Probably Stolen: Chemist Crafting Guide and Lab Station Mixing Steps
Running a chemistry lab in Probably Stolen requires balancing strict weekly cartel quotas against a six-stage extraction pipeline. Mastering exact alcohol ratios, heating cutoffs, impurity reagents, and overnight evaporation keeps your stipend climbing while avoiding a fatal day 8 collection failure.
Chemist Starting Setup and Cartel Quota Rules
Selecting the chemist advanced start skips the mentor introduction and equips your shop with a chemistry manual, a shabby blender with 35% content loss, a composition spectrometer chem scanner, a heating plate, an evaporator, a chem finisher, and a mini smugglers bay. Taking the well connected and savings starting perks gives you 15 faction reputation across all groups, including the cartel, plus buffer cash for week 1 rent.
On day 1, the cartel handler visits your counter, delivers three dream caps alongside a chemical supplies box, and sets an initial quota of 10 dream dust vials due on day 8. Two strict rules govern every weekly cartel collection: handing over zero vials triggers an immediate game over, and the handler takes every vial sitting on your counter. Always leave at least 1 vial on the counter to survive if you fall short of quota, and hide extra vials in storage if you only want to turn in the required amount. During week 1, however, placing all 29 vials you produce onto the counter boosts your cartel reputation rapidly; reaching 25 reputation increases your weekly credit stipend, and hitting 50 reputation lowers the cost of requesting extra ingredients. When a security officer visits on day 2 asking for reports, never report the cartel, as snitching triggers a gangster warning that deducts 20 cartel reputation.
The Six-Step Chemistry Loop for Dream Dust
Later on day 2, the retired chemist visits for her weekly supply run; purchase a box of chemical supplies and a water filter from her stock (the same tool used to strip contaminants in water purification). Every chemical recipe follows a six-step pipeline: blend raw ingredients into mush, dissolve in alcohol and heat to pull out extract, neutralize protein or fat impurities, filter out debris, evaporate liquid overnight, and package dry extract inside the chem finisher.
For step 1 of dream dust, place an empty bottle into the blender, load dream caps into the input grid, and press start to create dream cap mush. For step 2, pour alcohol into the bottle until the alcohol volume is at least 5 times the amount of dream cap mush shown on your chem scanner. For step 3, set the bottle on the heating plate on low heat and switch the plate off when temperature reaches 46 degrees so residual heat finishes converting mush into extract without going past 50 degrees, where dream cap mush burns. For step 4, check the protein reading on the scanner and drop in an equal amount of acid until protein drops to zero; if you add too much acid, add base to counteract it. For step 5, place cotton fabric or a water filter into a pitcher and pour the mixture through to strip remaining impurities, then run the liquid in the evaporator overnight for step 6 so the dry extract can load into the chem finisher.
Crafting Caffeine Pills and Scaling to Farm Grade
Alongside dream dust, crafting caffeine pills during week 1 provides steady cash to pay weekly rent and fund your shop while selling excess dream dust to the street dealer who arrives on day 3. Blend coffee beans into mush inside an empty bottle, then pour in alcohol equal to at least 3/4 of the mush volume. Heat the coffee mixture on the heating plate and switch it off at around 75 degrees before letting the container cool down.
Once cooled, add acid matching the scanner's protein number and drop in lipo bond agent at roughly 1/8 of the fat reading, or 1 ml per coffee bean used, to clear out both protein and fat. Pour the treated liquid through a pitcher fitted with a water filter so leftover debris does not ruin the batch, then place it inside the evaporator. Because the evaporator only removes 300 ml of liquid per night, large batches require two nights to dry before the chem finisher will accept the extract. Select the caffeine pill recipe in the chem finisher to press 1 pill per 5 mg of dry caffeine, and install the module awarded by the cartel handler after day 8 into your chem finisher to upgrade future dream dust batches to farm grade.