Schedule 1 Guide
How solid are these numbers?

All 34 effect multipliers, all 16 ingredient prices and the base product prices are cross-checked against the published Steam reference tables. The individual transformation rules are mostly not confirmed one by one yet, and meth/cocaine input costs are modelled. Checked against build v0.4.6f12 (Early Access) on 2026-08-11. Sources.

Schedule 1 Cartel Guide

The Benzies family gate every region past Northtown. This is how influence actually works, the exact numbers behind each way of reducing it, and the one rule that makes most players waste hours of spray paint for nothing.

Region unlock threshold

Influence < 300

Each region has its own influence pool. Drop that region below 300 and it opens.

Read this before you buy spray paint

Graffiti and unlocking customers do nothing while you are on a truce. Influence only moves when you are hostile with the cartel. Tags sprayed during a truce are wasted — they do not bank up and they do not count retroactively. This is the single most common reason people post "my influence isn't going down".

How to reduce cartel influence

Action Influence Notes
Unlock a new customer -75 Steals market share directly. Scales best.
Spray a graffiti tag -50 68 locations, 3–5 sprays per can, never respawn.
Knock out a cartel dealer -100 Loot their pockets for free product.
…then kill them -100 Stacks with the knockout for -200 total.
Win an ambush -100 Per victory, when they jump you.
Interrupt Benzies graffiti — Added in v0.4.3. Reduces influence and grants XP.

Unlocking customers is the best value per unit of effort — it is the only method that also grows your own business, and it scales as you expand. Graffiti is the reliable filler when you have run out of customers to convert.

Do not unlock every customer in a region at once

Cartel dealers only spawn if there are customers for them to serve. Strip a region of every available customer too early and the dealers stop appearing — which removes your -100 and -200 options and can leave you grinding graffiti with no faster route. Leave some customers on the table until the region's dealers are dealt with.

Starting influence by region

Values once you have gone hostile. Everything opens below 300.

Region Starting influence To clear
Westville 500–700 200–400 The first region you push into.
Downtown ~800 500 Gates shrooms and Fungal Phil.
Docks ~900 600
Suburbia ~1,000 700
Uptown ~1,100 800 Needed for the endgame quest.

At -75 per customer, clearing Downtown from ~800 is roughly seven customer unlocks, or ten graffiti tags, or a mix of both plus a couple of dealers.

An elevated view over Hyland Point at dusk: an overpass, small shops including one signed “Stash & Dash”, parked cars and forested mountains behind.
Hyland Point. Each district holds its own cartel influence pool and its own cartel dealer. Screenshot © TVGS, from the official Schedule I Steam store page. Used for identification and commentary.

The deal: Unfavorable Agreements

Thomas Benzies meets you at Taco Ticklers and offers a truce. It is a genuine fork, not a fake choice:

Accept the truce

  • No more ambushes or dealer robberies
  • Locked to Northtown and Westville
  • Deliver product to Hyland Manor 2–3× weekly
  • Paid wholesale — roughly 50% of market value
  • Cocaine stays locked

Refuse — stay hostile

  • Random ambushes and dealer robberies
  • Every region stays reachable
  • Influence reduction actually works
  • Cocaine and the endgame stay open
  • Hyland Manor becomes obtainable

The practical answer: refuse, or accept only as a short breather. The truce is survivable early if you are being robbed faster than you can earn, but it caps your map at two regions and halves your prices. You can end it at any time by texting T.B. or simply not delivering.

Cartel dealer locations

One per region. They spawn at midnight (00:00) and the window is roughly two seconds — be standing there before the clock rolls over. Since the Shrooms update they also wander out on smoke breaks, which is a second, more forgiving chance to catch them.

Region Where the dealer is
Westville Boarded-up building near Dean’s Tattoo
Downtown Apartment between the Diner and the Canal
Docks Billy’s house — the door near the Cuke machine
Suburbia Building next to Jane’s camper
Uptown The Crimson Canary

Knock one out for -100, loot their pockets for free product, then kill them for another -100. That is the fastest single chunk of influence in the game.

Surviving robberies

While influence is above zero your dealers get robbed. These arrive as notifications rather than events you can run to, and whether they hold onto the product depends on what you armed them with:

Dealer’s weapon Fully defended Partial loss
Unarmed 33% 42%
M1911 pistol 80% 20%
Shotgun 90% 10%

Arming dealers is cheap insurance — a shotgun takes them from losing product two times in three to holding it nine times in ten.

Finishing the Job

The endgame quest. It requires Uptown unlocked while hostile, after which you get a morning call from U.N. The chain is:

  1. Deliver 20g of pure, packaged cocaine to Billy
  2. Pay $10,000 to Sam to excavate a tunnel beneath the manor
  3. Eliminate a marked stranger at the docks, at night
  4. Get the bomb from Stan and plant it in the tunnel
  5. Destroy the cartel headquarters

Afterwards Hyland Manor goes up for sale at $250,000 — 12 worker slots and 2 loading bays, the largest property in the game — and every cartel mechanic disappears from your save for good.

Next

Sources