A recipe paper is a page of handwritten notes. Use it from your inventory and you learn that recipe for good - the paper is used up, so read it only when you are sure it is yours. Once that character knows a recipe, they can cook it at any station of the right type.

Stations are hidden by the city's underworld, not marked on any map. There are different kinds and each recipe says which kind it needs:

• Weed table - a drying rack for wet buds, plus grinding, rolling, bagging and pressing.
• Grow tent - pots to grow weed from seed (see Growing Weed).
• Grow tub shelf - damp tubs for mushrooms, with a drying rack (see Party Drugs).
• Chemistry bench - ketamine, MDMA and LSD cooks.
• Pill press bench and blotter bench - pressing pills and dosing tabs.
• Lean counter - mixing lean.
• Copper still - moonshine (see Moonshine).
• Formula desks for things still to come.

While a station is still unclaimed, a contact on the dark web drops tips about it. The first tip only names the area. Later tips get closer, down to a postal code. With a Darkweb Tablet in your pockets the Tablet signal box fills up as you get close. Once a gang locks the station, the tips stop.

1. Walk up to the station and press E. You only see the recipes you know that work here.
2. Pick one. The ingredients are taken right away. If the station has bigger glassware you can cook several batches at once.
3. Play through the steps. Each recipe has its own run of steps, and each step is one of these:

• Stir - press SPACE when the marker is in the green, three times.
• Hold the heat - A / D keep the needle inside a band that keeps moving.
• Pour - hold SPACE to fill, let go at the line. Overfill and it spills.
• Press - press SPACE when the shrinking ring meets the green one.
• Drip - press SPACE to drop into a beaker that keeps moving.
• Balance - A / D for temperature and W / S for pressure, both in their bands. Hotter means the pressure creeps up.

4. Your average score sets the purity of the batch. Higher purity lasts longer and sells for more.

Press ESC to give up mid-cook - you get your ingredients back. Dying, getting cuffed or getting knocked over ends the cook too.

A very bad step is botched and can go wrong in the room:

• Fumes hurt anyone without a gas mask for a few seconds.
• Fire - you save half the batch.
• Explosion - the batch is gone and you get hurt.

Fires and explosions get noticed, and the police may get a call.

Every drug family has its own cook level from 1 to 10. Each batch gives XP, even a failed one gives a little. A higher level raises the best purity you can reach, and some recipes need a minimum level.

Anyone can cook at a station nobody owns. A gang can claim it: two or more members hold the area for ten minutes with no rival gang there, then put a Padlock on it.

• Outsiders can ask for access - an online member of the gang names a price on the dark web and you pay to cook there for a while.
• A locked station can be broken into with a crowbar or a drill. It is loud, the owners get an alert and the police might too.
• Taking the territory around it hands the station to the new gang.
• Police can seize a station. It is sealed for hours and any cook in progress is ruined.
• A gang that leaves its station unused for a few days loses the padlock.

Owners can buy upgrades that fit the station: faster gear, bigger glassware (more batches at once), a vent hood (fewer accidents, less smell) and precision tools (higher purity) for benches; a bigger rack and drying fans for weed tables; more pots, grow lights, air fans and a carbon filter for grow tents. Every station can get a stash drawer only the gang can open. More on this in Gangs & Turf.

Using a drug plays its animation (swallow, snort, drink, smoke and so on). Then it kicks in: a screen effect, a different walk and sometimes a small boost such as less stress or more stamina. When it wears off, some drugs leave you with a comedown - a heavy walk and a bit of stress.

• Driving high is a bad idea. The wheel pulls to one side and on the stronger stuff the pedals sometimes ignore you for a moment.
• Overdose. Taking the same drug three times in about ten minutes, or mixing drugs that do not go together, makes you collapse. You need EMS. You get a warning heartbeat one dose before.
• Some drugs are addictive. Use them often and you start to crave them.