set to 0.504, we get two combinations that result in a vector that lands inside the radius of both glowing and explosive.

There could be ways around this, such as setting unique radii for each effect, increasing the range constraints of possible plot points for each effect so they are a little more spread out on the map, or determining a system by which conflicting transformations are resolved by some other factor. However, until more effects or ingredients are added in-game, none of these solutions feel especially necessary.

We've shown how effect transformations are determined mathematically in Schedule I and determined that lethal is not currently obtainable. Now that we've officially spoiled the magic, let's grab our golden skateboards and get back to mixing!