BUDGET EXPERIMENT · OCTOBER 4, 2026

Schedule 1 best mix: a five-ingredient budget experiment

This is a controlled simulation using this site's engine, not a universal ranking or a live game test. The exact product, ingredient pool, length limit and objective define what “best” means here.

Six budget caps, one complete comparison

Our material pool is Cuke ($2), Banana ($2), Paracetamol ($3), Donut ($3) and Energy Drink ($6), using prices from the saved engine snapshot. A budget is an upper limit on ingredient spending per unit. It is not an instruction to spend every dollar. All reported profits exclude base production cost and other expenses.

Each cap has one winning sequence in these runs. Eligible counts include the empty recipe and count distinct ordered sequences, even when two sequences produce identical effects. A zero-budget recipe is therefore a useful baseline rather than an omitted case.

A budget is a constraint, not a target

The eligible set grows from 30 sequences under $6 to 82 under $8 and 106 under $10. Those extra candidates did not beat $74. The winning sequence still spends $6, leaving $2 unused under the $8 cap and $4 under the $10 cap. Spending more is useful only if the additional calculated value exceeds the additional expense.

Within this experiment the objective is profit = rounded unit sell value − ingredient cost. We compare profit directly, not price, effect count or a percentage margin. A higher price can come with enough expense to lose the comparison. No time, equipment, customer preference or completed-sale model is included.

The cap comparison is distinct from our fixed-three-ingredient order experiment. That experiment holds the shopping list constant and swaps order. Here the allowed list, number of additions and spending all vary within explicit limits, so the question is which candidate meets a budget and maximizes the chosen objective.

Exactly what we searched

• Base product: OG Kush only.
• Allowed materials: the five named above, no others.
• Recipe length: zero, one, two or three additions.
• Repeated materials: allowed; order matters.
• Mode: standard mixing, Seeded Mixing off.
• Quantity: one unit; entered base production cost: zero.

With five choices at each step, the complete search size is 1 + 5 + 5² + 5³ = 156. The first term is the empty recipe. This is a count of inputs generated by our enumeration script, not a search-volume figure. We ran every candidate before filtering by cap, retained every output, and selected all candidates tied for the largest profit in each eligible set.

Download the complete experiment record to inspect every input and output, material prices, source commit and engine SHA256. The record has all 156 rows, including losing candidates; it is not a handpicked list of impressive recipes. You can independently filter cost ≤ budget and take the largest profit.

Inspect the $6 winner

Banana → Cuke → Banana costs $2 + $2 + $2 = $6. Its final effects in this snapshot are Thought-Provoking, Energizing, Jennerising, Gingeritis. Calculated value is $80, so ingredient-only profit is $80 − $6 = $74. The repeated Banana is part of this winning sequence; our separate repeated-ingredient example does not establish a rule against all repeats.

For an entered production cost of $5 per unit, this same result becomes $80 − $6 − $5 = $69. At 20 units that is $1,380 of calculated profit, $220 cost and $1,600 sell value. These are arithmetic consequences of the simulated unit result and the explicitly chosen cost and quantity. They are not observed revenue or a customer sales forecast.

Reproduce the result on this site

1. Open the calculator and reset the ordered ingredient list.
2. Select OG Kush, quantity 1 and production cost 0.
3. Add Banana, Cuke, then Banana. Keep that exact order.
4. Compare ingredient cost $6, unit value $80 and profit $74. Inspect the step trace if the final effects differ.
5. To check the batch example, enter quantity 20 and production cost 5; compare $1,380 profit, $220 cost and $1,600 value.

If outputs differ, first compare the source version and test inputs. A rule update or another base product changes the experiment; it is not evidence that every version should produce the saved result.

Questions about choosing a result

Is this the best recipe in the entire game?

No. It is the highest-profit candidate under the specified caps among our 156 sequences. We excluded other ingredients, longer recipes, other products and game modes. No conclusion about those excluded inputs follows from this test.

Does a higher budget have to produce a better recipe?

No. It admits more candidates but leaves cheaper candidates eligible. In our results, three different caps select the same $6 recipe. A maximum spend is not a minimum spend.

Can I apply the ranking if I know my production cost?

A fixed production cost subtracted from every candidate leaves their relative ranking unchanged for this same product and quantity. Candidate-specific costs, processing time or equipment changes require a new objective; this experiment did not measure them.

Why not compare hourly income?

We have no measured processing-time evidence for these candidates, so we cannot turn unit profit into hourly earnings. Dividing by an invented duration would add unsupported precision.

Source and boundaries

We ran this experiment on October 4, 2026 using the site's engine adapted from the MIT-licensed Schedule1 Tools snapshot 74607081. Material prices and simulated results come from that snapshot; the search bounds and arithmetic examples are declared experimental choices. The snapshot does not name an exact game build.

The table, enumeration method, budget comparison, downloadable outputs, diagrams and question answers are original analysis of these runs. We did not copy competitor recipes or claim nobody else has ever studied budgets. The tool is independent and has no official game affiliation.